it wasn’t anywhere glamorous.
it was a cook-your-own steak place in jervis bay. you know the ones — they bring out a volcanic rock the temperature of the sun and a raw piece of meat and basically leave you to figure it out. very primal. very “we trust you.”
i walked in and asked for a table for one.
the owner looked at me. then looked behind me, just to check. then back at me.
oh my, he said. loudly. why are you alone?
not quietly. not gently. in front of the entire restaurant, which was full, because it was a thursday night in jervis bay and apparently everyone else had remembered to bring someone.
i did not have a great answer. i said something like i’m travelling which is technically true and also means nothing. he nodded slowly in the way people do when they’re not convinced, and then he seated me outside.
outside. alone. like a footnote.
i want to tell you i handled this with grace. i did not. i sat down at my little outdoor table, opened a book i was absolutely not going to read, and had a brief internal crisis about every decision that had led me to this moment.
then the bread roll arrived. unprompted. and i decided to stay.
the rock came out and i cooked my steak badly — slightly too done on one side, deeply imperfect. i ate every bite.
from outside i could see the whole restaurant through the window. the family arguing about how done theirs should be. the couple on what was clearly a second or third date, comfortable now, not performing. the two women at the bar having what looked like a very good time.
i watched all of it. i ordered dessert. i sat there for almost two hours.
and somewhere between the steak and the tiramisu i realised i wasn’t performing okayness anymore. i was just... okay. outside, alone, slightly sunburnt, eating tiramisu at a table for one.
honestly? it slapped.
that’s the thing nobody tells you about eating alone. the first time is the hardest — especially when a stranger announces your solitude to a full dining room and then puts you outside like a plant. but after a while you realise nobody is watching you. they’re all inside their own dinners, their own conversations, their own thursday nights.
when you stop waiting to be looked at, you actually start to see things.
i still bring a book i don’t read. old habit. security blanket. it sits on the table like it’s doing something important.
i’ve stopped apologising for the table for one.
even when someone else hasn’t.