‘So clearly the sex is better with Alex,’ Tash says, later.

Alex left, after we spent a ridiculously long amount of time kissing goodbye at the door, and now Tash and I are sitting up in bed, scrolling our phones.

‘You weren’t meant to be listening!’ I say, kicking her under the duvet.

‘I wasn’t listening,’ she says. ‘But I still heard. Noisy bastards.’

‘Ugh,’ I say. ‘You’re the worst.’

‘I left you alone, didn’t I? I could see he was all…’ She waggles her eyebrows at me, sticks out her tongue.

‘Ugh,’ I say again.

‘He really likes you, I think,’ she says.

I smile. ‘I really like him.’

‘And the sex…?’

‘God, Tash,’ I say. ‘The sex is… it was never like that with Max. I had no fucking idea. I can’t believe it. All these years. Now I see why you’re—’

‘Such a slut?’ she says, grinning.

‘So into it, is what I was going to say.’

‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘That’s the thing with sex. When it’s good it’s really good. But when it’s bad, it’s the fucking worst.’

‘I didn’t know it was bad with Max, though,’ I say, putting my phone down on my lap. ‘I just thought that’s what sex was like. I couldn’t understand what the fuss was about.’

‘But you slept with people before Max, though,’ Tash says, putting her phone down too and turning towards me.

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘But only a couple. And it wasn’t great with them either. I mean, it wasn’t bad, but it was only okay.’

‘And with Alex?’

I shake my head. ‘It’s just… With Max it was sort of like something he did to me, you know? And I really mostly did it because he wanted it. But with Alex, it was both of us. And I didn’t even really have to think about it.’

‘That’s good,’ Tash says. ‘That’s how it should be, I think.’

‘And I think…’ I say. ‘I think that’s to do with being invisible too. You know, with Max sometimes I’d worry about how I looked. To him. I’d hold my belly in or I’d avoid certain positions ’cos I didn’t want him to see me like that. But now…’

‘Yeah,’ Tash says. ‘I get how that would help.’

‘I just don’t think about it. It means I can think about me more. I mean… I think about Alex too, of course, but with Max I never felt like I was really there. I was thinking of… someone else. Or something else. Work, sometimes.’

‘This is good, then. I said that, didn’t I? I said it could be good for you.’

‘You did,’ I say, nodding. ‘How weird, though. And the weirdest thing is that I never really worried about it. Or even thought about it. I just kind of accepted that that was how it should be.’

‘That’s not your fault, though,’ Tash says. ‘The male fucking gaze. Everywhere. We almost always see sex from the man’s perspective, I don’t think it’s a big surprise that we do that ourselves.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘But god. How shit is that?’

‘Right?’ Tash says. ‘But talking about sex from a man’s perspective, how tempted was I to come out and peek at Alex humping the air?’

‘Oh my god,’ I say, covering my face even though she can’t see it. ‘You didn’t!’

‘Course I didn’t!’ She laughs. ‘But I wanted to. I bet it looks hilarious.’

‘You’re not helping. And also we weren’t having sex.’

‘No? It sounded like it.’

‘I mean… I guess it depends what you call sex? But we didn’t, you know.’

‘You both came,’ Tash says. ‘I think you can call that sex.’

‘God,’ I say, my face heating.

She laughs. ‘I’m really happy for you, you know.’ She reaches a hand out and it lands on my thigh, next to my phone. ‘I mean, it would be better if I could see you. But I’m happy for you that it’s going well with Alex. And that you are getting, you know, off.’

I snort. ‘Thank you. What about you? How’s Liam?’

‘Oh!’ she says, pulling her legs up and crossing them. ‘I didn’t tell you! He’s into edging.’

I shake my head. ‘I don’t know what that is.’

‘Getting almost there and then… not.’

‘That’s a thing?’

‘Yeah. And he’s good at it.’ Her eyes are shining and her cheeks are flushed.

‘Is that for him or for you?’

‘Well, it was for him at first. But then it went so well that we tried it with me as well and… oh my god.’

‘Yeah?’

She shakes her head, her eyes closing. ‘Possibly the best orgasm of my life.’

‘God,’ I say. ‘It’s a whole new world.’

‘It really is,’ she says.

‘So how’s it going out of bed?’ I ask her.

She frowns. ‘Do you know what? I like him.’

‘That’s not so weird,’ I say. ‘He sounds nice.’

She nods. ‘But you know nice doesn’t usually do it for me.’

That’s true. As long as I’ve known her she’s been drawn to the boys I was totally intimidated by. The boys she never knew where she was with. Bad boys, I guess.

‘So what’s changed?’ I ask her.

‘I think, maybe…’ She holds her hands up in front of her. ‘Don’t start.’

‘Ha!’

‘It could be because of what happened with Rob. I think maybe I would like to try being with someone who really likes me, you know. I mean, all the time. As a person. Not just for sex.’

‘That sounds like a radical idea.’

‘Shut up,’ she says. ‘But yeah.’

‘So are you still seeing other people or—’

‘Maybe not. Right now. I mean, I’m not ruling it out. And if I met someone else tomorrow, I don’t know. But right now… no. I’m okay just seeing him.’

‘Wow,’ I say.

‘I know.’ She smiles and then rubs her hands over her face. ‘God.’

‘I think this is the first time I’ve ever heard you say something like that.’

She shakes her head. ‘Nope. Marc.’

‘Oh god.’

When we first moved to London, Tash worked with this guy who was, I thought, a total dickhead. He couldn’t seem to make up his mind whether he liked her or not. Or, at least, that’s how he acted. He’d stand her up and then turn up in the middle of the night at the flat we were sharing. I hated him. Tash was utterly smitten. He was all she could talk about. The sex was amazing, but he treated her like crap and she fell desperately in love with him.

‘He tried to add me on Facebook,’ she says now. ‘Did I tell you?’

‘Fuck! No!’

‘I didn’t accept. Had a quick look at his photos. He’s married. Poor cow. And he doesn’t look that great.’

‘He never did,’ I say.

That was another weird thing about Marc – physically he wasn’t Tash’s type at all, she’d always gone out with the best-looking boy in any group. It was guaranteed that if I saw a boy and thought, Hello!, he’d be on his way to talk to Tash. But Marc was only okay-looking. Not bad-looking, but nothing special. And he had really stupid hair.

‘So you and Liam?’

‘We’re going out tomorrow night, actually.’

‘That’s great,’ I say. ‘I’m really happy for you.’

‘I wanted to ask you a favour,’ Tash says. ‘Will you come? I want you to meet him.’

‘I… how?’

‘If you just come too – we’re going to a bar. And you can see him, watch him a bit… It’s not going to be just the two of us, there’s a couple of his friends coming too. Just… I don’t want to make the same mistake again, you know? I want to be sure this time.’

‘You want me to spy on him?’

‘No! But yeah, maybe. A bit.’

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘But I’m not getting dressed up.’