The Funny Thing About Love

20. Charlie

20

CHARLIE

‘She’s so hot, Ben. Honestly. I mean, she’s funny and great and cool too. But also, she’s just so, so hot.’

My best mate, Ben, nods patiently and sips his pint. ‘Yes, Charlie. You’ve said that. Several times now.’

‘Sorry. I know.’ I drain the remnants of my own pint and put it back on the sticky table. ‘It’s just that she’s so . . .’

‘Hot?’ Ben cuts in.

‘Yeah. Exactly.’

We’re sitting in a pub opposite Camden Town tube station, both of us three pints of Guinness deep. I texted Ben as I left the office a couple of hours ago to see if he fancied a drink. Mainly because I just wanted to tell someone about what happened in Pret this afternoon. I briefly considered going straight home to tell Merlin, but I wasn’t confident he could remain conscious long enough for a proper heart-to-heart.

‘Fancy one more?’ I ask Ben.

‘Dunno . . .’ He peers at me over his glasses. ‘Are we going to talk about something else, or are you just going to keep mooning over this Nell girl?’

‘The second one, definitely the second one.’

He groans. ‘Mate, I’ve had my hand up a sheep’s arse for most of today. I’m looking for some fun, light-hearted chat, not just you moping about some girl you fancy.’

I laugh. Ben’s in his third year at the Royal Veterinary College, which is just around the corner from the pub. Ever since I’ve known him, Ben has wanted to be a vet. I’ve always been secretly jealous of how sure he is about that fact. I mean, how amazing must it be to know what your ‘thing’ is? I still have absolutely no clue what mine is.

Ben’s dad is a vet too. He obviously doesn’t have the same qualms I have about following in his father’s footsteps, career-wise. But that’s because Ben has a different relationship with his dad than I do. As in, he actually has a relationship with his dad. They go to the football together most weekends. They’re mates.

‘I’m not moping,’ I correct him. ‘I’m doing the opposite of moping. Today, I really feel like something changed between us. She’s been so frosty to me since the first day, but when we were hiding under those apples, she actually smiled at me. She hasn’t smiled at me since we met!’

Ben looks at me like you might a toddler who’s just presented you with a scribbled crayon drawing. Even though he’s only a couple of months older than me, our dynamic has always been kind of big-brother-little-brother: Ben as the serious, hardworking, mature one, and me as the devil-may care,gets-fired-from-art-galleries-for-unwittingly-insulting-the-owner one.

I’ve only known Ben a few years, but he’s one of those friends you feel as if you’ve known forever. We met when we were sixteen – I’d just left Grassmere, the uber-posh boarding school Nick had insisted on packing me off to, aged eleven. After five years surrounded by braying toffs, pretending to be someone I wasn’t, I couldn’t wait to come home and start at the local sixth-form college. I met Ben on the first day – along with a few of my other now best mates – and, honestly, it felt like waking up from a bad dream.

Ben goes to the bar to get us two more pints and when he comes back, he says, ‘OK, seeing as your vocabulary today seems to be limited to mainly the word “hot”, can I at least have a look at this amazingly hot, cool, great girl? Is she on Instagram?’

‘Dunno. I don’t actually even know her surname,’ I say.

Ben sighs. ‘OK. So . . . who’d play her in a film?’

‘Hmm.’ I take a long glug of Guinness. This deserves some proper thought. ‘Who’s that one from Black Widow?’ I ask.

Ben takes a sip and wipes his foamy moustache. ‘Scarlett Johansson?’

‘No! Black Widow’s little sister.’

‘Oh, right. Florence Pugh.’

‘Yeah,’ I snap my fingers. ‘Nell’s definitely got a Florence Pugh vibe about her. But dark-haired.’

‘Dark-haired Pugh.’ Ben nods. ‘Nice.’

‘She’s more than nice,’ I say dreamily.

Ben snorts into his pint. ‘So, ask her out? You know she’s single.’

I consider this. ‘It’s so hard though. She sits in the IT department for some reason, which is in a totally different bit of the office. Like, after we got back from Pret earlier, I didn’t even see her for the rest of the day. Some days I don’t even see her at all.’

‘So, pretend your computer’s fucked and go to the IT department.’

I take another sip of beer. It’s actually not a bad idea.

Ben’s phone rings on the table, flashing the name ‘Tansy’ – his long-term girlfriend. He grabs it and stands up. ‘I’ll just be one sec.’

As he steps out of the pub, I feel my own phone buzz. It’s a Tinder notification: a match from some girl I liked a few days ago. Normally I’d be straight on it, seeing if she fancied meeting up, but right now my head is too full of Nell. I carry on idly swiping through the app, and I’m honestly thinking that no matter how great some of these girls might be, none of them will be as great as Nell, when my next swipe gives me literally the shock of my life.

I actually let out a yelped ‘What?!’ Two blokes at the bar turn to look at me.

On my phone’s screen, Nell’s profile is staring back at me. I laugh in disbelief. I mean, seriously – what the hell? Talk about fate!

She looks amazing in her photos. The first one is a selfie in a park, on what looks like a bright, crisp, cold day. She’s beaming at the camera, her hair messy at her shoulders and the tip of her nose bright pink. The next one: her howling with laughter at a karaoke bar, surrounded by mates, with a microphone in one hand, and the other held up to try to block the camera. Her smile is at full wattage in all of them. She’s making no effort to look cool or detached or whimsical or any of the other adjectives that normally come to mind when you swipe through these kinds of pictures. She just looks . . . fun.

My finger hovers over the screen. Would it be funny to swipe right on her? Or even a bit cheekily romantic? Or would it just be creepy and sleazy? I don’t want to overstep the mark. But I can’t shake how random it is, just happening on her profile like this. It has to mean something, doesn’t it?

My head feels a bit fuzzy from the four pints of Guinness. I glance out of the window at Ben, still talking to Tansy.

Ben will know what to do. He’s the sensible one. I place my phone back on the table and wait for him to come back in.