Babies in prams and arms interlocked, kisses at crossings and drinking coffee with cuddles we share each other’s company in the presence of others. It’s New Year’s Eve so the end of the year but today marks the start of us reigniting of our time together. We laugh together and smile into each other’s eyes reminiscing of our year gone by: the times when we were on our own, playing catch up, nodding, smiling and acting interested. Though I am interested. Every word you speak mesmerises me, you are passionate and I like that. I take you to coffee shops where I have a history and a past of bundlers, I’m not sure whether I took you there because it was convenient or because I wanted to show you off because I am proud of you and I love being on your arm.

You are a bag of contradictions but it is a mix I like. You are unpredictable yet I feel secure. You are a fighter but not a stereotype. It’s a nice mix of masculinity and the ability to care. You get offended when I called you a ‘soft’, but you misunderstand me.

Dundee is colder that I expected, always like this in winter – I forgot the smell of it, like the inside of a hairdryer, mixed with concrete and ozone. I wander around the city centre, Perth Road and back again, buy magazines that I don’t have time to read, sample-sized bottles of conditioner and tanning lotion which I will never use, nail files, soap, olives, crackers, strawberries. I try to do homework in the bathtub, crossed legged in orange laced knickers and the pink t-shirt on which you gave me, lay on the big white hotel bed with the heat on.

At ten PM, I drink cava from plastic hotel cups. I’m waiting. This morning: Glasgow, Merchant City, coffee, work, promote, sell, Dundee. Tomorrow: Dundee, work, Glasgow or Edinburgh, home to the chaos and noise. Home to study, to read.

Everything scrutinised. But tonight I am waiting. Tonight I’ll drink cava until I can’t feel my tongue.