Page 28 of The Last Train Home
‘Yeah, he’s been messaging,’ I admit. Although I don’t know why he’s bothering.
‘Still?’ she says, pulling a blanket around her and settling in. It’s been a month since that night in his flat. ‘He’s clinging on, is he? Have you replied?’
I shake my head, sip my champagne. Champagne is expensive for a reason. It’s delicious.
‘I don’t know what to say to him,’ I tell her. We’ve spoken about this many times at length over the past month, but it’s a subject that neither of us seems able to drop. ‘We were standing there, I was practically naked.’ I cringe at the memory and take another big glug of champagne. ‘So was Tom, and we were on the verge of going to his bed, or back up on the counter.’
‘Which would have been so, so hot,’ Natasha unhelpfully points out.
‘I’m not sure what we were going to do. But we categorically did not do it,’ I say. ‘And now he sends message aftermessage saying how much he wants me as a friend –needsme as a friend. How he wants to explain in person.’ Although the messages have drifted down to once every few days now, instead of every day.
‘Urgh! Afriend,’ she interjects. ‘That’s the worst.’
‘I know,’ I say dejectedly. ‘He wanted to have sex with me and then he backtracked, and now he thinks we’re better off as friends.’
Natasha makes a face. This has never happened to her.
‘I didn’t even initiate it. He kissed me first. And then he changed his mind.’ I’m whining now.
‘It is his right as a human being to change his mind halfway through sex,’ Natasha says as if she’s doing the voiceover on a consent video.
I give her a look.
‘If you’d changed your mind halfway through, do you think he’d be having this conversation withhismates?’ she asks.
I think. ‘Yes, actually. He would be bitching good and proper.’
‘Yeah, he probably would,’ Natasha says. ‘Anyway. We’re ignoring him for a bit longer, are we?’
‘We are.’
‘Cheers to that,’ she says and we clink glasses. That feels a bit mean, so I clarify, ‘Just until I can work out how I feel and if I want to see him again.’
But I’m not sure I do. I’m not sure I can look him in the eye ever again. How do I go from what happened in his kitchen to … ‘Hey, how are you? Can I have another drag on your cigarette?’ I simply can’t. A few weeks ago I didn’t even know Tom. How had he come to mean so much to me in such a short space of time? I think whatever our short-livedfriendship was, that night ended it. And I hate that. I feel humiliated, embarrassed.
‘Anyway, how are you?’ I ask Natasha and listen like a good best friend while she tells me how she’s just been promoted, how excited she is by her new job and how she’s already got her eye on renting a bigger flat, ‘with views of the river. It’s incredible. It’s got two bedrooms,’ she says. ‘Fancy the other one? You won’t have to stay over on my sofa any more …’ she continues in a sing-song voice. ‘And instead of keeping spare knickers and a toothbrush stuffed in a zippy pouch in one of my drawers, you could have yourowndrawers in yourownroom.’
I doubt very much I could sleep on her sofa any more anyway. I can’t even sleep well in my own bed very much. Sleep evades me these days.
‘No, thanks. I doubt I could afford it.’
‘I won’t charge you too much. The second bedroom’s tiny. And you spend so much time crashing at mine anyway, you might as well have a proper room for basic rent.’
I look at her. ‘I don’t need a pity-room,’ I tell her.
‘I get that. But you know what I’m like about sharing my personal space with people I don’t know – if I have to advertise it and I end up accidentally inviting a murderer to live with me, then I won’t be happy.’
‘No,’ I say with a smile. ‘You’ll probably be dead.’
‘Exactly,’ she says. ‘Think about it. What if we come to some arrangement. I’m hardly ever there, but what if I put you in charge of food shopping to compensate for the reduced rent. I was going to rent the whole flat on my own anyway,’ she reasons. ‘This way, you can report into my mum that I’m eating vegetables, and we get to live together.’
I think about this. I don’t mind living at home. I’ve lived there since I came home from university, whereas Natasha knew she was going to live under the City’s bright lights the minute she got her first job. But I guess that now, as I head towards my twenty-fifth birthday, this arrangement might be wearing thin on my folks, although they’d never say. I could never afford to rent my own place, not on my salary. And flat-sharing with strangers …
Natasha reads my mind. ‘It’ll be fun, us living together. You know it will be.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ I say with a smile. We both know that if I can make the financials work, she’s almost got me.
‘OK. Well, how about this much rent?’
