Page 21 of One Night With You

I can already feel the burning. It’s been happening this way. I’m fine one minute and then … pain. Unimaginable, terrible pain.

I fill the bottle up at the fountain in the changing room, the pain in my kecks growing with every passing second. The water bottle reaches capacity and I’mthis closeto having an accident as I push through into the cubicle and sit down on the loo. As I pee, I pour water between my legs to ease the fire. It helps. I don’t know why, but it does. I never knew having a wee could hurt so much. When I’m done, I sit, panting. It’s got to be some sort of infection. It’s been two days of torture now.

‘You okay, Nic?’ Jackson bellows through the emptiness of the changing room. I freeze. ‘We won,’ he continues. ‘No thanks to you. They’re up for the pub through, and I was going to get a kebab too? I’m starving.’ His voice gets closer. ‘Oh,’ I hear him say, stood just in front of the line of urinals opposite my locked door. ‘Time to drop the twins off at the pool, was it? Sorry.’

I don’t say anything. The water bottle is empty now and it normally takes a minute or two for me to catch my breath and for the pain to properly subside. I need to go see a doctor. I’ll do it tomorrow.

‘Nic?’

‘Yeah, great,’ I manage to say through gritted teeth.

But I know Jackson, and he’s not going to leave. We’re in a silent stand-off as he waits for me to reappear. He knowsthere’s something afoot that he’s missing. He can sniff secrets out like a hound. I resign myself to the inevitable investigative looks, but don’t make eye contact as I slip the lock across and go to wash my hands, the empty water bottle under my arm.

‘You look white as a sheet,’ Jackson observes, and he sounds legitimately concerned. I look up, and in the mirror am confronted with a deathly pallor. I’m sure I’ll be okay. I’m fine until I’m not, and then I’m not until I am.

I catch Jackson’s eye in our mutual reflections, and he slowly – deliberately – looks down to the water bottle and back again. I do the same. Ah, he’s got questions.

‘Tell Uncle Jackson,’ he prompts, and I can hear some of the others trickling through the door to get changed. We don’t tend to shower after, because it slows down getting ‘first blood’, as Jackson calls it, and if we all stink then no one’s the odd one out. Thankfully, that means nobody comes to the back of the changing rooms to the showers and loos, where we are.

I shake my head.

‘Is there burning?’ he prompts, but I don’t detect a single iota of judgement in the question. He’s just asking, his tone as neutral as if he’d just said, ‘Are there flowers in the vase?’ or: ‘Fishcakes for tea okay?’

I run the tap again and scoop up some cold water to my face. It feels good. When I stand back upright, I answer him. ‘Yes,’ I admit.

He nods. ‘Testicles swollen?’

‘Like dodgeballs.’

‘Discharge?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘The clam,’ he decides. ‘First time?’

He’s not smiling, or joking, or making fun of me, but instantly as he says it the weight of shame lifts the tiniest amount.

‘Are you sure?’ I ask. ‘This only started yesterday and I’ve not had sex since …’ I don’t need to finish the thought. He knows I mean that Ruby is the last woman I was with.

‘Symptoms can show after a week, or after a few months,’ he says, diplomatically. ‘Seems reasonable to me they could come now after, what, five or six weeks?’

I think to myselfsix weeks and two days, but who’s counting?

‘Have you had this before too?’ I ask.

‘Chlamydia? Oh yeah. Twice, mate. Most people have. It’s nothing to worry about.’

‘The burning, though …’

‘That’s why you’ve gotta order a test at the first sign.’ He grimaces. ‘There’s a walk-in place by Bank station you can go to. That’s your stop, yes? Go before work tomorrow – I’ll send you a link.’

‘Thanks,’ I say.

‘You know you’re going to have to let Ruby know about this, don’t you?’ he says absentmindedly as he types in what he’s looking for. It’s the first time her name has come up. I deliberately haven’t asked about her, and Jackson hasn’t offered any updates on what she’s up to. Maybe he’s been waiting for me to say something first, to see if I want to.

‘She must have given it me,’ I offer. ‘Before her, there was only Millie.’

We’d used condoms when we’d had sex the first two times, but by the time we did it a third neither of us had any more, and we were so in the moment that … okay, fine. We let it happen. We had unprotected sex because shesaid she was on the pill. I never thought about anything like this.

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