About a Girl (8 page)

‘There you are.’

I looked up to see Charlie striding along the edge of the pond, a frown on his face. His pretty, pretty face.

‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

‘To be fair, I didn’t get that far.’ I glanced around. I wasn’t more than five minutes away from the pub. I was sad, but I was also very lazy. ‘You missed an awesome scene.’

‘I know, I heard. I was in the gents.’ He sat down beside me, took off his jumper and draped it round my shoulders. ‘But afterwards you missed Amy grabbing hold of the baby and singing “Circle of Life”, so I think we’re square.’

‘Jesus, I’ve only been out here half an hour,’ I laughed, trying not to be upset that I’d missed what sounded like an incredible
Lion King
homage. I did love a Disney movie. There! That was something I knew about myself. I was a twenty-eight-year-old unemployed single woman who loved animated movies made for children. If we were at work, I’d be trying to sell me some cat food and a lovely cardigan about now. Maybe I should just change my name and run away ? that would be a pretty decent rebrand.

‘Well, I was worried about you,’ he said, nudging me with his shoulder. ‘Been a shit week, Brookes. How are you still sober?’

‘Didn’t bring any booze.’ I waved my empty hands at him. ‘Schoolboy error.’

‘Thankfully’ – Charlie produced a half-bottle of vodka from behind his back ? ‘I am not a schoolboy.’

‘Oh, you clever man,’ I said, gratefully accepting the bottle and taking a deep drink. I had never been a very good drinker. I loved a drink, but drinks did not love me. The two mugs of wine I’d enjoyed on Monday, post-sacking, were the first alcoholic drinks I’d had in a month, but while we were rebranding, I had to consider all my options. Maybe the new Tess would be a drinker. Maybe she’d learn how to make elaborate cocktails and have her friends over for parties. Maybe she’d be a whisky drinker and keep a decanter on her desk like Don Draper. Or maybe she’d do a shot of cheap supermarket vodka by the duck pond and retch in her own mouth.

‘Keep it down.’ Charlie rubbed my back and took the bottle from me. ‘Keep it down.’

‘Oh, bugger me, that’s disgusting,’ I coughed, feeling the burn in the back of my throat. Maybe if I was going to be a drinker, I shouldn’t start with four-quid cava and vodka that cost less than a Tube ticket. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re very welcome.’ Charlie took a shot without wincing and passed the bottle back. The sun was already setting across the pond, and the bad side was getting considerably more traffic than the good. ‘So, what are we going to do with you?’

‘I have no idea,’ I replied, turning to give him my best attempt at a smile. ‘I was just trying to work that out myself.’

‘Well, if you were a client and I was trying to sort you out, I’d start with what you wanted out of your campaign,’ he reasoned while I took a second shot. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him rubbing the centre of his left eyebrow. That meant he was thinking. Rubbing his chin meant he was confused. Nodding and scratching the back of his neck meant he was listening but not really paying attention. There wasn’t a thing about this man I didn’t know. ‘What do you want?’

This was why we were soulmates. He was trying to solve my problems in exactly the same way I was trying to solve my problems.

‘My job,’ I replied.

‘You can’t have your job.’ He slapped my bare thigh and I had to remember to be offended and not turned on. ‘As account manager, it’s my role to give you honest feedback and tell you what is and isn’t possible. Your old job, off the table. What else do you want?’

‘I really do just want my job,’ I said, clutching the warm bottle between my knees. ‘If I had my job back, I could just put everything back how it was and carry on. That would be perfect.’

‘If this week has taught us nothing else, it’s that things were not perfect for you,’ Charlie said. He turned on the bench until his knee was pressing against mine. ‘People lose their jobs every day, Tess. They don’t take to their beds for four days and fall apart. They turn to their friends, they go on holiday, they ? I don’t fucking know ? read the great novels or something. Write a great novel. Start a blog. Tell me what makes you happy, aside from work.’

I tried to think about something other than his knee on mine.

‘You?’ I said as quietly as humanly possible.

‘Me?’

‘You and Amy?’ I wanted to slap myself.

Charlie nodded for a moment and took the bottle back from me without words. The ducks on the pond, full of stale bread, started to make their way over to the rushes looking for their beds.

‘I think the problem is, you’re so used to being in your head and solving the problem that you don’t know how to present it back to the client. That’s my job,’ Charlie took hold of my hand. His were almost as soft as mine, but so much bigger. I turned, flushed with vodka, proximity and my ridiculous outfit, and looked into his big brown eyes. He was adorable. ‘So here’s what I see. You are a beautiful, clever, funny woman. You work too hard, you take on too much, and you’re far too concerned with other people’s expectations. You worry too much about your friends and you live with a mentalist, but aside from that, the basic elements are all there.’

Beautiful. He said I was beautiful.

‘Basic elements for what?’ I asked.

‘A life,’ Charlie replied. ‘You’re amazing, you know?’ He knew me well enough to recognize my near-tears whimper and started talking fast. ‘You have so much drive and ambition; you’re so dedicated to achieving your goals. All you need to do is redirect that energy to a new goal. I’m not saying you shouldn’t care about your job ? you should. It’s just that it can’t be the only thing you care about. There can’t only be one thing that makes you happy.’

‘Are you happy?’ I asked him, not letting go of his hand. I was a bit worried I might never let go. ‘In general, I mean, are you happy?’

‘Yeah,’ he nodded slowly. ‘I’m happy. I like my job, I’ve got good mates, I like my flat. There are things I’d change, but overall I’m not complaining. Are you happy?’

‘Am I happy?’ I repeated. ‘I don’t think I’m really anything.’

It was hard to say out loud, but as soon as I did, I knew it was true.

‘What would you change?’ I asked him, waiting to start feeling drunk. I really wanted to be drunk. ‘You said there are things you’d change.’

‘Oh, obvious stuff.’ He squeezed my hand and scuffed the toe of his shoe in the dirt under the bench. ‘I’d like my own place. I’d like Arsenal to be doing better in the league. A smoking-hot girlfriend who would do my washing so I didn’t keep running out of socks would be nice.’

‘I am so sick of buying you more socks. What do you do, eat them?’ I asked with the closest thing to a laugh I could muster. Bravely, I rested my head on his shoulder and breathed in. He was wearing the aftershave I’d bought him for Christmas. He smelled cool, spicy and familiar. It made my stomach melt, my fingertips tingle. ‘You’ve got loads going for you. You could get a hot girlfriend if you really wanted one. You’ve got everything.’

‘And so have you.’ He dropped his head on top of mine, our coppery curls meshing together, and put his arm around my shoulders. ‘You just haven’t realized yet.’

‘I’ve got sod all,’ I said, trying to pretend that the teenagers weren’t totally eyeing up the bottle in my hand. ‘As you have quite rightly pointed out.’

‘You’ve got me.’ Charlie said. ‘And I’m all right.’

‘Oh, don’t.’ I laughed out loud. ‘Don’t even.’

This wasn’t the first time Charlie and I had got drunk on a bench. This was not the first time one of us had talked the other through a crisis. But it was the first time he’d looked at me with such dark eyes. The first time I’d felt his thumb gently running back and forth over the back of the hand he was holding. And the first time that I had ever felt his heart beating as fast as mine.

‘I’m all right, aren’t I?’ he asked. ‘Tess?’

I felt goosebumps on my bare legs and twisted round to get a better look at him. His dark, gingerish five o’clock shadow was starting to come through and his dark, dilated eyes were ever so slightly bloodshot from getting up so early, driving so far and drinking so much. He leaned his forehead against mine and repeated himself in a whisper.

‘Tess?’

Words were my thing. Words were my actual job. I used them every day, manipulated them, moulded them, made them dance around in circles, but at that moment there wasn’t a word in the world that would help me. And so instead of trying to say something funny or clever, I took a deep breath and kissed him. For a moment, I couldn’t tell who was more shocked. Neither of us moved ? we just sat there, frozen, Tess pressed against Charlie. My cold, vodka-burned lips against his cold, vodka-burned lips.

And then he kissed me back.

It was slow at first and I wasn’t quite sure it was happening but I was too scared to pull away. And then I felt the slightest movement against my face, the tickle of warm breath on my wet lips. For ten years I had wondered what it would feel like to kiss Charlie Wilder on the mouth, and now I knew. It felt spectacular. The arm around my shoulders tightened and his other hand crept up to my face, cradling my cheek in his palm while our lips became better acquainted. I wrapped my arms around his back and ignored the little voice in my head that was shouting, ‘And now we’ll never, ever let go!’ As well as the vodka, I could taste the beer on his breath. I hated beer but I didn’t care. I was kissing Charlie Wilder and Charlie Wilder was kissing me.

‘Wait.’ Unable to stop myself, I pulled away with a pained expression. ‘You’re not kissing me because I’m sad, are you?’

‘I don’t think so,’ he replied, his voice broken and just short of breath enough to make my heart pound.

‘And you’re not kissing me because you’ve been drinking?’ I just could not stop myself from asking these ridiculous questions. Who gave a shit if he was kissing me because he’d been drinking? I hated myself so much sometimes.

‘Maybe? A little bit,’ he admitted, leaning back in for another kiss. ‘Can you stop overthinking this now, please?’

‘No,’ I replied, pressing a smile against his lips. ‘Have you met me?’

The teenagers across the way started whooping at us approximately four seconds into the second kiss, and although the sun setting across the mill pond was as close as my village ever came to beautiful and romantic, they were very, very off-putting.

‘Back to yours?’ Charlie asked. I took a deep breath and held it in for a moment. He wasn’t just suggesting we go home, he was suggesting we Go Home Together. ‘Tess?’

‘Where else are we going to go?’ I asked lightly, pretending I wasn’t absolutely bricking myself. I hadn’t had sex in almost two years, and while we were being entirely honest, it had not been a good experience. This wasn’t just a casual shag after a rubbish party to check I still knew how to do it. This was Charlie. I was going to have sex with Charlie.

‘There’s always the back seat of my car.’

I pulled away to look at him, not sure whether he was joking or not. Nor sure whether I wanted him to be joking or not.

‘But while I know that would continue the dodgy teenage theme of the evening, I think I’d rather take you to bed,’ he said, his voice was all low and rough. I’d never heard it like that before. ‘If it’s not too weird?’

It was weird. This whole thing was weird. I was sitting on a bench wearing a gold sequinned miniskirt, kissing a boy I’d been dreaming about kissing ever since the first night I’d lain on my plastic-covered mattress in my hall of residence. I should have said it could wait. I should have said no, we couldn’t sneak into my parents’ house and have sex on my bottom bunk. But where was the fun in that? Besides, I’d had a third of a half-bottle of own-brand vodka and Charlie Wilder wanted to have sex with me. I was eighteen again. Whatever happened next, I blamed the sequins.

‘It’s not weird at all,’ I said, practically jumping off the bench and dragging him down the street. ‘Let’s go.’

And just like that, we were together.

CHAPTER FIVE

The next morning, I woke up wrapped in the same pale blue duvet cover I’d left behind when I’d moved to uni and a pair of arms that were brand new. Too scared to move, I tried to keep my breathing slow and even. I was in bed with Charlie. I was in bed with Charlie and neither of us was wearing any clothes. And the reason we weren’t wearing any clothes was because for the last twelve hours we had been at it.

I closed my eyes on my childhood room, my exam certificates hanging on the walls, my favourite photos lining the shelves, and tried to commit as much of the night to memory as possible. It was hard to keep the events straight, not because I’d been drunk but because I was suffering from a distinct case of what Amy always referred to as Boink Brain. Nothing fogged up your memory like a good shag. I was completely overloaded with happiness, and, given how long it was since I’d last had sex, every part of me was aching. Happily, like everyone said, it was just like riding a bike. A really, really fun bike. I remembered sneaking into the dark, empty house, checking for my parents and then kissing in the kitchen, fumbling with buttons and zips, taking far too long to get up the stairs, eventually finding my room. It was strange to know someone so well, to know everything about them, and then find yourself in a situation where you knew nothing. I had never seen Charlie naked. I had no idea what to expect in the trouser department. I had no idea how it would be.

More than once, Amy had tried to counsel me out of my Charlie crush by telling me that he was too nice to be any good in bed, that it would be like shagging my brother. As it was, I didn’t have a brother, but if that was how incest went down, I could see why it was so popular in the Deep South. Amy had been wrong. The sex was wonderful. Beautiful. It was like film sex, all deep and meaningful and very, very nice. I pressed my hand into Charlie’s, smiling lazily as his fingers instinctively curled around mine. Mine. He was mine.

‘Hey.’

I felt him rather than heard him, his words tickling my ear.

‘So.’ He snuggled up closer to me and I silently congratulated myself on having bothered to shave my legs the day before. ‘That happened.’