Page 55 of One Night With You

‘Filet-o-Fish with large fries and vanilla milkshake,’ I agree. ‘Mydeath-row meal.’

‘McDonald’s it is, then.’ He nods.

We join the queue in the McDonald’s on the corner, and when he offers to pay, I gladly accept. He’s the one with the job, after all. I’m a mere student. We find a bench in the tentative sunny warmth and chew and slurp and people-watch. After all my train snacks it’s a wonder I’ve got the room for it.

‘Ice cream van driver by day, dog breeder of champions by night,’ Nic says, nodding his head in the direction of a chap walking by with an ice cream sundae on his T-shirt, a raft of fluffy Finnish Lapphunds trotting like tiny geishas just ahead of him.

‘Too easy, that one.’ I giggle, looking around to see how I can trump him. I spot an ageing woman with smeared lipstick and a beehive lighting one cigarette off of another, and whisper, ‘The developer of the UK’s first non-flammable hair setting agent,’ and he laughs, gleefully.

‘Perfection,’ he says, looking right at me as I shovel the last handful of fries into my mouth like an anaconda swallowing a bison.

‘The jaw dislocation is especially sexy,’ he notes, chowing down on his own chips. ‘Ten out of ten for that one.’

I deliberately answer him with my mouth full. ‘I don’t exist to be sexy for men,’ I say, food spraying everywhere.

‘And yet,’ he remarks, and there’s a moment as I swallow my food and self-consciously wipe the salt from my lips with the back of my hand that we could kiss. My tummy drops as we look at each other and he swallows and then I lose my nerve and it’s too bright, toodaytimeto launch at him – especially when I’m hungover and haven’t even brushed my teeth.

But I want to.

‘Look,’ he states, and at first I think he’s giving me an instruction to look across the square, but then he keeps talking and I realise it was a stamp on my attention. ‘This …’

‘This,’ I repeat, understanding we’re going to have A Talk.

‘Well, it’s nice, isn’t it?’

‘A Smaccy’s on a hangover is a God-tier cure, yes,’ I say, being deliberately obtuse.

He shakes his head. ‘If you had to list your top-three hobbies, why do I feel like torturing Nic Sheridan would be right there at the top?’ he says.

‘Because Nic Sheridan sometimes refers to himself in the third person,’ I say. ‘Nic Sheridan deserves it.’

I’m doing it again – getting silly and sarcastic so I don’t have to be genuine and sincere. I can’t help it. I couldn’t stop it, even if I wanted to. But this feels like dangerous ground.

‘I’m going to take you out,’ he says. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

‘I’m not dating, remember.’

‘The Year of Me,’ he laments.

‘Yup,’ I say. ‘No men for a year. Just me, myself, and I, in a relationship with film-making.’

‘That seems like an awful shame.’

I could almost waver. Last night, today … what if I did go out on a date with him? I have JP and Harry’s faces floating through my brain. I know they think I’m being silly with my Year of Me, but I feel so happy, so fulfilled. A date with Nic would be a huge risk to all that.

There’s a vibration in my pocket.

‘Saved by the phone,’ he says, as I pull it out of my pocket. It’s Harry, and I scan his words.

‘Holy shit!’ I cry. ‘They think they’ve found JP’s girl! They’ve done it!’

‘Oh wow, that’s amazing! At least somebody gets the girl,’ Nic quips, issuing a fake pout.

‘Look. I owe you all the information, right?’

‘You don’t really owe me anything,’ Nic says, shrugging. ‘But I’ll still take it.’

‘I thought this was just sex,’ I say. ‘But a date would be … not that.’

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