Once Harry and I started having sex, we didn’t really do any activity that wasn’t having sex if we could possibly help it. Whenever we managed to squeeze in alone time together, the whole thing was just an elaborate game of pretending we weren’t going to have sex. It started raining one day and didn’t stop for three weeks, postponing the filming. So we had a lot of sex. I even got over my aversion to going to his flat. Which showed just how much I wanted to have sex, because the place was disgusting. The toilet bowl was more skid mark than porcelain, the kitchen sink unreachable through the tower of dirty dishes, and don’t get me started on the pubes in the shower. But Harry washed his sheets and the bed was the only part of his flat I was interested in.
The sex was sometimes good, sometimes bad. Not yet great. I made Harry get an STI test. “This must be serious, if I’m getting a giant cotton bud shoved up my willy hole for you,” he’d grumbled. And then we had to wait until my period started before I could begin taking the pill. In the meantime, Harry bitched about condoms and, once, when he’d picked me up from a late shift, stoned off his brain because he’d been with Rosie, he’d lost his erection trying to put one on. I was mortified and started crying, “You don’t fancy me,” while he just laughed hysterically, patted me on the back and said, “Of course I fancy you…it’s just I’m high and I hate condoms… Can we go out and get some pizza?”
I found I couldn’t orgasm through sex, which Harry seemed miraculously unfussed by.
“You should let me go down on you.” He shrugged. “You will then.”
I turned purple at the thought. “No, I’m too shy.”
“About what?”
I buried my face deeper into his blue sheets and mumbled.
“What was that, Audrey?”
I pulled the sheet down so only my eyes were showing.
“I said…I’m not sure I want you so close to…there. I’m worried it’s…it’s…ugly.”
He grinned before he laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not ugly. It’s fine. It’s sexy! You’ll like it. I’m good at it. Hey, where are you going?” …As I buried deeper under the covers to hide my mortification. But then, one night, after a particularly gruelling shift, LouLou had said, “Screw this, we’re drinking,” and let us go mad on the cinema’s bar. Back at Harry’s, I was just drunk enough to not feel too shy about letting him try. He was right. He was good at it. And I did. He was also such a smug prick about it afterwards I had to thump him.
“Stop puffing your chest out.”
“I’m not. This is just what Sex Gods do with their chests.”
Another thump.
Leroy sauntered over while I was having lunch with the girls and smacked a ripped poster onto my table. “Tell me you love me.”
“What’s this?” I picked it up. “Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama…” And put it down again. “Why are you giving me this?”
He pulled up a chair and made the girls move down. “Read it! I stole it off the Drama noticeboard. We don’t want Milo seeing it. Not that he’d have a chance after missing that high note in ‘Luck Be A Lady’.”
Milo missing that note was the happiest day of Leroy’s life.
I pushed the poster further away, my heart aching. “Leroy, I quit Drama. They’re not going to let me into an acting school with a D in Geography.”
“OH WILL YOU JUST READ IT ALREADY,” he shouted, before turning to the girls, and apologizing.
Alice, Becky and Charlie just grinned at him. The more we’d all been hanging out, the more they’d got used to his theatrics.
Leroy turned back to me and punched the page with his finger, almost ripping it. “Look. They’re doing VIDEO auditions this year, Auds! To show how with-the-times they are. All you have to do is send in a clip. You have a clip! You can send your zombie bride stuff!”
I looked down, the words blurring with excitement. “Don’t you have to apply through UCAS to go there?” I asked. It was a question I’d already learned the answer to, when I’d stayed up late, clicking through the apply pages of uni websites, cursing myself for dropping Drama.
“Yes,” Leroy said. “But this is for two special places, SEE.” He jabbed at the page again. “They want a diamond in the rough! Not someone doing the Macbeth soliloquy for the eighth time in a row. Surely you should at least TRY and send something in? Harry will give you some footage, won’t he? Make you a showreel?”
I shook my head, my mouth open. “I…I guess. But I’m not exactly a diamond in the rough.”
“They don’t have to know that!”
I looked over at Alice and the others. “What do you think?”
Becky rolled her eyes. “Erm. Are you stupid?”
“But what about uni?”
Alice reached out and took a chip from our shared bowl. “You can still send off your UCAS form for Media, but enter this too.”
“I’m WAITING for you to say thank you.” Leroy crossed his arms. “You’re lucky I’m choosing to focus on IT-related world domination rather than Drama-related world domination, otherwise we’d have to fight each other for this.”
I leaned over and hugged him. “Thank you. I’m sure I won’t get in…” Everyone started protesting. “…but thank you. It’s worth a shot, I guess.” It felt like someone had shoved a valve into my belly button and started pumping hope right into me. I shook my head to dislodge the thoughts. I wouldn’t get in anyway. I mean, there’s “edgy” and then there’s playing a feminist zombie bride in an overtly B movie in some shit local woods.
“You are very welcome, now givuss a chip.” Leroy leaned over me and grabbed a handful from the bowl, ignoring Alice’s attempt to slap his hand.
We all started chatting but I kept looking down at the scrap of paper. Thinking…wondering…hoping… Until Leroy said, “Your mum keeps going to church with my mum. It’s weird.”
I sighed. “I know. It’s her new thing.” I still couldn’t figure out if this new thing was a good thing or a bad thing. It was certainly different, but it appeared to be stemming the drinking at least.
“Does that mean she’s hanging out with Harry’s parents too?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. She grumbled about trying to talk to his mum, apparently she was rude.”
Leroy nodded. “Sounds like Harry’s mum. She’s a big cheese there. Not a fan of hanging out with the Babybels.”
I didn’t like the thought of them meeting. From what Harry had told me, I wouldn’t like his parents. They were strict, cold, too religious to see straight, judgemental. It worried me too that Mum had randomly found God. We’d never been a religious family, not even at Christmas. But it seemed to keep her calm. And Leroy’s mum was there to look out for her. I was willing to hope on anything when it came to Mum at the moment.
“Argh, I don’t know what to do, Leroy,” I said. “I’m worried about ever going away to uni and leaving her. She’s so…lost.”
Leroy squirmed in his seat, never that comfortable with me talking about the deep and meaningful. “It ain’t your job to find her, babe.”