The words hung in the hallway like heavy weights waiting to crash down. I’d said those words before, a week after New Year’s Eve when we’d forgotten a condom.
Jude swallowed, I saw his Adam’s apple contract. “Will Genny have some?”
“In her bathroom. She keeps a stash there. Do you mind? I owe you.” I looked back towards the bathrooms I’d just come out of. “I’ll be in there.”
“I’ll be five minutes.” He took off before I could say anything else.
I headed straight to the loos, locking myself in one of the two cubicles, breathing a sigh of relief that the mess wasn’t too bad. Tomorrow, I’d go and shout at someone for not having a box stocked up with sanitary products and make sure it was done, even if I had to do it myself. Or I could get a few women to march round and make a point.
I heard heavy footsteps mid-plot, then Jude’s voice called my name.
“Shall I slide them under?” he said. “That okay?”
“Thank you – that’s perfect.”
A couple of pads and applicator tampons came under the door. I sorted myself out, assuming Jude had left the bathrooms until I came out of the cubicle and saw him leaning against the sinks.
“I wanted to make sure you were okay.” He folded his arms, biceps pulling the material of his club hoodie tight across them. “You look pale.”
I glanced in the mirror. He was right.
“I just need to get home. Have something to eat and a hot drink. Curl up in front of the TV and binge watchBuffy.”
He nodded. “Grilled cheese, tea by the bucketful and that Christmas blanket with reindeer and snowmen on that has a hole in from when the fire spat out a hot bit of coal.”
“You remember.” I knew what he was thinking of. That same couple of days when I found out our lack of contraception hadn’t led to a baby.
He nodded. “I was okay if you had been pregnant. I even looked at car seats.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “You mean you looked at custom car seats.”
His smile matched mine. “Pretty much. I was disappointed when you weren’t pregnant. Relieved as well – because I really hadn’t ever thought about it before. I weirded myself out because I was disappointed. I’d kind of thought what would happen if you were and how our baby would’ve looked, if it would’ve been a boy or a girl and what name we would’ve chosen.”
My jaw had dropped in a similar way to Amber’s earlier.
“I’ve shocked you, haven’t I?” He wasn’t smiling now. “I didn’t say anything to you because I didn’t want to scare you off.” His slight laugh was full of irony. “Not that it would’ve mattered.”
“Because it all ended a few weeks later.” I nodded, feeling the first of what would be many cramps. “I was worried I’d end up trapping you. The stereotypical older woman trapping a younger man with a baby.”
“You’d already trapped me. And not with a baby.” He shook his head and lifted a hand to ruffle his hair. “You need to get home to your blanket. Give me a call if you want anything."
I froze, realising I was going to say something almost unplanned for the second time that day. “I really fancy McDonalds. Do you want to grab it to go and come to mine?”
CHAPTER10
Jude
It wasn’t meantto be on my food plan, but I was having it anyway. Two super huge burgers for me with fries and onion rings, and just the one for Neva, with fries. Large milkshakes for both of us, which made it feel like déjà vu, walking into her home loaded with brown paper bags.
She had the fire on, which again, made me feel like I’d travelled back in time a couple of years. Her dark hair was pulled back in a pony tail, that looked more like a paintbrush because of its length and thickness, and she already had on sweats and a sweater.
Outside was heavy wet and cold, autumn handing the reins over to winter already, meaning it was the season for nights in by the fire and classic films, or going to just one bar and staying there because it was too fucking nasty out there to move on.
It wasn’t nasty in here. I handed Neva her food, sitting next to her on the sofa, just leaving a couple of feet of space between us.
“How’re you feeling?” I wasn’t afraid of periods and stuff. Because I had no sister or female cousins to learn from, my mum had made sure that things like that were normalised. When she started going through perimenopause, me and my dad were sent reading material and thermal underwear, because she was going to be the master of those hot flushes.
Neva nodded and gave me half a smile. “Better. I’m going to have a bath later and an early night. I’ll feel fine tomorrow. Thank you for helping before. If I’d asked Matty or someone they’d have acted like I’d just asked them to kill a puppy.”
