Oh. My. God. My head feels like someone used it as a punchbag. I reach down the side of the bed where Past Me has thoughtfully left half a bottle of Coke. It’s completely flat and tastes like crap, but it washes down the double dose of ibuprofen and paracetamol I’m hoping might crack this hangover. What the hell was I thinking last night? Today’s going to be a killer – a twelve-hour shift in A&E, full of half-pissed Christmas casualties (and that’s just the staff). Oh bollocks – and I’ve just remembered that effing assignment I was supposed to do last night on Modern Nursing Practices and the Something of Something.
I rub my chin. And I need to get my beard sorted before I tip over into looking like someone who’s been lost in a cave for a month. God, I should’ve been working that essay last night and yet instead I found myself sharing a bottle of red with Emma. And another one. And – I open one eye carefully, because it feels like someone’s shining lasers in my direction – how the hell did I end up in bed with her, when I’d made a resolution that the last time was the Last Time? Capital letters, no going back.
I stumble to the bathroom and stand under the shower for ages, trying to wash off the hangover and straighten my head out. I didn’t even mean to start something with Emma. In fact – I run my hands through my hair and groan again – it’s probably best to not think of it as a something at all. Definitely not the sort of something that would get in the way of Becky’s no-couples rule. After all, we’re just two people, who’d ended up in a bit of a situation, and who were looking for the same thing. People do that sort of thing all the time.
Not me, admittedly, because I’ve never been a one-night stand sort of guy, but then – well, that all got screwed up last year when Alice walked out and I swore I was going to focus on work and absolutely definitely not on relationships. Not that I was planning on being a player or anything – that’s not me, either. Just that I was going to focus on work, and studying, and leave the complications out of it. That’s why Becky’s no-relationships rule didn’t make me flinch, even if it did seem a bit weird. To be honest with you, I’d have taken a vow of chastity for the next five years if it meant I could get a place like this for the ridiculously low rent she was willing to take.
Just as well she didn’t make me take one, mind you. I switch off the shower and think back on how it all happened as I’m drying myself off.
I’d been working a late shift, and when I’d got home at eleven the house was empty. Rummaging through the fridge, I’d found a beer, cracked it open and sat down at the table, scrolling through my phone. The thing was just about falling over with a million notifications from friends – half of whom I hadn’t heard from in ages because of the whole Alice thing – sending mass WhatsApp invites to New Year’s celebrations. The old me would’ve been up for it, but the new Alex – wrecked after a night working supply as an HCA on A&E – couldn’t think of anything worse. As I went to put my phone down, another notification had buzzed through. It was a text from Jonno:
We’re in the Pig and Bucket. Come and find us when you’ve finished playing doctors and nurses. Fizz on ice.
Oh, piss off, I thought, and chucked the phone across the table. The joke was wearing a bit thin at this point. I’ve heard a million and one variations on the doctors and nurses theme, countless boring jokes about male nurses, and I still get the odd bemused message from former uni friends who’d heard through the grapevine I’d given up a perfectly good burgeoning law career to retrain as a nurse.
‘Hi,’ Emma had said, and I’d looked up. I had to admit she looked pretty bloody amazing. The cut of the dress emphasised the curve of her waist and cinched her breasts up so they were balanced, like two scoops of ice cream, spilling over the top of her dress. I looked away rapidly. Note to self: do not look in direction of chest. I stared down and picked at the label of my beer. She threw her keys on the table and sat on a chair, looking disconsolate.
‘Bad night?’ I asked.
‘Shitty.’ She screwed up her face. ‘I hate New Year. Too much enforced jollity.’
‘D’you want a beer? I think there’s a couple left in the fridge.’
She nodded. ‘Yes please.’
I got up, fetching one for her and another for me out of the fridge, and cracking them open.
She hooked a long strand of hair back behind her ear, and took a sip of beer from the bottle. ‘I knew it would be a disaster. Work friends, and a load of people I didn’t want to see. Well, one person, to be completely honest.’ She grimaced again. ‘My ex.’
God I could sympathise there. I’d been avoiding all social gatherings where there was a chance I’d bump into Alice for ages now. It made the whole division of friendships thing quite easy, mind you. Alice got pretty much everyone, and I got – well, most of them were work colleagues, so it wasn’t a major deal. And I’d made a couple of good friends on the course, which really helped …
‘Sorry, you were saying?’ I said, realising I’d drifted into my own thoughts. ‘So you work with him? That must be awkward.’
Emma pulled a face. ‘Sort of. He’s in the same building, and our companies work side by side, so he’s always sort of – there. Which is how I ended up in a relationship with him. But he’s still very married, despite his insistence that he was going to leave her.’
‘Oh God, that old line.’
‘Yeah. Exactly.’ She fiddled with her keys, spinning each one round on the ring, before putting them carefully back on the table. ‘Anyway, much as I am over him – and I am …’
As she trailed off, I raised my eyebrows, giving her a look. ‘Really?’
‘Totally. But you know what? Not the sort of over him that I want to spend my New Year’s Eve watching him with his wife, drinking champagne and casting glances in my direction. I’m not some bit on the side, which is what I told him in the first place. Anyway.’ She took another swig of beer, then got up, heading for the fridge. ‘It’s almost midnight. We can celebrate here, instead.’
She pulled out a bottle of champagne. I’d seen it in the fridge and wondered who owned it – my guess was right. Emma looked like the sort of person who’d drink posh champagne. Becky was a tequila girl, Rob would have to be around at some point to have left champagne in the fridge, and so far he hasn’t been, and Jess hadn’t moved in yet. The champagne was an expensive brand, the kind we used to open to celebrate successes in the office. Now I was on a student loan though, and living on my savings, it was beer all the way. Cheap beer, at that.
‘Want some?’
I nodded. ‘Yes please.’
She found two glasses and popped the cork. ‘Let’s put some music on. Alexa, play some New Year’s music.’
‘Here’s a playlist for New Year’s music,’ said the speaker. Ed Sheeran started playing and we both shouted ‘Alexa, stop!’ at the same time, laughing.
‘I’ll find something on my phone,’ Emma said.
A couple of glasses – and some debate over Emma’s dodgy taste in music – later, we decided to go through to the sitting room to watch the New Year celebrations on television at midnight. As if by agreement, we both flopped down on the sofa. Emma kicked off her heels and curled up her legs underneath her. In the background, a band was playing music at Edinburgh Castle with a horde of familiar TV faces standing at the side of the screen, trying to look animated. They were clearly freezing cold.
‘So what about you?’ Emma said. ‘I know you said you were living with someone before. Are you still friends?’
I gave a groan and stretched my arms out above my head until various joints creaked. I really needed to get to the gym. ‘Not really,’ I replied.
‘Hard, isn’t it? I don’t know many people who stay friends with their ex.’
‘Yeah.’
Emma poured another glass of champagne for us both. ‘The thing is, Alice signed up for the lawyer boyfriend, lots of money, and a nice house.’ I looked around at the tattered Seventies décor and raised my eyebrows at Emma. ‘This isn’t exactly her sort of thing. We had a place in Stoke Newington – a nice little flat. It was pretty much all mapped out – two-point-four children, dog, cat, move out to the suburbs eventually …’
‘Ugh,’ Emma said, making a face. ‘That sounds like hell.’
‘Everyone says that,’ I said, spinning my glass round on my knee, slowly. ‘Thing is, I think I’m a bit of a romantic at heart. I wanted the whole thing.’
‘That’s quite sweet,’ Emma said. ‘Even if it’s my idea of hell. I don’t even like being responsible for a potted plant.’
‘Yeah, well, we were engaged and everything. Then we had some family stuff happen, and I realised that actually I didn’t want to carry on doing law. I wanted to do something that made a difference. That’s how I ended up getting into nursing.’
‘That’s fair enough.’
‘Yeah. Not for Alice, it turned out. She’d had our future all mapped out, and my giving up the well-paid job with prospects for a career in a failing NHS wasn’t on her to-do list.’
‘So when you gave up on law, she gave up on you?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, and took a large swig of champagne. ‘Pretty much.’
Emma reached over, putting a hand on my leg. ‘I’m sorry. That’s pretty brutal.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, and looked down at Emma’s hand, which hovered there for a second. And I’d like to say that we carried on watching the television and then went to our separate beds after the bells struck midnight and that was that. But no. Turned out I was only human, after all, and that after a bottle of champagne and some sort of dodgy liqueur from the back of the kitchen cupboard, and some pretty direct flirting from Emma, my resolve to stay celibate and focus completely on my studies was – well, it wasn’t as steely as all that. And afterwards, when I was lying on the bed watching her fastening her bra and slipping the impossibly tight red dress back on, Emma had turned to me and smiled.
‘Nobody needs to know this ever happened,’ she’d said.
‘Not a soul,’ I’d agreed. ‘Becky would murder us, for one thing.’
‘Nice though,’ she’d said, and given a wicked little smile that had made me want to pull her back into bed.
Bloody hell.
And then last night it happened again.
I wipe the mirror in the bathroom and look at myself through the condensation. Still look like the same old me – bit knackered, perhaps, because I’ve been up shagging half the night – but no, definitely still the same old Alex. I raise my eyebrows at Mirror Me and suppress a snort of laughter. It’s the most out-of-character thing I’ve ever done. I try and imagine the faces of Jack and Lucy when I tell them. Jack and Lucy are my two best friends back home in Canterbury (who conveniently got off with each other a couple of years back, meaning that now they live together and I can see both of them in one go when I go back to visit). They’re always telling me to get on dating apps and have a rebound shag to get over Alice. Well, I guess I’ve done it. Didn’t even have to download Tinder.
I wrap the towel round my waist and head back to my bedroom, opening the window even though it’s freezing cold outside. It’s ridiculously early in the morning and the house is almost completely silent, but I can hear noises, I think. Sounds like someone’s moving boxes in the room next door. Jess? I check the calendar hanging on the wall. God, yes, it’s the third. She must’ve arrived overnight – I put a hand over my mouth – God, I hope she didn’t arrive when we were …
No. We’d have heard the door, wouldn’t we? She must’ve arrived when I was in the shower.
I pull on jeans and a clean T-shirt, running my hand back through my hair to shove it into place. Even if Jess had heard, she wasn’t likely to say anything. It didn’t have to be a big deal. Even if I have to have a conversation with Becky about the whole no-couples thing … well, it’s not like we’re actually a couple.
This is all completely new ground for me, though, and it’s weird. Jack and Lucy always took the piss out of me for being an old romantic, but the thing is, what happened with Alice really took the wind out of my sails. I loved her, and I thought we were going to do the whole married, house, kids, dogs thing – especially the dogs, I’ve always wanted a golden retriever – but it floored me completely when she told me it was over. I was a complete mess for ages, but I’ve got a grip now. I’m just not putting myself in that place again for a long time. Relationships are not for me.
I’m glad Jess is back. Now the house is full, it feels sort of … complete, somehow. I’m sure she said she’s not starting work until the second week of January. Maybe I’ll see if she fancies coming for a walk tomorrow, to find her feet a bit. It’ll be nice to have a friend who’s a girl, and not a girlfriend. I miss Lucy’s point of view on things – since she and Jack got together they basically come as a package.
I lace up my boots and I think about Jess chopping limes and chatting to me in the kitchen. Grudgingly, I have to admit to myself that in another life, Jess would be completely my type. She’s funny and she’s interesting, and I love the fact that she’s doing the same as me: taking the plunge to try something new and start life over again. It’d be good to have a partner in crime. It makes it seem less terrifying, somehow.