Chapter Three
A couple of days later the Student Union hires out a dingy nightclub and Liv and I spend such an age together perfecting our make-up in her bathroom, winding the boys up no end as we take our own sweet time, that we are now late, squeezing ourselves into a taxi that Ben offered to pay for as he didn’t want to wait another half an hour for a bus.
The club is dark and moody and it’s playing a collection of remixed pop that Liv and I are pretty happy about, but Ben fancies himself as a part-time DJ, despite the lack of decks in his room.
He left them at home in Wiltshire, allegedly.
He’s got mixed views about the music playing, but I suspect he’s only pretending he’s not having a good time as I can see his body start to move to the beat.
Ollie looks more hesitant than anyone else here and I grab his hand, force him into a reluctant dance, twirling him around the way my mum used to in our tiny kitchen when I was a kid.
‘What are you doing?’ Ollie laughs and I watch the smile break his features into merriment. I now love how he does that – smiles so easily. I was right, we just needed to break the ice.
‘Making you smile,’ I tell him. ‘Forcing you to have a good time.’
‘I am having a good time,’ he says.
‘Yeah?’ I pout at him as if I don’t believe him. ‘Try telling your face.’
‘Oh, come on!’ he shouts over the music. ‘We can’t all be twenty-four-hour party people.’
‘Yes, we can,’ I say. I’m so happy, surrounded by my new favourite people, my new favourite friends who are swiftly becoming family.
‘Ugh, OK,’ he moans as Liv and Ben bounce around us, fists in the air as we attempt various moves to ‘Girls Like’ by Tinie Tempah.
I hold Ollie’s hand as we dance, sort of raising our fists together, holding our bottles of VK Blue in our free hands. The smile on Ollie’s face continues while we dance and then the DJ throws us seamlessly into a Chainsmokers song.
Ben lurches over. ‘Drinks?’ he shouts, still bouncing.
‘It’s my turn.’ I gesture to everyone that they’re having the same again because I can carry four bottles, but I can’t carry pints.
They agree and I dance my way to the bar, determinedly and fully committing to the groove.
I arrive at the bar and pull out a twenty.
It’s union prices in here tonight, so four drinks won’t cost that much, but I’ve worked out that waving my sacred twenty-pound note gets the attention of the barman quicker than a tenner does.
I’m correct and the barman shoots me an appreciative look, takes my order when I am definitely not first in the queue.
‘Four VK Blue, please, but I think these guys are next.’ I gesture to, basically, everyone else along the bar, but the server has already started clicking open bottles. I notice Ben beside me. ‘Where’d you come from?’ I ask.
‘Thought you might like a hand.’
‘Ah, cheers,’ I respond.
‘I’ve had the best few days,’ Ben says.
‘Me too.’
‘I think we got really lucky in our flat.’
‘Definitely,’ I reply. ‘I think we got really lucky with our block.’ I take the bottles and hand over my twenty, wait for my change and hand Ben two bottles to carry back.
We got the party started in the flat long before we went out, operating an open-door policy so that some of the other flats could party with us.
So now we’re already buzzing on the excitement of the past few days settling in, and on the vodka my mum left as a flat-warming treat.
These bottles of noxious nuclear booze are hitting the spot, though.
Ben and I move away from the bar and back towards our friends. Liv’s gallantly taken over my duties, holding on to Ollie, swaying with him drunkenly to the beat, and he looks as if he’s enjoying himself now, one hand on her back as she grinds into him. Actually he looks a bit bemused.
He glances at me, stretches his hand out and I palm him his drink.
Liv turns, sees me and beams me her bright, happy smile and I hand her a bottle.
I love Liv. Already she’s like a sister.
And I’ve never had a sibling before. I wonder if she and Ollie might get it on?
She looks keen. I want to shake some fun into him. Liv might shake some fun into him.
Ben looks cool tonight. He’s got the same Ralph Lauren polo shirt that Ollie’s wearing, which made me laugh when they both emerged from their separate rooms wearing the same outfit. Neither could be bothered to change, so Ben’s accessorised his with his battered leather jacket.
‘You not hot in that jacket?’ I ask. I thought he’d want to put it in the cloakroom when we arrived, but he’s wearing it determinedly.
‘A bit,’ he grins. ‘But on reflection I’m not twinning with boyo over there, so it’s staying on. Come here,’ he says, pulling me towards him, and I dance with my friend the way Liv’s dancing with Ollie, a little manically.
‘What are you doing?’ Ben laughs. ‘You look deranged.’
‘I think I might be drunk,’ I say. ‘I dance like a robot if I’m drunk.’
‘I’m not drunk and I always dance like a robot,’ he replies.
‘No, you don’t. You’re a really good dancer,’ I fib. Then I decide to tell the truth. ‘You need to lighten up and stop trying to look cool,’ I say.
‘What?’ he asks, looking offended.
‘You heard me,’ I say, taking a swig of my drink.
‘Maybe I’m just nervous,’ he says.
I scoff and then realise he’s being serious. ‘You? Nervous?’
‘Yeah,’ he shrugs. ‘Why not?’
‘Because you’re … you.’
He laughs, sips his drink. ‘What does that mean?’
‘You’re Ben. You’re cool. Effortless. By far the best-looking guy in the room. You’re nervous in a nightclub? What about?’
‘I’m the best-looking guy in the room? I’m going to remember that for ever. Maybe I’m nervous about looking like a loser. Maybe I’m nervous about looking like a loser in front of you.’
I smile, drink, then fully pay attention to what he’s said. ‘Me?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Specifically me?’ I query, as this doesn’t sound right.
He chuckles. ‘Yeah. You think I’m cool and effortless. Have you seen yourself?’
I scoff again. ‘As if.’
‘It’s true,’ he says and his expression is genuine. ‘You are the fittest girl here.’
I roll my eyes at this blatant fib.
‘Seriously. You must see it. You’re beautiful. All six foot twenty-eight of you.’
I really laugh now. ‘Six foot twenty-eight? How dare you?’ I tease. And then, more seriously, ‘I’m too tall for a girl.’ I am. I can see over everyone’s heads in here. I feel like a giant, regretting my choice of heels. It only exacerbates the problem, but I do love a nice Topshop heel.
‘No such thing as being too tall for a girl,’ Ben says, moving closer.
And there’s something in his eyes that says he’s going to kiss me unless I stop it.
I may have to stop it. A little snog might be nice, but I’m not sure it’s wise, seeing as we flat-share together.
But if this gorgeous man who’s making me feel like a million dollars is going to kiss me, then I might well throw caution to the wind and let him – here, in this sweaty, cheap nightclub in our first week of uni.
It doesn’t have to mean anything. It can just be a thrill – be a kiss. Why not?
‘And you just say it,’ he continues, heaping praise, and I continue lapping it up, because why stop a man when he’s mid-flow telling you how fantastic you are.
No one does that. Especially when you really fancy the person saying it.
Because I do. I really fancy Ben. Who wouldn’t?
He’s the epitome of gorgeous. And I’m sure, for a forty-second snog, I can forget that his parents still give him an allowance, or pocket money, or whatever it’s called at his age.
‘Whatever it is, you just say it,’ Ben goes on. ‘No holds barred. I love that. And you dance like no one’s watching and I wish I could do that, but I can’t. And it makes you cool and fun, and people like you – I like you.’
‘I like you too,’ I reply and I’m not sure what I’ve said, but I do like Ben.
I like him more now than I did a little while ago, and I liked him a whole heap then.
He’s made himself entirely vulnerable, in the middle of a nightclub in a suburb of North London, to a girl he’s only known a couple of days.
But I can’t link together the try-hard Ben of the past few days with the Ben standing in front of me, letting out his fear that he doesn’t want to look like a loser.
‘Ben,’ I say softly.
He moves closer, his hand edging up to pull a long strand of my hair back, draping it over my shoulder to join the rest of my hair. I’m roasting, sweating from all the dancing, and he seems hot in that jacket, both in terms of degrees centigrade and looks.
‘Aurora,’ he says over the hum of the music, the dance floor vibrating beneath us.
‘You smell lovely,’ I mutter as he leans in, because he does smell fantastic.
‘Thanks,’ he says, leaning closer still.
‘Lynx Africa?’ I murmur teasingly.
He laughs out the words ‘Fuck off’, and then his mouth meets mine and I’m swept up in the intensity and raw sexuality that is Ben, in the kiss that seals his mouth to mine, in the heat of his tongue as it sweeps mine back and forth, making me melt in the solar plexus – our joint taste of VK Blue uniting us.
I think I moan. I think he does too. And we stand kissing like that for far too long, hands on each other, inhaling each other, devouring each other in this incredibly public space, surrounded by hundreds of people, but seen by no one because no one cares.
No one’s looking and we aren’t the only ones doing it.
We’re all away from home, we’ve been let off our leashes, some of us for the first time ever.
This, with Ben, is exploratory. It’s just a kiss.
We can still be friends in the morning. It might be a little bit odd, but I’m adult enough not to make a thing of it if he gets off with someone else tomorrow night, and the night after that.
Because this is Ben, and I can see that’s probably his way.
Whatever happens, we’ll be friends for ever. I can feel it.
‘Do you want to get out of here?’ Ben asks as the DJ changes the song and a natural pause forces us out of our kiss. I’m breathing so hard and there’s a look in his eyes that’s unmistakable.
Oh, does Ben mean what I think he means?
He does, doesn’t he? That could be a terrible idea.
Or it could be a great idea, although it sprang out of a short but delicious kiss.
I need to think about this, rationalise it.
I’m not marrying the man; I’m simply sleeping with him.
Scratching an itch. Just this once and then, in a couple of hours when it’s all over, we’ll go back to what we were.
No one else has to know. Least of all Ollie and Liv, although ditching them so suddenly might be a bit obvious. I glance over to them.
‘They’ll be fine,’ Ben says, gesturing to our friends, who are a few people away from us, dancing, looking into each other’s eyes so intensely.
Ollie’s eyes flick in our direction, sensing he’s being watched, but he doesn’t really see us – sort of sees through us, and then he flicks his gaze back to Liv and she tips her head towards him as he leans in, kisses her.
My mouth opens in surprise and I’m sure I blink. ‘Oh,’ I mutter in surprise, because I genuinely wasn’t expecting to see that. I’m a little taken aback at the pace of it. But then the pace between Ben and me has ramped up from out of nowhere.
Ben’s hand finds mine. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Before they get home and ruin it.’
I put my hand in Ben’s and together we leave the club.