15
They were sat in a cafe near campus when Izzy staggered in looking wrecked. Sunglasses on, jacket askew, tiny dress in vague disarray around her. Dex narrowed his eyes. She plopped down next to Nick and just sat there.
“Isabel, what the fuck happened to you?” he asked, then exchanged a look with Nat.
He was about to ask if she was just hungover or if it was something actually serious when Izzy said, “I think I’m not entirely straight?” The whole table—him, Nick, Nat, Jonny, Lance, Alex, Steph—froze.
The first person to break the silence was Natali. “What.”
Dex shot her another look, but she only had eyes for Izzy, watching her with an unreadable expression. Izzy, from what Dex could tell, was looking somewhere beyond all of them under her sunnies.
“I—” Izzy said. “I went out last night with my mate Kat, right, to a club in Vauxhall somewhere, can’t remember the address, anyway, doesn’t matter, so there was this girl.” Dex would have bet a million pounds Izzy had no idea she was running her hand over her mouth as she sat there. “She was a bit older, I think. My height. She was wearing one of them checked shirts and these baggy trousers with loads of pockets, and she started to dance with me.” She cleared her throat. “She kissed me.” Izzy paused. “We kissed.”
Everyone’s coffees and breakfasts sat forgotten. When Dex glanced around the table, he could see all eyes trained on Izzy. Lance’s looked to be close to popping out.
“And?” Alex asked loudly enough that a woman at the table next to theirs glanced up irritably from her Kindle.
“And,” Izzy said slowly. “It was really nice.” She nicked Dex’s coffee right from under his nose and drank about half of it in one go. “It was really nice. I feel like I need to reexamine my whole existence now.”
“Crikey,” Dex said, just as Jonny grinned and said, “Blimey.” Dex saw him and Lance exchange an almost conspiratorial look. Dex wasn’t sure how Lance wound up joining them for breakfast, but at least he wasn’t making things awkward for once.
The table erupted in excited talk, everyone tripping over themselves to ask Izzy questions and make rude comments. A moment later, all was brought to a halt by Natali spitting out over everyone’s voices, “I’m sorry, what the fuck. Do you expect us to wave a little flag for you now?”
Silence. Dex looked at her just to make sure he’d heard right. “Nat, what the—”
“No, no. I’m sorry,” Natali went on. Her whole face was like a storm brewing. She was staring right daggers at Izzy. Dex felt himself going cold. “Right, you have one kiss with some girl whilst pissed at a club, let’s bring out the parade? Is that what you’re saying?”
Izzy’s mouth hung open, and when she looked to Dex for help, all he could do was stare and shake his head helplessly. “Nat,” she croaked. “Nat, that’s bollocks, that isn’t what—I’m not saying that at all, I’m telling—”
“Yeah, fuck that. Reexamining your whole existence my arse. One kiss doesn’t mean fuck-all, so please don’t try to join the queer club. It’s pathetic.”
Dex was rooted to the spot. He’d seen Nat angry before, but he’d never seen her this vicious, or this—this mean. This wrong. This was Izzy. “Nat—”
She cut him off. “Fuck this, I’m late anyway.” Natali’s chair squeaked as she shot up out of it and grabbed her bag before anyone could say another word. “Here’s a tenner.”
Dex could only watch along with the rest of them as she shoved her way past the chairs and the tables until the bell over the door jingled her dramatic exit.
Izzy slumped and finally pushed her sunnies up off her face. They sat crookedly on top of her ginger mane. Her eyes were puffy and a touch red. “What the fuck?”
Dex shook his head. “Don’t—don’t mind that right now.”
“I don’t … I don’t understand.” She looked suddenly small. Her voice was hoarse, but he didn’t think it was because of being out late drinking. “What the fuck?” she repeated.
Dex exchanged an uneasy glance with Alex. “I’m not sure, babe. But you look proper wrecked.” A thought occurred to him. “Iz, did you—you didn’t come home last night.” One look at Izzy’s face gave him the answer. He produced a low whistle. “Shit, mate, you move fast.”
Izzy coloured but met his gaze straight on. “I’m an adult. I can fucking do whatever the fuck I feel like.”
Dex reached out, going for her hand, but she slipped it into her lap at the last minute. His hand landed awkwardly on the table. “I’m not saying a word,” he said carefully. “If you need a chat or anything—”
Izzy pushed his coffee cup back towards him and stood up, her chair scraping the floor in an echo of Natali’s. “I’ve gotta go,” she croaked and ran out of the cafe before they could do much more than call out her name.
“Shit.” Dex slumped down.
“What—why was Natali so upset?” It was the first thing Nick had said since Izzy’s dramatic entrance. He was pink in the face, his eyebrows furrowed. His neck and shoulders were all but lost inside his giant scarf. He looked like a nerdy hipster with his glasses.
“I’m fairly sure I know what happened,” he hedged. “But I’d have to talk to Nat first, I think.” Nick cast down his gaze and nodded, and Dex thought, fuck it. “Look, Nat’s had a bit of a thing for Izzy for ages.”
“Yeah, it’s been sort of an unspoken thing, but we all know,” Steph chimed in quietly. “I guess this sort of fucked her up.” She was quiet for a second. “Which sucks.”
“Oh.” Nick’s eyes were wide, but it wasn’t shock, Dex didn’t think. It was his way of taking in information. Dex wondered how much of their inner circle crap Nick sensed.
“Shit. Who wants to take who?” Jonny asked, and they all looked at each other before Dex raised his hand and offered to take Izzy. “All right. Alex, you’ve got Nat. You okay with that?”
Alex looked like he wanted to argue, but then just nodded. “Yeah, all right.”
Dex felt his gut churning uneasily. They’d all rowed before, obviously, but this felt bigger—terrible, if he was honest. He reached for his phone and shot off a quick text to Iz, just a few hearts to let her know he loved her.
“Will they be all right?”
Dex looked up, but Lance wasn’t asking all of them, just looking at Jonny.
Jonny shrugged, uncertain. “I mean, I fucking hope so? That sort of came out of nowhere, though.” He caught Dex’s eye. “Did you suspect?”
“What, that Izzy had been harbouring secret Sapphic tendencies?” He made a face, largely at himself. Jonny made the same face back at him. Right. “Sorry. Nah, mate. I’d no idea.”
“Poor Iz,” Steph sighed. She scraped her fork around her leftover runny eggs. “I’ll try to talk to her later, too.”
After that, the conversation petered out. When Dex glanced over at Nick, Nick was watching his half-empty coffee cup like he was trying to beam it into space. Dex couldn’t begin to guess what was going on inside his head.
+
Dex knocked softly but for once didn’t wait for an answer. “You decent?” He peered in through the narrow crack in the doorway.
Izzy was sat on her bed with her computer on her lap but was clearly not even paying attention to it. She wore only a ratty T-shirt and pants, and when she looked up her eyes were puffy and red. “Define decent,” she rasped.
Dex slipped in and shut the door. “Babe.”
She shut her laptop and shoved it to the foot of the bed. He plopped down next to her and opened one arm. Izzy slumped against him immediately.
“She won’t fucking talk to me,” she sniffed. “Like, friends for two bloody years, and she won’t even respond to a fucking text, what the fuck is that?”
Dex ran his hand over her arm and rested his cheek on her head. “She probably needs time to take it in or something,” he offered, not really sure he believed it himself.
“You know who fucking needs time to take it in?” she asked in a rising voice. “Me. I need bloody time to take this in, it’s not like.” She dislodged him as she sat up. Her lip trembled. “This isn’t a fucking lark, I’m not a bloody arsehole, I never knew. I mean, how stupid is that? How could I not have known?”
Dex shrugged. “People don’t realise a lot of things about themselves.”
“You did,” she said.
“Well, yeah, I’m not bloody bisexual, am I?” Dex smiled. “I’m a full-on card-carrying homo, Iz. It’s a bit different, because I was only ever attracted to boys.”
“But you believe me?” she asked softly. “That it was a real thing, not an experiment or some bullshit attention-seeking crap?”
“Oh my God, of course I believe you.” He pulled her back towards him, and she came. “When have you ever done anything just for attention?”
“Well, I dunno. Nat’s called me a show-off a bunch.” Dex felt his heart breaking along with her voice.
“Nat’s got a lot of anger, we know this,” he said softly. “She’ll come around.” She had to. But they all knew how fucking hard she’d fought to carve out her own identity in the face of her parents’ disapproval, their disappointment. Nothing had ever come easily to Natali. Not like Izzy. “She says things she doesn’t always mean.”
“She meant this,” Izzy whispered after a long pause. “But so did I.” She fidgeted against him. Dex kept still and silent. “I can’t fucking tell you how that girl turned me on,” she finally said. It was so quiet, he had to strain to hear her over the street noise filtering in through the window. “How had I never known I could be turned on by girls? Is it like a button that suddenly gets activated?”
She seemed to be waiting for him to respond, so Dex said, “Honestly, I don’t know. We’re all so different, you know?”
“I know. It’s just weird,” she mused. “All this time, I just thought I appreciated girls aesthetically. Like, oh wow, that dress looks great on her. Or, those jeans were made for her arse. But I had proper sex with a girl last night, and I have zero regrets or bad feelings about it.”
“That’s good, though. Isn’t it? No regrets?”
“Yeah, but now it’s all—do I come out to my mum? Does it matter? She doesn’t know about half the guys I’ve slept with, so why should she know about this?” She paused, took a breath. “But what if I actually get into a relationship with a girl? I’ll have to tell her then, and who knows how she’ll take it. And what about my aunt and cousins? God, Dex. Apparently I’m bisexual, and I’ve only just figured it out!”
She’d sat up again and was looking at him with wide eyes, her cheeks splotchy pink, almost overpowering the freckles.
“Babe,” he said. “Take it one thing at a time, yeah?”
Shakily, she nodded.
“You jumped out of a closet you’d never even realised you’d been in ten seconds ago.” He thought about the best way to word it. “It’s okay to be confused. And it’s okay to not want to come out to your family. That shit is scary. Nobody’s rushing you. Right?”
She nodded again.
“So, it’s all good.”
“But Nat—”
“Well, apart from that, but give it time. You know her, she needs space when she’s stroppy, and this is—” He stopped before he said anything he’d regret. “This is a weird one.”
“Why, though? Why?”
Dex wondered how she could have missed it, but even so, he didn’t actually believe this was all due to Natali’s unrequited crush. This was bigger. More complicated. Scarier.
“I’m sure eventually we’ll get it,” he said. “Just give her space to figure it out. Work through it.”
Izzy slumped, but nodded. “Fine.”
They sat in silence for a full minute before Izzy gave him a look, which was the only warning he got before the attack. “So, you teaching Nick to cook, huh?”
“Oh God.” Dex felt his entire face flaming hot and buried it in his hands. “Please don’t remind me.”
“That was incredible, mate. Do you have any idea how hard it was to keep a straight face in front of everyone? What’s next, skywriting? Taking out an advert in the Times?”
“It’s not the 1990s.”
“Whatever, this is amazing. Will you seriously go through with it?”
“No!”
“Bullshit, you can’t back out now. He looked excited!”
Dex finally lifted his head and glared at her. “Why are we talking about me, anyway, I’m not the one who just discovered he loves ladies.”
“We’re talking about you because we never actually had this conversation, and it’s pretty huge. Do you really like him, babe?”
He slumped against the wall. Her Bikini Kill poster was threatening to fall down again. “Honestly? Yeah.”
Izzy was doing her best to hide the awww expression on her face. She failed. He scowled.
“Oh, stop,” she laughed. She still sounded sort of clogged up and snotty, which made it harder to be stroppy with her. “It’s just unusual for you. He’s not, you know.”
“My type? Don’t remind me.”
She shrugged. “But we did just learn that human beings contain multitudes.”
He laughed despite himself. “True. Skinny white boys are the new, Oops, I’m bisexual?”
“We’re off-topic again. Would you consider actually going anywhere with it, or will you just pine like a hangdog until he leaves for America?”
Dex stared at her.
“What? This is a legit question!”
“No, it bloody isn’t!” Dex exploded. “Have you met him? In what universe do you think that this boy could ever be persuaded to—he’s like—Iz.”
“What!”
“He’s the very definition of emotionally unavailable,” he burst out. “And I don’t even know if he swings that way at all.”
Izzy snorted.
“Neither do you,” he said, really pretty patiently, all things considered.
“You honestly don’t think he’s even bi?”
Dex just spread his arms out in answer.
Izzy rolled her eyes. “So I don’t know what the fuck is the matter with your eyesight, but he is clearly into you.”
“What.” He stared at her. She stared back. “Isabel.”
“Yes, Dexter.”
“You’ve gone off your rocker,” he said, going for a light tone while everything in him wanted to scream out, What do you mean, how do you know, tell me everything. He was clearly losing it.
“I have done no such thing,” she said. “He looks at you with stars in his eyes, he just never does it long enough for you to fucking notice, apparently.”
Dex swallowed. Despite it being cold out, Izzy’s room felt like a sauna. No wonder she was hanging out in her knickers. “You do tend to see things that aren’t there a lot of the time.”
Her answer was immediate, like she was waiting for it. “Not just me. Steph’s noticed.”
“Bollocks.”
They squared off. Dex threw up his hands. “Fine. What has Steph noticed, then?”
He felt his stomach fluttering a bit. It was ridiculous. He was ridiculous.
“One,” she began, ticking off the first finger. “Whenever you talk, you can practically see his ears prick up like a bunny. Two, he watches you. All the time. And then looks away. And blushes.” Dex attempted to recollect this apparently obvious history. “Have you seriously never noticed?”
“Well no, I bloody haven’t noticed, and I look at him a lot!” Shit. That hadn’t been what he’d been going to say.
Mercifully, she went on like she hadn’t heard that last part. “Dex, I swear to God, he fancies you, but…” She trailed off.
Somehow, in the course of their conversation, Dex went from wanting it to end to the word but hitting him straight in the gut. He didn’t want a but. “But what?”
“But you’re not wrong. He is complicated, isn’t he? Not in a bad way, mind, I like him lots, but I’m not the one with a crush.”
“No,” Dex agreed. “And he’s leaving.”
“Not till June. That’s ages.”
“Still, though.”
A minute passed in silence. Then Izzy said, sounding careful. “So long-term crush, not just wanting a shag?”
Dex should have expected it, but somehow the question caught him by surprise. He hadn’t even articulated this to himself, but suddenly, he knew. “Yeah,” he croaked, then cleared his throat. “Shit. I guess so.”
She made a sympathetic face and grabbed his hand. “Babe. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think that may not be an altogether terrible thing.”
“What part of this isn’t terrible?”
“The part where you’re wanting someone again,” she said kindly. “The part that’s clearly over Michael the Tosser.”
“Oh.” Dex swallowed. “Well. I dunno. I suppose that’s good.”
“Blimey, you’re really into him, aren’t you?”
“Iiiiiz. Don’t. Don’t say it like that.” If you say it like that, it’ll make it more real.
“Deeeeeex. What are you gonna do? He’s part of the group now. You’ll have to see him all the time. You have had. Is your plan just to moon over him in silence, or what?”
“No,” he lied. “My plan is to get over this weird obsession with yet another emotionally unavailable boy and find someone I can realistically date. Maybe I’ll just fuck around a lot. That could be fun, too. Dating’s fucking boring anyway.”
“You’re difficult to know,” she said, finally.
“Likewise.”
She stuck out her tongue at him, but the next moment her face crumpled. “What if Nat doesn’t stop being in a strop with me?”
Dex gathered her up and kissed the top of her head. “She will. Just give her time.”
“D’you think she’ll respond to my texts tomorrow, maybe?”
“I think so.” Dex really, really hoped she would.