‘You have his number?’
‘Sure.’
She felt sick.
‘God, sometimes I forget that he’s so famous,’ said the boy, laughing. ‘To me, he’s just Haz, you know? He’s just a mate.’
‘Of course,’ said Elizabeth, trying to play it cool and not feel utterly resentful that this boy, this receptionist, this nobody, had hit the social media motherlode. ‘He’s such a great guy.’
‘Oh, do you know him, then?’
‘Well, not personally, no.’
‘Then, can I ask that you don’t talk about him as if you do? He’s not public property, even though so many of you think he is. Just give the guy some space, yeah? Anyway, my point is, you’ve got an NTR of 10.2. You need to stop tweeting and concentrate on building your followers.’
Elizabeth stared at him. As much as she was torn between wanting to rip him limb from limb and have sex with him on the desk, she began to feel that she was in the presence of a social media Yoda and it was best to learn what she could from him before he kicked her out of Dagobah.
‘But if I stop tweeting,’ she asked, ‘then how will my followers build?’
‘It’s not that you stop entirely,’ he explained with a sigh. ‘You just need to give it more thought, that’s all. You slow it down and ask yourself, is this something that people are going to be interested in? Will they like it, retweet it? Will others follow you because of it? Or will it just attract trolls?’ He picked up his phone and started scrolling. ‘Like, there’s way too much virtue signalling on your timeline. No one’s interested in that shit. Not any more. People picking a topic and tweeting about it all day, every day. Total waste of time. What’s all this bullshit about a leper colony, for example?’
Elizabeth looked down at the ground, feeling a little embarrassed by the question.
‘My boyfriend and I – well, he’s not my boyfriend any more,’ she added, glancing up to see whether he might react in some way to this, but nothing. ‘We were thinking about going to Indonesia to help out in a leper colony.’
‘Why?’ he asked.
She shrugged and, honestly, felt too exhausted even to try dressing it up. ‘Oh, I have no fucking idea,’ she said, throwing her arms in the air. ‘He wanted to go and I wanted to be with him so I said sure, whatever.’
‘And did you go?’
‘Christ, no. I ended up dumping him. So that was the end of that.’
‘Then why are you posting this shit? No one wants to read about lepers. Do you honestly think Kendall is interested in lepers? Or Billie? Or Harry – actually, he probably is. He’s such a caring guy, but don’t spread that around, please. It’s a private thing. Anyway, what I’m saying is that this kind of polish-my-halo tweeting is the absolute worst. It’s olden days, man. It’s got fleas. It’s on a Zimmer frame.’
Elizabeth nodded, impressed by his wisdom. She started to picture him wearing a slim-fit suit, waiting at the top of an aisle for her, while Harry Styles stood at the altar in a Stella McCartney dress, long earrings and a pair of Doc Martens as he prepared to officiate. ‘What’s your name anyway?’ she asked.
He tapped something on his phone and hers immediately beeped. Picking it up she saw her new follower. He had a blue tick too, the fucker.
‘@WillBuchanModel ,’ she said, following him back.
‘Take a look at my timeline,’ he said. ‘I post once every few days at most. And I keep it minimal.’
She scrolled through his recent posts. Most of them were pictures of him having just emerged from the shower, wearing a low-slung towel, looking deeply concerned, as if someone had just informed him that the Spanish flu had wiped out three per cent of the world’s population in the early twenties and he was devastated by the pointless loss of life.
‘You’re ripped,’ she said.
‘Am I? Oh, thanks. I basically eat whatever I want. I don’t even go to the gym more than five or six times a week.’
She looked over at him and waited for his eyes to meet hers, feeling a sudden conviction that this conversation was one they would recall months from now, when they were lying in bed together, and laugh at how cute their first encounter was. He didn’t look back, though. In fact, he was focussed on something on his MacBook and seemed to have forgotten her presence entirely.
‘You can just ask, you know,’ she said finally.
‘I can what?’ he replied, finally looking up at her.
‘You can just ask.’
‘Ask what?’
‘For my number.’
‘Why would I do that?’ he asked, baffled.
‘I think we both know why,’ she said, laughing a little.
He stared at her, his beautiful face as blank as his beautiful mind.
‘So you can ask me out.’
‘Oh,’ he said, leaning back in his chair, as if this was something that happened to him a lot. ‘Oh, right. I’m flattered. Honestly, that’s just so nice of you. But no. That’s okay.’
She stared at him. ‘Excuse me?’ she said.
‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘I don’t need your number.’
‘Oh, of course. You have it on your system already.’
‘Do we? Oh, right.’
‘So?’ she asked.
‘So what?’
‘So I’ll wait to hear from you?’
‘You’ve lost me.’
‘For drinks.’
‘Oh, I don’t drink,’ he said.
‘Dinner, then.’
‘You want me to take you to dinner?’
‘Well, don’t you?’
‘Not really, no. Sorry. I think you’ve got the wrong idea.’
She felt her breakfast beginning to make its way from her stomach in the opposite direction than nature had originally intended.
‘I was kidding. Obviously,’ she said.
‘Were you, though?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t think you were. And like I say, I’m flattered. But no, sorry. No offence.’
‘Oh, sweetie,’ she said, trying to hold back the tears that were unexpectedly building behind her eyes. This was turning into a rotten day, a rotten week, a rotten month, a rotten life. ‘You couldn’t offend me if you tried.’
‘It’s just, you’re not really my type, that’s all.’
‘Oh, I get it,’ she said, breathing a sigh of relief. ‘You’re gay. Sorry, I should have realized. My mistake.’
‘No, I’m not gay,’ he said, frowning. ‘I don’t have to be gay for you not to be my type and, quite frankly, it’s incredibly homophobic for you even to think that way. What is wrong with you?’
She swallowed and looked away. This entire encounter was turning into a disaster. Thankfully, beyond the glass wall, Sofiii seemed to be finishing up with Trevé, for she was on her feet now and they were beginning what would no doubt be a lengthy series of cheek kisses before releasing each other on to an unsuspecting public.
‘There’s no need to be a prick,’ she said.
‘I’m not being a prick,’ he replied. ‘I’m just being honest.’