Page 38 of One Night With You

Nic

‘I’m only here to get my steps in – you know that, don’t you?’

Ollie is pulling a face beside one of the Beefeaters at Kensington Palace, mortified to be associated with anything close to ‘touristy’ but humouring me in posing for a snap.

‘Mum’ll love it. Don’t be such a whinge,’ I say, getting dramatic with my phone. I turn it from portrait to landscape and take a step closer, hamming it up to say, ‘That’s it! There’s your angle! Yes! Yes! Make love to the camera, baby!’

Ollie relents with an eye roll and starts pulling poses, turning around to look back over his shoulder, hands on hips, and then spinning around to blow a kiss in my direction. I capture it all.

‘There you go,’ I say, selecting everything I’ve just taken to AirDrop to him, and then picking the most ridiculous to text the family WhatsApp group. ‘You’ve got handsome lad for Mum, sexy for your apps, and a special one you could frame and mount above your fireplace at home, too.’

Ollie squints at his phone as they Bluetooth over to him.

‘God, I’m a sexy bastard,’ he says, and he’s not joking. ‘What’s it like to have a brother as fit as me? You drew the short straw when it came to the gene pool, didn’t you?’

‘I got the brains,’ I say. ‘And the sense of social propriety.’

‘Manners are for the boring.’ He grins.

I’ve corralled him into a twilight walk in the dark around some London hotspots. I’ve cooled off on the dating this week, now I know I’m seeing Ruby. It’s a waste of everyone’s time when it’s hard work, frequently disappointing, and I compare everyone to her anyway. Her texts have become more regular. They were erratically timed before, but now it’s every other day, just to see how I am.

‘She’s totally bread-crumbing,’ Ollie says. ‘And look at you, following her trail like a hungry little mouse.’ He mimics mouse-like behaviour by putting his fingers up to his mouth and making ‘nom nom nom’ noises.

‘She isnotbread-crumbing me,’ I say, scowling. ‘We’re justchatting.’

‘Yeah,’ Ollie says. ‘As a warm-up before this weekend.’

I deepen my scowl and reread what she’s just sent.

All right there, me lad,

I’ll preface with: I ain’t mad,

But what the hell was that comment on Insta?

You’re a little bit pervy,

You’ve obviously some nerve(y),

Hitting ‘like’ whenever you see me.

Is that foreplay? Okay, yeah. I think there’s a bit of wordy foreplay happening before the weekend. A man can hope. I text back:

Hello and good day,

I fear I’ve got something to say,

These texts, they’re getting quite frequent.

I may hit that ‘like’

Making your heart rate spike,

But you have to admit that you love it.

It barely even rhymes butshe sends back a photo of herself pulling a silly face – eyes crossed, chin pulled in so it’s doubled, tongue hanging out of her mouth.

U think me pretty?it says.

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