I shift my gaze from Nick’s hand to his eyes. He’s looking at me in a way I’ve never noticed him do before.
‘What are you thinking?’ he asks.
‘I’m trying to work out why you’re being so nice to me,’ I reply. ‘It’s out of character.’
‘If you think that’s out of character,’ he starts slowly, as he runs his hand up my thigh, ‘then try this.’
Before I know what’s happening, Nick is pushing me back on the sofa, pressing his body down on top of me. He grabs a fistful of my long wavy locks firmly with one hand as he pulls off his dressing gown with the other. As much as I dislike Nick as a person, I have never been able to deny that he has one hell of a body – in fact, it’s one of the first things I noticed about him when we first met. All that eating clean and exercising near-constantly is really paying off for him, I admit it, but I never imagined I’d wind up in a situation like this with him, and now I’m not just looking at him, I’m really looking at him, and I want him more than anything right now.
He kisses me keenly, like he’s been waiting all these months to do it and now he finally can, he can’t control himself – least of all his hands.
When I came home tonight I figured Nick would be in bed because it was late and he always gets nice early nights. That’s why I felt safe kicking off my heels, slipping off my dress and putting on one of Nick’s gym vests that I grabbed from the dryer, so I didn’t have to make the long trip to my room to find something comfortable to wear while I devoured my birthday cake.
Usually that’s two offences that would land me in Nick’s bad books. My first offence is strolling around inappropriately dressed, the second is wearing Nick’s clothes. He hates that. He says I leave them covered in glitter and stinking like a mid-range prostitute. Perhaps that’s why he’s so keenly pulling the vest over my head, throwing it to one side before running his hands up my body, slipping my bra straps off my shoulders, kissing my collarbone, gently flicking his tongue against my skin.
Just when I think it can’t feel any better, Nick slips his hand into my knickers and I can’t help but moan wildly. My moans of pleasure get louder before quickly changing. As I raise my hand to my aching head and grumble in pain, I slowly open my eyes, only for the sunlight to burn them. That’s when I realise it’s morning, and that I must have fallen asleep on the sofa. I’m still wearing Nick’s vest, which means I dreamt the whole thing. Shit, another sex dream about Nick!
‘Why does this keep happening to me?’ I ask myself.
‘Because you make bad choices,’ Nick replies, startling me. I glance towards the kitchen and see him standing there, smartly dressed, eating cereal as always.
I quickly break eye contact with him, absolutely mortified. I mean there’s no way on earth he could know what I’d been dreaming but I feel like he’s looking straight through me, like he can see it written all over my face.
‘What happened last night?’ I ask him, concerned.
‘Not much, you went on a date with one of your Matcher psychopaths, came back steaming drunk, ate enough cake to kill you and then fell asleep.’
‘Oh. So I didn’t say or do anything bad?’
Nick stares at me for a moment.
‘Erm, no, only all of those things I just listed to you.’
‘That’s OK then,’ I say, exhaling a deep sigh of relief.
‘Well, I’ve got to go shopping and then get to work. Another day of fucking around, is it?’
‘I hope something really gross happens to you at work,’ I reply, massaging my temples.
‘You could use your free time to do something good,’ he suggests.
‘Good?’ I reply, saying the word slowly as I cock my head. ‘What is…good?’
Nick laughs.
‘I’m serious,’ he insists. ‘Do something to change the world.’
‘Like?’
‘Like give blood, that’s such a little thing to do to make such a huge amount of difference.’
I frown.
‘Needles,’ I tell him. ‘Nope.’
‘You’ll only feel a little prick – stop it,’ he snaps at me, before I have the chance to reply with a ‘that’s what she said’.
‘So is that how you spend you free time?’ I ask him.
‘I wouldn’t call it a hobby,’ he replies. ‘But blood donation, platelet donation – what’s twenty minutes or a couple of hours to make a difference?’
I feel my eyes widen with horror.
‘Mate, do you want me bleeding dry or something?’
‘Mate,’ he replies mockingly. ‘It looks like someone beat me to it. You’re looking very pale this morning.’
“Mate” is one of those words that has crept into my vocabulary – something that happens to me all the time with slang words. At first I’ll use words sarcastically, then as in-jokes, then suddenly, that’s it, words like “mate” and “BAE” and “on fleek” are in my day-to-day vocab.
“Mate” is definitely something I have picked up from Millsy, who calls everyone from me to his mum to his doctor it.
Hanging out with Millsy and my brother Woody growing up, I do worry that I’ve turned out “more boy” than I should have. Maybe that’s why I don’t have too many female friends. It’s like when a kitten gets in with a litter of puppies and thinks it’s one of them. It will act just like its adopted siblings, play like a dog, eat like a dog, truly think like a dog and feel like a dog…but at the end of the day, it’s still a cat. I’m a cat amongst the dogs. I find stupid gross-out comedies funny. I swear like a sailor who keeps stubbing his toe on the same bunk bed. I get riled up over football and borderline homicidal when I play FIFA.
Sometimes I think it would be nice to have female friends, but I just don’t seem to get on all that well with girls. Sometimes I think they’re ridiculous creatures, especially when it comes to the opposite sex. They have no chill. They’ll text a guy a million times and wonder why he isn’t texting back. Worse still, they’ll sleep with a guy on the first date, thinking it will win him over, only for him to ghost. And what do they do when he ghosts? They decide not to text him for a few days. Because that will teach him, and if he replies, he must be really interested, right? Surely if you’re trying to figure out a guy, it makes more sense to withhold sex instead of text messages?
‘It’s just my hangover,’ I tell him.
‘It’s not taking care of yourself,’ he corrects me. ‘It’s drinking too much, not sleeping enough, thinking you can eat Coco Pops for three meals a day and survive.’
As I hover around outside Millsy’s flat, I take in the stunning view he has, but does not appreciate. Well, I say it’s his flat, but it’s actually his uncle’s. What Uncle Mills actually does, I’ve never quite understood. He travels around the world, teaching doctors a procedure they need for the company’s weird clinical trials. To me, this sounds a little sketchy, but Millsy assures me his uncle is going to “save humanity, or something”. This may or may not be true, but it affords my best friend a gorgeous one-bedroom bachelor pad in a prime location with a stunning view of the River Aire and the Royal Armouries, rent-free.
Sometimes, when Nick is stressing me out, Millsy offers me his (technically his uncle’s) sofa to sleep on, but with the possibility his semi-nomadic uncle could return at any