Page 96 of You Belong With Me

‘… What was it like?’

‘It wasn’t too bad,’ Elliot said, and Edie flinched because her nerves needed something likeugh, it’s given me PTSD.‘It was a strange way to spend an afternoon, but we got it in a respectable number of takes. You’re trying to simulate the throes of passion while remembering where you were told to put your hand. It’s like following complicated dance steps while trying to story-tell a tango. It’s absolutely nothing like the, er, real thing, I promise.’

‘Right,’ Edie said flatly.

‘Sorry to interrupt,’ Declan said. ‘Edie, I was telling Kieran about your incredible story about the pissed-up wine merchant from a few years back?’

‘Ah … Olly?’

‘That’s the one!’

Declan encouraged Edie into reciting funny tales of Ad Hoc past. The seating arrangements dictated the limits of the socialising: Declan and Kieran were breakwaters between the rest of the company.

Elliot was quieter than usual, Kieran knew no one, and Edie tried to compensate by leaning on her ease with Declan. Edie felt the beer, then mezcal, acting as bonding agent.

‘Have you seen Meg’s got a new weapon in her culinaryarmoury?’ Declan said at one point, showing Edie a photo of a utensil. ‘Corn cob peeler. Apparently vegan creamed corn is the next frontier.’

‘He’s got Meg’s number?’ Elliot said, under his breath, perplexed.

‘Oh, there’s a back story involving a potato masher,’ Edie said.

Conversation moved to Declan’s single status. He’d not dated anyone since Aisling, and once Kieran was merry, that became a reason to berate his best friend.

‘Why not try the apps?’ Kieran said. ‘You’ve got loads going for you. Hasn’t he, Edie?’

‘Sure,’ Edie said. ‘Height. Girls love height.’

‘Do they?’ Declan said.

‘Oh yeah, isn’t that a whole thing? Setting minimum height preferences?’

Kieran put a hand up to cup his mouth, the gesture forimparting a secret. ‘Also, length. Dec is rumoured to be hung like a horse.’ He put his hands down. ‘Hahaha – wait, you can actually tell us if that’s true, Edie? You’ve unfortunately had eyes on the prize, I hear?’

Oh no no … NO. He’d told Kieran about his sleepwalking?

Edie had said it would alchemise into a pub yarn – little could she have known it would in fact become radioactive matter.

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She and Declan exchanged a look of mute alarm, witnessed by Elliot.

‘Oh boy, that’s enough from you. Help me get the next round in,’ Declan said, propelling Kieran up and off to the bar. Unfortunately, the swift intervention only increased the impression that she and Declan had done something wrong.

‘Why would you know that?’ Elliot said to Edie.

She steeled herself. ‘When Declan cycled into work on the first morning, he got hit by a car. He was concussed, so he had to stay over at my house as he couldn’t be left alone for twenty-four hours afterwards. The nurse asked me to look after him.’

‘OK,’ Elliot said. ‘Why would you know anything about the size of his wang? Did you give him a bath?’

Edie cringed. Some part of her had intended this to be amusing, if ever retold, and it was very much not that. ‘He went sleepwalking.’

‘Without his clothes?’

‘Yup.’ Edie gritted her teeth, but Elliot wasn’t reacting. ‘Poor sod.’

‘Where to?’

‘Er, the kitchen. Was confronted by Meg with a bread knife.’

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