know I fucked up. And not just by what I did and who I did it with, but by not realizing how amazing you are bloody years ago. You’re my best friend. You make me laugh, you take care of me; you’re the one who is always there. You’re shit at beat-em-ups but I don’t care. There are too many awesome things about you. I can’t believe I didn’t work this out before.’
‘Like what?’ I said, nervous laughter in my voice. ‘What’s so awesome about me?’
‘Everything,’ he said, grinning. ‘We like all the same films, we like all the same TV shows, we like the same music. God, it’s like we were made for each other. You’re basically me and I’m basically you.’
I wanted my wine back. Was that true, really? Did we like all the same things? And did I want to be with someone who liked me because I was exactly like him? I hated to admit it but I had a feeling it would be more true to say I liked the things he liked so we would have more reasons to spend time together. We never, ever did anything I suggested – because I never suggested anything.
‘I need you in my life,’ Charlie said, not put off by my contemplative silence. ‘And not as a mate. I didn’t realize how much I needed you until now. Just don’t tell me it’s too late.’
As it was, he didn’t give me a chance to tell him anything. Instead he took my hands in his and pulled me towards him.
‘Tess,’ he whispered. ‘My Tess.’
It was what I wanted: to be his, to belong.
Softly, slowly he pressed his lips against mine and I was full of wine and butterflies, so I kissed him back. I closed my eyes, let myself drift and kissed Charlie Wilder as though there wasn’t a single other man on the planet.
Only, I knew that wasn’t true.
It was very early the next morning when I woke up in Charlie’s bed. With Charlie, but without any clothes. The night before, it had seemed like such a good idea, the getting naked thing. I hadn’t had a good day by anyone’s standards and nothing seemed to take my mind off bigger problems like a good seeing-to. It was one of the fun new things I’d learned about myself of late. Unfortunately, for everything I’d learned, I seemed to have forgotten how much trouble dropping my knickers tended to land me in. Twelve hours earlier, the idea of sleeping with Charlie was warm and reassuring and comforting but when I woke up at dawn, the sunlight slicing across his blue-for-a-boy bedroom, there was one thought I couldn’t get rid of, no matter how many times I tossed and turned.
Nick Miller.
Here I was, nestled in the nook of the man I’d been achingly in love with for ten long years, and all I could think about was how different it felt to waking up beside Nick. I kept trying to close my eyes but every time I began to drift off, there he was. His ashy blond hair and blue eyes staring right at me, making me shiver from head to toe.
Strangely enough, waking up naked with one man but only being able to think of another was a bit confusing and so, as quietly as I could, I slid out of bed, grabbed my clothes from last night and tiptoed towards the bedroom door. All I needed was ten minutes to make a cup of tea. Or maybe I could go for a quick walk, blow away the cobwebs. Actually, it might be a good idea to pop back to Amy’s. I could leave Charlie a note. Yeah, that was a good idea. As long as I left a note it was OK. Everyone loved a note …
‘Morning.’
I froze in the doorway, pulling my borrowed T-shirt past the hem of my knickers with one hand and trying to push my hair into some sort of shape with the other. Charlie rubbed at his face with the back of his hand and smiled.
‘Hello.’
Well, at least I didn’t have to worry about what to put in the note.
‘Where do you think you’re off to?’ he asked, stretching his entire body down the length of the bed as I averted my eyes. Even now, even at twenty-eight years old, I still couldn’t make direct eye contact with a penis. At least not in daylight. Definitely not sober.
‘Uh, just putting the kettle on,’ I replied, my hair flopping down over one eye. I can pull off sexy, I thought, planting my hand on my waist and dropping my hip. Then immediately standing up straight and feeling like a twat. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
‘Not in the mood for a cup of tea,’ he said, pulling back the covers and patting the mattress. Once the duvet had been removed, it wasn’t hard to see what he was in the mood for. I coloured up from head to toe and averted my eyes. I had been fantasizing about Charlie for a decade and we’d had actual sex twice now, but seeing his actual peen with my actual eyes was still too much.
‘I need a wee,’ I said, the words falling out of my mouth before I could consider how incredibly unsexy they were. Charlie frowned and waved me away. ‘Back in a minute.’
Once the bathroom door was safely locked behind me, I sat down on the loo and pressed both hands against my face. What was wrong with me? Why was this weird?
If only I could stop thinking about Nick.
‘I’m not thinking about him at all,’ I corrected myself and ran the cold water over a dubious-looking flannel. ‘Not at all.’
Why would I be thinking about him? I had just woken up in the arms of a wonderful man who was over six feet tall, had all his own teeth and had bought me pizza. In an online dating world, Charlie was the catch of the century.
‘So I’m not thinking about Nick.’ I slapped myself around the chops with the icy flannel. ‘I am wishing I had never met him, but I am not thinking about him.’
There was nothing to think about anyway. So what if he was so attractive he made Matthew McConaughey look like he’d fallen out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down? So what if he was intelligent and passionate and fascinating? So what if the sex was intense and so all-consuming that I still have pale yellow traces of his fingerprints on my arms and shoulders and hips and even thinking about our time together made me forget to breathe.
Nick was a fling. I had a fling and now that fling was over. And not just because he sent a heart-stoppingly brief ‘call me’ email a week ago and then failed to pick up his phone or answer anything subsequently, but because I had decided it was over. Hawaii was a fantasy; this was real life. And it wasn’t a bad trade by any stretch of the imagination.
‘Totally over the Nick situation.’ I was resolute underneath the flannel. ‘The fling has been flung.’
Not that I wasn’t a bit pissed off. Yes, he had good reason to be annoyed at me, but when a man sent you an email that said ‘call me’ and then didn’t actually answer your calls, that was enough to slot him firmly into the ‘douchebag’ category.
‘Why tell me to call if he didn’t want to speak to me?’ I asked the flannel.
It didn’t answer. It just smelled damp and sad.
‘Everything all right in there?’ Charlie knocked on the door. ‘You setting up shop or something?’
‘I was just, you know,’ I stood up and flushed for the want of a better response, ‘doing stuff.’
‘Oh,’ he replied. ‘Oh. Right, uh, I’ll let you get on with that then.’
‘I’m not doing that,’ I shrieked, realizing he had added two and two and got something very unladylike. ‘I was just washing my face.’
I threw the door open and waved the damp flannel around to prove my innocence.
‘You didn’t use that, did you?’ Charlie asked, taking it from me with his thumb and forefinger and sniffing gingerly.
I pressed my fingers to my face. The skin was still all there. ‘Why?’
‘No