21
Three … two … one … Happy New Year!”
Dex’s feeble yaaaaaay must not have satisfied Izzy, because she blew her bright red air horn right in his ear and threw him the V-sign.
He threw one right back at her.
“Cheer up, mate, it’s a new year!”
People stumbled all around, drunks attempting to kiss other drunks and sing off-key at the same time. He and Izzy probably didn’t look much different, what with Izzy climbing into his lap planting wet kisses all over his face.
“Geroff! God!” His attempts to push her away only resulted in further barnacling by Izzy. Dex was only mildly pissed and doing his level best to shake off his shitty mood.
“You know, it could be worse,” Izzy shouted into his ear over the din of the horns and the merry crowd. Her sparkly purple fedora was digging into his forehead.
“How?”
“You could be all alone at home with Al and your parents, alternating between cringy fireworks banter and Jools’ Hootenanny whilst crying into your lager.”
“I would not be crying.”
“Have you looked in the mirror lately, babe? You look like someone’s stolen all your collectibles.”
This time he did push her off him, and she giggled as she tipped over onto the bench. “I’m just letting you know that you’re back to Grumpy Dex and I’m essentially being an angel, stuck here with your scowling face in the arse-end of nowhere instead of bonking someone hot that I’ll never see again and whose last name I probably won’t know in a Camden loo somewhere.”
Dex gave her the side-eye she properly deserved. He wasn’t the only one here who was avoiding shit. “Deflection,” he said, “is your middle name.”
“You shut up now,” she slurred.
“Iz, let’s just face facts, all right? We’re both properly pathetic right now.”
She laid her head against his shoulder and slurped the rest of her drink in one go until all that was left was a blue tinge underneath the ice cubes. “I hate being pathetic.”
Dex nodded in sympathy. “There, there. It’ll pass.” Get a load of him, sounding wise and accepting. He had not even checked his phone in the last hour. That was a vast improvement over the past two weeks.
“It fucking better. Fuck this, let’s get another round. Start as we mean to go on.”
“Pissed as shite,” Dex agreed, and went to procure them more alcohol.
+
“I just hate that she still won’t bloody act normal towards me.”
She was wailing loudly enough to draw concerned looks from the other drunks staggering down High Street, which was not an entirely enviable position to be in. He held onto her a bit harder and did his level best not to steer them both into a pole.
“She’s just a bit confused,” he slurred in what he hoped was a soothing manner. He closed one eye, then switched over to the other. He was fairly certain he knew where they were going. Nearly. Essentially. “She’ll come ’round.”
“You’ve been saying that since November,” she moaned. “It’s January bloody first now, it’s a new year, and still!” She shook her phone at him. “Nothing! I wished her a happy new year with a heart emoji and got fuck-all in return. I ask you!”
“Shhhh.” He patted her on the head. She’d dropped her purple fedora a few streets back and had looked at it balefully before sighing and letting him know they must both move on if they were to continue on this earthly realm. “It’s only, like, two am. It’ll be okay.”
“When?”
Dex shrugged. “Soon,” he told her, then belched. “Oh, fuck, Iz.”
“What. What. Are you gonna vom? Fuck, should have kept the fedora. Are you vomming? Do you need me to hold your hair?”
“No.” He didn’t think. “Don’t touch the hair. No, not vomming.”
They were jostled on both sides by a laddy group of staggering celebrants Dex hoped would take no notice of them. “What is it, Dexter-Baxter?”
He tried to remember what he was sad about. Oh, right. “He ran out on me,” he said. “Kissed me so bloody good and then ran off.”
Izzy made a sad face in return. “Aw. I know, babe. We’ve talked about it. He zhust needsh, you know … time. And shit.”
“But how much time?”
“Should we just fucking get a fucking cab?”
Dex looked around the busy street. “In Cheltenham? On New Year’s?”
“Ugh.”
“Let’s just … keep walking,” he suggested and pulled her along. She clutched at him and staggered half a step behind.
“Don’t toss us into a ditch.”
“Are there ditches on High Street?”
“How the fuck should I fucking know, I’m not the one who lives here.”
“I don’t fucking live here, either, you cow.”
“Tosser. Ha! Tosser. Toss into a ditch. Toss toss toss. I’m hilarious.”
“You are, babe. You’re the most hilarious.”
“Tosser.”
“Shut up now.”
“All right.”
+
Dex’s mum was the best mum. She had sneaked into the room just after ten sometime and left a pot of tea with two cups, a packet of paracetamol, and two glasses of water on his dad’s desk. He had been vaguely aware of this happening and only realised its full import after Izzy kicked him awake in her sleep and rolled over, snoring.
He dislodged his body from hers and nearly brained himself in an attempt to untangle his limbs from the sheets. The room had been surprisingly stuffy for winter, and they’d managed to shove the duvet off at some point in the night. He had a wedgie all the way up to his taint, but it all paled in comparison to the headache currently pounding through his temples.
He sat up gingerly to test the waters. Murky. He buried his face in his hands. Luckily, his father’s study was small enough that getting to the paracetamol and water was a matter of extending an arm and being able to form a grip.
He shouldn’t have thought of waters, or at least should have taken the pill dry.
Oh God, he needed a wee.
He did not think he could make it down the stairs, though. He also did not think he could face his parents or Al just yet. His options, however, appeared slim. He could either wee out the window onto his mother’s flower beds, go into his glass of water, or gather up what was left of his dignity and do his best at using an actual toilet.
“If you don’t stop shifting around I’m going to murder you where you sleep.”
“Oh, look who’s bloody awake now.”
“I hate myself,” Izzy croaked. She didn’t move. “I hate you. I hate tequila. I really hate Nat.”
Dex shifted just enough that he could poke her in the arse. “Your phone went off at some point in the night. Don’t you use Do Not Disturb?”
She almost nailed him in the balls in her scramble to get out of bed. “Don’t do that again,” he pleaded feebly.
“Holy fuck,” Izzy breathed.
Dex popped one eye open and tried to focus on her. She was hunched over her phone on the floor in her bra and pants and mad hair, grinning like a lunatic.
“What? Don’t make me come over there. Because I can’t move.”
“She’s only gone and texted me back! Look!”
She thrust her phone in his direction and when he didn’t respond quickly enough shoved it up to his nose.
Happy new year. See u soon, babe xo
“Whoa. That’s basically a love letter right there.”
“It is! Oh, God, I think maybe she’ll actually act normal at some point. Like, we’ll be able to have a proper conversation? Don’t you think?”
“I do,” he assured her, covering his eyes with an arm. “I really do.”
“Unless … God, it was bloody half three in the morning. She must have been fucking paralytic. Oh God, do I respond or what? What if she regrets it? What if she doesn’t mean it? Dex, help, oh God, what does it mean?”
“Babe,” he whispered.
“What?”
“Shhh.”
“Oh. Right.” The futon dipped around his feet. “Want me to check yours?”
“Who cares. It’ll just be a bunch of offers off Pizza Hut or some shit. Maybe Alex or Jonny will have texted.”
Dex heard rummaging around where he’d dropped his jeans and jumper on the floor before crawling into bed and passing out. “Got it.”
“Well?” he asked. “Out with it. You have zero messages.”
“Well, not zero,” she said. “You’ve got a text off Jonny, that’s nice. Oh, and a picture!”
“Please tell me it isn’t him and Lance snogging, I couldn’t bear it first thing in the morning.”
“You are such an arsehole,” she laughed. “No, but it is him and Lance and Alex and, oh! Nat! In a pub. They all look proper shitfaced, too, blimey.”
“Get in,” he mumbled.
“Anyway, he says, ‘We miss you both come back sooooooon not the same without you,’ with like ten heart emojis. Aw. That’s nice.”
“That’s it?”
“Sorry.”
He shrugged again and finally made himself move. He sat up. Swallowed through the dizziness. “Need a wee,” he sighed, and did as both nature and society demanded of him.
It wasn’t just that Dex had gone through the past few weeks pining and sad, but Dex had gone through the past few weeks pining and sad with a side order of ticked-off and confused.
When Nick had given him a boner and then ran off before they even made the fucking sauce, Dex hadn’t quite known how to feel. Izzy had found him in the living room watching Antiques Roadshow and drinking the dregs of the wine, finishing off a packet of crisps and half a pack of digestives. If she hadn’t known his plans for the evening, she probably wouldn’t have worried, but she had, and she’d taken one look at his face and said, “What’s happened?”
Dex still didn’t really know. Well, he sort of did. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t resent the fuck out of it.
“Why?” he asked Izzy for the millionth time after they’d finally had his mum’s fry-up for a very late breakfast and lazed in his parents’ living room whilst his dad was having a kip, Mum had gone to work, and Al was busy doing Al things in his own room. “Why do I always fall for emotionally unavailable guys? What is wrong with me?”
“You’re exaggerating. Didn’t you have a nice boyfriend at school?”
“Yeah, at sixteen, for about a month. And then we got bored of each other.”
“Of each other or you of him?”
“A bit of both. Anyway, that’s hardly relevant. Michael was the real first relationship.”
“Your schoolboy is feeling very sad and neglected. Wasn’t he your first, like, shag?”
“Point taken. But we’re talking relationship here, not just sex. I liked Jamal, but Michael was, you know. Love, I think.”
“I know. But he’s in the past, and Nick is now, and it’s different.”
Dex swallowed the Jaffa Cake as it transformed into a lump in his throat. “I am guessing he is also in the past, Iz.” Finished before it had started.
The thing was, Dex could tell Nick had been into him. It took him a while to get there, but he wasn’t a complete idiot. And if he hadn’t known before that kiss, he sure as shit knew afterwards. Sadly, the afterwards had also included Nick shoving him away and running out like the house had been on fire, and then not contacting anyone and buggering off to America for the holidays.
Despite better judgment, Dex had texted him a few times. He’d received zero response.
“Maybe just give him time,” Izzy said. Dex had attempted to get more out of her, because he had the distinct feeling that she knew something, but his every attempt at wheedling it out of her was met with assurance that it was none of her business nor his. Which was crap.
“Well, I don’t fucking want to give him time. He doesn’t need time, he needs to sort himself out, and I’m not going to wait around, it’ll probably take a million years.”
“That’s bollocks, and you bloody well know it. If you fancy him, you can wait. And I think you do.”
Dex switched the channel on telly a little bit more viciously than he had intended to.
“Ignore me all you want, but you know I’m right.” There was an Eastenders omnibus on. He could ignore her forever if he wanted.
He did fancy Nick. He didn’t particularly want to, all things being equal, but he did. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about that kiss in his kitchen. In one moment, a world of possibilities unfurled in his mind’s eye. The things he would have done for Nick if only Nick had asked him. Had let him. It had been a while since Dex felt like that. Not just horny and happy to get off, but excited. Really excited about someone and the feel of their skin, the way they sounded when he made them feel good.
He had made Nick feel good. Nick had liked it. Liked Dex. Which was salt in the wound when he’d run off and disappeared without a trace.
“You’re being melodramatic. He’ll be back eventually. We’ll probably see him before term even starts.”
Dex highly doubted that last bit, even as the thought made his stomach fizz with sick anticipation. Dex knew Nick was good at making himself scarce. I don’t like being visible, he’d told Dex once.
“Iz, he’s just so fucking complicated. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to start anything.”
“Babe. Just give him time. He may come around. It’s not about you.”
Dex didn’t know if that made it better or worse. Maybe if it had been about Dex, he would have felt like he’d mattered. But what Nick had made him feel, first and foremost, was rejection.
“I think that makes it worse,” he told her, and she petted him wordlessly and shoved a biscuit in his mouth.