Our Stop(30)

‘Sorry. I …’ he began, taking his arm off from around her.

The girl looked disappointed, but also undeterred. ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’

‘No,’ Daniel said.

‘Because I don’t kiss and tell …’ the girl continued, stepping closer to him again. Daniel put his hands on hers to lift them off his stomach, where she’d lightly rested them in a way that was, Daniel wasn’t so drunk as not to notice, quite nice.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, firmly, and to her credit the girl simply shrugged and walked off.

At home, in bed on his own with a pint of water on his bedside table, Daniel listened, against his will, to seven minutes of banging and moaning coming from Lorenzo’s room, before it stopped and somebody left the bedroom to pee, leaving the bathroom door slightly open. He could tell by the way it echoed. He didn’t sleep well that night, and when he did finally drift off he had weird dreams about being an octopus. He had something in every hand, and desperately wanted to pick up a book he’d found but he couldn’t pick up the book without putting something else down. And he didn’t want to. In his dream, as an octopus, he got so upset at the idea he’d have to let something go in order to look at the thing he so desperately wanted to look at that he woke up in a pool of sweat, panting and out of breath and feeling really, really sad.

He wished there was somebody else in bed beside him.

He wished he was in bed with his best friend, in a house they owned, maybe even with rings on their fingers.

Daniel wanted what his mum and dad had had. He wanted it so terribly badly. And not just with anyone.

He wanted it with the love of his life.





14


Nadia


Nadia had a feeling all day that something wasn’t right. A sort of ominous heaviness in her tummy, and an anxiousness that made her snap in the lab more than once.

‘I’m sorry,’ she told her assistant, when she found herself losing her temper over the reconfiguration of a stubborn bit of code that wouldn’t quite translate to what they were working on. ‘In fact, you know what? I know we’re on a deadline here but let’s take a break. Twenty minutes. I’ll come back with cake.’

Nadia grabbed her phone and left the office building, heading towards the market to her second-favourite bakery in the city. Her first-favourite bakery was the cupcake shop on Church Street in Stoke Newington, down the road from where she lived. If you got them at the right point in the day it was possible to get almost a whole quarter of a full-sized red velvet cake, with so much icing it needed two cups of tea to help wash it down. On a less frosting-based day, Nadia liked the cookies at her second-favourite bakery, which were inspired by New York’s Levain bakery – the cookies there had been invented by an Olympic swimmer who needed a way to get in as many calories as possible in a short amount of time. They were dense and light, full of chocolate chips but so moreish it never seemed like enough. They cost almost six pounds each and so it wasn’t so much the fat content as the price that put Nadia off going too often.

Typically, she treated herself right before her period which – ah. Nadia pulled up the period tracker app on her phone, knowing before it told her that she was definitely pre-menstrual. Yup. The flashing dot told her to expect a bleed tomorrow, and suddenly her dark mood and short temper and desire to both burn the world to the whole damned ground and eat innumerable calories as she did so made sense.

It was later, right as she got changed into a different top, putting on extra deodorant and wondering where her Tic Tacs were, that Nadia felt a twinge in her tummy that meant her period was a day early. She hated that feeling – the feeling of a period coming before she was ready – and instantly knew she’d have an awful night, wishing she was at home. She hated that she felt obliged to go because of this stupid set-up Gaby had arranged. She was in no mood to flirt and be coy and diminish her accomplishments until she got a read on the extent to which this guy might feel threatened. The set-up was all cute and lovely in theory, but she felt gross, and really was more determined to find out who the man on the train was than go tonight. Who knew what kind of guy was waiting to meet her at the Sky Garden? Although, to be fair, who knew what kind of guy was waiting to meet her on the train. Urgh. She looked at herself in the mirror.

Come on babe, she willed herself. Show up to your own life.

Meet you there, she texted Gaby. Gonna walk off a bad day. My period came early.

Gaby texted back, Hurry! The poor guy is a bag of nerves! It’s cute, but also get here and put him out of his misery!

Nadia sent back the running girl emoji, signalling a pace she didn’t feel. Her friend was only trying to be good to her, she knew.

She was about thirteen minutes into the twenty-minute walk when her mood lifted. The fresh air blew away her cobwebs and gave her back some perspective on her life. Nothing bad was about to happen: the feeling she’d had all day was the simple biology of her menstrual cycle. She was about to walk in to a beautiful venue with a summer view of the London skyline, her two closest friends in the world there with an open bar and a potentially handsome man. Even if nothing came of tonight, she’d read in Get Your Guys! that refusing to practise flirting with men you didn’t fancy was like saying you’d learn your lines only once you got on stage. That book advocated flirting with everyone, always, everywhere, just to be polite and friendly and getting used to being a little nervous, so that when the true man of your life is finally in front of you, you don’t blow it.