‘And?’
‘And what?’
‘Is it going to happen then?’
‘Is what going to happen?’
‘Come on, mate, you know damn well what I’m talking about. Is tonight the night Freddie finally becomes a man?’
‘Working on it pal, working on it.’ Freddie’s stomach swooped.
‘See, your problem is,’ Baz leaned in close, smelling of beer and late-night musk, ‘that you put too much focus on it. That’s what your problem is. You think that sex is the be-all and end-all. That it’s the culmination of true romance and all that crap.’
‘I don’t think that.’
‘Freddie, it’s just sex! There doesn’t have to be any greater meaning to it. Just two meat-sacks, slapping together and having fun.’
‘That’s gross Baz.’
‘It’s not gross. That’s sex!’
Freddie gave Baz an affectionate double-tap on the shoulder before he headed past, careful to look as if he was moving with intention and not desperately searching, in case his friend was still watching him.
‘I just thought, you know, if you wanted to go somewhere, I’m sure there’s somewhere quieter we could go?’ Kate wasn’t sure her words were making sense, because the boy in front of her looked utterly startled.
‘Do I know you?’ he asked.
‘You don’t know me, but I know you. And I also know that it’s loud in here, and that we could go somewhere quieter if you like?’
The rush of confidence, the thrill of the glow, was fast fading. Why did he look so scared? Isn’t this what all guys wanted? To have it laid on thick, to literally have a girl fall at their feet?
‘I don’t know if you think I’m someone else maybe?’
‘Come on, let’s get out of here . . .’ Kate was starting to feel as if her heels were too high, that her lipstick desperately needed touching up, and that the double-sided sticky tape she was using to make sure her dress didn’t gape obscenely was coming undone. This wasn’t the way it was meant to be going.
‘Sweetheart, are you OK?’ someone else now, a girl with a kind voice and a concerned face.
‘I’m fine,’ Kate said, pulling back and looking around for Lindsey and Pippa.
‘I just think that maybe you should get some water or something?’ the girl said.
‘And I just think you should get out of my friend’s face!’ Suddenly Pippa was there. Too much there.
‘Easy, OK? I was just trying to help.’
‘I think you could help a lot more by staying out of my friend’s business, OK?’
‘Excuse me? It was your friend who lunged at my boyfriend.’
Boyfriend? Oh crap. Kate hoped that the layers of foundation she was wearing would hide her reddening face.
Kate looked around anxiously for a gap in the crowd to escape through, but her brain seemed to be slowing down just as the music felt like it was speeding up. When she turned to check that her friends were following her, she saw Pippa reaching out a palm towards the girl’s face, Lindsey struggling to hold her back.
Lindsey called out, ‘Help me hold her!’
‘We should really get her home,’ Kate said.
‘No, this is meant to be your night. And you know what Pippa gets like. She just needs a glass of water and some time on the naughty steps outside.’
Kate watched as the guy she had technically assaulted and his girlfriend made their getaway. She didn’t want to go home. The night was young and she had a mission to complete. But Pippa was swaying dangerously and looked as though she was about to puke.
‘We should take her back to halls,’ Kate said, trying not to sound too sad about it. Lindsey looked at her appreciatively with panda-like smudges of eyeliner under her already tired eyes, her usually bouncy brown curls limp and flat around her face.
‘I know it sucks, but it’s not as if tonight is the last chance you’re going to get to have sex or anything,’ she said, stroking back Pippa’s damp hair.
Lindsey was right, Kate thought, but that wasn’t the point. Not exactly. She knew there’d be more chances to lose her virginity – there had to be – but tonight was the last night she’d be able to truthfully say that she ‘lost it at uni’. From now on, she was a bona-fide adult, a graduate who was expected to know all about the intricacies and intimacies of life. From now on, for whoever she met, being a virgin could only be decidedly and horribly weird. Damn it, Pippa.
That was it. The dream was over. The friend code trumped the sex code, always and for ever. Kate knew that.
Lindsey took one of Pippa’s arms over her shoulder and Kate took the other as they left the ballroom, staggered through the lobby and back to the door. On the steps leading down to the road, she saw that tall, gawky boy again, gazing mournfully down at the ground, as if he’d just been told the worst news of his life. Kate felt a wave of sympathy. At least she wasn’t the only one having a terrible night.
Freddie had seen her. She had been there the whole time. Wrapped up in the arms of someone else. Someone wearing a shirt so tight it looked as if his muscles might burst through like the Hulk on a rager.
He didn’t want to be the creep who stood and watched another couple kissing, so he had moved by relatively quickly, but then he had to go back to check because there was always the possibility that his mind was playing tricks on him, that he had got the angle wrong. But nope. It was Camellia. That same short hair, tonight styled to flare out in a wild, spiky aura around her face, the nose-ring and the clompy Doc Martens (which, paired with a tulle-underskirted dress, made her look twice as cool as she usually did). There was no doubt.
She hadn’t liked him, after all. Or, at least, if she had liked him, it certainly hadn’t been in the way that he had hoped. A part of him wanted to march right over and demand the Yorkie back. Another part of him just wanted the earth to swallow him up.
‘Taking a breather?’ Baz joined him on the steps outside the hall and took out a cigarette.
‘What?’
‘How’s Camellia? Going well?’
Freddie didn’t often make bad decisions, but his heart was hurting, and he wouldn’t have been able to stand any of Baz’s sympathy.
‘Just waiting for her, actually,’ he said. He looked up towards the sky, hoping to see stars, hoping for divine reassurance. Instead he got the murky purple of night-time London clouds.
‘Yeah?’
‘We’re going back to hers. She just needed to get her stuff from the cloakroom.’
‘Come on my son! I knew you could do it!’
Freddie hoped his silence was conveying a quiet, satisfied confidence rather than how he was really feeling.
Baz was rambling on. ‘See, I knew it would happen for you. So what if it was the last night? That’s your style, isn’t it: save the best for last. I’m proud of you, mate.’
After an affectionate pat on the back, Baz wandered off to find someone who might have a working lighter. Freddie took the opportunity to make his escape and stepped down to the road, turning right. He had no idea where he was going, he just knew that he had to get out of there as quickly as possible.