Page 57 of So Thrilled For You

It was just as well some other students came to relieve us of our duties, because, by the time they did, we were significantly past the twenty quid-mark contribution to the bar.

‘Shall we dance?’ Matt asked, holding out a sweaty palm and nodding towards the heaving dance floor. The band had just reached the end of a song and the couples were wilting, laughing, turning to chat to one another, wiping sweat from their brow.

‘I’ve never been to a ceilidh before. I have no idea what to do.’

‘That’s why they have a caller.’

Just then, the said caller spoke into the mic. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I need you in groups of eight, please. Groups of eight. We start in five minutes.’

A circle of incredibly red-faced older men, all proudly in kilts, saw us loitering and beckoned us over. ‘Come here young bloods,’ one yelled in a thick Aberdeen accent. ‘Are either of you medical students? Gus here is about to have a heart attack from the exertion.’

‘Nonsense,’ Gus replied. ‘Hey, yous get yourselves over here. You need an initiation sup to join our group.’ He produced a large hipflask of whisky and handed it to us. Matt and I made excited eyes – students will never tire of the joy of free alcohol – and each took a swig. ‘No need to be shy, there’s plenty more where that came from,’ Gus added, eyeing our measures, nodding at us to take more.

Some violins started limbering up and the crowd around us quietened. There was sweat on my lip, sweat in my hair, sweat almost raining from the ceiling, and we hadn’t even started dancing yet. Matt held out his hand, and I curtseyed and took it, while he laughed again. And oh, how we laughed when the dancing started.

The rest of the night took on a heady, dreamlike, quality with Gus’s regular top-ups of whisky cloaking me in a coat of warmth amongst the jolly chaos. It was the most fun I’d ever had going out as a student. There was no ego in dancing to a ceilidh, no way you could look sexy. It was the total opposite to how students danced at the club nights – girls touching themselves, slut-dropping, looking faux-coyly over their shoulder while licking their lips – all with the hope that some acne-ridden rugby player in a shiny shirt would comeand rub their dick through the back of their mini skirt. Some of the dance moves that night involved hops.Hops!The least sexy thing ever.

‘I’ve broken both ankles,’ Matt declared, stumbling into me, as drunk as I was.

‘I’m so dizzy I might need to lie down.’

‘There’s no more willow to strip, surely?’

All I can remember is laughing. Laughing as we totally failed to strip the willow properly, Gus having to push us about, yelling at us for ruining the formation, punishing us by making us down more shots. Laughing as we were instructed to hold hands and gallop through a long arch of held arms. Laughing as we turned wrong ways; bumped into other drunk people as useless as we were. Laughing at the sweat; wiping our hands on one another to prove how sweaty we were and as an excuse to touch. Because we’d helped set up, we weren’t on clean-up duty, and Matt and I kept laughing as the crowd spilled out into the sharp northern air. It was hilarious to order a Subway together. It was hilarious to wait for the bus back to mine. It was hilarious to point out other students, all only starting their nights out, when we were so drunk and finished at not even midnight. It was hilarious eating the Subway on my kitchen floor, the house empty, the rest of the Little Women out at the union’s Saturday cheese night. It was hilarious when Matt started kissing me – first gently, then with serious urgency. It was hilarious having sex on top of our standing freezer. I giggled into his shoulder and pretended to come, wrapping my legs around his back, laughing and laughing. I found a bottle of gin and we took it up to my room, taking swigs, kissing more, giggling, taking it in turns to choose a song off mylaptop. Hazy and too drunk, but both happy. We tried to have sex again but Matt couldn’t get it up he was too hammered. That was hilarious too, even though he said, ‘Stop laughing, it isn’t funny,’ but then laughed himself, good-naturedly. Erectile dysfunction . . . another thing I apparently find attractive as long as you can make a joke about it.

We passed out, half naked, sprawled in my sheets, limbs floppy. I still remember us both stirring when the Little Women came home from their own night out. The smell of their takeaway sneaking under the gaps of my door, the sounds of their drunken laughter and getting ready for bed noises. Matt pulled me closer to him, brought the duvet over our bodies as we were sobering up enough to get cold. We slept again in a drunken fog, until . . . sometime nearing dawn, I was woken by his fierce erection poking into my back.

‘Sorry,’ he said, noticing me stir. ‘I can’t help it. It won’t go down . . .’

‘I know something that will help.’

The second time we had sex wasn’t funny at all. It was sleepy and cute, but sexy as hell. We whispered into one another’s ears. He told me how glad he was I’d joined Nightline, how he’d noticed me on that first induction day. He kissed me how men kiss you when they’re falling in love – searching, gentle. He kissed my lips, neck, chest, went down further.

‘No . . .’ I tried to push him off. ‘I’m all gross from dancing and . . .’

‘I don’t mind,’ he said, his tongue teasing me through my underwear. ‘You smell amazing.’

I really did come that night, turning my face into a pillow as to not wake my housemates. I unravelled and writhed – intotal awe that my body was capable of doing this under the touch of a boy, when it was something I’d only ever achieved myself before.

‘Wow . . . fuck . . .’ I mumbled.

‘I want you so much.’

We had sex how I imagined Sting has it – breathing in one another’s breath, taking it slow, eyes locked on each other’s. I can’t think of a less cringe way to say it than a‘soul connection’.

Or so I thought . . .

We collapsed in a sticky naked pretzel as the sun rose behind my shitty student curtains – the light of dawn steaming through them. The last thing I remember is him gently stroking my back and kissing my neck one more time before his breath hit a rhythmic pattern. I fell into the heavy sleep of a satisfied body, a heart drumming with hope, opportunity tingling in my limbs. I’d slept with a few people since starting uni, sort of because I felt I had to.

‘Go and have experiences,’ Mum had begged me. ‘I never got to. You never regret experiences – the good, or the bad.’

All three times had felt disappointing and a bit sad. All three times the sex had been bordering on terrible, but I managed to grind these nights down into diamonds of funny stories. ‘Smegma Guy,’ had become urban legend in our house. We squealed and ran away whenever we saw him on nights out. ‘Washing Machine Mouth,’ was in one of our seminars, and we all giggled silently whenever he spoke. I was, by far, the most ‘experienced’ out of the Little Women. Nicki had only just broken up with her first steady boyfriend. She’d since kissed a guy on a night out and spun it into the giantest drama of all time when he didn’t ask for her number afterwards. Lauren was stillmessaging a boy from home things had never properly taken off with, so she said she couldn’t fancy anyone new until she’d got over the‘wasted potential’. And Charlotte was unashamedly following the ‘Good Girl Rule’ where you don’t sleep with anyone until after Date Seven because she ‘knew her worth’ – not realising, in saying that, she was implying I didn’t. As a result, the whole house dined out on my own mild promiscuity. I admit I played the part a bit. It felt nice to feel worldly, and to have confidence in a part of my life where they all appeared to be lacking. They all came from solid homes and money in the bank. Charlotte and Nicki didn’t even have student loans! Well, they did, but their parents had only made them take one out to get interest on it in a savings account, as an investment. My bad sex stories were almost my only status in our group – a way of transforming me from the poor, single parent one who couldn’t have them stay in the holidays because there wasn’t enough room at my mum’s flat, into one they could almost be jealous of. But, after that night with Matt, I felt I’d had an experience they could be genuinely envious of. When we woke up at ten, I was already working out how to tell them the story to get the most whoops. How a drunken charity fundraiser turned into a Disney-level fairytale.

‘Hello you,’ I told his fluttering eyelids.

‘Hey yourself,’ Matt replied, smiling, before leaning over to kiss my forehead.

‘Ouch,’ I said, clasping my hands over where he’d just kissed. ‘It hurts.’

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