Page 40 of One Night With You

‘I don’tthinkI’ve fallenin lovewith her. I just think if there’s a chance to see if it’s got legs, then maybe we should do that. I don’t know. It’s cool if you want to get your dick wet with somebody different every night of the week, but it’s just notme.It’s weird you’re so hung up on my sex life anyway. It’s creepy. You do you, bro.’ He’s smirking as I rant, and it forces me to smirk slightly too. The prick. ‘And her name is Ruby.’

‘And we’re going to see her at the weekend?’ he asks. ‘At this party?’

I retort: ‘Why do you think I’m trying to stay busy?’

Ollie blinks, like he doesn’t compute. ‘I just …’ he says. I wait for the blow to come. ‘I get that romance can be nice, but you’re acting like a bit of a lost cause. You had one night with her. So what? People have one-night stands all the time.’

‘We just clicked,’ I insist. ‘I would have let it go, but then when she said she’d be coming, and then the texting and whatever …’

‘You got hard again?’

‘Ollie.’

‘Nic.’

I sigh.

‘Just all sounds like a lot of hard work and earnest navel-gazing if you ask me.’

‘I didn’t.’

We head down towards the river, winding through some of the quieter streets where Ollie looks wistfully at a pub that has post-work drinkers supping pints outside, despite the cold. I motion for him to come across the road with me, to a van pulled up near Westminster Abbey, selling hot drinks and roasted chestnuts.

‘How’s work, anyway?’ he says, once I’ve ordered the promised hot chocolates. ‘I’ve got to admit, I love telling everyone that you work for a Hoare.’

‘Ha, ha,’ I say. ‘The first person ever to makethatjoke.’

‘My brother the banker,’ he says. ‘Doing us all proud.’

‘That sounds dangerously close to a compliment.’

‘It’s not,’ he says, cheerily. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘What are you getting Mum and Steve for their anniversary, by the way?’ I ask. ‘And have you got your train ticket yet?’

‘Not thought about it,’ he says. ‘The present or the train ticket. I’ll just get one on the day.’

We linger on Westminster Bridge, looking out towards Waterloo Bridge, and Tower Bridge beyond it. The wind is icy, but the hot chocolate is warm and it’s pretty, all the twinkling lights and looming dark sky.

‘Shall I see what’s on her Amazon wish list? We can go halfsies?’

‘Sound,’ he says, not taking his eyes off the view. I follow his gaze.

‘I’m glad you’re down here, you know,’ he announces, suddenly.

‘Aww, my younger brother getting soft on me?’ I say. ‘Surely not?’

‘Piss off,’ he retorts. ‘I was just saying.’ He goes back to looking out towards the water.

‘I’m glad I’m here too,’ I say. ‘It’s nice. Hanging out.’

‘Yeah,’ Ollie says, and he doesn’t even make a joke.

I don’t know what the future has in store for me – who I’ll be in five years, or ten, or where I’ll live or who with. But I do know that here, now, weeks before Christmas in the cold, with my brother, in a great city, texting a hot woman who, yeah, can’t decide what she wants and lives miles away – butis texting me, me! I don’t know. It feels right. Like I’m doing okay. It’s all good.

‘You look like you’re gonna break out into a chorus of The Beatles’ “Blackbird”,’ Ollie notes.

‘“Blackbird”?’

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