Falling for the man of her dreams…

Ruby Wood is perfectly happy playing the dating game – until she has a red-hot dream about her very attractive flatmate, Nick. He might spend every day saving lives as a junior doctor, but he’s absolutely the last man on earth that fun-loving Ruby would ever date!

The solution? Focus on all of Nick’s bad points. And if that fails, up her dating antics and find herself a man! So what if she manages to make disapproving, goody two-shoes Nick jealous in the process…

Only, after a series of nightmare first dates, there’s still just one man on Ruby’s mind. Maybe it’s time to admit the truth and dare to ask Nick to be her next date?

Also by Portia MacIntosh

Between a Rockstar and a Hard Place

How Not to be Starstruck

Bad Bridesmaid

Drive Me Crazy

Praise for PORTIA MACINTOSH

‘Impossible to put down, hilarious, fun, flirty and packed with excitement.’

— Victoria Loves Books on How Not to be Starstruck

**

‘A brilliant story full of fun, gorgeous rockstars, big egos and great friendships.’

— A Novel Thought on How Not to be Starstruck

**

‘Absolutely hilarious’

— Books and Bookends on Bad Bridesmaid

**

‘Sex and the City meets Gossip Girl … Very, very enjoyable read and can’t wait for more!’

— M’s Bookshelf on How Not to be Starstruck

**

‘A must-read for any one fancying a light heart and humour read, which can be devoured in one sitting.’

— Compelling Reads on How Not to be Starstruck

**

‘Fun-filled, sweet, crazy and always entertaining. Portia MacIntosh wrote a fab book.’

— Reviewed the Book on How Not to be Starstruck

**

‘Portia’s books guarantee a laugh out loud read and I wasn't disappointed with this one!’

— Comet Babes Books on Drive Me Crazy

**

‘A brilliantly fun story, that is incredibly entertaining, and highly enjoyable.’

— Rachel’s Random Reads on Drive Me Crazy

Truth or Date

Portia MacIntosh

Copyright

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2016

Copyright © Portia MacIntosh 2016

Portia MacIntosh asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © April 2016 ISBN: 9781474049610

Version date: 2018-10-18

PORTIA MACINTOSH

has been ‘making stuff up’ for as long as she can remember – or so she says. Whether it was blaming her siblings for that broken vase when she was growing up, blagging her way backstage during her rock chick phase or, most recently, whatever justification she can fabricate to explain away those lunchtime cocktails, Portia just loves telling tales. After years working as a music journalist, Portia decided it was time to use her powers for good and started writing novels. Taking inspiration from her experiences on tour with bands, the real struggle of dating in your twenties and just trying to survive as an adult human female generally, Portia writes about what it’s really like for women who don’t find this life stuff as easy as it seems.

You can follow her on Twitter at: @PortiaMacIntosh

I’d like to say a super-massive thank you to my fabulous editor, Charlotte, for all of her support and hard work, and thank you to Victoria, Clio, Rhea and all of the other people behind the scenes at HQ Digital who take what I write and package it up in a way that makes it a thousand times better. From your solid guidance to the incredible covers you create for me, I couldn’t imagine doing this with anyone else.

Writing under a pen name is tricky, it means that I have a very small group of people around me giving me support, but I get so much, I may as well have an army behind me. Thank you to my fellow HQ Digital authors for always holding my hand, thank you to all of the wonderful book bloggers who kindly spread the word about my books and the biggest thank you ever to my readers for their continued support. To be about to publish my fifth book is unreal, but to have people actually read and enjoy them is just beyond my wildest dreams.

Thank you to my rockstar, for always having my back no matter what. Thank you to A for being a wonderful lady. Thank you to my siblings for everything they do for me, for always keeping me in stitches and synonyms – depending on which one I needed at that particular moment in time. Thank you to my parents for always standing by me – especially my incredible mum who, despite having so much to contend with, has endless time and support for me. I would not be doing this without her.

Thank you to Handsome Face, my ambassador/admiral, for taking care of me and helping me out more than he’ll ever realise.

The biggest shout-out of all has to go to every bad date I have ever been on – I cannot believe I shaved my legs for you, but thanks for all the inspiration.

For Handsome Face

*fist-bump*

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Book List

Praise

Title Page

Copyright

Author Bio

Acknowledgement

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Excerpt

Endpages

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

‘You look good in red,’ Nick tells me, stifling a laugh.

Were I not so happy to have just tied the knot with the love of my life, I would’ve climbed the nearest palm tree, removed the biggest coconut I could find and thrown it at my darling hubby because, as much as I love him, I hate it when he’s right. Last week as we shopped for the few last bits for our honeymoon, I dragged Nick into Hollister where I saw this beautiful cream sundress. I knew that it would be perfect for our trip to Hawaii, but Nick didn’t seem convinced. He just doesn’t buy into fashion, he’s one of those guys who just doesn’t get it, whereas I’m the kind of girl who would swap a kidney for a Hermès bag. It wasn’t so much the price Nick took issue with (although he did say it was a lot of money for very little material), what he worried about most was the fact the dress was cream.

‘You’ll spill,’ he told me as I admired it on its hanger.

‘Fuck off,’ I replied.

‘You will,’ he insisted. ‘You’re the messiest girl in the world.’

Of course, this just made me want the dress all the more, so I bought it and here we are, the first day of our honeymoon and I’ve spilled my Lava Flow cocktail all the way down the front. Just like Nick said I would.

Nick retrieves the chunk of pineapple that garnished my drink from my cleavage and pops it in his mouth.

‘I told you you’d spill on it,’ he chuckles. ‘It’s a miracle you didn’t spill on your wedding dress.’

‘That’s because I couldn’t eat in it,’ I admit, although it wasn’t because I didn’t want to. ‘If I so much as inhaled too deeply, it felt like it might burst open – and flashing my boobs on my wedding day is just the kind of Carry On moment you expect of me. None of the glossy wedding mags prepare you for the fact that your wedding dress will be the most uncomfortable thing you’ll ever wear.’

‘Yeah, they don’t warn you that the first thing your new bride will do when she gets to the honeymoon suite will be hurry off her dress before pillaging the minibar either.’

I scoop some of the cocktail slush from my chest and flick it at Nick’s bare stomach. He just laughs, lying back on the sand to catch some rays.

‘Throw it in the sea,’ he suggests. ‘Back to its natural habitat. I’ll bet it has missed the sound of the waves in the shop – so stupid.’

‘Leave Hollister out of this,’ I snap, jokily.

I peel off my dress, lie down on the sand next to Nick and rest my head gently on his bicep.

‘I’ll tan weird if you cuddle me,’ he laughs, the sweltering heat from the Hawaiian sun beaming down on us.

‘You’ll get over it,’ I reply.

Lying here with the man of my dreams, with nothing but the peaceful sound of the ocean filling my ears and the delicious smell of strawberries filling my nostrils, I sigh and smile to myself. I am so disgustingly happy.

Unable to resist him a second longer, I climb on top of Nick, leaning forwards to kiss him passionately. He places his hands on my hips before running them slowly up my body. I part our lips, but only so I can moan softly at his touch.

‘I love you, Nick,’ I tell him.

‘I love you too, Ruby,’ he replies. ‘Ruby…Ruby…Ruby…’

Nick’s voice grows louder, louder still and then more aggressive. It sounds like he’s pissed off, come to think of it.

‘Ruby,’ he shouts. ‘Wake up.’

I jolt awake suddenly, sitting upright.

‘What the hell?’ he asks, angrily.

I glance around for a second, taking in my surroundings… I’m not in Hawaii at all, I’m in my living room. I’m not wearing a bikini, I’m in my underwear. I’m not lying on a beach, I’m on top of Ben, a guy I’ve been seeing for a couple of weeks. Oh, and Nick isn’t my husband, he’s my flatmate. My boring, stuck up, joyless flatmate that I can’t stand. And I was just having a sex dream about him – eww! I feel my cheeks flush with shame – not because he’s caught me semi-naked with a bloke, but because I was dreaming about him. That I was in love with him, that I’d married him… I was about to have sex with him!

‘What time is it?’ I ask him, rubbing my tired eyes, only to cover my hands in black eye make-up.

‘It’s 7am,’ he tells me, his eyes shooting laser beams of judgement at me as he glares. Luckily for me I’m used to Nick looking down his nose at me, and anyway, the sheer volume of body glitter I’m wearing can easily deflect even the strongest laser.

‘What day is it?’ I ask.

Nick shakes his head and sighs.

‘Friday. It’s Friday, Ruby.’

‘Oh fuck, I’m at work in an hour,’ I reply as I massage my temples, my hangover from last night now in full force.

As Nick stands over me, eating a bowl of Weetabix like he does every morning after he gets back from the gym, about to head out to his proper serious job, I can feel him judging me. It’s not my fault he doesn’t know how to have fun, is it?

‘So this is your online dating weirdo, how are things going?’ he asks, nodding towards the heavily tattooed, muscular man that I’m using as a bed. I take a moment too long to answer. ‘That badly?’

‘All good,’ I reply, unconvincingly. I’ve been dating Ben for about three weeks now, and things aren’t exactly going that well. Last night was our third date, and despite every girly magazine I could get my hands on assuring me that date three was when the magic happened, the magic did not happen last night. Still, from the way Nick is looking at me right now, I doubt he believes that. In Nick’s head I’m his hoe-bag flatmate who seemingly ploughs through internet dates, when in reality that’s not the case – I wish I were getting even one per cent of the action Nick thought I was.

Nick fakes a gasp.

‘Are you telling me that you hooked up with a guy you met via your phone and it’s not a fairy tale romance?’ he asks sarcastically.

I cast my mind back to our date last night. As much as I don’t want to give Nick the satisfaction of being right, the need to tell someone feels greater.

‘Things have been going well, it’s just…I met up with him yesterday and he told me he was taking me to a family party,’ I start.

‘Weird,’ Nick chimes in. ‘You’ve only been on a couple of dates with him, kid.’

‘I know, and weirder still: what he didn’t tell me was that it was a wake.’

‘A wake?’ Nick echoes loudly in disbelief, and in a much higher pitch than his voice usually is.

‘I’m awake, I’m awake,’ Ben says, panicked as he jumps to his feet. He does so without having realised I was on top of him, causing me to fall back onto the sofa. As he glances between an angry-looking Nick, and me in my underwear, he puts two and two together – coming up with wrong answer.

‘Look, calm down, nothing happened, OK? I didn’t sleep with your girlfriend,’ Ben babbles, stressing it in such a way that makes it sound like this is an excuse he has to make often.

‘Oh, charming,’ I say, annoyed that Ben thinks I’m the kind of girl who would have a boyfriend and still date around, but he isn’t listening.

‘She’s not my girlfriend, she’s my roommate,’ Nick corrects him.

I watch as Ben expresses visible relief.

‘Well, in that case, good to meet you, I’m Jonathan,’ he chirps, offering Nick a hand to shake. Nick doesn’t oblige.

‘Your name is Jonathan? I’ve spent three dates calling you Ben,’ I blurt out.

‘Yeah, I thought that was like a cute nickname or something,’ he laughs.

I giggle, puzzled, but what I see as a hilarious story for my blog, Nick is unimpressed by.

‘I just don’t get you, Ruby Wood,’ Nick says angrily, pointlessly using my full name like a pissed-off parent. ‘What are you doing with your life?’

‘What are you, my fucking dad? Why can’t you just be cool?’ I ask him, sounding like a teenager whose dad just confiscated her cigarettes – incidentally, something Nick has done with me before. In the end it was just easier to quit smoking than it was to put up with his complaints and his borderline OCD smell-removal techniques.

‘I’ve got to get to work,’ Nick tells us. He heads to the kitchen, rinses his bowl and spoon, places them in the dishwasher and then leaves without so much as a ‘see you later’.

Jonathan – not Ben – and I are sitting on the sofa next to each other awkwardly.

‘So your roommate seems fun,’ Jonathan says sarcastically.

‘He really is like my dad or my granddad or something,’ I reply, irritated, still sounding like a teenager.

‘You should move out,’ he tells me, like maybe that hadn’t crossed my mind.

‘There’s no way I can find a flat this central for this cheap,’ I tell him honestly. ‘Nick comes from a super-rich family, but he won’t take any money off them, so he reckons he can’t afford to move either. If either of us should move out, it should be him, don’t you think?’

‘Yeah, maybe,’ Jonathan replies, followed by an awkward silence.

I wonder how I managed to call him by the wrong name for so long. I suppose that’s app dating for you, it’s like fishing with multiple lines. I guess as I reeled this one in, I mixed up his name with a different fish.

‘Listen, Ruby, we’ve had fun right?’

I think for moment. No. No we haven’t. On our first date he suggested we go to the cinema – a rookie error, because it involves sitting in silence for two hours – and on the second we went to a bar and got drunk. Oh, and then the wake date. Jonathan is a good-looking dude, but he’s a bit weird. There’s something almost tortured about his personality, like he’s got some issues he needs to work through. Don’t we all, though? Still, he does have his good qualities too, so I’m happy to see where this goes. I’m not going to ditch the guy just because he took me to a family funeral without telling me.

‘We have,’ I lie with a warm smile.

‘Well, I think we should call it a day,’ he tells me. I feel my smile drop.

‘What?’

‘I just…I think we’re moving in different directions.’

‘Oh my God, seriously? Are you really giving me the old lines? Is it not me, is it you?’

Jonathan grabs my hand.

‘It is me,’ he assures me, giving my hand a reassuring squeeze.

‘You’re damn fucking right it’s you,’ I reply.

Jonathan drops my hand and jumps to his feet, wrestling his clothes on as he talks, his tone suddenly becoming significantly less friendly.

‘OK, cards on the table, when we got back last night I thought I might get lucky, but you didn’t even want to sleep with me,’ he explains.

‘Dude, we’d just got back from your dad’s wake – that you didn’t even tell me we were going to.’

Oh, did I not mention that it was his dad’s funeral? I suppose I didn’t want to give Nick too much ammunition when he teases me about this every day until one of us moves out.

‘Yeah, well don’t you think I needed some comfort after that?’

‘So I’m supposed to bang you out of sheer sympathy?’

‘Well, it would’ve been nice,’ he replies, like it’s a fairly reasonable expectation.

‘You’re disgusting, get out,’ I demand.

Jonathan puts on his shoes and heads for the door, slamming it behind him.

Lying back on the sofa, I massage my temples for a moment. My head is banging, and I’ve got to be at work in an hour. Is getting dumped a good enough reason to call in sick?

‘Awkward,’ I say to myself. ‘So, so awkward.’ Not only what just happened with Jonathan, but my dream about Nick too. Not only do Nick and I not get on, but we’re like enemies, both driving the other crazy, but neither of us in a position to move out. The fact we’re stuck with one another only makes us hate each other even more.

I glance around the floor for my outfit from last night, only to find that Nick has folded my dress and placed it neatly over the back of the sofa. I grab it, shaking my head at his anal neatness as I meaningfully and defiantly unfold it. All communal areas of the house must be neat and tidy to a military standard. Sir, yes, sir.

Tossing my clothes through my bedroom doorway, I head straight for the shower. I know that I’m running late, but after an uncomfortable night on the sofa cuddled up to a sweaty, emotional wreck of a man, there’s no way I can go to work without washing some of yesterday’s failed date off of me. I’m literally going to wash Jonathan out of my hair – well, his sweat and tears at least.

I turn on the shower, cranking up the hot water to make the bathroom nice and steamy while I brush my teeth. I’ve got that fuzzy mouth feeling you’re left with after too many sugary alcoholic drinks. Typically, I’m out of toothpaste, but that’s what flatmates are for, right? Borrowing things from.

I can see from Nick’s toothpaste tube that he’s used approximately 1/8 so far, with the used 1/8 neatly folded over a few times, thus giving the appearance of a perfectly full, slightly smaller tool. Does he really have that much spare time on his hands? Really? In another act of defiance, I not only use his toothpaste, but I squeeze from the middle of the tube, leaving behind a big, fingertip-shaped dent in it.

Finally stepping into the hot shower feels glorious, I can feel my bad date washing off me. Sure, I’m annoyed at how he behaved, but mostly I’m just annoyed to have another bad date on my romantic CV. Hardly seems worth putting Jonathan down, for a mere three weeks, but they always say it’s better to put jobs down that you didn’t have for long/got fired from, rather than have big, unaccounted-for gaps in your employment, right?

I grab my delicious-smelling pina colada-scented shower gel and rub it all over my body. I love the smell of it because it reminds me of my two favourite things: cocktails and the beach. Which reminds me, I’m not only washing away Jonathan, I need to scrub myself clean of that sex dream about Nick. Nick Hall! I can’t believe it.

I think to myself as I shampoo my hair. I’ll admit that the first time I met Nick right here in this very flat, the first thing I noticed about him was how sexy he was. A sexy doctor, no less – that’s like every girl’s fantasy. Sharing this small space didn’t suit us though, and it’s amazing how quickly you can go off a person when they start to grate on you. One thing I can definitely put on my CV is that I’m not shallow, because not even Nick’s chiselled good looks, bulging biceps or romance novel-worthy profession can sway how I feel about him.

So why the hell did I dream that about him today? It can’t mean anything, can it? All that stuff about dreams meaning things has got to be a load of bollocks.

I shut off the water, and shut my dream about Nick out of my mind.

Once in the messy confines of my bedroom – where I am free to express my unorthodox organisational skills as I see fit – I grab a dress from the large pile of clothing on my bedroom floor – the division of my floordrobe which I have dubbed Mount Clothesmore – and search for my make-up bag because today my face is going to need everything it has to offer. If I don’t get a move on, I’m going to be late for work, but it’s better to be late than ugly, right?

Chapter 2

‘So he took you to a wake and then dumped you? Fuck me, that’s as rough as you look,’ Millsy laughs as I meaningfully drain the takeaway coffee cup I filled with a double shot vanilla latte the second I arrived at work – fifteen minutes late, which isn’t too bad considering.

‘You don’t look so hot yourself,’ I reply.

‘Erm, yeah I do,’ he replies, and he means it.

Millsy leans over and looks at himself in the reflection of the shiny silver coffee machine. He checks his eyes for dark circles before securing the topknot they make him pull his dark brown hair into for work. He makes a noise of approval – the kind that most men would usually reserve for a topless calendar or a bird they fancied. Millsy mostly just fancies Millsy.

Joe ‘Millsy’ Mills has been my best friend my whole life – my entire 27 years on this planet. Our parents lived next door to one another, and because he’s only three months older than me, we started playing together almost immediately and that was it, we became inseparable. We went to playgroup together, then school, and even now we’re supposedly grown-ups, we’re still best friends, still playing together – except our games have changed a little as we’ve become older.

I credit/blame Millsy for the way I’ve turned out. Despite my girly-girl appearance (because who doesn’t love that girly shit? Even Millsy loves a face mask and a regular brow appointment) I’m a total tomboy on the inside. I grew up doing whatever Millsy wanted to do for fun because, as he always reminds me, he is the eldest, and so video games, football and then eventually ‘lads’ nights out have become my hobbies. It’s funny because, to look at me, you’d think I was your typical Sex and the City-loving, spa-visiting, wine-drinking lady, rather than this messy, unscrupulous, coffee-addicted, sailor-mouthed hot mess you see before you.

‘What’s wrong with me?’ I ask him.

‘There’s nothing wrong with you.’ Millsy pauses, thinking for a second. ‘Well, no, there are lots of things wrong with you, but none that twat would’ve thought of when he ditched you. It’s because you didn’t shag him, simple enough. I’ve ditched girls for that.’

I can always count on my bestie for brutal honesty.

Sadly, all of the men playing the dating game at the moment seem to be similar in their attitude. One thing I’ve noticed is that I’m always willing to give men the benefit of the doubt about things. So what if they’ve got a bit of grey hair and they’re only 26? So what if they’re not particularly stylish? So what if they could do with using a stronger deodorant? I give people a shot. Men, I am noticing, are not often like this. You can be too fat for them. You can be too frigid for them. You can text them too much. They don’t need much of a reason to ditch you and move on to the next bird.

‘What are your relationship goals?’ he asks me jokily, posing like the sassy girl emoji.

‘My relationship goals are: to have one. I’m sick of being single,’ I tell him.

‘So are all single birds, so you’re not alone,’ Millsy tells me, as though it’s going to be of comfort to me.

‘I am literally alone, that’s the point,’ I joke.

‘Man up. Plenty more fish in the sea.’

‘Which is why I’ve done something stupid,’ I start slowly.

‘Oh God, go on.’

‘I’ve agreed to go on a date tonight.’

Millsy laughs.

That’s the thing with dating apps, you meet all these seemingly lovely dudes and then you kick yourself when you date the wrong ones. You’ll be talking to a few people, and then you’ll have to pick just one to date and you can just guarantee I’ll pick the wrong one. I wind up with guys like Jonathan, who will leave me feeling annoyed I wasted so much time shaving my legs for dates that never worked out. It’s not like the men I meet in real life are much better; my last real-world boyfriend cheated on me, so it’s obviously just my taste that is the problem. Even in my dreams, I’m sleeping with the wrong people. I still can’t get over that I was dreaming about Nick. I know I’m going on about it, but it’s so weird. To dream about Millsy would be weird, because he’s like a brother to me, but Nick is like my sworn enemy and that’s much worse. Like, Batman and Robin getting it on would be weird, but Batman and The Joker shagging is just plain ridiculous because they hate each other so much, there isn’t enough Viagra in the world to facilitate that union. I consider telling Millsy about the dream, but he’ll probably freak out more than I did about it.

Maybe it was stupid of me to make a date for this evening as I was walking to work, but I can’t think of a better way to get Jonathan and Nick out of my head. And no matter how bad things go with one guy, I’m always full of hope that the next one will be the one for me.

Millsy glances towards the door. ‘Ruby would/Ruby wouldn’t?’ he asks.

‘Ruby wouldn’t,’ I tell him with certainty. He’s talking about the rocker-looking dude who just left the coffee shop. What it is, we play this game called Ruby would/Ruby wouldn’t – an obvious pun on my name: Ruby Wood. Whenever a man walks past us, Millsy poses the question and I reply with one or the other. It’s daft, but it keeps us amused during long shifts. Obviously Ruby has no intention of sleeping with any of these people – it’s rare I meet a bloke I don’t want to punch within minutes of meeting him (which is why I’m so annoyed things have fallen flat with Jonathan, but I’m trying not to go on about it). I think one of the best and worst things about growing up with a bloke for a best mate is that it has made me wise. I know all the moves men make to try and get birds into bed (‘oh, but I love you/blue balls are a thing/my dad just died’ etc.), and as such I don’t credit men with an ounce of sincerity when they try to chat me up. There’s no equivalent game where I ask Millsy who he fancies, because Millsy can’t let a pretty girl walk past him without announcing ‘I would’ anyway – usually loud enough for them to hear. It makes me laugh because he says it, but he rarely pursues the girls he announces it to, so even though he ‘would’, he often isn’t going to.

‘Well, I was out last night, and I don’t look half as bad as you, Rubes,’ Millsy brags. ‘And I was on time for work.’

‘For once,’ I reply.

Sally, our manager here at Has Beans coffee shop, is pretty laid back, especially now that she’s pregnant. She’s going on maternity leave any day, so we’re maybe pushing our luck a little more than usual in the hope she won’t care.

I like working here. Well, no one likes working anywhere, do they? But there are worse gigs to have. I mean, it’s pretty easy work, I get to spend my days messing around with my best friend and I’m allowed as much free coffee as my nervous system can handle, but it’s more than that. I just like the vibe in coffee shops. You’ve got places like Starbucks with their contemporary artwork and their jazz music playing in the background, or Costa with their comfortable seating and family-friendly environment. Has Beans is by no means as huge as either company, but of all the branches in Yorkshire, the one I work at in central Leeds is the busiest. During the week, lunchtime is dominated by office workers and shop employees looking for a caffeine fix and something to eat to break up their day and spur them on until the evening, but by the afternoon the place is more peaceful, with writers and students all face-down in their laptops. The thing I love is how the vibe can change depending on the customers. When it’s quiet, it’s quite relaxing, I can sip my latte and listen to the latest James Bay album playing on the stereo – my hangover likes this. Similarly, when we’ve got a gaggle of mums with screaming babies in, I often consider trying to tie my own tubes with the tongs we use with the panini press.

‘So when is your audition?’

‘Monday morning,’ he replies, his usual confidence waning slightly.

‘So I guess you’ll be taking it easy the next few nights then?’

‘Mate, I won’t be out at all – anyway, don’t you have a date?’

‘But it’s Friday night,’ I protest. Going out is what Friday nights were made for.

Millsy, like me, is a bit of a pleasure seeker and as such, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him take anything seriously other than trying to get away with being drunk every waking moment of his life – until recently.

At school, our grades weren’t up to much, but we were outgoing, cheeky, confident and – most importantly – excellent at lying. Naturally we gravitated towards the arts, and soon found that acting might just be one thing that we were good at. The thing is, it’s not a realistic career goal, is it? Which is why I gave up trying to ‘make it’, but recently Millsy seems to think he’s got a real shot.

If I’m being honest, I think he’s wasting his time – I mean, if he were on track to be Leonardo DiCaprio-famous I would happily be his Kate Winslet. Let’s face it though, hardly anyone makes it in the acting business. And he’s not going up for a role in the new Star Wars flick, it’s a local production of Macbeth. I forget which part he’s auditioning for, but it’s all very weird and last-minute. The guy they had for it originally got hit by a bus on the way to the first rehearsal. He wasn’t life-threateningly injured or anything, but he wound up in hospital. His understudy went to visit him and fell down a manhole in the hospital car park – you couldn’t make this shit up. So, sucks for those guys but great news for Millsy. Sucks for me too, because it’s going to cut into our drinking time.

‘So, which Macbeth character are you auditioning for?’ I ask, not really all that interested, but willing to pretend I am for my mate.

Millsy throws a chunk of his brownie at me with frustration, which I realise quickly enough to attempt to catch it in my mouth, but not so quick I actually succeed. Man, I want a brownie now.

‘You’re not supposed to say the title, it’s “The Scottish Play” in theatre circles,’ he reminds me. ‘You know that.’

‘Ooh, sorry,’ I say sarcastically. ‘So, go on, then I can stop pretending I give a shit. Who are you auditioning for?’

‘Banquo.’

‘Cool,’ I reply, holding the word on for longer than seems even a little sincere. We were in an end-of-year production of Macbeth when we were at school, and I wasn’t mad about it then either. I liked it when we did Bugsy Malone and Grease, when I got to dress up in pretty clothes and sing – Shakespeare didn’t write nearly enough musical numbers.

Sally shuffles out from her office and hovers around the counter.

‘I can’t sit at that desk a second longer, the baby wants me to move. There’s just so much admin to do though.’

I am in the process of simultaneously toasting a panini and making an Americano for a customer, but I’m pretty sure she’s angling for Millsy to take over and give her a break.

‘Yeah, well, it’ll be out of you soon,’ Millsy replies, oblivious to her hint. ‘Why don’t you come for a post-night out vindaloo with us or get your Robert to give you a good seeing to – that brings ’em out, right?’

‘Is your topknot too tight or are you stupid?’ I ask him. ‘You can’t just “bring them out” when you feel like it. Remember that time we got in from Saturn at 4am and you were so hungry you took your burger out of the microwave when it still had half the time left? You spent the whole day at work throwing up.’

Millsy rubs his chin thoughtfully.

‘I remember having to call the plumber,’ Sally adds, a distant look in her eye, like a solider recalling a horrific war memory. ‘Pass me a lemon muffin, please. I’ll get back to work.’

Millsy laughs to himself as he obliges.

‘Wasn’t that also the night you pulled a teenager?’ he asks me.

‘You mean the night I kissed a student. And he was twenty – hardly makes me a cougar, does it?’

‘Yeah, but that dodgy beard made him look fifteen.’

‘He was in a nightclub, Millsy, so he had to be at least eighteen.’

‘You were in nightclubs when you were fifteen.’

He’s got me there.

‘Dude, you’ve got to stop going on about this.’

‘But it’s funny,’ he insists.

‘Well, I think the real reason you blocked the work toilet is funny, but I don’t tell people, do I?’

Millsy laughs, but his cheeks flush a little.

‘OK, we take these stories to our grave, deal?’

‘Deal.’

We bump fists, like we always do. It can be to seal a deal like today, to celebrate some sort of victory or even just to say hello.

Millsy begins the much-hated task of cleaning the panini press while I rearrange the pastries and cakes to make them look neater – an excuse, of course, to stealthily eat a brownie, because if it’s stealthy, it’s healthy. Everyone knows the calories don’t count if no one sees you eat it. Seizing my opportunity, I stuff a rather large chunk into my mouth just as a customer approaches the counter.

‘Ruby would/Ruby wouldn’t?’ Millsy asks under his breath as the man crosses the shop.

‘Oh shit,’ I whisper back. ‘Ruby nearly did!’

I watch Millsy’s face light up, like he might be about to witness something hilariously awkward. Little does he know, this is a fella I’ve told him about that I met via a dating app recently, and our final date was a nightmare.

‘Ruby,’ he says as he approaches the desk.

‘Michael,’ I reply. ‘Hello. What can I get you?’

I see a glimmer of recognition on Millsy’s face, he’s heard of Michael. His amusement quickly turns to anger.

‘Medium cappuccino and a slice of coffee cake, please.’

‘You want to be careful with all that caffeine,’ Millsy warns him. ‘You won’t be able to sleep at night.’

Michael laughs and turns his attention back to me.

‘So, you said you worked here, I thought I’d check it out. And here you are.’

‘Yep, here I am…’ …at my place of work, you creepy weirdo.

Michael seemed like the most charming man in the world, but after a whirlwind amazing three dates, at the end of the third date he ended up coming back to mine. As we started kissing and fell back onto the sofa, it quickly became apparent that Michael wasn’t very good at this stuff, but worse than that, he went from nought to Fifty Shades before he’d even got my clothes off me. The second I felt him giving me a love bite on my chest I did what any mature young woman would do: I smashed a vase by kicking it off the coffee table. Nick came running in and went mad – like I knew he would – so I told Michael it was probably best if he left. I mean, if that was his foreplay, the main event would’ve left me unable to sit. Once he was gone, I looked at myself in the mirror and I was covered in scratches and love bites. I looked like I had a disease. And, you know, each to their own and all that, I get it, people are kinkier now, but you don’t just go for it during your first time, and you don’t do anything that leaves a mark without permission. Probably – this has never happened before. Needless to say, I didn’t want to go on another date with him so I slowly stopped replying to his messages. I guess that’s why he’s turned up at my work a few months later.

‘Are you doing anything tonight?’ he asks.

‘Erm, yeah, I’m going out for dinner,’ I tell him honestly. I don’t mention that I have a date with another guy I met through the very same dating app.

‘Time for a quick drink after you finish here though, surely?’ he persists.

‘I don’t, sorry, I need to go home and make some adjustments to my new dress. Do you ever just look at a dress and think: that would look great, if only it were shorter?’

Michael immediately says no while Millsy says yes.

Millsy stops him before he can say anything else. ‘Take a seat, pal. I’ll bring your drink over.’

Michael thankfully senses that he’s not getting anywhere and goes to sit down.

‘That the prick who covered you in hickies?’ Millsy asks.

‘It is indeed – wouldn’t think it to look at him, would you?’

‘Want me to do something disgusting to his cake – I think the loo is free,’ he suggests, completely straight-faced.

I laugh and kiss my friend on the cheek. I assume he’s joking.

‘It’s fine. Looks like he’s got the message.’

I glance over at Michael, who is glumly looking at his phone. I can tell from his frantic hand actions that he’s doing the instantly recognisable left and right swiping people do on dating apps. Because that’s what you do, you swipe one away and move on to the next one.

‘Aww, doesn’t he look miserable,’ I say sarcastically.

‘Yeah,’ Millsy replies, rummaging around in his nose before plating up Michael’s cake. ‘Sucks to be him.’

Chapter 3

Getting ready for a first date requires as much mental preparation as it does physical prep work. Sure, it’s important to look and feel your best, and for that you’ve got to wash, shave, wax, pluck, dry and moisturise every last inch of your body before caking yourself in make-up, dousing yourself in perfume and slipping on something skimpy. Said skimpy outfit will be carefully selected, and you can guarantee it will be the first outfit you pick out – which would be great if you didn’t put it on, take it off, and then proceed to pull out everything else you own, trying various combinations of different outfits on before deciding you actually had it right with the first one. By which point, of course, you’ll be running late. So the whole time you’re whizzing around your room doing all of the above like a sparkly Tasmanian devil, you’ll be alternating talking yourself out of going with persuading yourself you absolutely should go, because you’re single and you have to give men a chance, lest you die alone – isn’t dating fun?!

The mental preparation is possibly even trickier than trying to wing your eyeliner without winding up looking like Amy Winehouse or searching for an outfit that makes your bum half the size it is – and mine is pretty big, so that’s quite the task. First of all, you need to constantly talk yourself into it. It will be at the forefront of your mind to cancel because you are gross, and boys don’t like you, and you’re incapable of sustaining a relationship with anyone other than your mobile network provider and the platonic ones you have with barmen all over town to get service quickly. You know none of these things are true (except the last one) but it’s easy to convince yourself that you can put it off today and meet the love of your life the next day week month…

It’s nice to know as much as possible about who you’re dealing with, and Facebook is great for that, but I’m yet to friend the guy I’m meeting tonight and he’s got his privacy settings spot on, which sucks for me stalking him. I did have a quick flick through his profile pictures, careful not to knock ‘like’ on any from six years ago like I did with someone once before – nothing says cray-cray like ‘liking’ an old photo. After flicking through this guy’s photos, I’ve got to say, he’s so far out of my league, we’re playing different sports. There’s only one thing for it: control tights. The illusion of a flat stomach might level the playing field, at least a little.

I lie back on my bed and begin gently rolling the tights up my legs one at a time, careful not to ladder them because this is my only pair. It’s a new pair, and as such, the tights are super tight. I sometimes struggle to keep them up high enough at the back, causing them to roll down and give me this weird back podge that I could have an anxiety attack about if I thought too much about it…no, I don’t have a fat back, it’s just the way control tights kind of round everything up, and God forbid my date puts his hand on my back and figures out where my control tights are hiding my stomach. The solution to this problem that many people probably weren’t even aware was even a thing, is to tuck my tights into my bra, but that’s really difficult to do on your own. Luckily, I have a solution to this problem too.

‘Nick,’ I call out at the top of my voice.

‘What, what’s wrong?’ he asks, bursting through my bedroom door. He’s wearing an apron, causing me to giggle at him. Then again, I probably don’t look so cool right now either.

‘Shit, Ruby, I thought maybe one of your online dating weirdos was hacking you up in here.’

‘You wish,’ I reply.

‘You want me to pull your tights up again, don’t you?’

‘What are roommates for?’ I say with a sweet smile.

Nick shakes his head as he walks over to me, knowing that sometimes the easiest option is to just humour me.

‘You know, I struggle to recall a single thing you’ve ever done for me,’ he starts as he yanks up my tights, wrestling them under my bra at the back.

‘Erm, I helped you glue that vase Heather made you back together,’ I remind him.

‘Yeah, because you smashed it having sex on the sofa.’

‘I wasn’t having sex – foreplay, if that.’

‘Too much information.’

The process of pulling my tights up isn’t pretty for anyone involved, so I think the fact that Nick and I dislike each other makes him perfect for the job – I don’t care about how unsexy I look in front of him.

‘So, where is Heather tonight?’ I ask – not that I care.

‘She’s on her way over, so can you hold your breath or something to speed this up? I don’t want her to see us like this, she might get the wrong idea.’

I roll my eyes, even though Nick can’t see my face.

‘Dude, you’re literally wrestling me into my clothes. That’s as unsuspicious as you can get.’

‘Whatever, Ruby. Look, I don’t even know why you wear these things, you’re not fat.’

‘I ain’t thin, doll,’ I reply in a very matter-of-fact manner.

‘If you’re not happy with how you look, go on a diet, go to the gym – anything that means I don’t have to do this.’

Nick goes to the gym at least once a day, he eats clean and he is in excellent shape. My cardio involves running for trains, the only lifting I do is food to my mouth, and as such I am a comfortable size twelve…occasionally a ten, if I don’t eat salt for a few days, or a fourteen if we’ve just had a major holiday like Christmas or Valentine’s Day, the latter of which is best enjoyed alone, eating chocolate and watching films starring Hugh Grant.

‘The gym sounds awesome, but have you ever thought about punching yourself in the face?’ I ask, straight-faced. ‘That sounds much more fun.’

‘Hey, I’m not saying you need to go, I’m just all for whatever gets me out of being the person who has to pull your tights up. Just out of interest, how do you cope when you need the bathroom?’

‘I drink light and thank God for my excellent bladder control,’ I reply.

‘Wish I hadn’t asked,’ he replies as he heads for the door. He hovers in the doorway for a second. ‘Date tonight?’

‘How did you guess?’ I ask, fully expecting him to give me a lecture on how I go on too many dates.

‘The scary tights, Beyoncé playing – it’s like you’re simultaneously making yourself feel sexy enough to pull someone, whilst reminding yourself that you don’t need a man at the same time.’ I think for a second, considering whether or not this is possibly a compliment, until he adds: ‘You know, in case he scarpers like the rest.’

‘You can leave now,’ I tell him. ‘Your girlfriend will be here soon. We don’t want her catching you in my room, while I’m in my lingerie.’

‘You were right before,’ he calls back. ‘No one would suspect a bloke of sleeping with a girl in those things – at least you don’t have to worry about date rapists, they’d never get into those.’

I look in the mirror, examining my slightly smaller looking, tights-clad body and sigh. Dating is horrible, isn’t it? Just a ridiculous nightmare that’s absolutely impossible, with all these rules of what you’re supposed to do, what you’re not supposed to do, how you’re expected to behave – and most people stick to them. And even though we have bad ones, we suck it up, we have our grumpy flatmate pull us into our tight-tights and we get right back on the horse, ready to give someone else a chance. Does my optimism for finding someone deplete every time I go on a bad date? Maybe, just a little, but it also hardens me to it. I don’t take it personally anymore. I don’t wonder what’s wrong with me if someone tries to cover me in love bites, I wonder what’s wrong with people, and while that may be a depressing thought, it doesn’t hurt or damage my self-esteem, and I don’t feel bad about myself in the slightest. In my control tights, I am untouchable – literally, apparently.

With every first date there is always this thought at the back of your mind that if you just get it right this time, it might be your last ever first date, and wouldn’t that be wonderful?

I grab a dress from the top of Mount Clothesmore. It’s a short black number with a mesh panel down the front. With a little bit of extra weight comes a great pair of boobs, so I may as well work them to my advantage. The truth is that I probably could stand to lose a few pounds. If I went on a diet, my nearest and dearest wouldn’t be hurrying me off to The Priory to talk to someone, you know? I’m just normal, I guess. Not skinny, not fat – but most importantly, not bothered. I’m happy in my skin. I know how to dress to make the most of what I’ve got and I love eating and drinking way too much to become the girl who only orders a salad in restaurants. I certainly have no intention of ordering a salad tonight. I imagine I should, according to the rules of the dating game. Even if I don’t plan on keeping it up forever, I could order a salad the first few times we go out to make him think that I’m this dainty little thing who doesn’t stuff her face and then, once he’s suitably charmed by me – boom – that’s when I reveal my secret appetite for red meat and dessert.

Hair – check. Make-up – check. Tights – check. Dress – check. Heels – check. That’s me ready to go. I grab my handbag to make sure I have the necessities: purse, extra make-up, rape alarm – all the things you need for a successful date with a man you’ve never met before.

I make my way into the living room, grabbing my keys from the bowl on the coffee table where Nick insists we keep the keys, ready to make a dash for it before his girlfriend arrives, because if there’s one person I like even less than Nick, it’s Heather, Nick’s current bird.

‘How do I look?’ I ask Nick, who is stirring something over the cooker.

‘Not like you’ve got terrifying tights on, kid,’ he tells me, which I think is a compliment.

Nick has called me kid since pretty much the day we met. At first I thought it was just one of your typical terms of endearment used by Yorkshire folk, but then as we realised we were never going to get along, and he started comparing me to an immature child, I realised that he probably called me kid because he thinks I am one. I call him much worse, so it’s fine.

‘How does the food smell?’ he asks.

I walk over and peer into the pan, but its contents are not recognisable to me, not by sight or smell.

‘Erm, what is it?’ I ask.

‘It’s vegan stew. Will you taste it for me?’

‘That’s a thing? I’d rather close the fridge door on my head,’ I reply.

I watch as Nick takes a spoon from the drawer, scooping a little out of the pan and tasting it. As he does, a little drops down and it lands on his apron, which he promptly begins cleaning. It’s only now that I’m looking at his apron that I notice the slogan: meat is murder.

‘Taste good?’ I ask him.

‘Yeah, I mean, it’s not the same as meat, but as long as Heather likes it.’

‘Boy, she’s got you whipped.’

Nick pulls a face.

‘No she doesn’t.’

‘So I suppose you’ve made yourself a meat version, then…’

‘Look, I don’t expect you to understand, but this is what you do when you’re in a relationship, you make sacrifices. If Heather doesn’t want me to eat meat in front of her, I won’t. She’s happy for me to do it when she’s not around.’

‘Bullshit kind of vegan she is then,’ I reason. ‘That’s like a policeman who is OK with murdering people, so long as you don’t do it in front of him.’

‘So you acknowledge it is murder,’ I hear Heather say victoriously from behind me.

I jump out of my skin, I’d no idea she was here.

‘How did you get in?’ I ask, accusingly.

‘Nick left the door open for me.’ She gets back to the subject at hand. ‘So you acknowledge that they’re both murder?’

‘That is not the comparison I was drawing and you know it,’ I tell her.

Heather shrugs, walking over to Nick and kissing him lightly on the lips.

‘Looks delicious,’ she tells him.

‘I know I do,’ I laugh. ‘Shame about the food though.’

Neither of them laugh.

As I head for the door, a notification comes through on my phone. It’s from my date, asking if we can meet an hour later because he’s run over at work.

‘Ah, crap,’ I say out loud, to no one in particular.

‘Language,’ Heather scolds me, before backtracking. ‘Sorry, teacher reflex. Although you probably shouldn’t swear, it’s not very becoming of a lady. You’ll do better on dates if you’re more ladylike.’

I plonk myself down on the sofa. No point leaving yet, I’ll be far too early.

‘Thank you, Cilla Black, I forgot you were the expert – remind me how you two met again?’

‘Nick was my sister’s obstetrician,’ she tells me, giving me the refresher I didn’t actually need.

‘Oh yeah, how romantic,’ I say sarcastically. ‘That means he saw your sister naked before he saw you naked – and they say romance is dead.’

‘Don’t tell me you’re not going,’ Nick interrupts before Heather has a chance to reply. ‘We’ve planned a night that doesn’t involve you.’

‘Mate, as much as I’d love to stick around for a Friday night of cardboard stew and the missionary position, I’m still going, I’ll just be too early if I leave now. But you know what that means.’ I adopt a faux enthusiastic tone to my voice. ‘I get to make small talk with you guys for even longer.’

‘Oh joy,’ Heather says, with an equal amount of sarcasm.

Heather Johnson is exactly the kind of girl I would have expected Nick to wind up with, in fact, she’s perfect for him. They both have sensible jobs (Heather is a primary school teacher), they both watch what they eat and, most importantly, they’re both so, so incredibly boring.

Heather takes a seat on the sofa next to me. Nick, whose crap stew clearly doesn’t require any attention at the moment, wanders over and sits in the chair next to us.

‘So you’re going out like that?’ Heather asks me.

‘I am,’ I reply, all smiles. Heather likes me about as much as I like her, which is not at all. She never really gave me a chance, I think she just dislikes me because Nick dislikes me – she’s also a monumental bitch, which also has an effect on her people skills. Still, if she thinks she can upset me, she’s wrong. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘I can see your bra,’ she tells me.

‘Good,’ I reply. ‘It was expensive.’

We sit quietly for a moment before I decide on a silence-breaker.

‘I actually heard a vegan joke the other day, would you like to hear it?’ I ask her.

‘Oh, go on then,’ Heather replies, scooting to the edge of her seat, ready to laugh.

‘How do know if someone is vegan?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know, how?’

‘They tell you,’ I reply, slapping my thigh. ‘Funny, right?’

‘So what you meant is that you heard a joke about vegans, not a vegan joke,’ she corrects me.

‘Same diff., right, miss? I can’t imagine vegan-friendly jokes are a thing – vegan-friendly food is barely a thing. And vegans aren’t known for their sense of humour, are they?’

‘Well, I won’t be telling that one at Vegan Club,’ she says with a frown.

‘Holy shit, Vegan Club is a thing?’

‘Of course it is,’ she replies. ‘We meet every Sunday at Baa Bar Blacks. All welcome.’

‘Wow. So I’m going to guess the first rule of Vegan Club is the opposite of the first rule of Fight Club,’ I joke.

I’m not sure if Heather doesn’t get the reference or just doesn’t find me funny, but she ignores me, turning to Nick.

‘Darling, what do vegan zombies eat?’

‘What?’ he asks, without much enthusiasm. I can tell he’s just enduring the seconds until I leave, so they can get on with their boring night.

‘Graaaaaains,’ she replies, laughing her head off. ‘And you said vegans didn’t have a sense of humour, Ruby.’

‘I did say that, didn’t?’ I reply, pulling myself to my feet. ‘But it was still nice to have you confirm it to be true. I’m going to get going, enjoy your night, you crazy kids.’

Neither of them say goodbye to me, but as I head out through the door, in the seconds before I close it I overhear a snippet of their conversation.

‘How long do you think this bloke will stick around?’ Heather asks Nick.

‘Not long,’ he replies. ‘They never stick around for long.’

Chapter 4

‘Hey, babe,’ the large, muscular blond-haired dude towering in front of me says as he pulls me close, planting a kiss on either side of my face.

‘Hello,’ I reply, my voice sounding funny thanks to his exceptionally tight embrace. He’s got that sort of Lenny from Of Mice and Men strength going on, where I don’t think he realises just how tightly he’s hugging me. One of my many Matcher rules (Matcher is my dating app of choice/force because I’m oh-so single) is to never go on dates with dudes who look like they could/would strangle me, and Lenny here could choke the life out of me with ease if he so chose. I’m hoping that he won’t though, because this guy is kind of a celebrity around here. His real name is Deano Gamble, and he plays for the Leeds Lions rugby team. He’s a hooker, apparently. No idea what that means but I laughed for way longer than was cute when he told me during our first phone call. I started talking to Deano on Matcher and we’ve been 21st century flirting ever since; Whatsapp-ing, Snapchat-ing and FaceTime-ing. That was until three weeks ago when I started dating Jonathan and went cold on him. Luckily when I reached out to him again, he still wanted to go on that date we’d been talking about.

Satisfied we were both who we said we were, we’ve arranged to go for dinner - tonight is our first date. Our conversations haven’t really been too in-depth and I think he was drunk during our brief FaceTime, but if I have learned anything during my Matcher-ing, it’s that if you spend too long chatting beforehand, you have nothing to talk about on your first date and it’s super awkward.

I didn’t know what Matcher was until I discovered that my boyfriend was on there. It’s weird, because he kept making comments to me about online dating, joking around with me about seeing what was out there… I assumed he was kidding as he chatted about it with me on the walk back to his after a night out. I was listening, of course I was, but I didn’t really care because I had a boyfriend, what did I need to know about dating apps for? David, my then boyfriend, was perfect on paper. He had a good job, his own flat, a nice car, a handsome face – all the things you’re supposed to look for in a partner if you’re shallow, but I didn’t care about any of that stuff. I felt so safe with him and when he would lie in bed with me at night, cuddled up in the dark, and he would tell me how all he wanted was for us to get our own place.

That night we got back to his and had sex, but that’s about all I could tell you about it: that we did it. It wasn’t special or memorable in any way, and when he was done he rolled over, checked his phone and then went to sleep. I climbed over him to go to the bathroom, sat down on the loo and thought about things. About how cold he was, about his new fixation with dating apps – did he tilt his phone away from me when he checked it? I was sure he did. And when I started really thinking about it, he’d changed the passcode on his phone a matter of days ago, because ‘someone at work’ had learned it, and was on a one-man quest to ‘frape’ him – get into his Facebook account and post something embarrassing on his behalf. He never did tell me the new code…alarm bells were ringing so loud they were deafening, and it was making me dizzy.

I walked back to the bedroom where David was fast asleep, his phone on the bed next to him. That’s when I realised he’d fallen asleep with it unlocked and then I did something I’ve never done before and I’ve never done since – I looked on his phone. I felt sick with myself for looking but that’s nothing compared with how I felt when I looked through his apps and saw Matcher. Still willing to give David the benefit of the doubt, I considered whether or not this might just be curiosity and, with my heart banging hard against my chest, I ventured inside the app. Once in there, I got lost, drowning in a sea of matches and messages from more girls than I probably have in my phone contacts. I still felt like I was reaching, looking for something to grab onto to save me, but all I was seeing was conversations my boyfriend was having with single girls, telling them how he’d been single for a while, how he’d never met any girl that was worth the effort, how he’d love to go on a date with some red-headed girl, a veterinary nurse, some chick over from Australia on holiday for two weeks, a bird looking for ‘no strings’ fun, a single mum all the way in Doncaster – my boyfriend was putting out all kinds of bait and reeling in any fish he could get his hook into.

I locked his phone, placed it down next to him and climbed back into bed. I woke up and gave him a handful of opportunities to come clean, but he didn’t. It was lie after lie. Even though it was 3am, I packed up my things and I left, because without trust, what’s the point?

David was my first, proper grown-up relationship, and I thought we were going to be together forever. We were together just over a year, but we got so serious so quickly, we’d be talking about moving in together. Getting a place with David in Leeds was all I wanted. When the shit hit the fan, I thought to myself: who says I need a man to move out of my parents’ place and into the city? That’s probably why I was so quick to move in with Nick, despite not knowing him all that well. He was a means to getting what I wanted, even though it turned out that I did need a man to move out: Nick. I probably would’ve been happier living with my lying, cheating bastard of an ex.

One of the things I’ve learned about Matcher is that it makes people greedy. Because you can’t just chat to one person, you wind up chatting to a whole bunch of different people. Say you pick just one to go on a date with and wind up having a blast – you don’t think maybe something could go somewhere with this person, you realise just how easy it is to get more dates. Why date one person when you can feasibly date at least four people a week? It’s horrible really. But that’s the world we’re living in now..

When I first started using Matcher I was very cautious about who I spoke to and I certainly didn’t plan on meeting up with anyone. I knew that Millsy was never off it, and that it allowed him a different girl to sleep with every night, but I didn’t fancy it for myself. ‘Single AF’ as Millsy described me, because the bulk of his vocabulary is internet slang these days, he told me to sign up ‘for the banter’ last year, so I did, and I was surprised when I got talking to one dude who seemed pretty cool called Jack. I chatted with him for two months before I met him – which is ages in online dating world. He had his own place in the centre, he was gorgeous and he seemed really kind and funny – until I met him. Well, when Jack turned up, he looked nothing like his photos at all. He was significantly bigger than he appeared in his pictures, and shorter that I imagined too which didn’t help. He wore these little rimless glasses which – and I feel bad for thinking this at the time – made him look a bit like someone you’d expect to find on the sex offenders register, but I can honestly say that I didn’t care, because he was nice, and sweet and kind and funny – except he wasn’t. He didn’t just look different in person, he acted it too. Our chats were friendly and flirtatious, but we’d never really got onto the subject of getting it on, which is why I was surprised when – fifteen minutes into our date – Jack pinned me up against a wall and kissed me like a porno director had just shouted ‘action’. And right in the city centre, on a Tuesday lunchtime too. I wiggled free of his grasp awkwardly, steering him into the nearest shop in an attempt to halt his horses a little. I thought I was being a bit of a prude – which is unlike me – but Jack only got worse. He was like a horny teenager that had been granted unlimited access to boobs for the first time – except he hadn’t. When he wasn’t grabbing me, he was going behind me to try and unzip my dress. I let this go on for fifty minutes – forty-nine minutes longer than this excuse of a date should’ve lasted. Needless to say, this knocked my Matcher confidence and it took me nine months before I even dared to meet anyone again, but I did, and I have continued to meet fellas since, but no one has ever dazzled me. Everyone has been weird or, worse, boring. It’s full of vapid, topknot wankers who bang on about ‘cheeky Nando’s’ and how much they lift at the gym, and are on a one-man quest to shag as many birds as possible by any means necessary – people like Millsy, but he’s OK, because he might be a topknot wanker, but he’s my topknot wanker.

These days, I don’t really give meeting up with dudes a second thought, and I’d rather do it sooner than later, get it out of the way, see if they’re weird or boring and then move on to the next one if they are. I breeze through it like it’s dull, mindless admin work. This one is no good, on to the next. Unlike Millsy, I’m not sleeping with my dates – I rarely find Matcher dudes tolerable enough to sleep with. Millsy teases me and says I’m weird, but I just can’t fancy someone if I think they’re a bit of a dickhead, no matter how hot they are. This is why Millsy tells me I’m ‘doing Matcher wrong’ because I’m not ‘making the most of the D’.

So, back to Deano. It sounds strange, but I’m instantly more trusting of ‘known’ people because I feel like they have too much to lose to rape and murder birds they meet on Matcher. Another reason Deano seemed safe was because Millsy could vouch for him – well, the opposite of vouch for him, it turns out. When Millsy was a teenager he had a choice, he could pursue rugby or acting and he chose acting, much to his dad’s disappointment – and his own, to be honest, because he’s really struggled to find work, that’s why he’s so psyched about this Macbeth gig. In an attempt to sort of feel like he was acting and still be a part of the team his dad so wanted him to play for, Millsy took on the job of team mascot, which basically means he dresses in a big, stupid lion costume and roars on the side-lines during games. I often remind him that this particular job neither counts as acting nor being a sportsman, and I think he did feel a little daft to start with until he realised he’d get all the chicks that the real players didn’t want, so he’s quite happy with it now. Millsy has lots of silly little jobs, it’s surprising he’s found time to sleep with the entire female population of Leeds.

When I found out Deano played for the Lions the first thing I did was ask my lion what he was like.

‘He’s a monumental bellend,’ Millsy told me.

‘So are you,’ I reminded him playfully.

‘He just fucks his way through Matcher.’

‘Again – are you talking about you or him?’ I laughed.

‘I’m serious, Rubes, most of the team have Matcher and we just use it to plough through girls.’

‘You say “we” like you’re one of the team and not the glorified stuffed animal who twerks to “Sexy and I Know It” at halftime,’ I persisted with my teasing, unwilling to take his advice.

‘Fine, go out with him, but he isn’t your type. You heard it here first: Ruby wouldn’t.’

So here I am, with Deano the hooker, and I have to say he scrubs up well. He’s wearing black trousers with a black shirt that his muscles look fit to burst out of. He’s clean-shaven, something that seems to be a rarity amongst the menfolk of Leeds these days, and his short blond hair is perfectly messy.

A waiter shows us to a quiet corner of Vici, an Italian restaurant. Deano’s choice and one that scores him major brownie points (or tries, if we’re sticking with the rugby theme) because I love Italian food.

It’s such a romantic setting, with its rustic feel, twinkling fairy lights and soft music – the perfect environment for a date.

‘So have you had a good day?’ I ask, making small talk as we wait for our food. I don’t know what it is, but the conversation feels forced and difficult. Deano is quiet, but in a strange way. He’s clearly not shy, he just seems to have nothing to say.

‘Good, cheers,’ he replies in his thick Yorkshire accent. ‘I had physio this morning, chilled this afternoon.’

‘Cool,’ I reply, giving him a few seconds to ask how my day was, but he doesn’t. ‘Well, mine has sucked. I had a hangover this morning, I was late for work and then a customer was absolutely horrible to me.’

‘You should’ve told them to “piss off”,’ he laughs.

‘Well, I would’ve liked to, but you know what they say: the customer is always right. Expect when they’re wrong, like today,’ I laugh.

‘What do you mean?’ he asks.

‘What do I mean?’ I echo.

‘The customer is always right expect when they’re wrong,’ he repeats back to me.

I can’t help but cock my head and furrow my brow in confusion.

‘It’s a joke,’ I tell him. I mean, I know it’s not my best material, but even so.

‘I don’t get it,’ he tells me.

‘Never mind,’ I smile as the waiter sets a steak down in front of Deano and a pizza in front of me.

As the smell of the food fills my nostrils I feel my mood lift, it looks incredible too. I can’t wait to tuck in, except…

‘Come on, what do you mean?’ he persists, clearly annoyed he’s not getting it.

‘It’s just a saying, it doesn’t matter. You know what they say: explaining a joke is a like dissecting a frog; you learn a lot but the frog dies in the process.’

Deano thinks for a second.

‘What do you mean?’ he asks again.

Are you fucking kidding me?

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I laugh, taking the pizza slicer and resisting the urge to use it on myself instead of my food. I’ve just realised something: Deano is dumb. Maybe it’s come from years of getting his head stomped on out on the rugby field, I don’t know, but that’s why he’s so quiet, he has nothing to say, and I instantly don’t like anyone who doesn’t get my jokes because personally I think I’m hilarious.

We eat our food in near perfect silence, with the exception of “That’s Amore” playing in the background, the quiet buzz of everyone else’s conversations, and the sound of Deano chomping on his steak loudly. His steak is so rare I’m surprised I can’t here it mooing – not that it would have a chance to open its mouth at the rate he’s shovelling it down.

As the waiter heads over to clear our plates, he asks us if we’d like to see the dessert menu. To be honest, I’m bored out of my mind and I want this date to be over, but my pizza was so delicious and I know they have amazing desserts here, and something yummy and sweet would mean the night wasn’t a complete washout.

‘Yes please,’ I reply. He promptly brings me a menu, so I start scanning the list.

‘They do bomboloni,’ I say excitedly out loud.

‘What do you mean?’ Deano asks – his catchphrase it seems.

‘They’re Italian doughnuts,’ I reply.

‘If it fits your macros,’ he replies, and it’s my turn to be confused.

‘What do you mean?’ I ask, followed by a little chuckle because I just inadvertently did a Deano.

‘Heavy on the carbs, high in fat – is it really worth it?’

‘Dude, they’re doughnuts,’ I remind him. Everyone knows doughnuts are bad for you but we still eat them because they’re doughnuts. And these are Italian, cream-filled doughnuts with chocolate sauce, so they’re super impossible to resist.

‘So, what can I get you?’ our very enthusiastic waiter asks.

‘Nothing for me, cheers,’ Deano replies.

‘Yeah, I think I’ll give it a miss too, thanks,’ I tell him, handing my menu back.

The enthusiastic waiter’s face falls, like a kid who just found out there’s no Santa Claus. I feel similar inside.

‘I’ll get you the bill,’ he tells us.

It’s not that I’m taking this muscly moron’s advice, but I don’t really want to spend any more time with him. He’s not a bad person, but he’s boring and his priorities are all wrong. Doughnuts above everything.

‘I’ll be back,’ he tells me, wandering off in the direction of the toilets.

The only thing stopping me leaving right now is my manners, so I sit and wait until he returns.

Moments later Deano is back as promised and I am happy because it means I can go home.

‘The men’s room was out of order, I had to use the disabled toilet,’ he tells me.

‘Good for you,’ I reply, confused as to why he thought I’d be interested, although I wouldn’t be surprised if he did have some kind of brain damage courtesy of his job.

‘Anyway, while I was in there, I was just thinking about how much I want to take you in there and fuck you right now.’

I stare at him blankly, blinking my eyes in disbelief once or twice. Not only is that a pretty gross request anyway, but it’s not like we’ve been getting on, we have zero chemistry and he said no to doughnuts – so why would I want to have sex with him?

‘Well, I mean, that’s why they have the handles on the walls, right?’ I joke, no better words coming to mind.

‘So, shall we?’

Oh shit, he’s serious.

‘Erm, no!’ I squeak.

Should I be flattered right now? Also, why does it need to be the disabled loo, why can’t it be the regular loo? What does he need all that extra space for?

‘Well, I had to ask,’ Deano says. ‘Want to go somewhere and grab a drink?’

Yes, but not with you. Soon as I get out of here I’m going to swing by one of my favourite bars (because it’s a pretty safe bet one of my friends will be there) and drink until I forget this date happened.

‘No, I’m pretty tired. But thank you, it’s been, erm…’

Nope, can’t even lie.

‘Yeah, maybe see you again soon?’

Not a chance, mister.

‘Maybe.’

Chapter 5

I gaze down at my half-eaten birthday cake. It’s a big, pink thing. Like a cupcake for a giant or a drunk 27-year-old woman hoping for diabetes ASAP, covered in a heap of pink frosting, littered with dolly mixtures and jellybeans, reminiscent of something fresh out of a Willy Wonka novel. The box it came in said that it was intended to serve twenty, but by the time Millsy and I cut ourselves a piece the other night, there was much less than eighteen slices of a similar size left. It seemed like a reasonable portion size at the time, but as we munched our way through it whilst watching old episodes of South Park, we started feeling increasingly sick. Millsy, whose motto is “workout more to eat more” was the first to bow out, but I wouldn’t be beaten. It was the middle of the night, but we were still a little tipsy and when Millsy is drunk, he regresses to being a stroppy toddler. He threw the remainder of his cake in the bin, but he was so sickened with it that he couldn’t stand to watch me eat mine either, so he took my cake from me and threw it away too. I’d have been angry, were it not so funny. He denied all knowledge of it the following morning.

It’s 1am, and I’ve just got in from a Matcher date from hell with Deano – but, aren’t they all? It was so bad, I had to go to a bar and chain drink cocktails to try and forget that it happened, but now I’m home, starving and in need of something to soak up all the booze, and I finally feel strong enough to tackle the cake again.

I pop the kettle on and grab myself a big, sharp knife from the drawer. I cut myself a generous wedge and pick at it with my hands, eating it straight from the box. Well, Nick likes me to keep the kitchen tidy, so it’s one less plate to wash. I am raining cake down on the kitchen table as I shovel handfuls into my mouth, but it’s so sweet and glorious my only qualm is that I’m technically not getting as much cake in me as I potentially could. My God, cake is wonderful.

I observe that one side of the cake is not quite even, and shave some off with the knife, like a sculptor perfecting a piece of art – a piece of art I’m eating by the slice whilst simultaneously picking jellybeans from the top with my other hand.

‘Jesus Christ,’ I hear Nick’s voice behind me. ‘Look at you.’

‘Fuck off,’ I tell him through a mouthful of cake. ‘It's my birthday cake.’

‘It’s not even been your birthday,’ he reminds me, as though I might not be aware of when my birthday is (or isn’t).

‘I’d had a bad day, so Millsy bought me it,’ I tell him. ‘Isn’t it past your bedtime, granddad?’

Nick rolls his eyes as he heads for the cupboard and removes a glass, before filling it with water from his lame little filter jug that he keeps in the fridge.

‘Just getting a glass of water,’ he tells me.

Watching him drink makes me suddenly thirsty, so I turn on the tap and lean over the sink to drink from the stream of water.

‘You’re like an animal,’ he observes. ‘And I thought better of Joey, eating cake. He’ll struggle to keep his body like it is, if he puts junk in it.’

‘He’s always eaten shit, and he’s always been a babe, so he’s fine,’ I reply snippily, straight to the defence of my friend. ‘Anyway, he’s a sweetheart. I’d had a rough day at work, so he bought me a birthday cake, because birthday cake is my favourite,’ I inform him, shovelling another handful into my mouth, as if my point needed proving.

‘First of all, birthday cake can’t be your favourite, because a birthday cake is any cake that is eaten on a birthday. Second of all, how bad can your workday be in a coffee shop, seriously? You want to try spending a day in my shoes, people’s lives are literally in my hands.’

‘Mate, you’re a gynaecologist, the only things literally in your hands are vaginas.’

‘Only a few more weeks of obstetrics and gynaecology for me,’ he reminds me. He’s doing that rotation thing new doctors do where they sample a bit of each area of medicine. Judging by the few stories he’s told me, this won’t be the area of medicine he chooses to practise, I’ll bet.

‘So why was your day so bad, did you give someone decaf by mistake?’ he teases.

Annoyingly, he’s not far off the mark. We had the grumpiest cow of a woman call in, asking for a skinny mocha with an extra shot. I was working on the till and Millsy was making the drinks. He prepared her coffee while I placed the granola bar she has requested in a takeaway bag – something people hardly ever buy because they look like all the loose bits that have broken off from all the other cakes, swept up and glued together. It didn’t take us long at all, still, she tapped her perfectly manicured nails on the counter impatiently. I handed her order to her and watched as she headed for the door, but as she reached for the handle with one hand, she raised her takeaway cup to her mouth to take a sip before turning on her heels and marching back up to me.

‘Is everything all right, madam?’ I asked in the friendly manner they insist we adopt when speaking to customers. Even the ones we want to hit over the head with a milk jug.

‘I asked for a double shot and this is not a double shot,’ she says angrily, slamming the cup down in front of me.

I glanced over at Millsy.

‘It is, ma’am,’ he replied. ‘I definitely put two shots in there.’

‘Are you two saying I can’t tell?’ she snapped. ‘Don’t you need any training at all to do a job like this? My God, they could train monkeys to do better. At least they’d acknowledge that the customer is always right.’

I took a deep breath and gritted my teeth, because although every fibre of my being was telling me to grab the panini press and throw it at this bitch, I knew that my actions might by frowned upon in the eyes of my employers/the law.

‘Not to worry, we’ll make you another one,’ I told her, but it wasn’t enough.

‘I want to watch him pour each shot in, because clearly he needs someone to count for him. Honestly, if he spent less time at the gym and you spent less time drawing your eyebrows on, you could maybe find jobs you were competent in.’

I glanced over at Millsy, smiled sweetly and said: ‘When you've made this lady’s drink, there are some boxes of coffee that need moving from the back door, please.’

Millsy nodded, knowing exactly what he needed to do. The truth is, we don’t even have a back door, that’s just our secret code for teaching a lesson to horrible customers – the ones who truly deserve punishing. Never mess with the people who are serving you food and drinks.

I watched Millsy switch from using regular to decaf coffee with the sleight of hand skills of a seasoned magician. As he poured the two shots of fuck all into the customer’s cup, she applauded him sarcastically.

‘There, that wasn’t too difficult for the two of you, was it?’ she asked rhetorically before taking a sip. ‘Much better.’

OK, so maybe we shouldn't be playing coffee god, but she asked for it, and by the afternoon when the caffeine withdrawal headache hit her like a ton of bricks, I hope it made her realise that she needs to be nicer to people, because if karma doesn’t get you, vigilante baristas will.

Nick, clearly irritated by the fact I’m not rising to the bait, carries on talking to me.

‘I thought Joey was never setting foot in here again?’ he says. I find it weird that Nick calls Millsy by his less used nickname, rather than his preferred name or his actual first name.

‘You were away for the night,’ I remind him. ‘He won’t come over when you’re here because you’re the reason he has to climb out of the skylight for a cig.’

‘I told him he can’t do that either.’

‘Yeah, and that’s why he won’t come over when you’re here, you’ve got so many rules: don’t smoke in the flat, don’t climb onto the roof – you’re a drag, man,’ I ramble, occasionally glancing at the cake as I wonder if I can manage any more without throwing up. Nope, no more.

Nick heads back towards his room. Well, it is way past his bedtime.

I scoop my hair up with my hand and let it fall down around one side of my face, sighing heavily. This catches his attention and he stops before he opens his door.

‘Are you OK?’ he asks, almost begrudgingly.

‘I’m fine,’ I assure him, heading for the sofa and plonking myself down.

I tip my head back and rest my eyes for a second. I don’t know if I’m exhausted from all the late nights and early starts, or if I’m maybe slipping into a diabetic coma from that slab of cake I just effortlessly devoured, but I can’t keep my eyes open.

I give myself five minutes before forcing my eyes open again, only to see Nick standing in front of me, except now he’s got his nerdy plaid dressing gown on – untied, showing off the body he’s spent hours in the gym perfecting.

I stare for a moment longer than I should, stopping only when Nick takes a seat next to me.

‘Want to talk about it?’ he asks.

His moment of concern takes me aback.

‘What do you care?’ I snap.

Nick places his hand on my bare knee and gives it a gentle squeeze.

‘Look, I know we don’t get on, but I’m allowed to care about you, right? I mean, you must care about me a little – what would you do if you found out I left for work one morning and got hit by a car?’

‘I guess I’d care,’ I reply. ‘But, like, about the stress of finding another roommate so I could afford to stay here – I could wind up with someone even worse than you.’

Nick laughs at the joke I didn’t realise I’d made. That’s when I realise his hand isn’t on my knee any more, it’s on my thigh, and the gentle squeezing he was doing before has turned into more of a caressing motion.

I shift my gaze from Nick’s hand to his eyes. He’s looking at me in a way I’ve never noticed him do before.

‘What are you thinking?’ he asks.

‘I’m trying to work out why you’re being so nice to me,’ I reply. ‘It’s out of character.’

‘If you think that’s out of character,’ he starts slowly, as he runs his hand up my thigh, ‘then try this.’

Before I know what’s happening, Nick is pushing me back on the sofa, pressing his body down on top of me. He grabs a fistful of my long wavy locks firmly with one hand as he pulls off his dressing gown with the other. As much as I dislike Nick as a person, I have never been able to deny that he has one hell of a body – in fact, it’s one of the first things I noticed about him when we first met. All that eating clean and exercising near-constantly is really paying off for him, I admit it, but I never imagined I’d wind up in a situation like this with him, and now I’m not just looking at him, I’m really looking at him, and I want him more than anything right now.

He kisses me keenly, like he’s been waiting all these months to do it and now he finally can, he can’t control himself – least of all his hands.

When I came home tonight I figured Nick would be in bed because it was late and he always gets nice early nights. That’s why I felt safe kicking off my heels, slipping off my dress and putting on one of Nick’s gym vests that I grabbed from the dryer, so I didn’t have to make the long trip to my room to find something comfortable to wear while I devoured my birthday cake.

Usually that’s two offences that would land me in Nick’s bad books. My first offence is strolling around inappropriately dressed, the second is wearing Nick’s clothes. He hates that. He says I leave them covered in glitter and stinking like a mid-range prostitute. Perhaps that’s why he’s so keenly pulling the vest over my head, throwing it to one side before running his hands up my body, slipping my bra straps off my shoulders, kissing my collarbone, gently flicking his tongue against my skin.

Just when I think it can’t feel any better, Nick slips his hand into my knickers and I can’t help but moan wildly. My moans of pleasure get louder before quickly changing. As I raise my hand to my aching head and grumble in pain, I slowly open my eyes, only for the sunlight to burn them. That’s when I realise it’s morning, and that I must have fallen asleep on the sofa. I’m still wearing Nick’s vest, which means I dreamt the whole thing. Shit, another sex dream about Nick!

‘Why does this keep happening to me?’ I ask myself.

‘Because you make bad choices,’ Nick replies, startling me. I glance towards the kitchen and see him standing there, smartly dressed, eating cereal as always.

I quickly break eye contact with him, absolutely mortified. I mean there’s no way on earth he could know what I’d been dreaming but I feel like he’s looking straight through me, like he can see it written all over my face.

‘What happened last night?’ I ask him, concerned.

‘Not much, you went on a date with one of your Matcher psychopaths, came back steaming drunk, ate enough cake to kill you and then fell asleep.’

‘Oh. So I didn’t say or do anything bad?’

Nick stares at me for a moment.

‘Erm, no, only all of those things I just listed to you.’

‘That’s OK then,’ I say, exhaling a deep sigh of relief.

‘Well, I’ve got to go shopping and then get to work. Another day of fucking around, is it?’

‘I hope something really gross happens to you at work,’ I reply, massaging my temples.

‘You could use your free time to do something good,’ he suggests.

‘Good?’ I reply, saying the word slowly as I cock my head. ‘What is…good?’

Nick laughs.

‘I’m serious,’ he insists. ‘Do something to change the world.’

‘Like?’

‘Like give blood, that’s such a little thing to do to make such a huge amount of difference.’

I frown.

‘Needles,’ I tell him. ‘Nope.’

‘You’ll only feel a little prick – stop it,’ he snaps at me, before I have the chance to reply with a ‘that’s what she said’.

‘So is that how you spend you free time?’ I ask him.

‘I wouldn’t call it a hobby,’ he replies. ‘But blood donation, platelet donation – what’s twenty minutes or a couple of hours to make a difference?’

I feel my eyes widen with horror.

‘Mate, do you want me bleeding dry or something?’

‘Mate,’ he replies mockingly. ‘It looks like someone beat me to it. You’re looking very pale this morning.’

“Mate” is one of those words that has crept into my vocabulary – something that happens to me all the time with slang words. At first I’ll use words sarcastically, then as in-jokes, then suddenly, that’s it, words like “mate” and “BAE” and “on fleek” are in my day-to-day vocab.

“Mate” is definitely something I have picked up from Millsy, who calls everyone from me to his mum to his doctor it.

Hanging out with Millsy and my brother Woody growing up, I do worry that I’ve turned out “more boy” than I should have. Maybe that’s why I don’t have too many female friends. It’s like when a kitten gets in with a litter of puppies and thinks it’s one of them. It will act just like its adopted siblings, play like a dog, eat like a dog, truly think like a dog and feel like a dog…but at the end of the day, it’s still a cat. I’m a cat amongst the dogs. I find stupid gross-out comedies funny. I swear like a sailor who keeps stubbing his toe on the same bunk bed. I get riled up over football and borderline homicidal when I play FIFA.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to have female friends, but I just don’t seem to get on all that well with girls. Sometimes I think they’re ridiculous creatures, especially when it comes to the opposite sex. They have no chill. They’ll text a guy a million times and wonder why he isn’t texting back. Worse still, they’ll sleep with a guy on the first date, thinking it will win him over, only for him to ghost. And what do they do when he ghosts? They decide not to text him for a few days. Because that will teach him, and if he replies, he must be really interested, right? Surely if you’re trying to figure out a guy, it makes more sense to withhold sex instead of text messages?

‘It’s just my hangover,’ I tell him.

‘It’s not taking care of yourself,’ he corrects me. ‘It’s drinking too much, not sleeping enough, thinking you can eat Coco Pops for three meals a day and survive.’

Chapter 6

As I hover around outside Millsy’s flat, I take in the stunning view he has, but does not appreciate. Well, I say it’s his flat, but it’s actually his uncle’s. What Uncle Mills actually does, I’ve never quite understood. He travels around the world, teaching doctors a procedure they need for the company’s weird clinical trials. To me, this sounds a little sketchy, but Millsy assures me his uncle is going to “save humanity, or something”. This may or may not be true, but it affords my best friend a gorgeous one-bedroom bachelor pad in a prime location with a stunning view of the River Aire and the Royal Armouries, rent-free.

Sometimes, when Nick is stressing me out, Millsy offers me his (technically his uncle’s) sofa to sleep on, but with the possibility his semi-nomadic uncle could return at any point, he’ll want his bed back, Millsy will get the sofa, and I’ll wind up homeless. Giving up the flat to Nick would be letting him win, and that’s just not on either – also, with the amount of Matcher birds Millsy has slept with in there, I deem his sofa a legitimate pregnancy risk.

I lean on the wooden fence outside his building and glance around. It’s busy, yet weirdly peaceful – you don’t feel like you’re in a city centre. There are people hanging out on the grass because it’s surprisingly warm for October today, having picnics, fishing – it’s a picturesque Saturday lunchtime.

The reason I’m hanging around outside, admiring the Aire & Calder navigational canal (which I know to be its name now, because I just heard a tour guide telling a flock of tourists that’s what it’s called) is because Millsy has a girl in there with him. We’re supposed to be catching the train home to Outwood to visit our parents, but he needs to ‘finish up’ with last night’s bird before we can go – whatever that means.

Bored, I decide to amuse myself. I take a gold wedding band from my handbag and stand it on its side on the fence in front of me. I use a finger to gently twirl it around in circles before channelling every sad thought I’ve ever had: the fact I’ve lost a charm off the Juicy Couture bracelet my parents bought me for my birthday, the end of that film where the dog dies, the fact I’m probably going to die single and alone – shit, that one was a bit real. Anyway, it only takes a few seconds before my sorrowful frown catches the attention of two twenty-somethings walking past.

‘Are you OK?’ the first girl asks. She’s got her long, bright purple hair up in a bun on top of her head, the structure supported by a hair doughnut so big it looks like a burden. Her naturally red-headed friend, who appears equally concerned, looks like she could’ve been an extra in Pretty In Pink, her hairstyle and outfit positively 80s, even though she was probably only alive for a year or two of the decade.

‘I’m fine,’ I tell them. ‘It’s just…I’ve just found out my husband has been cheating on me.’

‘Oh my God, that’s proper rough,’ the first girl says.

‘Totally,’ the second echoes. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘That’s what I’m trying to figure out. We’ve only been married a few months – together for ten years though. I don’t think I can live without him.’

The girls stare at me for a moment, fascinated by the seeming collapse of a stranger’s life.

‘You can’t take him back,’ the purple-haired girl tells me. ‘You just can’t. He’ll do it again and again if you do.’

‘You’ve just got to be strong and start again,’ Molly Ringwald wannabe adds.

I think for a second, my expression dominated by a look of faux anguish.

‘You know what,’ I start, my confidence slowly coming back to me. ‘You’re right.’

I pick up the ring from in front of me and examine it for a second before meaningfully throwing it into the river. I watch as the ripples disappear before exhaling deeply.

‘You go, girl,’ the first girl says as they wonder off, the show over. I turn around and watch them head up the steps, noticing that Millsy is standing behind me. He gives me a slow clap as he approaches me.

‘Bravo,’ he praises me. ‘It’s nice to see you’ve still got it in you.’

‘I act for fun, not work,’ I remind him. ‘Anyway, that was too easy.’

‘Great improv. with that ring though,’ he says, leaning on the fence next to me. ‘I would’ve gone all Andy Serkis, giving it “my precious” and all that.’

‘Oh I’m sure that would’ve had those two girls eating out of your hand – speaking of girls and eating out, where’s your bird?’

Millsy wiggles his eyebrows.

‘I got rid when I came out, during your matinee. I reckon I could handle seeing this one maybe one more time, don’t want her meeting you, do I?’

I furrow my brow.

‘Don’t give me that resting bitch face, Miss Wood,’ he laughs. ‘You know you’re a cock-block. Birds see that I’m close with you and run a mile – God knows why. But most blokes seem to find you fit, so we’ve got to keep you out of the way, you know the score.’

The fact Millsy doesn’t want to sleep with me is actually the highest compliment he can pay me, because Millsy only sleeps with girls he doesn’t plan on keeping in his life for very long.

‘They have no need to be jealous,’ I tell him. ‘I know where you’ve been, I won’t even share drinks with you – herpes is for life.’

‘Fuck you! So I had a cold sore last year. One, once. It’s not the same as herpes.’

I laugh as he passionately defends his cold sore, like he always does when I tease him about it. It’s just too easy.

‘OK, sorry.’

‘Right, we going for this train?’ he asks as he zhooshes his messy brown hair.

‘Sure, right after you jump in and get my ring back for me,’ I inform him, staring at him expectantly.

‘What?’

‘My ring. I saw where it landed. That was a real gold one, I threw it by mistake.’

Millsy looks worried sick, the reflex to help his best friend without question doing battle with his aversion to jumping in dirty water and getting his hair wet.

I watch as he appears to reach for his T-shirt, as though he were going to take it off, before I put him out of his misery.

‘Don’t worry, Tom Daley, I’m just kidding. It was a cheap one, from a Primark set. Plenty more at home.’

‘You bitch,’ he laughs. ‘You’re lucky I don’t care enough about you, or I would’ve just jumped in.’

I grab him and hug him.

‘I love you too,’ I laugh. ‘Even though you’re dumb enough to think you can retrieve a tiny ring from a huge river.’

‘They’ll be retrieving you from a river when I strangle you and dump you in the Aire,’ he warns me.

‘And there’s me thinking you weren’t going to give me the same treatment you give all your Matcher birds.’

‘Come on, trouble. Train,’ he insists with a chuckle.

Considering it is October – and we’re up north – it’s not that cold today, perfect for a stroll through my favourite part of Leeds. The Calls area is a mixture of offices, flats and bars/restaurants. Along with Call Lane and Lower Briggate, it makes up the heart of the gay scene in Leeds, so it’s great for peaceful walks during the day, before it comes alive at night.

This is the part of Leeds where I wish I lived, instead of my flat-share hell above a bar on New Briggate, further up the hill. I mean, it’s not awful where I live. It’s in the city centre, and it’s right next to Merion Street which boasts some pretty cool bars, but I want to be down by the river where it’s pretty. Situated midway between where I live and where Millsy lives is the Trinity Centre, full of all my favourite shops as well as a whole host of bars and restaurants, so naturally when we hang out, that’s where we go. Yes, it’s awesome, but it doesn’t hurt that we can both easily crawl home after, it just sucks more for me because I’m headed up the hill, whereas Millsy heads down. When I put this argument to Millsy once to try and blag a rare night on his sofa, he countered it with: ‘at least you’re not at risk of rapists like I am’ – he quickly added that he meant because he walks along the edge of the river in the dark, and not because I’m so grossly undesirable that not even the rapists want me. Neither place is anywhere like where we lived for most of our lives.

4 Finch Avenue, that’s the street Millsy and I grew up on. In cute red-brick detached houses, down a quiet little cul-de-sac in Outwood, a town near Wakefield that no one has heard of.

Millsy didn’t just grow up on the same street as me, he lived in the house next door. Our mothers have been best friends since before we were born and, as a side effect, our dads are best friends too. Except, now that I think about it, I don’t think our dads have ever liked each other all that much. One thing I remember about growing up here was how they were always competing with one another. It was all about who had the neatest lawn or the most impressive tool – I know, that sounds like an extension of something, but in the suburbs having a large strimmer is exactly that. I guess our dads are quite different people, too – opposites, in fact. Millsy’s dad is a big, tall, broad, bald-headed rugby-loving dude whereas my short, skinny, curly-haired dad would much rather watch the football – or “girl’s rugby” as Daddy Mills would put it.

Our mums are both your typical suburban housewives who quit their jobs the second they fell pregnant. They both moved on to the street at the same time, both had two kids – and they even managed to give birth in the same years. Our mothers were already pregnant with their first two kids when they met, but whenever it is mentioned that Millsy and I were conceived around the same time, Millsy’s dad assures us that it wasn’t a keys-in-a-bowl-on-the-table kind of thing – something that had never crossed my mind until he brought it up.

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