Lindsey Kelk - What a Girl Wants

Charlie’s flat was a typical man flat. The walls were white, the curtains were blue, and all of the furniture orbited an obscenely large television in the corner of the living room. Its satellite PlayStations and Xboxes blinked their welcomes as I dropped my handbag on the leather recliner and let Charlie guide me over to the sofa. I’d sat on this settee a million times – God, I’d gone to DFS and helped him choose it – but today I felt strangely uncomfortable, as though I didn’t know where I should look or what I could touch. The framed Goodfellas poster I had given him four Christmases ago stared down at me as I perched on the edge of the settee, pressed my thighs tightly together, and smiled gratefully when Charlie reappeared from the kitchen with a glass of water and the codeine I remembered feeding him when he knackered his knee the year before.

‘How many more years until you’ve actually paid for this?’ I asked, patting the settee as he sat down beside me, at a respectful distance. Which wasn’t that easy when he was six three and I was five ten. Charlie and I had a tendency to make most furniture look Lilliputian.

‘Three, I think.’ He pushed his coppery brown hair off his face, one or two strands refusing to comply and sticking to his forehead. ‘I’m assuming it’ll completely fall apart or something. That’s how I’ll know it’s officially mine.’

‘Right,’ I nodded in agreement and sipped my water. Water was good. A shower would be better, but I still felt a bit weird and I couldn’t see what good would come of him holding me up in there. ‘Yeah.’

I’d known Charlie Wilder for ten years. I knew his height and his date of birth and his blood type. Our hair and our eyes were exactly the same colour. I knew when he had lost his virginity, I knew he lied about having a trial for Newcastle when he was fifteen, but things had never, ever been weird between us until I knew what his penis looked like.

‘Right, yeah,’ Charlie echoed. ‘You all right?’

‘I’m fine,’ I said, attempting to sit more upright, look more composed. While wearing a cropped neon unicorn T-shirt? ‘Apart from falling out of a window and spending all afternoon in a police station, I, sir, am right as rain.’

‘I’m glad you called me,’ he said, taking the empty glass out of my hand and placing it on the floor. Our fingers didn’t touch once. ‘Been waiting to hear from you.’

What I wouldn’t have given to be having this conversation in any other outfit.

‘I know.’ I felt the edge of my thumbnail between my teeth and concentrated my attention on the blinking clock on his Blu-ray player. I was fairly certain it wasn’t six fifteen in the morning and I quite badly wanted to go over and fix it. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry.’ I watched as Charlie pushed his Converses off with his feet, one at a time, then kicked them across the room to their home beside the door. ‘I know I dropped a load of shit on you on Monday. It’s not like I expected you to have an answer right away.’

I smiled and looked down the sofa at my best friend and saw someone I wasn’t even sure I knew. ‘I always have an answer right away though, don’t I?’

‘Well yeah, there is that,’ he replied with a soft laugh. ‘Got to admit, I wasn’t expecting you to take this long to get back to me.’

I had been in love with Charlie from the very first day of university and every day since. He was The One. He was the man I imagined walking down the aisle with, the man I wanted to father my children. I wanted him to change my plugs and catch my spiders and know where we kept the paperwork for the car insurance and everything else that went along with a happy, long life together. Only, for ten long years, all I had been to Charlie was the one who reminded him about Mother’s Day, the one who was always available for lunch or a pint after work. I was the girl who explained that petrol station carnations were never an appropriate apology, the one who went with him to weddings when he didn’t have a girlfriend.

It turned out there were lots of different interpretations of The One.

And then, two weeks ago, under the most romantic of circumstances – drunk on cheap vodka on the bottom bunk of my childhood bed – we had finally done the deed. It had been wonderful and not just because I hadn’t had sex in so long that there were expired condoms underneath my bed; it had been genuinely, toe-curlingly fantastic. Right up until Charlie threw me the ‘I don’t want to ruin our friendship’ curveball the morning after and I found out he’d been secretly shagging Vanessa.

Of course, as soon as I told him to take his tainted peen as far away from me as humanly possible, he decided he wanted to make a go of it. And not only that, but he wanted us to start our own advertising agency together. Because going out with each other after everything that had happened wasn’t potentially messy enough, clearly we needed to throw a professional relationship into the mix as well.

‘There’s been a lot of stuff going on …’ I let out a tiny yawn, the pain in my shoulder ringing as I moved. Well, that was definitely the last time I jumped out of a window. ‘I don’t really know what else to say.’

‘I had noticed you’re not at your most chatty,’ he said. ‘You haven’t really told me anything about Hawaii. You still don’t want to talk about it?’

‘Honestly, I sort of just want to go to sleep,’ I admitted. ‘And maybe have a bath and not be wearing Amy’s clothes any more. Not necessarily in that order.’

What I really meant was, I’d rather go back to the police station than talk to Charlie about what had happened in Hawaii.

‘In that case …’ Charlie stood up and stretched. He was ever so tall. ‘I’m going to pretend to go and have a wee when really I’m going to clean the bath, then I’m going to fuck off and leave you to have a nap for a bit. Thank God that’s not your top. I was about to stage an intervention.’

‘I went to Hawaii,’ I replied, ‘I didn’t go insane.’

‘Understood.’ He saluted, picked up my empty glass, and headed for the kitchen. I was already fully foetal on the settee and snuggled into the cushions I had made him buy in the Heal’s sale when he returned.

‘Drink this,’ he ordered, holding out a fresh glass of water. ‘And I’ll run the bath.’

Lying on the settee, listening to the bath water run and watching dust dance around the living room in the late afternoon sunshine, I could easily imagine things working out with Charlie. It would be so nice to have someone to look after me and he knew me so well. It could be so wonderful. The job I’d always wanted, the man I’d always wanted. It was the life I’d dreamed of.

But I couldn’t stop myself from wondering what would happen if I went to Milan. I couldn’t stop myself from wondering what might happen with Nick … Hooking my foot through the handle of my handbag because I was too lazy to sit up and get it, I dragged it along the settee and dug around for my phone. The screen was so badly shattered I had to tilt it this way and that to get a clear view of my inbox but it was pointless. There was nothing to see. No new emails, no missed calls, no new text messages. Nothing from Nick; nothing at all. Three days of silence, otherwise known as an eternity.

‘Do you want bubble bath?’ Charlie called from the bathroom. ‘I’ve got bubble bath. Why have I got bubble bath?’

‘Because you’re a woman?’ I asked, sliding my phone under my back and refastening my ponytail on top of my head. Long, thick curly hair looked amazing on celebrities. In real life, it was nothing but a pain in the arse. ‘Yes to bubble bath, please.’

‘Right, it’s running,’ Charlie said, emerging with his sleeves rolled up and a slightly flushed face. At least I knew the bath had been properly scrubbed. Charlie was one of those blokes who believed that because you cleaned yourself in the bathroom, somehow that made the room itself self-cleaning. I really hoped I was catching the towels on a good day … ‘You want a T-shirt or something? I don’t think I’ve got any underwear to lend you.’