Page 60 of So Thrilled For You

And the last thing I said to him, to try and convince him to fall in love with me, was, ‘You can pee in our garden before you leave, if you’d like? I don’t mind.’

I was stupid enough to hope after that. Lauren came running down after he’d left and screamed, ‘JAWLINE GUY!! Oh my God, you’re right. He’s like Robert Pattinson’s and a protractor’s love child. Where has he gone? No! Don’t say I ruined it all by blocking the toilet. It’s unblocked now! Ring him and tell him to come back. I’m so sorry!’

Nicki lurked behind her, a tight smile on her face. One I couldn’t decipher. A strange distance fell between us like light snow.

‘I . . .’ It’s only then I realised it with a cold dread. ‘I don’t have his number. We didn’t swap numbers.’

We’d swapped bodily fluids. I knew what his face looked like while he slept. His sweat was all over my sheets. And yet he hadn’t even left his fucking number.

‘Oh . . .’ Lauren looked as shocked as I felt. ‘He’ll just have forgotten and be kicking himself. I’m sure you’ll run into him at your phone line thingy, won’t you?’

‘Yeah, maybe.’

‘What happened last night anyway?’ Nicki asked, still looking beyond cute in her giant pyjamas. ‘Like, was it a one-night-stand vibe, or what?’

‘I . . . we . . .’ I hated the way they both looked at me. All, like,look how being slutty backfires. I was about to tell them the whole thing. How we’d clicked, how we’d chatted, and laughed, and danced all night, how it had felt special right upuntil the moment he went to make me toast. I was about to tell them how different it had felt with Matt. But pride closed my mouth. I was too thrown. Maybe I’d open up later, once he’d hopefully hunted me down for my number? ‘. . . yeah, just a one-night stand,’ I confirmed, turning to go back upstairs.

It certainly became that. Especially as Matt never appeared at Nightline again. He wasn’t in our final training, and therefore not on any of the overnight shifts. For the final term, every night I spent in the tiny helpline office, I stared at the little trundle beds, imagining what could’ve happened if Matt hadn’t vanished. The Sheffield campus was big enough to not bump into anyone, and, as the Little Women preferred cheese nights to the indie rock Matt had told me he liked, there was a minuscule chance of bumping into him on a night out. I had no choice but to acknowledge it was a one-night stand after all – one where I’d maybe been blinded by the sex actually being good for once. It hurt for a while. I had a fling with some random Masters student, who actually took me out to Las Iguanasfirst, and paid, which felt remarkably grown up. But it was all rather empty and I thought of Matt the whole time. After a few months though, I stopped looking for him on packed dance floors, or floating through the union’s forecourt. I wasn’t going to forget him, I knew that. The night was too cinematic and the ending so abrupt and unexplained. But I was managing to feel less pained and preoccupied by it, until one day, Nicki finally, unexpectedly, filled in my blanks.

‘Shall we go out for coffee today?’ she asked me one morning in our kitchen. ‘Just us two?’

‘I mean, we’re having one right now,’ I said, holding up one of our matching JUSTICE FOR BETH mugs.

‘Yes, but it would be nice to go out for a proper one, wouldn’t it?’ Nicki said. ‘Have a chat?’

I think I knew it then. I pushed away my drink – unwilling to stay on her script. ‘What’s going on?’

Nicki pulled the sleeves of her cardigan down over her hands and picked up her mug again. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Something’s happened. Tell me.’

‘Steffi, stop being weird.’

‘Me? You’re the one who’s been weird and offy for weeks. You keep being mysteriously busy. Until now, I feel like you’ve been avoiding me.’

‘Well, I have, as a matter of fact. Sorry.’

‘What?’

She blew on the top of her drink and raised an eyebrow as she looked up at me. Her face was set in this stony determination. ‘I’d hoped to make this nicer, but if you want to do it now.’

‘Do what now? Stop being weird. You’re the one being strange, not me.’

She bristled. ‘If you must know, I’ve been weird because I have a new boyfriend.’

My heart dropped into my guts and I hated her then, for the scene I was about to play. ‘Oh wow,’ I said in my fake voice. ‘That’s exciting.’

‘It’s been two months now so I’m ready to tell you.’

‘It’s not my dad, is it?’ I joked, wanting to prolong this moment of not knowing for certain. ‘You’ve tracked him down and now you’re marrying him.’

‘Steffi . . .’ She took my hand with such patronising pity that my palm almost blistered. ‘I’m together with Matt. Jawline Guy. It’s serious. We’re in love.’

‘Right . . . oh . . .’

She rushed to explain the details, and the relief at having my curiosity satisfied was quickly replaced by sickening anguish. They’d just really ‘clicked’that morning over breakfast. It was love at first sight, she was very keen to tell me, three times. Thunderbolt. He’d said he’d thought he was on a date with her. Strange as that sounds. He’d asked for her number. And, when it became clear that our thing was only a ‘bit of drunken fun’,they’d gone on a date. Then another. Now they were properly together.

I could tell when she spoke how much she’d rehearsed this, and how excited she was. By Matt. By her being chosen over me. Though that was all in the subtext. Considering she’d clearly rehearsed it, you would’ve thought she could’ve edited out some of the nastier inclusions. ‘He said he was so drunk he hardly remembered that night with you.’ ‘He said it was clear by the way you were with each other that it wasn’t a relationship thing.’ ‘He said he was so blown away by me that he honestly forgot you were upstairs.’ I chewed on my lip and tried not to show the blows landing, trying to give my friend the benefit of the doubt. She was so obviously in love with Matt, and, by the sounds of things, Matt with her. Everyone newly in love is an obnoxious prick. She was telling me as soon as she practically could, ‘I wanted to know for sure it was really something before jeopardising our friendship.’ Plus, also, there was the obvious get-out clause for everyone involved. ‘It was only aone-night stand, wasn’t it?’ Nicki asked, eyeing me over the steam of her mug as she backed me into a corner, knowing the only appropriate response was an affirmative. I nodded, telling myself I could get upset later, when my bedroom door was closed. I could cry with my head under my pillow then, obsess over what Nicki had and I didn’t, endlessly doubt my instincts about men and how they feel about me.

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