Page 46 of One Night With You

‘That’ll be a fun cliché,’ I joke. ‘If we end up dating a couple of brothers.’

‘Who said anything about dating?’ Candice smirks. ‘I don’t do that, remember?’

‘Is the postman here tonight?’

‘Lost my nerve, didn’t I?’

‘Jesus,’ I say. ‘How can a woman be so sexually confident but so romantically timid?’

‘Are you looking in a mirror when you say that?’ she teases. ‘Or …??’

‘Ha, ha.’

She pulls down the hem of her dress and throws a satisfied glance around the room, like it’s all exactly as she wants it to be.

‘Anyway,’ she concludes. ‘Remember: you’re not here for Nic. You’re here for me. I’m the birthday girl. You should shower me with nothing but love and attention, okay?’

‘Deal,’ I say.

22

Nic

We start out by making eyes at each other across whatever room we find ourselves in. Everyone has arrived by eight, is happily tipsy and relaxed enough to start dancing by nine, and by ten there’s two different couples snogging on the sofa, a limbo competition happening in the dance room and Ollie has snorted a vodka shot out of some woman’s belly button and weirdly, she seems to be finding it hilarious instead of gross. Jackson is here somewhere – last I saw he was creating cocktails in the kitchen, with an audience lapping it up, which is par for the course. I know only a handful of faces: Jackson, Candice, my brother and Ruby, plus two girls from dodgeball who Candice knows too. But I’ve been chatting as I sup a couple of beers, and fulfilled my role as chief rubbish collector as well, doing sweeps of the place for any stray empties. That ends up being a good way to talk to people, actually, giving me a pretext to interrupt people and chat but also a reason to move on as well.

But no matter what I’m doing and where I am, the magnetic power of Ruby never leaves. If I’m in the dance room I know that she’s leaning near the stairs talking to someone who has just come in. If I’m in the tiny lounge I know she’s by the door through to the kitchen, swaying to the sounds of the music drifting through. And when I’m on the way back from the loo, she’s on her way up, saying nothing, only pursing her lips provocatively as I let her squeeze by. I feel the warmth radiating off her skin as she passes, wisps of her hair tickling my face. Is she swaying her hips that way for my benefit? She’s like Marilyn Monroe with her tiny waist and rounded hips and an arse you could park a bike in – and I mean that in all the best ways.

We orbit the same spaces, each aware of the presence of the other, flirting with our eyes and smirking and it all feels so predetermined, so already decided, that after four hours of this game, she locks eyes with me, nods, and then slips out the back door. I know I’m supposed to go after her. Finally.

‘Having fun?’ I say, finding her out on the picnic table at the far corner of the patio.

‘I am now,’ she replies, grinning. It’s cold, and she’s wrapped her arms around herself to keep warm. There are goose bumps on her ivory skin, tiny dot-to-dots. She sees me notice and says, ‘I didn’t think this through. It’s freezing.’

I take off my flannel overshirt and give it to her. It’s heavyweight – Jackson calls it a ‘shacket’, like a shirt-jacket. He’s got names for everything, that man. I heard him compliment a woman’s ‘shoboots’ earlier, and it took me ages to work out he meant shoe-boots, like that’s even a thing.

‘I wasn’t expecting you to put clothesonme.’ She giggles, as I drape it around her shoulders, enjoying my knucklesbrushing against her lightly. I get to lean in just close enough to do it, from behind, and she doesn’t quite turn the whole way as she registers my proximity, amusement dancing across her features.

‘It’s going to be like that, is it?’ I whisper playfully. ‘I see.’

Ruby shrugs, noncommittal and like butter wouldn’t melt, but I know that look. I’ve seen that look before. I saw it that night.

‘Can I have some of your beer?’ she asks, and she’s lowered her voice too. We’re talking softly, as if we’re postcoital. It does something to the air between us. I hand her my bottle. ‘Thank you,’ she enthuses.

She takes a long swig and I hop up onto the bench beside her, putting my feet where our bottoms should be, on the chair part. Her face sparkles where the light catches it – she’s wearing the same glitter on her face as Candice and Jackson. Her hair falls long, in loose waves, like a mermaid, and the short, square nails at the end of her dainty hands are painted red.I love red nails,I think when I clock them, before realising that I only love red nails because they’re on her. It’s an opinion I’ve never expressed before in my life until now.

‘How’s Manchester?’ I ask. Getting an update on her new life seems as good a place to start as any.

‘It’s even better than I hoped it would be, actually,’ she says, talking to the moon. ‘I mean, I’m shit-scared most of the time because I have this constant little voice in the back of my head asking me what I expect to come from all this, what am I going to do once I’m out of the uni bubble … but for now, I feel like more myself than I ever have done. I think … I’m scared and also driven by the fear? It’s complicated.’

Sometimes Ruby’s got the banter of an ice queen, but thenshe suddenly switches to being open-hearted and authentic with something like she’s just said. It’s a killer combination, keeping me expertly on my toes. She’s dizzying in the emotional highs and sarcastic lows she can scale from one sentence to another. I like it. It’s mercurial but thrilling.

‘You sound dangerously close to doubting yourself,’ I observe, noticing how she’s pulling at the label on the bottle she hasn’t given back. Isn’t that what the sexually frustrated do? ‘Don’t let it hold you back.’

‘Yeah,’ she says, still looking up at the sky. The moon is almost full, and casts bright light over the tops of the trees. ‘But I don’t mind a little bit of self-doubt if it spurs me on, I suppose. The problem contains the solution, and all that. Gotta feel my feelings before I can fix ’em, haven’t I?’

‘That’s very mature of you,’ I say, and she chuckles and says thanks.

‘I’m doing my best on this spiritual quest for personal growth, or whatever it might be called,’ she says.

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