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‘I can’t tell you, obviously.’ We both look up and close our eyes. Or at least, I close them for a second, because I soon realise I need them open if I want to stay upright. I take an inadvertent step to the side when I try to right myself. ‘Done.’
I realise with sudden clarity just how close we now are. Two Finns swim through my blurred vision, an unreadable expression onboth of his faces. But I can see his chest rising and falling, see the bob of his Adam’s apple, see the trails of rainwater dripping from his hair down his face.
My eyes refocus and then there’s only one Finn, wordlessly waiting, eyes dark and careful, supercharging the air simply by being this close. Static crackles between us and every cell in my body is set alight under his gaze.
There’s thunder, too. It rumbles through me; its weighty roar pounding in my ears and drowning out every coherent thought. I don’t know if it’s the alcohol pulsing through my veins or some other force at play, but one of my hands finds its way around his bicep. My eyes drop to his lips. They’re close, too. My breath catches as I incline my head, and I dimly register that he tilts his too, and the static frenzies as we draw closer together, millimetre by torturous millimetre.
But then, the lightning strikes.
‘No,’ he whispers, warm breath hitting me before the meaning of his word does.
It’s amazing what two letters can do to your self esteem, even amidst the stormy depths of intoxication, and I blink a few times and take a startled step backwards.
‘Oh.’ Nothing more intelligent comes out, and my cheeks flame with embarrassment.
He looks at me, pleading. ‘I’m sorry, I just— I don’t think it’s a good idea right now.’
I try to push the storm clouds away, feigning a brightness I know sounds fake to both of us. ‘It’s fine, don’t worry.I’msorry. That was— yeah. I’ll be okay from here.’ I gesture vaguely back the way we came. ‘You should go home before the rain starts up again.’
‘Are you sure?’ His brow furrows from behind his rain-streaked glasses.
‘I’m sure. Thanks for walking me. Sorry, I know I already said that.’ He nods, and I’m inside my building before he’s even started walking away.
I blearily open my eyes and in my half-conscious state conclude that if I don’t extract myself from my duvet’s sweltering heat within the next three seconds I may actually die. I ungracefully free my desiccated self from the twisted covers before getting out of bed, tripping on a pile of clothes on the floor and stepping out into the great unknown.
‘Morning, sunshine!’ Josie calls brightly from the sofa, where she’s listening to what sounds like a self-help podcast on nurturing healthy habits. When I don’t respond, she says, ‘Been reminded you’re not twenty-one anymore?’
‘Get a hobby,’ I bite back, and her snort accompanies the rest of my perilous walk to the kitchen. No one has ever been as dehydrated as I am right now. I’m sure of it.
‘I didn’t hear you come home. Thought it meant the date with the quizzing guy had gone well. Which, I’ll be honest, was unexpected, because from what you told me about him, he seemed like a bit of a wet blanket. But maybe he was a dark horse.’ After multiple futile attempts to figure out where to press on the handle-less doors, I open the dishwasher instead, grabbing the first vessel I can find to pour myself some water; a mug with “hot” embossed in braille. There’s no sound for a while apart from that loud, echoey, breathless gulping that kids do when they come inside for a drink after playing in the garden. Except it’s not a child, it’s me, rejuvenating my dried-up prune of a body after a night of mixing drinks. I fill up the mug once more and head towards Josie andRudy on the sofa, where I’m hoping some canine energy will revive me.
‘The date?’ she prods. I try to stay as still as possible, the comforting feel of Rudy’s fur under my hand.
‘The date was…’ I wrack my brain for details to give her but everything’s a blur that I need to reorganise into something that makes sense. ‘It wasn’t great. He was kind of intense. But I ended up bumping into Finn.’ She sits up and the sudden movement makes my hand fly to my stomach, as if that’ll help settle it in any way. I notice I’m still wearing my outfit from yesterday, and it feels weird. Almost crispy, like it dried funny. ‘He has this list of things he wants to do in London, and going on a boat was one of them. Remember the boat bar by Vauxhall I went to with that guy I was sure secretly worked for MI5? Finn and I went there and hung out for a bit. I have him to thank for my current state.’
Her eyebrows raise a fraction of an inch and she asks, a picture of nonchalance, ‘And you stayed out late with just Finn? Again?’
‘Is that news?’ I reply, at the exact same moment a murky memory of what happened at the end of the night flashes across my brain. The rain, the electricity, and the violent embarrassment when it became apparent we were both reading the situation very differently. Shit. He was being a good friend and I was ready to fall all over him. Whatwasthat? I need to lie down again. ‘I’m going back to bed.’
‘But we haven’t finished this conversation,’ Josie whines, and I can’t tell if it’s disappointment or glee in her voice, but I’m too hungover to figure it out.
‘Have fun finishing it by yourself.’ My snappy response doesn’t generate the same impact when my feeble voice breaks halfway through.
Desperate to hunker down under my duvet and hide from theconsequences of my own actions, I grab my phone from the bedside table to check for notifications—it has a full battery; good to know that even drunk me is technologically dependent enough to put it on charge—and lie down. Between the hangover and the raging carousel of my turbulent thoughts, being horizontal helps.
On my screen is a single text from Finn.
Alive?
I stare at it for what could be a few moments or ten minutes before replying.
negative
Three dots appear on my screen straight away, and a beat later a message comes through.
On a scale of 1-10, how fresh do you feel?
can the scale be 0-10?
