by Liz Jacobs
“I hate you,” Dex said, but even Nick couldn’t perceive any real heat behind it. “Anyway, Izzy and Nat met at some get-together or other, and Steph and Jonny we picked up—”
“Right here in this pub!” Jonny interrupted, lifting his glass. “Steph was determined to make friends despite being a shy young thing.”
“Was not,” Steph mumbled, pink-cheeked. Watching her gave Nick a similar feeling to walking through his own front door. She put Nick at ease. He smiled at her when she caught him staring, and she smiled back. “I mean, I was, but whatever, this was two years ago.”
“Shyness is not a character flaw, babe,” Natali said. “Anyway, Jonny and Steph met at freshers week stuff, and Jonny took her under his wing, being older and wiser than the rest of us because … well, blah blah, and then we came across them both, and blah blah friendship blah.” She gave Nick a smile and finished off her Corona in the next go.
“I mean, it’s not like we’re a cult. We do know other people,” Izzy offered. “I meet people all the time.” She pointed to Nick with her glass.
“Izzy likes to pick up strays,” Dex added, and just like that, Nick’s newly found euphoria popped like a balloon. He hoped his expression hadn’t changed, but he knew better. He’d been called an open book by Zoya enough times.
“What the hell?” Natali protested. Nick looked down at his drink, wondering how to extricate himself to get another. He’d never gone up to a bar before in his life. And he didn’t even know what he was drinking.
“What?” Dex asked, then said, “Oh. Oh, shit. Sorry, Nick. That wasn’t—sorry.”
Nick glanced up at him. For some reason, hearing Dex say his name startled Nick, and he shrugged in an attempt to cover it up. Dex actually did look apologetic.
“Oh, it’s fine, I didn’t even…” He seized the moment. “I was just gonna get another drink, actually. Um…” He steeled himself. “Can I get anyone else anything?”
“Ohhh, yes, please!” Steph raised her glass. “It’s the Stella. Cheers, mate.”
Nick nodded, repeating Stella in his head, and waited for Izzy to move her chair so he could get out.
“Can you grab me another Corona?” Natali asked, and Nick gave her a nod, as well. Right. Three drinks. He could do three drinks.
“Oh, and a cider here,” Alex piped up, finishing his glass off in one gulp. Nick got a little mesmerized by the movement of his Adam’s apple, then panicked. Four drinks. Okay. He could fight his way through the crowded pub with four drinks. His fingers were reasonably long and grabby.
“I’ll come up with you,” Izzy said decisively and grabbed his arm like she had earlier. “These lazy tossers,” she muttered. Nick tried not to look too relieved.
Once they managed to get through the throngs of drinkers, Izzy bellied up to the bar like she was paid to do it. All Nick could do was stand back and wonder at her ability to pull attention toward herself like she was lit by a spotlight. He noticed that the bartender all but flew over to where she was waiting, much to the annoyance of the dude who’d been craning his neck in an attempt to get attention.
“What’ll it be, Iz?” the bartender asked, leaning his elbows on the bar and giving her a crooked smile.
Of course he knew her. Nick hid a smile behind his hand while Izzy rattled off the drink orders. Nick remembered to grab his wallet just in time, shoving his card at the bartender. Who didn’t spare him a glance, fair enough. Standing next to Izzy was like a sparrow attempting to upstage a peacock.
“Don’t mind Dex, by the way,” Izzy said while they waited for drinks to be poured. “It’s not you.”
Nick shrugged, looking down at the smooth surface of the bar. “It’s fine.” His face was hot. There was a lot of humanity around him.
“Well, it’s not fine, him being a bit of a tosser, but he isn’t always like that.” When Nick looked up at her, she was biting the inside of her cheek like she was holding something back. Not for the first time, Nick wondered about those two. He wondered just what was sticking in Dex’s craw, and he especially wondered, with an uncomfortable, clawing-at-his-belly feeling, why Izzy had invited Nick out in the first place.
“Well, everyone else is really nice,” Nick offered.
“Oh, no,” Izzy smiled, shaking her hair back. “They’re also tossers, they’re just much cheerier about it. Oh, goody, here we go!” Three glasses and a Corona appeared beside them.
All in all, Nick was pretty proud of himself for not even spilling any beer as he slithered his way between people and set the glasses down on the table without any disasters.
“Cheers, mate,” Alex said, grabbing his and Steph’s drinks while Nick handed Natali her Corona.
Then he sat back down, took a long gulp of his own beer, and decided to ask no more questions.
4
It wasn’t that Izzy was furious with Dex, exactly, but she was righteously annoyed. And worried. It was some sort of a combination of the two, and she had tried giving him space to sort himself out, but it was about time he stopped acting like a stroppy toddler and owned up to his crap. She marched up to his room, only stumbling on the last step a tiny bit, and slunk in without a knock.
He looked like he’d needed the distraction in any case, because he definitely had one of his incomprehensible textbooks open next to him, along with his laptop and a glazed sort of look on his face.
“You’re definitely going to regret that last glass of wine,” he told her once she tucked her head up against his shoulder, dislodging his laptop in the process. He shut the laptop and moved it out of the way. Izzy snuggled closer.
“Am not,” she said once she was comfier. She never regretted any glasses of wine. Or, well. Most, anyway. Neither did Dex, for that matter. She decided on a sideways approach. “Why aren’t you celebrating with us?”
“Thought we’d already done that,” he responded in a superior tone that really bloody grated on her.
“There’s always more celebrating to do, what the hell are you, forty?” She gathered herself, cleared her throat, and decided sideways approaches were for wimps. “So why were you such a shithead to Nick earlier?”
“Was not,” he mumbled. Izzy could have slapped him. “Why did you spring him on us like that?” This time she did smack him. He knew. She knew he knew.
“I didn’t bloody spring him on anybody, I brought a new friend along. This isn’t precisely unprecedented.” The last glass of wine had made a sort of a mess out of that sentence, but at least she’d got the point across. She looked him in the eye. “Dexter, seriously. You were a massive dickhead, and I seriously worry about you.”
He looked up at the ceiling. “I’m sorry. I’ll apologise.”
“Yes, you will, but that’s not actually my point.” She shifted, making sure to knee him in the shins at least once. She loved him to death, but sometimes she just wanted to throttle him. “Look, you’ve been a brooding pain in the arse, and while I understand a broken heart, it’s been literally months. You have got to go out and fuck someone before your balls explode from disuse.”
“Nice.” He pushed himself away. He looked like a storm cloud. She wanted to hug him immediately, but she really needed him to hear her out first. She was about to open her mouth when he said, “Is that how it works in your world?”
She felt it like a kick in the gut. She pursed her lips to stop them trembling, then got a hold of herself. “Slut-shaming me won’t work. And it’s fucking disingenuous at best.”
“Ohh, big words,” he said, and after a flare of bright-red anger, Izzy felt the exhaustion hit her all at once. It had been a long day, and her final year of uni was promising to be terrifying. In this moment, all she wanted was to go to sleep. Best to just get it done with.
“Fine. Fuck right off,” she said. “The point is, you’re being a stupid arsehole, and even Alex is getting sick of your shit, so pull yourself together, talk to me, or to any of us, or you can just sit in your room until you’re a shriveled fucking raisin, b
ut don’t pretend like everything is fine, because it’s clearly not.”
She shoved her way up off the bed and a moment later slammed the door behind her. She staggered the three steps to her own door and slammed that behind her, too, for good measure.
Fucking bastard.
Rich of him to suddenly, what, start having a problem with her having sex? As if they hadn’t gone on the pull together countless times and then told each other all about it the following morning in minute detail. It was, she thought as she stripped her dress off, a strange thing to do, probably, but this was Dex.
She stomped towards her bed and fought with her bra clasp. Releasing her tits felt like heaven.
But really, nothing was weird with Dex, not since that first encounter in the kitchen when he’d nearly set himself on fire. For a few moments, she wondered if she’d just met the love of her life—she’d looked at him and her entire body had done a sort of ping!—but then, of course: gay. So totally gay. Which was totally fine, obviously, and anyway, they’d probably have made an awful couple.
But he was her best friend, and he’d been acting like a shithead for far too long. A stroppy, grumpy shithead who needed to sort himself out before he alienated everyone. She had tried to say her piece and been rebuffed, so now it was up to bloody him.
She threw on her loosest T-shirt and reached for her phone as she plopped down on the bed. She snapped a picture of her toes tangled in the duvet cover and uploaded it to Instagram with a sleep-face emoji and a filter that covered up the fact that she hadn’t painted her toenails in far too long.
She was just about to turn off her lamp and fall into unconsciousness when there was a light knock on her door. She braced herself for Dex, but it was Natali who peeked her head in.
“Hey, mate, you all right? Heard some shouty words up here.”
Izzy shrugged and flung her phone away from her. “Dex is being a stroppy bastard.” She wasn’t going to go into details, and she most definitely was not going to let Dex make her feel bad for having a cracking sex life. Or making friends.
“Oh, is it Tuesday?” Natali grinned and flopped down onto the foot of Izzy’s bed. “What’d he do now?”
“Dunno, said some shitty stuff. Like how I’d apparently sprung Nick on you all.” She stared off into the middle distance, and a bother of a thought slowly made its way into her brain. “Nat,” she said slowly. “Am I overly controlling or, like … obnoxious?”
“Wha–?”
“I mean, like, I know that I sort of tend to, dunno, act first, think later, but is that necessarily a bad thing?” She thought of how she’d railroaded Mum into letting her apply for a film course despite Mum insisting she go for something sensible, like teaching or dentistry or whatever. She hadn’t even listened to Mum’s arguments, not really. She wanted to study film, so that was what she was obviously going to do. But what if it really was a stupid decision?
“Babe. What’d that stroppy arsehole say? I’ll fuck him up.”
“He didn’t, not—”
“Because that’s bullshit, all right? You’re not overly controlling, and you didn’t spring anyone on anyone, you just invited a boy out with us to celebrate.” She must have seen something in Izzy’s expression, because she squinted, tilted her head, and said, “I mean, not to question it or anything, but why did you bring Nick with you? Just curious, mind.”
Izzy gave her a look, but she knew that Nat would get there eventually. “I … he was sweet. And awkward. And he looked like he needed some friends in his life.”
“Hmm.” Natali was watching her with half a smile on her face. “And it wouldn’t be because you’ve mentioned, you know, once or twice, attempting to shake Dex out of it by dangling new boys in front of him, would it?”
Izzy tried for an evasion. “How’d you know I didn’t bring him there for me?”
Nat raised her perfect eyebrow.
“Ugh, fine, maybe.”
Nat’s laugh always sounded like a cackle. “I bloody knew it! No wonder he was in a strop. Not, mind you, that he’s ever allowed to make you feel like shit. But, like. He’s just not ready, mate.”
Izzy slumped down sideways. “Ugh. I know, all right? But I thought—I dunno. He wouldn’t stop looking at him at International Night, I thought—maybe.”
“Give him time.”
“I know,” she grumbled.
“But he really was a right dickhead tonight.”
“I know.”
“And you’re not a controlling anything, all right? Don’t let him take his crap out on you.”
Izzy sniffed, suddenly close to tears. She shifted until she was staring at the ceiling so Nat wouldn’t notice. “I know.”
“Aw, babe. C’mere.”
Of course she noticed. Izzy squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m just drunk and tired and emotional. Ignore me, please.”
“Nah.”
Natali plopped down next to her until they were staring at the same yellow blob on the ceiling from where the Nat had lost a fight with a humidifier last winter. “You’re a good egg among some truly rotten pieces of crap. So don’t go off the deep end.”
“That’s … quite a compliment.” The thing of it was, for Natali, that was downright effusive. Izzy felt warm inside, a little gooey, and maybe just a little less tired but definitely more weepy. She sniffed. “I’m glad you think I’m not a rotten egg.” In the beginning, she’d always felt far too uncool for Natali. It was sort of funny to think about that now.
“Yep. I think there are maybe, like, six of you in total around these parts.”
“Which parts?”
“I’m thinking … Mile End. No, wait, London. No, no, wait. How about this entire bloody island?”
Izzy must have been just a little mad, because the next moment she was giggling as she gazed up at the yellow blob, and Natali was grabbing her hand and twisting their fingers together.
“So, yeah. Stop crying.”
“Yes, ma’am.” She sniffed.
“I’ll fuck you up.”
Izzy giggled into Natali’s bony shoulder and decided that Dex could solve his own problems if he was going to be a bastard about it.
When she finally did settle in to sleep, hours later, she had a text from him.
Sorry I’m a bastard. I’ll try harder to be better.
“Yeah, well, I bloody hope so,” she muttered, then turned over. He could stew until morning for a text back.
+
She ended up accepting his apology in person, whilst weak with need for caffeine, waiting for the coffee to brew faster. It wasn’t like she hadn’t been planning on doing it anyway. Having anybody be upset with her set her teeth on edge, and this was Dex.
Funny, when they’d first met, he had seemed so cool. Maybe it was his gorgeousness, because frankly, he wasn’t all that cool. Well, he was, but now he was Izzy’s best mate, and that took the edge off his cool a bit, made him just, like. Real.
The point was, Izzy hated tension, and she especially hated tension when it came to her housemates. You could smell it in the air whenever anyone was in a strop with someone else. Even if it didn’t involve her, it involved her. It rubbed her nerves raw, made everything feel wrong and off-kilter.
So when she heard Dex shuffle into the kitchen—she knew his shuffle—she didn’t even turn around before saying, “I forgive you, you ninny.”
He breathed out loudly behind her. “Thanks.” Pause. “Sorry.”
She shrugged. She did still have a point to make. “I could be shagging half of London, it would still be total shit to call me a slag.”
“I know.” She wasn’t looking at him, but she still thought he sounded like he’d hung his head in shame. Good. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, so, like, don’t be an arsehole like that again.”
“’Kay.”
“’Kay.”
He reached the counter, and they stood side by side waiting for the coffee to be ready. She glanced at him sideways. “I’m sorry,
too.”
“For what?”
“Dunno, just, like.” She wasn’t quite ready to admit that he knew her well enough to see every ulterior motive a mile away. “Stuff.”
He huffed out a laugh. “Sure.”
“You still need to apologise to Nick.”
She felt him tense just a bit. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “When I see him next.”
He probably thought it wouldn’t be anytime soon, but the truth was, Izzy really had liked Nick. Or maybe liked was the wrong word. He seemed lovely, if terribly closed off and almost too shy to bear. She had wanted to spend more time with him and see if she couldn’t shake him out of his shell a bit. She felt only slightly like Cher in Clueless. It wasn’t as if she didn’t already have her share of “projects,” but Nick clearly had some stories to tell. She wanted to hear them.
He was also totally adorable. She never claimed not to be shallow, in some respects.
+
Kat ran up to her just as she was about to step into the classroom. “Hola, lover!”
Izzy rolled her eyes out of habit. Kat was weirdly sort of like if you combined Luna Lovegood and Sue Perkins and rolled them both around in a speedball. Not, like, visually, but in essence. She had an aura of the absurdly hilarious, the dreamy, and the totally fucking off her rocker. Izzy adored her but could only take her in small doses. “Hiya,” she greeted.
“Did you see what that twat said about female writers?”
“Which twat?”
“Johannes, obviously. On the forum?”
Oh, right. Izzy kept forgetting to go to their module forum. Or, truthfully, ignoring it. She kept ignoring the module forum, largely because it was like immersing yourself in a YouTube comments section. Kat, on the other hand, loved getting her righteous rage on and would gleefully report the low-lights on a regular basis. Izzy pulled her bag farther up her shoulder. “Oh god, what now?”
Kat, leading them to a far-from-the-door place at the massive table, recounted all the ways in which Johannes shit all over women writers. “Well, obviously, there is no interest in the film world in what women have to say—we all know they largely just want to talk about how all men are pigs and worthless, when men have contributed the most to the fabric of our society, blah blah blah, oh, and also that they should, you know, try it out—by it he means scriptwriting, you understand—on material that’s more their speed, like, soaps and crap. Or, obviously, romantic comedies, but everybody knows that.”