in silence for two hours – and on the second we went to a bar and got drunk. Oh, and then the wake date. Jonathan is a good-looking dude, but he’s a bit weird. There’s something almost tortured about his personality, like he’s got some issues he needs to work through. Don’t we all, though? Still, he does have his good qualities too, so I’m happy to see where this goes. I’m not going to ditch the guy just because he took me to a family funeral without telling me.
‘We have,’ I lie with a warm smile.
‘Well, I think we should call it a day,’ he tells me. I feel my smile drop.
‘What?’
‘I just…I think we’re moving in different directions.’
‘Oh my God, seriously? Are you really giving me the old lines? Is it not me, is it you?’
Jonathan grabs my hand.
‘It is me,’ he assures me, giving my hand a reassuring squeeze.
‘You’re damn fucking right it’s you,’ I reply.
Jonathan drops my hand and jumps to his feet, wrestling his clothes on as he talks, his tone suddenly becoming significantly less friendly.
‘OK, cards on the table, when we got back last night I thought I might get lucky, but you didn’t even want to sleep with me,’ he explains.
‘Dude, we’d just got back from your dad’s wake – that you didn’t even tell me we were going to.’
Oh, did I not mention that it was his dad’s funeral? I suppose I didn’t want to give Nick too much ammunition when he teases me about this every day until one of us moves out.
‘Yeah, well don’t you think I needed some comfort after that?’
‘So I’m supposed to bang you out of sheer sympathy?’
‘Well, it would’ve been nice,’ he replies, like it’s a fairly reasonable expectation.
‘You’re disgusting, get out,’ I demand.
Jonathan puts on his shoes and heads for the door, slamming it behind him.
Lying back on the sofa, I massage my temples for a moment. My head is banging, and I’ve got to be at work in an hour. Is getting dumped a good enough reason to call in sick?
‘Awkward,’ I say to myself. ‘So, so awkward.’ Not only what just happened with Jonathan, but my dream about Nick too. Not only do Nick and I not get on, but we’re like enemies, both driving the other crazy, but neither of us in a position to move out. The fact we’re stuck with one another only makes us hate each other even more.
I glance around the floor for my outfit from last night, only to find that Nick has folded my dress and placed it neatly over the back of the sofa. I grab it, shaking my head at his anal neatness as I meaningfully and defiantly unfold it. All communal areas of the house must be neat and tidy to a military standard. Sir, yes, sir.
Tossing my clothes through my bedroom doorway, I head straight for the shower. I know that I’m running late, but after an uncomfortable night on the sofa cuddled up to a sweaty, emotional wreck of a man, there’s no way I can go to work without washing some of yesterday’s failed date off of me. I’m literally going to wash Jonathan out of my hair – well, his sweat and tears at least.
I turn on the shower, cranking up the hot water to make the bathroom nice and steamy while I brush my teeth. I’ve got that fuzzy mouth feeling you’re left with after too many sugary alcoholic drinks. Typically, I’m out of toothpaste, but that’s what flatmates are for, right? Borrowing things from.
I can see from Nick’s toothpaste tube that he’s used approximately 1/8 so far, with the used 1/8 neatly folded over a few times, thus giving the appearance of a perfectly full, slightly smaller tool. Does he really have that much spare time on his hands? Really? In another act of defiance, I not only use his toothpaste, but I squeeze from the middle of the tube, leaving behind a big, fingertip-shaped dent in it.
Finally stepping into the hot shower feels glorious, I can feel my bad date washing off me. Sure, I’m annoyed at how he behaved, but mostly I’m just annoyed to have another bad date on my romantic CV. Hardly seems worth putting Jonathan down, for a mere three weeks, but they always say it’s better to put jobs down that you didn’t have for long/got fired from, rather than have big, unaccounted-for gaps in your employment, right?
I grab my delicious-smelling pina colada-scented shower gel and rub it all over my body. I love the smell of it because it reminds me of my two favourite things: cocktails and the beach. Which reminds me, I’m not only washing away Jonathan, I need to scrub myself clean of that sex dream about Nick. Nick Hall! I can’t believe it.
I think to myself as I shampoo my hair. I’ll admit that the first time I met Nick right here in this very flat, the first thing I noticed about him was how sexy he was. A sexy doctor, no less – that’s like every girl’s fantasy. Sharing this small space didn’t suit us though, and it’s amazing how quickly you can go off a person when they start to grate on you. One thing I can definitely put on my CV is that I’m not shallow, because not even Nick’s chiselled good looks, bulging biceps or romance novel-worthy profession can sway how I feel about him.
So why the hell did I dream that about him today? It can’t mean anything, can it? All that stuff about dreams meaning things has got to be a load of bollocks.
I shut off the water, and shut my dream about Nick out of my mind.
Once in the messy confines of my bedroom – where I am free to express my unorthodox organisational skills as I see fit – I grab a dress from the large pile of clothing on my bedroom floor – the division of my floordrobe which I have dubbed Mount Clothesmore – and search for my make-up bag because today my face is going to need everything it has to offer. If I don’t get a move on, I’m going to be late for work, but it’s better to be late than ugly, right?
‘So he took you to a wake and then dumped you? Fuck me, that’s as rough as you look,’ Millsy laughs as I meaningfully drain the takeaway coffee cup I filled with a double shot vanilla latte the second I arrived at work – fifteen minutes late, which isn’t too bad considering.
‘You don’t look so hot yourself,’ I reply.
‘Erm, yeah I do,’ he replies, and he means it.
Millsy leans over and looks at himself in the reflection of the shiny silver coffee machine. He checks his eyes for dark circles before securing the topknot they make him pull his dark brown hair into for work. He makes a noise of approval – the kind that most men would usually reserve for a topless calendar or a bird they fancied. Millsy mostly just fancies Millsy.
Joe ‘Millsy’ Mills has been my best friend my whole life – my entire 27 years on this planet. Our parents lived next door to one another, and because he’s only three months older than me, we started playing together almost immediately and that was it, we became inseparable. We went to playgroup together, then school, and even now we’re supposedly grown-ups, we’re still best friends, still playing together – except our games have changed a little as we’ve become older.
I
