‘Laura.’ Desi spoke my name gently, her fingertips finding my forearm, but it was no good now. The cap was off, the toothpaste was out the tube and I wasn’t done.
‘No!’ I yelled, shaking her off. I’d started and I could not stop. ‘That’s not even half of it. Do you want the full list? Because I’ve got one. Why am I in so much debt from student loans? I’m not out there buying Chanel handbags, I’m training to be a fucking surgeon. Why do I have to deal with sexist doctors and patients who won’t let me help save their lives but are perfectly happy to have one of my male colleagues on their team even though I’m miles better at my job than they are? I could go on but what’s the point of losing my shit? It doesn’t help, nothing changes. So I live with it. I push it down, I walk around with a smile on my face and I try to make things better for the world, knowing it will never make things better for me. And yes, I keep people at a distance because if you don’t let them in, they can’t let you down and give you another reason to be even angrier. Obviously I made an exception for you two and that was clearly a mistake.’
I didn’t realise I was crying until Desi pulled me into her chest and I saw my tears staining the cream fabric of her shirt.
‘Oh, Laura,’ she said, squeezing her arms around me tightly when I tried to wriggle away. ‘You’re an idiot.’
‘OK, not what I was expecting you to say,’ I muttered through choked sobs.
‘If anyone has any right to be pissed off with the world, it’s you,’ she replied as Joel made it a group hug. ‘But you can’t keep it all in because, well …’
‘Because eventually you’ll explode in the middle of a Marks & Sparks Simply Food and start bawling your eyes out on Christmas Day,’ Joel finished for her. ‘And walk out on the first man I’ve ever seen make an impression on you in the entire ten years I’ve known you.’
‘Consider it a lesson learned,’ I snuffled into my friends’ bodies. ‘I won’t be letting my guard down again.’
Desi stroked my hair and cleared her throat.
‘Are you going to hit me if I suggest that’s the wrong lesson?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK then.’
Joel went next. ‘Can I ask a question?’
‘No.’
‘Tough tits because I’m going to ask it anyway,’ he said. ‘Given how very, very good you are at keeping people out, how the bloody hell did Callum six-foot-something-Scot McClay weasel his way in so quickly?’
‘She told me he made her come four times,’ Desi answered. ‘Does that answer your question?’
‘It would if she wasn’t clearly head over heels for him before he gave her the pork sword,’ Joel said. ‘I’m not trying to upset you, Lau, it’s an honest question. What is it about Callum that broke through?’
Squished between my best friends’ bodies, I closed my eyes and the first thing I saw was Callum’s face. The freckle underneath his left eye, the shifting blue of his irises, that irresistible half-smile.
‘He listened,’ I said simply.
‘Fuck me,’ Joel muttered. ‘The bar really is low for straight women, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Desi, elbowing him in the ribs. ‘Now shut up and let her finish.’
‘I suppose,’ I added, unable to shut down a horrible sinking feeling in my stomach, ‘because I was playing a role, my guard was down. I wasn’t worried about him getting close so I didn’t bother to keep him at a distance.’
‘So busy pretending to be someone else, you accidentally let him see the real you,’ Desi said. ‘Ironic really.’
‘A little too ironic,’ Joel sang, only earning himself another, sharper elbow to the guts from our friend.
My tears dried up and sobs slowed into hiccups as I recovered myself. It was true. I’d told Callum things I’d never shared with anyone else. He made me laugh. He made me feel soft and safe and strong and powerful. And to Desi’s point, he had made me come four times which was, sadly, an all-time record.
‘He’s still moving to Paris though,’ I said, carefully extricating myself from my friends’ embrace. ‘And I still have exams coming up. Even if I do have feelings for him and he has feelings for me, it’s still terrible timing.’
‘Sounds like perfectly normal timing to me,’ Joel replied. ‘Unless you’re the sort of person who constantly looks for excuses why they shouldn’t try.’
I shot him a filthy look, scrubbing at my cheeks with the backs of my hands.
‘Withdrawn,’ he said. ‘Desi, your witness.’
‘Bear with me,’ she said, the three of us still standing in the middle of the snack aisle, surrounded by my overturned basket full of goods. ‘What if we went back to Balmaclay and you and Callum … talk?’
