"It's brilliant," my boyfriend said with the kind of enthusiasm he usually reserves for sweets. "We really, really have to get some."
The opportunist in me agreed wholeheartedly. If he was that excited about buying a Lush massage bar, I'd be a fool to dissuade him. But then he went on.
"This massage oil really is just so nice," he said, sniffing each tester in the shop's display. "Mmmm." And he paused thoughtfully before adding, "Really, really nice."
It was that last "really nice" that busted open the Pandora's box of things to strategically ignore for the benefit of any modern romance, and the ghost of one of his ex-lovers popped out to tell me just how nice she thought the massage oil was too.
"How exactly did you find out you like this stuff so much?" my inner-masochist prodded, and in the same breath I asked him not to answer that. He knew what I was thinking though, and just as much as my face didn't conceal jealous discomfort, his didn't conceal annoyance.
"How exactly did you find out you like sex so much?" he countered.
That shut me up.
With a little breath, I locked Pandora's box again and reminded myself that having a boyfriend who likes to give massages is far better than one who doesn't – no matter how he developed a taste for it, or the skills. You can read further into that if you want.
So we went back to the task at hand, and agreed on our favourite scented oil, which was easy, because we both liked the same one.
But the universe couldn't just leave it at that.
The next day an old fling found me on Facebook and sent the message that he'd been "thinking fondly of old times". While that fling was brief and lacked long-term significance, I realised I hadn't walked away empty-handed. In fact, he'd taught me something I've gone on to share with most of my friends – something just as, if not more intimate than massage oil ... breakfast.
Delicious, delicious breakfast – and I make a mighty fluffy scrambled eggs with cream cheese.
This is what dating looks like in England.
