Chapter 10
‘I didn’t really think this one through,’ I say, looking down at my sparkly dress, standing out like a sore thumb in the decidedly more casual environment of the Chinese social club, a shiny silver pot of jasmine tea steaming between us, the tea cooling in little white cups without handles.
‘I think you look great,’ Felix says, that trademark smirk of his playing on his lips.
‘You’d better.’ I slide my foot forward so it brushes up against his. He doesn’t move away, instead tilts his foot to the side so I can feel the pressure against mine. ‘I turned down going to an after-party at Zach Collins’s flat for this.’
‘And Zach Collins does throw a good party,’ Felix shrugs. ‘But I think you made the right decision.’
‘I think so too,’ I tell him as an austere middle-aged waiter silently sets our food down on the table before stomping off.
The meat is glossy and gorgeous, sitting like a prize on top of brilliantly white rice.
We eat, chatting away, glancing up at each other every so often, the powerful spark of shared eye contact fizzing away between us.
We’re quiet for a moment, which obviously is my kryptonite, so I break the silence with the question I’ve been wanting to ask for hours. ‘So, what’s the story with you and Laurie? Just a classic schoolboy rivalry?’ I ask, remembering what he’d said about them being at St Alfred’s College together.
Felix leans back in his plastic chair and puts his hands behind his head. ‘Something like that. He’s just a bit of a dick, that’s all. Or maybe dick is the wrong word . . . maybe creep is better?’
‘How do you mean?’
Felix inhales sharply. ‘Just some dodgy stuff with a girl in sixth form, trying a bit too hard, you know? Eventually someone had to say something, and things got a bit heated and everything escalated from there. But it’s not really my place to go into it now.’
I swallow. ‘Yikes . . .’
‘Yeah, he’s one of those guys,’ he intones grimly. ‘But enough about him.’ Felix does an exaggerated stretch, looks around the café before fixing me with a very direct gaze. ‘I think it’s time we went home, don’t you?’
I pause for a moment, almost letting myself think about how vague his explanation of his beef with Laurie was. But then I push it aside. Eyes on the prize.
‘Sure,’ I say, fluttering my eyelashes at him across the Formica table. ‘Your place or mine?’
‘Mine,’ he says decisively. ‘My housemates are away on a rugby trip and for once I’ve got the place to myself. Might as well make the most of it.’ A smile creeps across his face that’s so assured and alluring it makes my stomach do a backflip.
When we get back to the house he shares with his course-mates Oscar and Mitchell, the place is dark and quiet, as you might expect it to be at 4 a.m. Really dark.
Really quiet. Really still. He flicks the light on, and it illuminates a surprisingly tidy living room.
The only things out of place are the piles of books everywhere, which actually have a rather charmingly bohemian effect, because of course they do.
‘This is nice,’ I say, looking around. ‘Very nice indeed. I mean, not that my flat isn’t nice, it’s just .
. .’ The more of it I take in, the fancier it gets.
A lot of my uni friends live in houses, but they don’t live in houses like this.
Not cosy, well-decorated houses on quiet, pretty, residential streets.
They live in huge, draughty, cavernous houses on main roads with, like, six flatmates and three wheelie bins in the front garden.
Everyone has rickety dining tables grudgingly supplied by landlords or found in a skip, threadbare IKEA sofas or something uncomfortable in faux leather.
Not Felix. His sofa looks like a gorgeous velvet cloud and his dining table is solid wood, something my mum would make Stephen drive across London to pick up from a vintage furniture warehouse as part of one of her domestic projects.
Felix shrugs. ‘It was my parents’ first house back in the day.
They held onto it when they moved to Dulwich, just rented it out until I went to QAC.
’ Normal. ‘When I was growing up I was always a bit perplexed by why they’d choose to leave here and move to the suburbs, like they’d deprived me of something, you know?
’ I’m not entirely sure Felix knows the meaning of the word deprivation, but whatever, I’m not going to interrupt the flow of the evening, am I?
‘So it’s kind of nice to be living here now, at last.’
‘How did you know you would go to Queen Anne’s and need the house at all?’ I ask, amused.
‘Oh, I knew I would be going to Queen Anne’s,’ he says, shrugging. ‘My dad went here, his dad went here, his dad went here, et cetera. A family tradition, I suppose.’
‘And what if you didn’t get in?’
He looks at me as if I’ve just made a really good joke.
‘Ha ha,’ he says, and I realise what he means is that with a legacy like that, there’s no question about whether he gets in or not.
OK, so he’s kind of annoying, but so am I!
Aren’t we all annoying in our own special way?
And besides, I can’t imagine not finding out what it’s like to run my fingers through his hair or what his skin feels like against mine, and who am I to disrupt a plan so close to its execution?
Speaking of which! Felix reaches his arms out to me and wraps them around my waist. This is it! It’s on! It’s so on! ‘Is this OK?’ he murmurs before our lips meet.
‘Very OK,’ I say breathlessly. And then we kiss for the first time and it’s everything I wanted it to be. Hot, steamy, sexy, full of the promise of more to come. I thought I would be more into it than him, but the way he kisses me, it’s like he wants to eat me alive.
‘Shall we . . . shall we go upstairs?’ he offers, and I nod so quickly I think I might have given myself whiplash. But I can worry about whiplash later! Right now, I’m going to finally sleep with Felix Balfour!