Page 89 of One Night With You

‘You’re debating me for sport, aren’t you?’ I say, my tone neutral.

‘Just killing time until we’re at the bar.’ He shrugs, and with that the bouncer gestures for us to go inside, where the low lights and loud music kill any chance of meaningful conversation at all – which is just as well. I was almost in danger of enjoying the arsehole, which would have been a step backwards in terms of my taste in men, that’s for sure.

Seb gets the first round in, drinks for everyone with a matching shot.

‘I haven’t done shots in months,’ I tell Harry as Seb sets down a tray at our table.

‘Not exactly JP’s scene, is it?’ He grins, as he raises a glass to signal to us all that it’s time to get tipsy – or tipsier, to befair – and I take it down like a champ. It’s a nice place, all dark wood and glass front and bar staff whose employment is undoubtedly based mostly on how attractive they are. We sit around a big round table, talking across it, trying to keep everyone involved but ultimately ending up slipping into a two- or three-person offshoot conversation because the music keeps getting louder and we keep getting drunker and at some point Manroop is sat beside me asking how my night is going.

‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Good!’ I have to shout to be heard so he leans in close enough for the citrus tang of his cologne to permeate the air around me.

‘I like your top!’ he yells, and at first I think he says something about liking to mop, so he repeats himself and I look down at what I’m wearing and yell a thanks.

‘The backless thing!’ he continues. ‘It’s hot!’

I nod thank you, and realise his arm is snaked around over the back of the booth, a finger lightly tracing the side of my spine.

‘I hope that’s okay to say!’ he continues to yell over the music. ‘I just wasn’t expecting Harry’s friend to be you.’

I don’t really know what to say. I do not fancy this man. Maybe the old me, the one who hadn’t realised her worth and had never met Nic – been changed by Nic – the one who had never saw to it that she changed herself – maybe she’d flirt back with this man. But I don’t want to. I don’t want to pretend to appease him, or to prove to myself that somebody finds me attractive. The back-and-forth in the queue, the seedy comments that wouldn’t sound seedy from somebody I actually like but from Manroop feel generic, designed to elicit a specific reaction from me that he’s still waiting for as he dips his head to try and make eye contact.I don’t want any of it. I didn’t come out for a man, to try and have a casual hook-up. I came out for me. To dance. To let loose.

‘When are we going to the club?’ I shout across the table, to anyone who might hear me.

Beau stands up and addresses us all: ‘Now, little ones. Let’s go!’

We pile out of the booth and work our way through bodies and tables to the outside, and I hook my arm into Harry’s and walk ahead of the crowd, telling him: ‘Donotleave me alone with Manroop, okay?’

Harry looks back over his shoulder.

‘He’s staring at us,’ he says.

‘He’s vile,’ I tell him. ‘No, no, no.’

‘Not even as a distraction from Nic?’

‘Harry,’ I tell him plainly. ‘I don’t need a distraction. I need to dance.’

Now we’re talking. The club has three levels, each one playing a different sort of music with a different sort of vibe. We head to the top floor, where it’s Nineties and early Noughties R ’n’ B so we can bump and grind and drop it like it’s hot. Just off from the dance floor we have a table, another booth wrapped around a big circular glass thing, and I have no idea who in the group knows somebody sending us champagne, but Harry assures me the tab is taken care of and all we need to do is have a nice time.

Manroop hasn’t taken the hint, approaching Harry and I on the dance floor a few times, but I’m so into the music that I spin away from him without causing too much of a scene. The bass is loud and the room dark, occasionally lit up with laser and flashes of coloured light. It’s busy, but notso busy that people bump into each other, so Harry and I sing lyrics into each other’s faces, sway our hips, and as a few more glasses of whatever’s on offer at the table course through our veins increasingly close our eyes to sway and sing and be at one with ourselves. A good night out can be like a meditation. I’ve forgotten that. When it’s past midnight it’s like free time. Sure, like JP once said, nothing good happens after midnight but to be fair, ensconced in the throng of sweaty bodies moving and shaking, it doesn’t feel like anything bad can happen either. The worries of today are forgotten but tomorrow hasn’t yet begun, making it easy to breathe deeper and laugh louder. Nothing matters in the middle of a great night out.

I open my arms and spin on the spot, getting dizzier and dizzier and only stopping when my hand accidentally brushes the hair of another dancer.

‘Sorry!’ I say, happily, and just as happily she yells back, ‘It’s okay!’

If I could bottle this feeling, I could make a fortune. Thoughts come to me and then are just as easily washed away. Nic ebbs in and flows back again. Abe. The miscarriage. JP. What I’ll do after. The new Instagram followers, some development people at production companies amongst them. I should see my family more. I should go and see Candice, force her to fix what’s up. Jackson. Lovely, lovely Jackson. It’s all what makes me, and it all matters, but none of it matters either. I’m just a person, doing her best, who likes to dance.

By the time 3 a.m. crawls around, we’re in the kebab shop on the corner, Manroop with his arm around a woman he met on the way out the club, Woody and Leticia sharing cheesy chips, Harry and Beau stealing kisses as they sit on the windowsill and bark orders at Seb and me at the counter.We have fizzy canned drinks and questionable meat and greasy chips, and it’s perfect. I’m laughing at nothing, happy just to be here, against all the odds, making strangers into friends and my own body, my own soul and mind and heart my home. I live here, I think to myself. Not in a place, but within myself. And that’s exactly what I’ve been chasing, this feeling. Peace. Not in spite of everything that’s happened, but because of. It’s all made me who I am. Alone, but not lonely. Not anymore.

38

Nic

She ignores my first calls. I mean, I assume she’s ignoring them. We haven’t been in touch since that day at the train station, almost a month ago now. I told Jackson not to fill me in on her life unless I explicitly asked, and that if I did explicitly ask, to remind me I don’t really want to know.

Fuck, man. Jackson.

It was awful: the sound of the bike hitting his flesh; the bend of his leg as he lay on the ground, the lights of the ambulance; the cries of the person who hit him. I spent the whole ambulance ride thinking to myself:This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening,even though, on another level of thought, I knew it was, and that I needed to be calm and tell Jackson everything was going to be okay. I can’t remember if I did or I didn’t. I don’t remember anything else.

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