Some things are coincidence, and other things just take a bloody long time.

"It was sweet. We were watching from across the table. He was looking at you, then he'd look away and you'd look at him, then he'd look at you..."

We were sitting in a pub on the Essex Road; the remnants of the day's red wine scattered on the table, our boisterous crowd of 14 whittled down to the last four still yet to admit they had work in the morning.

It was coincidence that yesterday was picked as the day that our big gang got together for a Sunday lunch for absolutely no reason at all. A group of friends that I didn't know this time last year, but now wouldn't be without, and a group of friends who, quite frankly, are the biggest incentive to go through a break-up that I've ever known: I'd never have met 90% of them if the events of January 2011 hadn't happened.

Whether it was a coincidence that someone else should join our party as well, I don't know.

"He's cute" stage-whispered the PIB, performing the facial equivalent of a wink wink nudge nudge in my direction.
"Shhh" I replied with a grimace. But she was right.

It was later on in the evening when me and him found ourselves chatting and I felt something bubble up inside me; a feeling which I can quite accurately describe as a lovely sort of abject terror. Not only was I standing talking to a boy - a good looking one at that - who didn't repel me, but I was smiling and laughing and feeling like should this end up going further, then I wouldn't much mind.

There was just one problem: last year, it almost had gone further - but that time the terror had been different, and so acute that I'd cancelled the date.

Yet here I was on the tube home five months on, reading over the text messages from last year and thinking "Why the hell did I do that?"

The simple answer is that I wasn't ready. But whether it's coincidence that some little spark returned a year to the day after my heart got broken, and whether I've blown it this time or not, and whether it's this boy or the next, perhaps I am ready now.

I've just sent a text message to find out.

And yep, it's still bloody terrifying.