I Was Born for This(37)

‘Oh. Just me, then.’

I whack him on the arm and we both laugh.

We return to comfortable silence for a few minutes before I speak again.

‘How d’you get away with it?’ I ask him.

‘With what?’

‘Getting with so many people.’

He’s silent for a moment.

‘You don’t really know anything about me, do you?’ he says.

‘What?’

‘You think I just fuck everyone, don’t you?’

I look at him. His forehead is creased, his eyes unblinking.

‘Well, don’t you?’ I say.

He sighs. Then he chuckles. Then he rolls away and laughs hard.

‘No, Jimmy,’ he says, and then sighs exaggeratedly again, grinning. ‘No!’

‘Well, a lot of people, then.’

‘No, Jimmy!’

He bops me suddenly on the nose, making me flinch. He’s still smiling.

‘Why do you all think that?’ he asks.

‘Well …’ I begin, but don’t really know where to go from there. ‘I mean – you always disappear at parties and … you’re always flirting with people.’

‘But you’ve never actually seen me having sex with all these people you think that I’ve had sex with.’

I snort. ‘No, I’ve never actually seen you having sex with anyone.’

Lister smirks up at the ceiling, tucking his hands behind his head. ‘Shame. It’s quite a sight.’

‘Shut up, you dick.’

I don’t really know what to say after that, so we just lie there for a bit again. What’s Lister trying to say? That he doesn’t have sex with quite as many people as we all think he does? So what? That doesn’t change anything.

‘Five people,’ he says suddenly.

‘What?’

‘That’s how many people I’ve had sex with.’

‘At once?’

‘No! Jesus fucking Christ.’ He blinks. ‘I mean, that sounds highly appealing, but no.’

I shove him, nearly making him roll off the bed. He laughs, then readjusts himself, and we fall back into silence again.

Only five people?

I mean, that’s higher than average for most nineteen-year-olds. But it’s a lot less than Rowan and I thought. We thought he was having sex with someone, or several someones, at every party we went to. And we’ve been to a lot of parties.

‘I know you all think I’m a druggie bisexual slut,’ he says. ‘The classic bisexual stereotype. Just because I like more than one gender, that opens up my dating options, and consequently I sleep with everyone on sight. That’s what you think.’

‘We … we don’t …’ But we do. We did. And I can’t lie to him about it.

‘Well, newsflash, not all bisexuals are having sex every five minutes.’ Lister snorts.

I decide to turn the TV off.

I can’t remember the last time Lister and I talked like this. There’s always been a sort of barrier between us. Between him and Rowan too. Maybe because he’s that little bit older. Or maybe because Rowan and I have been friends for longer, have always been closer.

‘And also,’ he continues, ‘most of those were a couple of years ago.’

‘Oh.’

‘I’m not like that any more,’ he says with more seriousness than I’m used to. He stares into my eyes. ‘I just want you to know. I don’t do that sort of thing any more.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

‘Why?’

‘Yeah.’

He suddenly can’t meet my eyes. He rolls his head away, back to staring at the ceiling.

‘It just got boring,’ he says, but it sounds like a cover-up for something. I decide not to press him for more.

We don’t ever talk about deep stuff, me and Lister Bird.

‘So who’ve you slept with that I know?’ I ask, trying to lighten the mood.

Lister’s face immediately breaks out into a more familiar boyish grin.

‘You wanna know?’

‘Hell, yeah. Give me the gossip.’

‘D’you remember the lighting director from our second UK tour?’

‘Kevin?’

‘Yeah. Him.’

‘Bloody hell.’ I strain to remember Kevin’s face. He must have been about twenty-five, at least. ‘Okay.’

‘I wish I hadn’t, actually,’ he continues. ‘It wasn’t very fun.’ In a smaller voice he says, ‘He was the first guy and I think he thought I was more experienced than I was.’

‘Oh.’ I think that’s what we all thought. I wonder if I should ask him to talk about it more but he quickly moves on to the next name, which is a member of an extremely famous girl band.

‘You’re joking,’ I say, moderately scandalised.

‘No. We’d been chatting a lot on Twitter before that.’ Lister chuckles. ‘She invited me back to her hotel after the BRITs party this year. She’s the most recent person I’ve been with, actually.’

I say nothing because I’m still so surprised. I’ve had a few conversations with that girl before. She’s always in the news. Wouldn’t have suspected a thing.