Devil's Food Cake [✓]

25 | lost

It didn't help that we got confronted by a host of problems as we sought to get to Zachary's restaurant of choice.

The station was overflowing with commuters heading towards their direction: Jonny and I were separated in the rush of party-goers and tourists as we attempted to navigate along the platform.

The first train we intended to take had refused to move along the platform.

Signal failure.

We had to get off, squashed like sardines, barely able to breathe as we trod on people's toes, earning a torrent of swear words for our efforts.

'What do we do now?' I said.

As we gazed at the scrum of passengers in the carriage we'd just departed from, Jonny's eyes were narrowed in concentration as he scrambled around for an answer.

Some people jostled past us, deciding that it was best to take another route to get to their destination for convenience.

Jonny's head swivelled around as I began to speak.

'I think I've got a map in my bag—'

'We can take the longer route — I think I remember it when I looked on Google Maps earlier,' he beamed as though he'd solved a complicated mathematical formula.

Jonny grabbed my hand and started to lead me down the platform.

'But I have the map right here. It won't take me long to find it,' I protested.

'You're all right, babe.' I'd never seen a guy look as happy as he did at that moment; I had no idea why men insisted on never asking for directions from people or trusting females with maps?

Male pride? It was almost like he'd acquired a caveman SATNAV.

'Look, are you sure you know where we're going?' I glanced at my wrist watch. 'At this rate, we're going to miss our dinner date with Zachary.'

'Trust me.'

We walked up the newspaper sodden stairs, at a snail's pace, a direct result of the hundreds of disgruntled people in front of him.

There must have been three of four lines we could of got on, but neither of us knew where each led to.

I'd tried to look for a map, but I couldn't find it.

After approaching a group of French speakers, who were just as clueless as we were, I didn't dare ask any other people for directions.

The minutes rapidly slipped past.

I could imagine Zachary waiting for us in the restaurant, totally blasé about whether we came or not.

I would have like to give up and go home, but my boyfriend had other ideas.

Jonny had the mad cap idea of following a man with a neat white beard, wearing a pair of camel-coloured shorts, as he seemed like he knew where he was going. Naturally, as we had run out of other options, we followed the guy as if we were his stalkers.

'This feels kind of weird.' I watched as Camel Shorts dashed ahead of us.

'We're not doing anything wrong,' Jonny smiled reassuringly, 'I do this often.'

I narrowed my eyes at him. 'I didn't just hear that.'

He laughed. It seemed to reverberate in the tunnel, attracting him a few appreciative stares from a group of party girls on the opposite side.

Leaning towards me, he whispered in my ear, "I'm not a stalker. Unless you count the time I stalked my brother. For a laugh, he'd nicked one of my video games when we were kids, so I decided it was time for stealth tactics because I was getting nothing out of him about the game's whereabouts — and I really wanted to finish that final bitch of a level..." He was now caught up in remembering the torment he'd gone through.