Page 36 of So Thrilled For You

The more time I spent with Phoebe, the more I started viewing my twenties with a different prescription. The chats over our desks, our lunches in the park, the afterwork drinks that started regularly turning into shots and dancing and crashing at hers . . . the more I felt I’dmissedsomething rather than dodged something.

‘Doesn’t it depress you, knowing you’ll never fall in love again?’ Phoebe asked, half a burrito hanging out of her mouth as we sat on a park bench. ‘Never have a first kiss again?’

And, ‘I can’t believe you’ve never been dumped!’ she’d exclaimed, thudding her empty shot glass down on the bar. ‘How do you know your heart if it’s never been broken? It’s capable of such pain, Nicki. Such glorious, exquisite, pain. You need to know who you are when you’re heartbroken. You learn so much about yourself.’

‘Well, er, Matt and I did take a break for a week after graduating to see if we missed each other,’ I offered blearily. ‘But we both missed each other after two days, so we got back together.’

She’d blown a raspberry with her delicate mouth. ‘Doesn’t count. If you’re not hyperventilating on the ground, clutching your heart through your top to try and stop the sheer physical, actual, agony of it breaking . . . nope.’

‘I was quite gloomy for those two days.’

‘Christ. You’ve never had a break-up song, have you?’ Phoebe would’ve looked less shocked if I’d said I hadn’t had the MMR vaccine.

‘A what?’

‘A song that you play repeatedly when you’re heartbroken that’s then forever tainted and triggering.’

‘Umm, I get sad when I listen to that one about Eric Clapton singing to his dead son.’

‘So, you’re not a psychopath, congratulations.’

I tried leaning my chin in my hand but missed and almost fell off my stool. ‘Aren’t I just lucky?’ I argued. ‘To have met The One, dodged all that?’

‘But how do you know he’s The One if you haven’t had a chance to see what you’re like when you’re with other people? What they bring out of you?’ She had that glint in her eye again, pushing another shot glass my direction.Tuesdays are the new Fridays,was our motto. I hadn’t shared a bed with Matt on a Tuesday for weeks now.

‘Matt brings out general happiness.’

‘Are you sure you’re not confusing happiness with just comfort? Safety?’

‘What’s wrong with being safe?’

She raised both eyebrows at me and downed her shot.

‘You tell me.’

It’s hard to know if Phoebe was the blight that had started to spread through Matt and I’s marriage, or if she’d just merely pointed it out. But, by the end of that summer, I was no longer happy. I was definitely no longer comfortable.

‘Don’t you mind, me going out so much?’ I’d asked Matt. When, yet again, I’d come home on a Wednesday night, with red eyes and hardly any sleep.

He’d shrugged and carried on playing Football Manager on his iPad. ‘I quite enjoy having the big telly to myself to be honest,’ he’d replied. ‘And I get Chinese, which you don’t like.’

One night, when we’d gone for a drink around the corner at our local, like we always did, I asked him if he ever thought about doing role-play.

He’d pulled a face into his pint. ‘Not really, no. You?’

‘No. Do you think we should want to do role-play?’

‘What would we even play?’

God it was so sad. The only sexy roles I could imagine was us not knowing one another for the past twelve years.

My ‘lucky’ life started to feel like a choker. I, quite quickly, began to feel resentful I’d met Matt so young. Resentful that he was so loveable, and dependable, and into me, and never made me doubt or question anything. The only drama we had was the Steffi stuff, and to be honest, sometimes, when I wanted to fancy him enough to have sex with him, I’d have to remember the Steffi drama to get turned on.

Had I settled, marrying the guy I met at uni? Had I missed out on the best sex of my life? The worst sex of my life, but funny enough it would make a hilarious story? Steffi always had the funniest stories – us snorting into cocktails while she’d wail, ‘Stop it, it’s my life,’ but laughing too. I never had any stories to tell. Would I have been happier with another person? Had I met Matt later, would I appreciate him more because I’d been dicked around (literally) through my twenties? Or was I taking him for granted?

‘You’re making me question everything,’ I complained to Phoebe, over drinks, celebrating the client pitch we’d somehow pulled off despite this morning’s hangover. So much was possible since I’d met her. You can be hungover at work and still deliver. You could make new friends inyour thirties. It’s not too late to change. To question what you’ve been doing up until now and ask yourself if it’s for the best.

‘That’s not true,’ she replied. ‘You were questioning it all anyway. I’ve just made you admit it to yourself.’

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