I am beaming with smiles, there is no insecurity inside this body of mine. Gretel is here and it’s Friday and what a wonderful adventure life is. I hold up a bottle of tequila. ‘You said we were having Mexican?’
He leans in to kiss me on the cheek. The bowl clashes between us. ‘Tequila! You’re a legend.’ He kisses me again on the lips this time, slipping in a tiny bit of tongue. ‘Thank you. Right, come on in. Welcome to my flat!’
He takes the bottle in one hand and returns to the kitchen with the bowl in the other. I take off my sandals and follow him, barefoot, trying to sneak glances around as I do. There isn’t a hint of female touch anywhere. The sofa is black and made from cheapish leather. The art’s nondescript – masculine lines hung in basic frames. The gadgets are all top-notch however, showing off his IT nerdery. The TV is massive, with all sorts of fancy wireless speaker set-ups. In the corner there’s a desk with a giant computer with two monitors and all the gear, plus a laptop. In the kitchen, I see further gadgets littered around the place. Cooking thermometers, and a posh coffee-maker. Things with fiddly bits and instruction manuals that would need to be read properly in order to get them to work.
‘Margarita?’ Joshua asks, holding up a state-of-the-art blender.
‘Oh yes please!’
‘Coming right up.’
He leans over to kiss me once more, before blasting the ice into submission. He pulls out two proper margarita glasses and tips the pale green slush into them. He decorates the rims with salt and everything, and I can’t help but be a little touched at the effort he’s made, even though it’s not for me but for Gretel. We ‘cheers’ and take a sip, keeping eye contact as we do. I raise an eyebrow, tell him that I know what he’s planning and I’m totally OK with that, and, without a word spoken, the tension rises in this one-bed new-build in an up and coming area. Joshua swallows too hard. ‘So, fajitas are OK with you?’
‘Totally OK with me. Can I do anything to help?’
‘Nope. Just sit down and delight me with your company, Gretel.’
I perch on a black faux-leather stool and watch Joshua cook. I chug my margarita and he pours me out another one, deliberately brushing my hand as he gives me back my glass.
‘You make a mean margarita,’ I tell him.
‘What can I say? I’m a very talented man.’
‘I’m sure you are.’
Another explosion of sexual tension. This one less daunting, what with the tequila whizzing through my bloodstream. In fact, I almost enjoy it. I sip and stare at Joshua over the rim of my glass, and he’s the first to look away, blushing. He returns to stirring his pan of sizzling beef, making the entire flat stink of seasoning because his extractor fan doesn’t work properly.
Second cocktail down and he’s pulling a chair from under his circular glass dining-table. ‘I’ve given you the non-wobbly one, lucky girl.’
‘Wow. You really know how to treat a lady.’
He puts down bowls of homemade guacamole, salsa, and sour cream. He brings our third margaritas over and puts them on coasters. Then, with an excitable ‘voila’, he produces the grill pan of sizzling meat and veg, placing it between us on a wooden chopping board.
‘This looks amazing.’
‘Thank you. Tuck in.’
We pile things upon other things and wrap them into tortillas and then both find it difficult to bite into them delicately. The end of Joshua’s fajita spurts open and drips onto his plate. ‘Oh dear,’ he says, fingers covered with a hybrid of Mexican sauces. ‘I’m doing well, aren’t I?’
Always make them feel safe and comfortable. Soothe their egos. Make them feel loved for exactly who they are.
I bite into mine vigorously and the same thing happens. ‘Don’t worry, I just equalised.’ We laugh together and make more eye contact.
‘How was your day anyway?’ he asks.
I remember the hour I spent lying with my head twisted to one side. ‘Yeah, it was great! Our CEO brought everyone ice cream this afternoon so we had a party in the office.’
‘What a man. This heat’s really something, isn’t it? They’re saying it’s going to rain.’
I put down my fajita. ‘Finally. I love the rain. Sometimes I like to go out and just stand in it, like I’m in the last bit of Shawshank Redemption.’
The second I say it, I feel weird. That was a slightly weird thing to say, I must be drunker than I thought. I wait to see Joshua’s disapproval, yet he’s somehow laughing.
‘I love that film,’ he says. ‘And I love Freeman’s voice. If I had all the money in the world, I’d use it to pay him to read me bedtime stories. Can you imagine?’
April’s laughing too, picturing Joshua tucked up in his pjs with Morgan Freeman sitting at the edge of his bed, reading Goodnight Moon. ‘I can actually do quite a good impression of him,’ I say, ‘If you want a cut-price dream come true?’ I cough in announcement, lowering my chin. ‘You can either get busy living,’ I gravel. ‘Or get busy dying.’
Joshua’s face falls into shock before he bursts into laughter and breaks into applause. ‘That is scarily accurate! Oh my God.’
‘Thank you. It’s a gift. I’ve always been weirdly good at doing accents. It’s saved me through many a conversational dead patch at parties.’
His face is red and grinning. ‘How did I not know this about you? Hang on …’ Before I know it, he’s up and gone into his bedroom. I sip at my drink, the further tequila joining rank with the rest already in there – feeling happy and squiffy that I’ve been a bit like April and he seems to like it. Joshua returns with a book. His eyes are as red as his face, slightly unfocused. ‘Right, this is my current read,’ he holds out a crime thriller. ‘Come on Morgan, read to me.’
I take the book from his hands and I can’t help but smile. ‘Well, you need to lie down first if I’m going to tell you a bedtime story properly,’ I instruct.
Joshua takes my hand and leads me to the living room section of the flat, before he flops back onto the sofa. He folds his arms behind his head as a pillow. ‘I’m ready for Freeman.’
‘Is this weird?’ I ask. ‘It feels like things are getting weird.’
‘It’s definitely weird, but let’s go with it.’
‘OK.’ I sit by his feet and suppress a giggle. I open a page at random, cough again, and start reading it out loud in my best Morgan Freeman voice. It really is very good – it always used to be my party trick at university. Megan would sometimes get me to read back our lecture notes in the voice while we were revising.
Joshua’s vibrating with laughter. I get down the page best I can, but I’m starting to laugh too. I manage a few more sentences before I lose it and we both shake with silly hysterics for a good thirty seconds until Joshua reaches out and pulls me on top of him, and the book slides to the floor. We laugh into one another’s mouths as we kiss. It’s a strange moment of total and utter happiness. For two seconds, I’m laughing as I kiss a very nice man who seems to like me and get my weird. It’s enough. For me, at least. One of life’s slivers of brilliant moments – the sort you wish you could suspend and bathe in. I’m lost in the connection throbbing between two humans. But then Joshua groans into my mouth. His hands slide up the back of my dress. The mood shifts. I can sense he’s been activated. A surge of panic gurgles in my throat. Suddenly all I can smell is the acrid scent of the fajitas we are supposed to have forgotten about. I feel like prey … like Joshua is gone. The bits of him that make him reasonable and trustworthy shut down with the power of his lust. A thousand small birds take flight in my stomach, flap through my limbs, and Joshua moans again.