Page 56 of So Thrilled For You

A part of me tingled. I also recognised him from the training induction. He had the best jawline I’d ever seen. In fact, I’d told the Little Women about him when I’d got home that evening, and we’d referred to him as ‘Jawline Guy’ ever since.

‘Maybe jawline guy dropped out of Nightline?’ I despaired to them when I hadn’t seen him in any of my training sessions. ‘Maybe he got kidnapped by a biscuit factory and they’re using his perfect jawline to design cookies?’

‘Oh, yeah, maybe.’ I dusted off my hands – pretending he didn’t already have a nickname in my household. I subtly took in the rest of him. Alongside his ridiculous jaw, he had ridiculous green eyes too. He was the sort of tall and skinny thatmeant most girls would overlook his attractiveness. Plus, he dressed in that mismatched awkwardness of a boy who’d never had a serious girlfriend before to tell him what suited him. He wore a white long-sleeved top under a bright green t-shirt, making him look younger than a second year. Sixth form even. ‘How have you been finding Nightline so far?’ I asked him.

‘Yeah, good. Intense, isn’t it?’ He rubbed his messy hair and looked a million per cent more adorable. Nightline was the university’s equivalent of a Samaritan’s helpline – open from eight til eight overnight, giving any struggling students a service they could use that was peer-run, and, therefore, hopefully more appealing than calling a random Sheffield helpline. ‘But good. It’s going to be crazy when we’re let loose on the phone lines for real.’

‘Yes.’ I nodded. ‘And sleeping in those little beds next to the phones? So surreal . . . if we can make them enough money tonight, I guess.’ I pointed to the other two kegs by the door where they’d been dumped by the brewery. ‘Do you mind helping me with the others? I am precisely as strong as I look, i.e. not very.’

He’d laughed for a third time. ‘Of course.’

We spent the next hour making small talk as we set up the hall for the fundraiser. I’d given myself my Freshers’ year off to just enjoy the student experience, but now that we were in second year, I’d decided to maximise everything on offer and started volunteering. I still had a month’s training to go before I was allowed to do my first Nightline shift, but we’d all been drafted in to help with tonight’s fundraising event. It was a Scottish ceilidh, in a random hall buried in the middle of the city. Itwas very much for the civilians of Sheffield rather than for students.

‘Students are too broke to hit up for cash,’ Ben, Nightline’s manager had told us when we were drafted in. ‘We have to fundraise using locals.’

Apparently, the Nightline ceilidh sold out every year and was a guaranteed hit for the ‘civvies’ of the city. It did feel strange, being out of the union bubble for the day, in a part of the city not heaving with students wearing Uni of Sheffield hoodies. Matt and I set up the rest of the bar – him tapping the keg, while I wrote the drink prices on multiple white boards. Ben directed others around us to mop the floor, stock the toilets with paper and put chairs on stage for the band, while he did the soundcheck, saying, ‘one two one two,’ down a microphone.

‘So, what made you sign up for Nightline?’ I asked Matt, while enjoying my attempt at artsy gastro-pub handwriting.

Matt squirted some beer into a plastic cup and tasted some. ‘Got to check it doesn’t taste of gas,’ he explained with a wink, before squirting out some more and offering it to me. ‘It’s part of making sure it’s been tapped correctly.’

I raised both eyebrows and downed it. ‘Tastes good to me.’

‘Me too. Anyway, I’m doing a psychology degree,’ he explained, ‘which I thought would be really deep and interesting, but it’s mostly about the reliability of different research methods. I thought Nightline would be a good way to get experience in, like, actually listening to people. Plus, it’ll keep me away from my Xbox.’

‘Cool. So you want to be a therapist, or something?’

‘Yeah. Maybe. After watchingThe Sopranos.’

I laughed. ‘It didn’t inspire you to be a gangster?’

He shook his head, squirted more beer, and necked it. ‘Nah, too skinny to be a gangster, aren’t I?’

I raised my eyebrows again. I have always, and continue to, find it vastly attractive when men are aware of their physical flaws and accept them with a shrug and a smile. Giant noses, male pattern baldness, skinny legs . . . I’m a quivering wreck if a man can make a gentle joke about them.

Matt made a dorky gun gesture with his beer tap and mimed shooting me. I threw my arms up and faked a death and he laughed appreciatively. ‘Hmm, I really think we need to check this hasn’t got any gas in again. Want some?’ He squeezed out more beer and I drank from the red cup in his hands. ‘Anyway, how about you? Why did you sign up?’

I wiped my mouth as delicately as I could. ‘I do English so we only have two hours of lectures a week. I’m someone who always needs to be doing something, you know? There’s only so much time I can spend at the gym, so I thought I’d try volunteering.’

‘I mean, the gym is a terrible, terrible place,’ he said. ‘They’ve banned me actually. Not enough muscle mass. I was heartbroken, obviously. Do all the rugby lads go there and huff loudly when they lift weights?’

‘I can confirm that happens. They “spot”each other too. Then there’s lots of high fives.’

Matt mock shuddered and I laughed again. I couldn’t believe I was sparking with Jawline Guy. He was as sharp as his cheekbones and our vibe already felt delicious.

‘So, Nightline is something to keep me busy,’ I continued. ‘Plus, my mum was a single mum and she said she used to ring Samaritans when I was little as she got lonely during the day.We’ve always done charity runs for them and stuff growing up. I looked into training to be a Samaritan but it takes two years and we’ll have graduated by the time I’ve finished and I have no idea where I’ll end up getting a job. Probably nowhere with an English degree.’

He laughed, then I laughed, and we both laughed and that set the pattern for the rest of the night.

Hours later, drenched with sweat from the packed hall of dancing, Matt and I were doing our hour’s shift at the bar.

‘I need to check there’s no gas in the beer again,’ Matt said, belching quietly in his throat he was so drunk. I was so into him that I found this attractive. He poured us another pint and we shared it between us, watching the dance floor throb and flow to the jolly vibrations of the fiddle band. It was midway through some dance about stripping the willow or something so the bar was empty. People do not sit out at ceilidhs, I was learning. Everyone dances every single dance, even when soaked through with sweat and panting from the effort. It felt strange to be surrounded by people of all different ages. A good different – away from the student angst. I loved my course, and I loved the Little Women, but I did already feel a bit bored by the clichéd parts of the university experience. The Little Women watchedNeighbourstwice a day, unironically. I only scraped through one episode so I could join in their chats about who might die in the advertised upcoming plane crash, but the inertia of most students drove me crazy. The laziness of students. Charlotte and I bonded over this during our gym sessions. The needing seven weeks to write a 2000-word essay, and acting like you were more overworked than a Victorian chimney sweep. ‘I never got to go to university,’ Mum had said, driving me up onmy first day in a rented car. ‘Make the most of the opportunity. It’s such an opportunity, Steffi. Squeeze the juice.’

There was so much juice to be drained from this night. I felt the fizz of anticipation – the buzz of something new starting. I downed the rest of my pint and let out a hiccup. ‘We’re drinking all the profits,’ I told Matt, wiping under my eyes to keep my melting eyeliner off my cheeks. ‘We’re sabotaging our own fundraiser.’ I had to yell to be heard above the six-piece band on stage who seemed to be having a moustache-growing competition.

Matt was doing that glorious thing boys did when they liked you on nights out – where they stand too close to pretend they need to be heard over the music. ‘It’s OK. I’ve chucked twenty quid into the cash box to cover us.’ His sweaty chest touched my stomach and we blearily stared at each other with a knowingness.

We were going home together.It was so obvious. So brilliantly obvious. And the best part of that process lay before us – spending the evening pretending to each other we didn’t know it yet.

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