“I think it’s sort of sweet, that he wants to try to work things out,”
Vicki tells me. “I mean, how many girls would kill for a guy that wants to work through problems like this, and tries to talk things through?”
“And calls them a bitch?”
“You can be a bit of a bitch, you know. You can be kind of a Karen, sometimes too.”
“You’re one to talk,” I snap back at her, although honestly, I can’t come up with a single example of Vicki losing her shit over something trivial.
“Oh, I’m sorry, would you like to file a complaint with my manager?”
I snort, despite myself, and she erupts in peals of laughter.
“All I’m saying is, maybe you should hear him out. Maybe this is all just cabin fever, you know? The lockdown talking. It’s a weird, scary, stressful situation, so it’s hardly surprising you guys had a fight over something.”
My scowl returns. “This isn’t lockdown talking, Vicks. This is way bigger than that.”
“Okay.”
“As for hearing him out—why should I? He hasn’t heard me out.
He just thinks I’m blowing things out of proportion, or that it’s not worth getting so worked up over.”
Vicki gives a sympathetic hum. I called her for some support, some solidarity, but also so she could talk some sense into me. She’s good at calling me on my shit, so I knew that if Vicki thought I was overreacting and being ridiculous, there was a solid chance I was overreacting and being ridiculous—but so far, she hasn’t. She’s just tried to offer “perspective” in case it’ll help me “approach the discussion from a new angle.”
(Spoiler alert: it won’t.)
She obviously knows that it’s not doing any good, though, because she clears her throat and moves on quickly, her voice all upbeat.
“What if we just smuggled you out, off the balcony?” she suggests, and I can hear the grin in her voice. “Hire a crane. Or we could create a whole pulley system. I’ll come over with my bicycle and we can just, like, lift you out of there or something. Oh! You could tie all your sheets together and climb down, like a makeshift Rapunzel.
We’ll call a taxi to be your getaway driver.”
The crushing weight of the ruins of my relationship disappears for a moment, and I forget about everything while we come up with crazier and crazier ways to break me out of the apartment block, and I’m in fits of laughter that leave me wheezing for breath and teary eyed.
And for a second, everything feels like it’ll be okay.
apartment #14 – imogen
Chapter Twenty-two
Bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bor—
“What are you doing?” Nate asks, rudely interrupting my brain’s incessant chant.
I look at him like it’s not totally obvious. I am lying upside down on the sofa, my feet up on the wall, my head just brushing the ground, my fingers drumming on my stomach in time with the rhythm of my bored bored bored bored bored chant.
“I’m drying my nail polish,” I tell him.
It’s not a complete lie. I found a bottle of bright blue nail polish rattling round in my handbag so decided to paint my fingers and my toes. And then in an attempt to stop myself touching something and smudging them before they dried, I sat like this. Although that was, like, ten minutes ago, so they should be good now.
He squints at the blue fingernails I waggle at him and scrutinizes my position carefully.
“And does this . . . help?”
“It can’t not help,” I point out, and then swing my legs down and twist until I’m lying across the sofa, arms now flung above my head.
Nate starts pottering around with his iPad and the TV, setting up for the Zoom “pub quiz” one of his friends has organized.
I wonder if I should’ve offered to leave him in peace for it.
Apparently, it’s a regular thing, because Nate’s old gang from school all live so far apart, they do a virtual quiz night once a month, which is honestly about the cutest thing I’ve ever heard. Like, they all “block out their calendars” (genuine quote from Nate) and make sure they never miss it, and take it in turns to host, and have theme nights.
And it sounds awesome so of course I was like, “Oh my God, YES.
Nate, this is amazing. I cannot tell you how badly I need to spend an evening, like, not watching something on the TV. That is all I have done all week. And I’ve done the two jigsaws you own, which says a lot, because I do not like doing jigsaws at all. I need this.”
Now, as he sings quietly to himself as he sets up the Chromecast on the TV, I wonder if I’m intruding.
Well, okay, I know I’m intruding, but it’s not like I can leave the building, is it? I guess I could’ve not invited myself along, though.
Shut myself in the bedroom instead for an hour or two scrolling TikTok or whatever. I probably should’ve offered to do that, at least.
But, hey. Letting me join in is the least Nate can let me do, when I’ve cooked us dinner every night this week. Mostly to keep myself from getting too bored, but still.
“Get us some drinks, will you, Immy?”
I startle a little at him using my nickname, but Nate carries on like it’s no big deal.
It’s just a nickname. It’s my nickname, it’s what everyone else calls me. It shouldn’t be a big deal.
So why does it feel like it’s, I don’t know, A Moment?
Oh God, no, I cannot be having A Moment all by myself. I won’t allow it. I don’t have Moments. They’re for serious people with serious relationships. Like Nate. And Nate, very obviously, is not part of this Moment.
So, it can’t be a big deal. I won’t let it be.
“Oh my God,” I sigh, languishing on the sofa. “Just call me Cinderella!”
Nate only laughs, though, and I roll off onto the floor then clamber to my feet. Almost as soon as I leave the room, I hear a conversation start; I guess Nate’s not the only one joining the call a couple of minutes early.
I wonder what he’s said about me to them. I assume he’s said something, to explain why I’m joining their quiz night.
I wonder what kind of picture he’s painted of me. I know Nate’s a good guy and he wouldn’t exactly be bitching about me behind my back, but I also know I haven’t exactly been a model houseguest, like I bet Lucy is being somewhere upstairs. My stomach twists with something a little like guilt, even though that’s stupid because I’ve got nothing to feel guilty about, and I tune out the conversation determinedly.
I root through his alcohol collection in one of the cupboards for a minute before deciding to mix us some cocktails, finding a big plastic jug so I can make a batch. I accidentally put three cartons of cranberry juice in the food shop instead of one, but now it’s a perfect mixer to make a Woo Woo. Total crowd pleaser.
Besides, Nate’s wines look fancy. Like, I don’t mean compared to my usual whatever’s cheap at the liquor store round the corner, I mean, they look fancy. Like he really considers his choices. He probably even knows how to pair them with different foods.
Maybe it’s how he impresses girls when he brings them over for a date night and cooks them dinner.