when I looked again, you were gone. And the next time I saw you, my flatmate told me you were going out with that bloke off the PE course. So I didn’t make a move. But we had so much in common and we were in all the same classes and, you know, that was that.’
‘And you never thought to bother again?’ I said, shuffling my feet a little bit closer to him. ‘In ten years?’
‘I know your mum and dad got divorced, Tess, but if you’d lived through what I’ve lived through, you wouldn’t be so quick to swap a friend for a shag. By the time we were both single, we were such good friends. We had so much in common – the books and the music and everything – and I didn’t want to ruin that. I was twenty. I couldn’t even think about anything long-term. But you were long-term to me.’
‘You do know the only reason I read all those books and listened to all that music was so that I’d have something to talk to you about in the first place, don’t you?’ I asked, looking at a knot in the floorboards. ‘Because I liked you.’
‘Sneaky cow.’ He pulled the sleeves of his jumper over his hands and smiled. ‘Anyway, I just wanted you to know why I might have freaked out a little bit this morning.’
‘I’m not quite sure I do know,’ I said, my heart pounding. I really needed to hear him say it. ‘You might want to clarify.’
That’s when I saw the full trademarked and copyright Charlie Wilder grin break out across his face. ‘I freaked out because I didn’t know what it was. Or what you wanted it to be. I could never just do the friends with benefits thing with you because you’re my Tess. I love you.’
‘You love me?’
They were words I’d heard a thousand times before, they were words I’d said a thousand times before, but they’d never, ever mattered until he said them now. It felt like Cupid, the Andrex puppy and a selection of assorted kittens had taken up residence in my stomach. There was far too much fluffy fluttering going on in there for my organs to work properly.
‘You love me?’ I said it again just to make sure.
‘Of course I love you,’ he repeated, taking hold of my hand. ‘You’re my best friend.’
And with that, Cupid, the anonymous Labrador and assorted kittens froze and turned around to look at me very, very slowly.
‘I’m your best friend?’
My French teacher had always told me the best way to understand something was to repeat it until you’d really drilled everything into your brain, but I was just not getting this.
‘My best, best friend.’ Charlie squeezed my fingers so tightly I thought they might snap, and I inched back ever so slightly on the sofa. ‘And we both know how important that is.’
‘We do?’
‘How many times have you seen me ruin a relationship?’ He let go of my hand and threw his arms up in the air. The arms that had been around me all night long. ‘I’m the worst! I can’t keep it together with a girl, you know that.’
I did know that. Charlie had a different girlfriend approximately once every five months. And once every five months I absolutely did not spend (on average) two hours online stalking the shit out of her and praying to a god I didn’t believe in that she would just go away without me having to resort to violence. So far, those prayers had been answered. I probably owed every major religion at least a fiver: the girlfriends never lasted more than a couple of months. One did almost six, but Charlie was travelling around Australia for three of them and I knew for a fact that he’d cheated. Not that he was a cheater. Most of the time.
‘There’s a reason we’ve never got together.’ Charlie seemed to be choosing his words very carefully. I hoped they were the right ones. ‘What if it doesn’t work out and we end up hating each other? I’ll let you down, Tess, I will. I don’t want you to hate me; I want you to be checking the football scores for me in the old people’s home when I’m too old and blind to read the screen. I want you to be in my life for ever.’
One by one, Cupid, the puppy and the kittens limped away, whispering awkwardly between themselves. I assumed they were uncomfortable with tears because dear God was I about to bring out some pretty impressive crying. The tears I’d busted out that morning were nothing compared with the biblical flood that was about to drown everyone in the room.
‘Ah, fucking hell – this is what I’m talking about. We’re not even going out and I’ve made you cry.’ Charlie dived across the sofa and pulled me into a hug, trying to stem the sobs. ‘See? It would never work.’
‘But … but we did it?’ As the words came out of my mouth, I wondered if I’d actually gone mad and we had, in fact, not ‘done it’ at all.
‘I know.’
‘After ten years? After never doing it at all?’
‘I know.’
To his credit, he looked terribly guilty. Not that it mattered in the slightest. My heart hurt. My everything hurt.
‘Why?’
‘I honestly don’t know,’ he replied.
We sat locked in silence on the sofa, half disengaged from the least sexy embrace in the history of embraces. I was staring at Charlie’s messy hair, his pale face, his sad eyes. He was staring at my Eeyore nightie. All I wanted to do was hug him again and tell him it was all going to be all right, that it didn’t matter and that we could just pretend it had never happened. We would just go back to being best friends and I’d go back to waiting for him to work out that I was the one. Even though I could still feel the red-hot tears spilling over my cheeks, every single part of me just wanted to make him feel better. Somewhere in the corner of the room, my self-respect shook her head in disgust. He didn’t say anything else. I couldn’t say anything else. Luckily, someone else didn’t have quite the same struggle.
‘Oh Jesus Christ, what’s going on now?’
In the midst of all our emodrama, I hadn’t heard the front door open. And I hadn’t seen Vanessa loitering in the hallway. But I heard her.
‘Don’t tell me you two are shagging?’ She hung her keys on my hook next to the door and inspected her nails. ‘Don’t bother, Tess, he’s shit in bed.’
‘What did you just say?’ I couldn’t possibly have heard her right.
‘I said don’t bother, he’s shit in bed,’ Vanessa repeated slowly, disappearing into her bedroom. ‘And between me, you and Mr Wilder, he’s not exactly packing down their either. Not. Worth. The effort.’
I let go of Charlie at exactly the same time he let go of me, and slid off the sofa into a graceless pile of too long limbs and donkey T-shirt at his feet.
‘You?’ I pointed at him. ‘And her?’ I pointed to Vanessa.
‘OK, don’t go mental, but—’
‘Oh my God, you and her.’
It was too late; I was freaking out. The Andrex puppy had morphed into a Rottweiler and Cupid had traded his bow and arrow for an AK-47.
‘It was nothing,’ he said insistently, grabbing hold of my wrists a fraction too tightly. ‘It was just one of those things. I don’t even know. It was nothing.’
‘It was several times,’ Vanessa called from behind her closed bedroom door. ‘Your place, this place, that hotel for the weekend in Wales.’
‘You went to Wales?’ I breathed. ‘You went on a mini-break?’
Truly this was the last straw. Everyone knew that a mini-break was the universally accepted sign of true love. Bridget Jones said so.
‘Remember you asked me not to tell Tess until you “knew what we were”?’ she called. Exactly what he had said to me that morning. ‘And because she’d probably have a nervous breakdown.’