34. Megan
Chapter 34
Megan
It only takes one night to start a new tradition, and this has become ours.
By the end of March, we’ve fallen into an easy routine. On weeknights I make dinner then Ollie disappears to work on his van, but Fridays nights are all about this. A haven right here on the sofa, sharing food and wine and jokes. We take turns to pick a movie, but Ollie always buys facemasks, and I always help him apply his.
At some point I stopped panicking if our arms accidentally touch, and since we both fidget a lot, it’s not uncommon for me to end up tucked in the crook of his arm while he stretches it out across the back of the sofa. I could tie myself in knots overthinking it, but I suppose it’s no different to when Hattie, Kara, and I used to get the sofa bed out at Kara’s old house and snuggle up together.
We’re just really good friends.
Some weeks we barely watch the movie because we’re too busy chatting, but sometimes, like tonight, we are both glued to the screen watching The Talented Mr Ripley .
Matt Damon is schmoozing his way around Italy when a noise in the hallway distracts us. Ollie’s arm jerks out in front of me, and I grip hold of it.
“Did you hear that?” he whispers, pausing the TV. We hold our breath, and there’s the unmistakable sound of our front door clicking closed, then hushed voices.
“Oh my God,” I squeak, my hand flying to my mouth. “Are we being robbed? Did that guy come back?”
Quietly, Ollie leans forward, sets the popcorn down and rises to his feet.
“No, Ollie. You can’t go out there.” I reach out to pull him back, but he clasps my hands together and pushes them into my lap.
“Stay there,” he whispers, one finger pressed to his lips. “Do not come out unless I say it’s safe to.”
“Please be careful.”
My heart is pounding as he approaches the door, and I ignore him and get up to look around for a weapon. I should keep a bat or something in here, but the only thing I could do is whack them with a scented candle or throw a yoga mat over their head.
I dart to the kitchen and grab a knife while Ollie gestures for me to stay back. My heart is in my throat when his fingers curl around the door handle just as two people come hurtling through from the other side.
“Surprise!”
I scream just as Hattie and Kara launch themselves at an unsuspecting Ollie. He stumbles back into me, one hand clutching his chest, the other arm shielding me from my friends, who’ve turned up in loungewear, with bags of food in hand.
“Oh my God, we thought we were being robbed,” he yells at them.
“What the fuck are you two doing?” Hattie shouts back.
I’m not sure I know how to explain why they’ve stumbled across me in his hoodie wielding a bread knife, sheet masks still plastered to our faces. Ollie and I stand there gawping at each other, chests heaving as our heart rates return to normal.
“What are you doing here?” I eventually say.
“We came to surprise you!” Kara says, her excitement palpable as she bounces up and down on her heels. “Luke and Rob have gone to see a comedy thing at Moonshine so we’ve brought takeout and fizz, just like old times. Non-alcoholic for me, obviously.”
“And I’ve brought ice-cream,” Hattie says, her voice deadpan as she scans the room.
Our shared bowl of popcorn sits half-eaten on the coffee table, crumpled blankets draped across the sofa, candles flickering away. It looks like one of the many nights we’ve spent together at Kara’s old house when the three of us needed nothing more than each other.
Except, when the only two people here are me and Ollie, it definitely looks romantic.
“I didn’t know you still had a key?” Ollie says, folding his arms across his chest.
“We didn’t know we’d be interrupting something,” Hattie says, her tone and raised eyebrows making me feel like my parents have walked in on me doing something inappropriate.
Ollie and I search each other’s eyes for an explanation until he finally speaks up. “You’re not interrupting anything.”
“Yeah, we were just hanging out. We’ve already had dinner.”
“Well, I hope you’ve still got room for samosas.” Hattie drags Kara to the kitchen as if she never left, and I hear two corks pop in quick succession.
“Wine, babe?” she calls through.
“Yes, please,” I answer without thinking, even though I can’t think of anything worse than drinking right now. The shock of my friends walking in on me wearing the clothes of the roommate I’ve insisted nothing is going on with is making me feel sick.
“I’m sorry,” I mouth at Ollie, who is only standing three feet away but might as well be on another planet for how distant he now feels.
“It’s cool,” he says, dragging his mask off and scrunching it into a ball. He forces a smile and squeezes my shoulder gently. “Now it really is girl's night, eh?”
His tone is forced, but I know he’s disappointed, and I am too. This was our Friday night, and surprise guests require energy reserves I just don’t have. While the girls make themselves at home around me, I watch him leave, his shoulders slumped.
Kara finds a comfortable position on the sofa, plumping a cushion behind her back. “What are we watching?”
“ Talented Mr Ripley .”
“Oh, I love it,” she says, but I grab the remote and turn it off. I don’t want to watch the rest without Ollie. We're working our way through Matt Damon's best movies, and I might have seen it before, but he hasn’t.
“I’m not really in the mood for a movie now. Tell me all your news. How’s the baby doing?”
“Baby is good. I’m twenty weeks now.” She lifts her top to show me her belly. “Look at my bump. Isn’t she cute?”
“ She ?” I gasp, and Kara nods, her eyes sparkling as she beams at me. Hattie's focus is solely on her dinner. “Did you know already?”
“Know what?” she mumbles around a forkful of rice.
“We're having a girl,” Kara clarifies.
Hattie's eyes light up, and I breathe a sigh of relief. “Nice! Rob owes me fifty quid.”
“You bet on the gender?” I scoot closer to Kara and covering her hand with mine.
“Why not?” she laughs. “We bet on everything else.”
“A little girl. How amazing is that?” This is really happening. My best friend is going to have a daughter. “How’ve you been feeling?”
“Mostly good. I had a couple of weeks where I was puking every day but it seems to have passed and now I’m just hungry all the time. Exhausted too, so I might not stay long.”
“That’s OK, babe,” I say, squeezing her leg. “It’s so nice to see you.”
And that part is true. Ollie has been a wonderful distraction, but I’ve really missed my friends these past few months. Things have shifted in our dynamic and I’ve felt us drifting, but it wasn’t long ago I was complaining about being lonely, and a night with just us three is exactly what I wanted. If the universe heard me wishing for us to be closer again, hopefully she’s working on the rest of my dreams, too.
Pregnancy dominates the conversation while they eat their food, and once they’ve finished, Hattie takes their plates to the kitchen, returning with the rest of the bottle of wine. “So when are we going to talk about the fact that we walked in on you and babyboy snuggling up earlier?”
“We’re not, because you didn’t.”
“So you weren’t hanging out on the sofa together in your PJs doing facemasks? You weren’t sharing a big bowl of popcorn, fingertips gently grazing each other every time you reached for another piece?” She swoons, flopping back with her hand pressed to her forehead. “You weren’t about to have a big old make out sesh?”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“You’re seriously telling me nothing is going on with that cutie?”
I busy myself with setting everything back to normal on the coffee table. “Nothing is going on.”
“You’re a stronger woman than me,” she laughs, and though I know it’s just Hattie being Hattie, I resent the implication that I’m weak because I haven’t tried to have sex with Ollie. “I’d have shagged him in every room of the house if I had to live with him.”
“Well, it’s a good job you can do that with the actual man you live with, isn’t it?” I snap back.
“Are you still thinking about him when you wank?” she retaliates, and I flap my hands as if I can magically bat her words away.
“ Shhh! Keep your voice down or he’ll hear you,” I protest, despite knowing how fast my heart rate rose when I had the chance to smooth his mask on earlier. He bit his lip, then his eyes flicked down to mine and for a moment I thought he might kiss me. That was going to be the start of the fantasy for tonight's spin on my vibrator.
I gave up pretending I'm not using him for masturbation material weeks ago. It was pointless even trying to conjure the image of anyone else. If that makes me a bad person, well, I already feel like crap about my life. Can't get much worse.
Kara sits in the armchair, her thumb rubbing across the side of her belly absentmindedly, and I wonder if I really would prefer a baby to the way I’m feeling right now.
I might know plenty about working with teenagers, but a newborn suddenly seems like such an enormous responsibility. A whole life to look after, to shape into a decent human being. I can barely get my own life in order, let alone that of an infant.
“Anyway, I’ve joined a dating app,” I confess, desperate to steer our conversation away from babies and Ollie.
“Oh my God!” they shriek at the same time.
“Give me your phone right now,” Hattie says, topping up her wine glass. “Let’s go man shopping.”
After an initial flurry of messages that went nowhere, I found myself avoiding the app entirely. Still, it's nice for my love life to be the focus for a change, so I unlock my phone and hand it over. Kara and I sit either side of Hattie and it’s almost like we’re fifteen again, swooning over photos of boys on Tumblr.
I let them pick and choose, critique and analyse, knowing it’s not that serious. I doubt I'll be following up with anyone.
“Ooh, I’ve slept with him,” Hattie says when a guy in a football kit appears on screen. “You’d like his dick. Nice and thick, if I recall correctly.”
“Don’t match with people you already know!” I scold.
Hattie was a strict one-night-only girl before she fell in love with Rob, and I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me she might have already hooked up with some of the men I've spoken to.
Kara kicks her legs up and down. “Imagine you fall in love with one of these guys, then you bring him to Sunday lunch and it turns out he's already shagged Hattie?”
The wine sours in my throat. At my age, I’m not expecting to meet someone who has never been in a relationship before, but I definitely don’t want someone who’s slept with my friend. I’ve had enough of feeling second best. I want a man who’ll put me first.
“Ooh, fresh meat,” Hattie says, swiping quickly through another profile. “Let’s say hi.”