‘So what have you been up to?’ Sharda asked Paige, once they’d been seated.
They’d only walked a little further down Bold Street to the Moroccan place. They’d been here before, Paige realised as they’d walked in, the first night she’d met Sharda, through someone else on her course. They’d all gone out for a drink and ended up here, ordering too much food. Paige hadn’t been able to enjoy it because she’d worried about the bill the entire time.
‘Not much,’ Paige said now. ‘Working. And uni. You know.’
‘How’s your dad?’
Paige had forgotten she’d told Sharda about her dad. She couldn’t remember exactly what she’d told her, but it was probably more than she’d wanted to – they used to get stoned together and Paige talked when she was stoned.
‘The same,’ Paige said.
‘I’m sorry.’ Sharda reached over and touched the back of Paige’s hand with her index finger. Her nails were long but squared off at the tip. She was wearing bright purple polish. Paige flashed back to that first night again – the boy from her seminar rubbing his knee against hers under the table while Sharda sat opposite and every time Paige looked at her she was looking right back. The guy had dropped out of the course last year. Paige couldn’t even remember his name now.
‘How about you?’ Paige asked Sharda. ‘How are things?’
‘Good,’ Sharda said. ‘Went out to San Francisco to see Lola a couple of months ago.’
Lola and Sharda had just split up when Paige and Sharda first met. Or ‘sort of’ split, as Sharda had put it. Lola was working away for a year and while they wanted to be together, they didn’t think it was practical while on opposite sides of the world.
‘She loves it out there. She was talking about staying.’
‘Wow.’ Paige reached for the menu and ran her fingers around the edges. Her stomach was rumbling.
‘I know. I think I’d try to move out there too, if she did.’
‘Yeah? That’s big.’
The waiter appeared and they both ordered, Sharda encouraging Paige to get more than she really wanted. Or more than she wanted Sharda to have to pay for, anyway.
‘So it’s really serious with you two then?’ Paige said, once the waiter had gone.
‘Oh, yeah. I mean, it has been all along, really. I love her.’
Paige nodded. She’d met Lola once and she was fucking awesome. She wasn’t surprised to hear Sharda planned to uproot her entire life for her.
‘But while she’s away …’ Sharda said and hooked her ankle around Paige’s under the table. ‘I mean, we agreed it would be unrealistic for us never to see anyone else.’
Paige grinned at her. ‘Good to know.’
Nick pushed open the door of the restaurant, and the smell of spices made Ella’s mouth literally water. How had she not known she was hungry? She couldn’t remember having been this hungry for ages.
They were shown to a booth table and Nick let go of her hand so they could both sit down.
‘Beer?’ Nick said and Ella realised she’d only had one sip of the last beer he’d bought her. She didn’t even know what she’d done with it. Had she just left it on the floor in the lobby?
‘Please,’ she said.
‘Text your friends,’ Nick said. ‘I’m going to pop to the loo.’
Nick got up and Ella watched him walk to the bathrooms at the back of the restaurant. She liked the way he moved. Like all his limbs were a bit more loosely attached than other people’s. Was it called ‘loping’? she wondered. She thought maybe he loped.
She texted Issey and Liane to tell them she’d left and then texted Lou: ‘With a boy. I like him. Tell me not to fuck it up.’
Lou replied immediately: ‘Don’t fuck it up! You’re gorgeous. He’s lucky to be with you. Get some. It’s been too long :)’
Ella was smiling at Lou’s reply when Issey’s popped up: ‘Woo! We saw you go. HE’S HOTTTTTT’, and then another came through: ‘B careful. Text again later so we know you not murdered.’
‘Helpful,’ Ella muttered, smiling.
‘All OK?’ Nick said, sitting down opposite her. The waiter arrived with the beers and put them down on the table, asking if they were ready to order.
‘Sorry,’ Nick said, smiling brightly. ‘Haven’t even looked yet. Maybe some prawn crackers and sauces.’
The waiter nodded and left and Nick said, ‘Have you texted?’
‘Yeah,’ Ella said. ‘My friend Issey wants me to text again later to tell her I’m still alive.’
‘Sensible,’ Nick said, smiling. ‘I thought you were the sensible one.’
Ella smiled. ‘I am. Usually. And Issey definitely isn’t. But … I don’t want to be sensible all the time.’ She looked down at her hands on the table and then up at Nick.
‘I was always the sensible one too,’ Nick said. ‘At school. Like … I’ve got a younger brother and he just did what he wanted, didn’t even think about it. But I worried about what my parents would think. Or that someone they knew would see me and it would get back to them … I went out with a girl once. From school. I didn’t really like her much, but she liked me and my friends couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to see her. So we went out. Like, just to this square where everyone used to sit around drinking and smoking and getting off with each other.’
His eyebrows flickered up as he looked at Ella and she smiled back at him.
‘So we were all there, right? And I knew she was waiting for me to kiss her. And the others were too – they’d been going on about it all day, you know, like “Nick’s on a promise” and telling me “You’re going to get your –”’ He stopped, his cheeks flushing pink. ‘You know the kind of shit people say.’
Ella nodded.
‘And the longer I left it, the harder it was to actually make a move. Cos everyone was looking, waiting, getting impatient. Actually …’ He sat back in his seat, still looking embarrassed. ‘I’m wishing I’d never started telling this story.’
Ella smiled. ‘No! You have to tell me now. I won’t judge. Actually, that’s a lie. I probably will judge. But I’ll try to be OK about it.’
Nick picked up his beer by the neck. Ella watched him turn it in his fingers and then forced herself to look up at his face.
‘Cut a long story short,’ he said. ‘I pretended I had the shits.’
Ella let out a yelp of laughter. ‘Oh my god.’
‘I know.’
‘But … why didn’t you just kiss her?’ Ella asked, picking up her own beer.
‘I … I mean, that would’ve made more sense, right? I just … I didn’t like her. I didn’t like her as a person. I didn’t find her attractive. I only agreed to go out with her cos my friends said I should. If I’d kissed her it would only have been to stop me looking bad in front of my friends and that just didn’t seem like a good enough reason to kiss someone. It’s a true story, I promise,’ he said, his face gentle now. ‘You can ask my mum.’
Ella laughed again. ‘You told your mum?!’
‘One of her friends told her. The mum of one of the other kids. She tried to make out she was concerned, like “I hope your Nick’s feeling better”, but she just wanted to mock me. And then my mum and dad thought it was hilarious and they mocked me too.’
‘It sounds like a very upsetting experience,’ Ella said, trying not to laugh.
‘It was,’ Nick said, his face serious. ‘It really was.’ And then he grinned.
They stared at each other and Ella felt the electricity thing happen again. It was as if it was running up her arms from her fingertips, lighting her skin up. She wanted to ask Nick if he could feel it too, but what if he said no? What if it was just her?
‘I kind of want to say let’s get out of here,’ Nick said, still staring. ‘But I’m starving.’
Ella nodded. ‘Me too.’ She stared at their hands on the table and then said, ‘You can feel it too, right? The thing?’
‘Fuck yeah,’ Nick said. ‘I’ve been feeling it since you came in the bookshop.’
‘Oh my god,’ Ella said.
‘That wasn’t a line,’ Nick said. ‘Did you think that sounded like a line?’
Ella shook her head. ‘I thought it sounded amazing.’
Liane was dancing with a boy Issey thought might be Tom from her seminar. He was shorter than she’d expected him to be. And his hair was stupid. But Liane had hooked her hand around his wrist and was grinding up against him. He looked at Issey and smiled as if he expected her to join them.
‘Are you drunk?’ Issey asked her.
Liane shrugged. ‘Tom had some stuff.’
‘What stuff?’ Issey looked at Tom, but he had his eyes closed and his face turned up to the lights as he danced.
‘Come and get some water,’ Issey said, tugging at Liane’s other hand.
Liane frowned and then said, ‘Yeah. I’m thirsty, actually.’
She pressed her mouth up to Tom’s ear and Issey watched him smile, but then Liane let Issey lead her across the dance floor to the bar.
‘It’s sweet that you worry about me,’ Liane said once they got there, dropping her head down on Issey’s shoulder.
‘You know I love you, right?’ she said, against Issey’s neck. She’d flopped almost entirely against her now, they were pressed together from chest to knee. Issey started to wriggle away, but Liane just made herself even heavier.
Issey could feel sweat prickling the small of her back. She wanted to push Liane away and tell her not to be so dramatic, but she also wanted to keep her close, keep her safe.
‘Let’s go home,’ Issey said. ‘This is shit.’
‘I want another drink!’ Liane said, her lips sliding over the hollow under Issey’s ear. ‘And I said I’d go home with Tom.’ She squinted out onto the dance floor where he was already dancing with someone else. ‘Actually, fuck him.’
‘We’ve got stuff at home.’ Issey straightened up and Liane staggered back. ‘We can take our duvets out on the terrace and drink all of Lou’s tequila.’
‘That,’ Liane said, holding up one finger, ‘sounds like a plan.’
Paige was in the kitchen making herself a coffee when she heard a door slam overhead, followed by heavy footsteps on the stairs.
‘What the fuck?’ she said, as a strange guy appeared in the doorway.
‘Your mate’s a fucking psycho,’ he spat.
‘You scared the shit out of me,’ Paige said. ‘Who even are you?’
‘Your mate. The one with the purple hair. She’s a fucking psycho.’
‘You’re the one acting like a psycho,’ Paige said. ‘Why are you even here, talking to me?’
‘She told me to get out.’
‘So get out,’ Paige said, taking a couple of steps closer to him.
‘Don’t tell me what to do, you fat bitch,’ the boy said.
‘Are you joking?’ Paige walked right up to him. She was only very slightly shorter than him, just a couple of inches. She was wearing her tartan pyjamas and flip-flops and he was fully dressed. Although now she was up close, she could see that he wasn’t wearing anything under his stupid hipster cardigan and it was buttoned up wrong.
‘If Lou told you to go, you need to go,’ Paige said. ‘Before I call the police. Or just open the front door and scream – the security over the road’s usually pretty quick. And very protective.’
‘You’re all fucking mental,’ the boy said, staring down at her. ‘She brought me back here. If she didn’t want to fuck –’
‘Clearly she didn’t,’ Paige said. ‘Or she’d have fucked you. So off you go.’ She pushed past him and opened the front door. ‘And don’t come back, eh?’
‘Fucking lezzers,’ he said as he left. Paige resisted the urge to kick him up the arse. But only because she was wearing flip-flops.
Once he’d gone and Paige had locked the door and put the bolt on, she kicked off her flip-flops and ran up the stairs to Lou’s room. She knocked and Lou said, ‘Who is it?’
‘It’s Paige. He’s gone. You OK?’
Lou pulled the door open. She looked pale and smaller than usual.
‘Did he hurt you?’ Paige asked.
Lou shook her head. ‘Can you come in for a bit? Do you mind?’
She took a couple of steps back until the bed hit the back of her legs. She sat down and scrabbled up towards the headboard. Paige sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed.
‘Who was he?’
‘I just met him tonight. It was stupid. I wasn’t going to bring him back, I was just going to dance. But then my ex was there. And he’s … I mean, he’s a dick. He’s been kind of … I don’t know, bothering me a bit. Sending messages and stuff. I keep telling him it’s over, but he doesn’t believe it’s over. So I thought if he saw me leave …’
‘Right,’ Paige said.
‘I mean, that’s not the only reason. That guy was cute. In the club. And hot. And I haven’t had sex for fucking months.’
‘Hey,’ Paige said. ‘No judgement.’
‘It was stupid.’
‘It wasn’t. It was the same thing people do literally every weekend. And certainly every Christmas party.’
‘You saw him, right? When he left?’
‘Yeah, he came down to the kitchen and yelled at me.’
‘Fuck, I’m sorry.’ Lou tipped her head back and rubbed her hands through her hair, before turning slightly to look at Paige. ‘You didn’t want to come to the party?’
Paige shook her head. ‘Nah. Not a big Christmas fan, to be honest.’
Lou snorted. ‘No. Me neither. Although it’s not as bad as New Year’s Eve. That’s the fucking worst.’
Paige held up one hand and Lou high-fived her, smiling.
‘Have you been here the whole time?’ Lou asked her.
‘Nah. Had dinner with a sort of ex. And then she came over for a bit. She’s gone now. I was just getting a coffee when I met your friend.’
‘Coffee? Now?’
‘Got an essay to finish,’ Paige said. ‘But I can leave it if you want me to stay.’
Lou shook her head. ‘Thanks, but I’m OK. Nothing even really happened. I don’t know why I … I mean, it was fine. He was a bit of a shit kisser, slobbering all over my face, and then he started taking his clothes off and I just … I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to do it. So I told him and I apologised. And he –’
‘Didn’t take it well,’ Paige finished. ‘He was a right prick.’
‘Yeah,’ Lou said. She rested her chin on her knees. ‘And I’m still horny.’
Paige laughed. ‘I mean … I could help you out there, but it might make things awkward in the house.’
Lou laughed, and looked better than she had since she’d opened the door to Paige.
‘You could help, actually. Have you got any AA batteries?’