Page 6 of One Night With You

‘Right.’

‘And she’s fit as fuck, right? She’s got the eyes, the lips, the body, whatever. You look at her, and it’s like, whoa!’

‘Uh-huh …’

‘Number one, she probably already knows it. Fit girls either know they’re fit, and are sick of men like us ogling them like they’re a piece of meat. Or they don’t know how fit they are and so they get self-conscious. They assume we’re making fun, or we’ve noticed something they’re insecure about. You can be thinking,God that’s a good arse,and she’ll assume you’re thinking,Whoa, what a fat, disgusting pig of a woman with a bum like that!’

‘Girls don’t talk to themselves like that,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘That’s awful.’ I never heard Millie say horrible things about herself. But then, Millie was quite self-assured; she was very practical about things like that. As soon as Ruby had opened the door there was an energy about her, a rawness. Millie was more … missionary. She liked to have a shower before we had sex and was always the first to get up to clean off afterwards. Millie was cerebral, in a way that made her body simply incidental, like she could honestly do without it. Ruby is bodyandmind. I can just tell, even after five minutes with her. I know I sound ridiculous but honestly – I’ve never felt thisstruckby another person before.

‘Yes, they do,’ Jackson insists. ‘I’ve lived with those two for four years. I’ve heard it all. I don’t know – diet culture, they say it’s called. The way they think about their bodies isn’t the same as the way we think about their bodies, basically.’

‘Really?’ I say. ‘Because if I was a woman …’

‘You’d be stood naked in front of a mirror all day, every day?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Same, mate.’

We both take a moment to digest what it might be like to be offered such mysterious powers.

‘Anyway,’ Jackson presses. ‘We see a woman we like, and right away we’ve jumped ten steps ahead: how can I talk to her? How can I be alone with her? How can I kiss her, shag her, keep shagging her?’

‘It’s not always about sex,’ I try to argue, but Jackson waves a hand.

‘It isalwaysabout sex. It’s always about sex until it isn’t. It’s always about sex until just after we’ve had sex, and then it’s about …’ He pauses, considering his conclusion. ‘Something else. I think that’s when we know, isn’t it? After sex, there’s this moment ofdo I want you stay all night, or do I want you to go?Do you know what I mean? It’s like, once sex is out of the way then you see this person beside you for the first time. And you either want them around, or you don’t.’

‘You only know thatafteryou’ve been with them?’

‘Yeah, don’t you?’ Jackson replies, but before I can figure out how to make out like I know exactly what he’s talking about he continues: ‘Look. For women, right, they mostly don’t sleep with you until they’ve alreadydecidedhow they feel and what they want. That’s where the trouble comes. It’s not like that with men. Sleeping with men is way more straightforward.’

‘Got a lot of experience with men, have you?’ I jest, and it’s supposed to be banter but comes out sounding pathetically homophobic. I regret it instantly.

‘A bit, yeah,’ says Jackson.

That’s got me.

‘I’m pan,’ he continues. ‘Pansexual. I fancy people, not genders. Men, women, non-binary …’

‘Oh,’ I reply, painfully aware that I shouldn’t have even tried to make a joke about men liking men, or anybody else for that matter. This isn’t 1952 for God’s sake. ‘That’s really cool. Good for you.’ I suddenly envy him, just a bit. Imagine liking yourself so much that you can just tell people who you are and not wait for the other shoe to drop?

He moves on, and the kindness of it makes me feel even worse for misspeaking. ‘What I’m saying is this: if talking to women makes you nervous, try not to get too ahead of yourself. When I say be where you are, what I mean is don’t think about her naked, or getting her naked. Focus on the now. Talk about what’s right in front of you.’

‘Like, literally? The sofa?’

‘Try it on me,’ Jackson says. I look at him and blink. ‘Try it on me!’ he repeats, and with it he flops down onto the chair, crosses his legs, and bats his eyelashes at me. ‘Hello,’ he says, in a high-pitched and silly voice. ‘I’m … Bathsheba. I have a sofa for sale. Are you here to buy the sofa?’

I shake my head. ‘This is … I’m not …’

He doesn’t break character. ‘Gosh, I wish I’d remembered to wear a bra today. I hope you can’t see my boobies.’ He pushes out his chest, realises I’m not biting, and then fixes his mouth into a straight line.

‘How long until the taxi?’ he asks, dropping his self-assigned role in exasperation.

I look at my phone. ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘It’s gone from three minutes back up to five. That’s annoying.’

‘Five minutes,’ he says. ‘You can play my little game for the next five minutes, can’t you?’

I look back at the house, just in case anyone is watching us. I realise I actually really trust this guy. He doesn’t have to be sympathetic towards me, but he is. London Nic needs to trust the process. London Nic needs to go with the flow and stay open to anything that could happen. That’s what I’ve promised myself. Even if it means pretending to buy a sofa off a fella I’ve just met cosplaying as my schoolboy crush at the sharp edge of a West London cul-de-sac.

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