‘Oh, you know. Stuff. Girls have to think about this kind of thing.’
‘They do?’
He could tell that Kate was too shy to say anything else, but between them they’d decided that a week on Friday would be the perfect time. Neither had to get up for work the following morning and it gave both of them a chance to mentally prepare.
‘Do you want to meet between now and then?’ Freddie had asked, tentatively. ‘Maybe dinner before or something?’
‘Do you think we should? I don’t want to complicate things,’ Kate had replied. Freddie was a little disappointed. ‘This arrangement,’ She further explained. ‘I don’t want things to get confusing between us. I think, if we went out to dinner, that it might feel like dating?’
‘You’re right,’ he had said.
‘The whole point of this is that we have a distance from each other. That we can do this without getting swept up in our emotions. It’s perfect really. How we are now, how we’re talking right now. It should be like this. This would be fine.’
Freddie had nodded, unable to counter her logic, but now he wasn’t so sure.
He could do it. He could have sex with her. It made a lot of sense. It was what other people did all the time, for the entirety of history. Two people met, got on, and decided to sleep with each other. Why should they be any different? Why should it be any harder for them?
Except it was harder. Because Freddie was liking becoming Kate’s friend, and the one thing he risked by sleeping with her was that friendship. What if everything went wrong, if they both ended up completely embarrassed and never saw each other again?
He remembered the rainbow alley. He hadn’t known how to behave, how to show her that he was enjoying himself too, but he had liked being with her there, and watching her be happy. He remembered her now with the rose light on her face, smiling at him with those big brown eyes. He didn’t want to lose that.
Do I like her? He asked himself. The obvious answer was yes. She was the person he most wanted to be around right now.
Do I like like her? He didn’t know. He’d tumbled down that rabbit hole before and look where that had left him. But, he reasoned, if I keep a safe distance, if I deal with this like a scientist, like a contractual obligation, then we both get what we want without any of the messy stuff. Without anybody’s feelings getting hurt.
It made sense in his head, but then the bus arrived, and as soon as he sat down on the top deck his head scrambled and he was left confused and unsure once again.
Freddie was a little concerned when he got home and saw the light on. Their flat was on the fourth floor, with the living room looking out on to the street. Damien should have left for work hours ago. He was fastidious about saving energy and keeping bills down; it wasn’t like him to leave a light on before he left. Which suggested that he might be home. This concerned Freddie too – it was an unusual break in the routine. Damien always worked on Tuesday nights, and if he was home, it might mean that he was sick. Freddie wasn’t great with sick people. His imagination ran riot worrying about germs and viruses, and his obsessive compulsions tended to run riot accordingly.
After he unlocked the front door, he stood in the hallway for a moment, listening out for any Damien-like sounds. When he heard nothing, he moved to the living room, looking around for any clues. Freddie switched the light off and went to the kitchen to grab a drink of water.
There was a sound. Like something falling in another room. With no sign that Damien was there, and an intruder being unlikely considering the front door seemed normal, Freddie’s mind instantly went to rodents. He wasn’t scared of rats, but he was scared of the bugs they might carry.
Freddie picked up a saucepan and went back out into the hallway. The flat was tiny, the hallway itself barely larger than a closet, a tiny rectangular box from which all the other rooms sprouted, but nevertheless Freddie moved slowly and carefully. He put an ear to Damien’s bedroom door. There was definitely a noise in there. Something was moving.
‘Damien?’ Freddie called, just in case. No reply.
He could honestly say that he’d never gone into Damien’s room without express invitation. And he’d only ever had the invitation a handful of times. It was his flatmate’s private den, and Freddie expected the same level of privacy in return. He felt terrible about opening the door, but was also determined that it was the best thing to do given the circumstances.
He was not ready for what was on the other side. Damien was indeed home, and he was not alone.
‘What the hell!’ Damien cried.
As soon as Freddie realised that Damien was naked, he turned away and covered his face with the saucepan.
‘I called out,’ Freddie replied, voice muffled behind the cookware. ‘I heard a noise and I called out to see if it was you and nobody replied so I thought I needed to check!’
‘I didn’t agree to a party,’ the woman in Damien’s bed said. She didn’t sound scared or embarrassed. If anything, she seemed vaguely bored.
‘There’s no party,’ Damien said to her.
When Freddie dared to move the saucepan away from his face, he saw that the woman was practically naked. Freddie marvelled at her long black hair, glossy and rather vampiric, as she got out of the bed and arranged one of Damien’s dressing gowns around herself.
‘I needed the loo anyway,’ she said, before moving past Freddie to get to the bathroom. Once in there, he heard her lock the door from the other side.
‘Didn’t you hear me call out?’ Freddie asked his flatmate in a loud whisper.
‘I was a bit busy,’ Damien puffed, his face a peculiar shade of puce. He was sitting on the end of his bed, boxers on now, and scooping up some errant clothes from the floor.
‘I’m so sorry Damien,’ Freddie tried. ‘I’ll go to my room and won’t come out until morning. You won’t even know I’m here.’
The toilet flushed and the bathroom door unlocked. The woman reappeared. Damien and Freddie both froze as she framed herself in Damien’s doorway, looked at them and sighed dramatically.
‘I’m really sorry,’ Freddie said to her.
‘Oh don’t be silly, it happens,’ she replied before turning to Damien. ‘You ready to try again?’
Freddie just caught Damien’s dazzled face as his bedroom door closed in front of him.
Damien was standing over his coffee machine in the morning.
‘Hey,’ Freddie mumbled as he reached for his favourite bowl and the cornflakes.
Damien just mumbled in return.
‘She seemed nice?’ Freddie said.
Damien ignored him in a way Freddie felt was very deliberate.
‘Again, I am so sorry,’ he tried. ‘I honestly had no idea. If I had known, I don’t know, I might have found a way to let you have the place for the night. I didn’t have to be here at all.’
‘It’s OK,’ Damien grumbled.
‘It’s just that this has never happened before. I didn’t even think—’
‘Seriously Freddie, relax. So it didn’t go as smoothly as I would have liked, but it wasn’t a big deal in the end.’
‘What was her name?’ Freddie asked, putting a pause on eating his cornflakes so that he could listen.