The question came out of nowhere. My hand wobbled, and the cat’s-eye-effect eyeliner took a detour that made me look like a circus clown. It was typical of Andie to suddenly turn an innocuous conversation into interview practice for her journalism course. It was all the more bizarre because the last question she’d asked was whether she could get away without wearing a bra under the strappy top she’d picked out for the party. Frankly, I was far happier discussing her boobs than my former love life.
My silence was a dead giveaway that she homed in on with unnerving accuracy. She was going to make an excellent journalist. She rolled over on my bed, where she’d been scrolling through her phone, and focused her attention on me. I hid as much of my face as I could behind a tissue as I wiped off the wonky eyeliner.
‘You have, haven’t you? You’ve been in love. How come you’ve never said anything about it before?’
Andie wriggled on her belly, commando fashion, to the edge of the mattress so she could better study my face. ‘Was it that Pete boy who you dated in first year, the one with the weird earlobes?’
Despite the intensity of her gaze, I smiled. ‘There was nothing wrong with his ears,’ I said loyally. I might not have been in love with my first-year boyfriend, but I was still willing to defend him – and hopefully throw Andie off course in the process.
I should have known better. She was relentless.
‘Nah. It can’t have been him. You weren’t even that sad when you two broke up.’
She was right. Neither of us had been when Pete and I went our separate ways.
As my best friend, who’d occupied the room next to mine in our student accommodation, there wasn’t much Andie and I hadn’t shared during our time at university. And yet, somehow, we had got almost to the end of our second year and hadn’t once ventured down this particular conversational avenue. Probably because I was pretty good at negotiating one-eighty-degree swerves whenever the topic came close.
‘Well, it definitely can’t have been that bartender bloke in the club we used to go to, because you said he was a weird kisser.’
‘I’m sure I never said that.’
‘You did,’ Andie said, pulling herself upright and crossing her legs. ‘You said his tongue was too big.’
I bit my lip to stop the smile, but it got out anyway. ‘So, according to you, I only go out with guys with peculiar body parts.’
‘Just reminding you how it went down,’ Andie said, tapping the side of her head with a forefinger. ‘Steel trap, you know. It’s going to come in handy when I’m a world-famous investigative journalist.’
That might have been the opportunity to redirect the conversation to Andie’s big glittering future, but I missed it by a whisker.
‘So, this guy you were in love with ... where does he come into the picture? I thought you said you’d never dated anyone seriously from back home. Was he a holiday romance?’
For the life of me I didn’t know why I didn’t just lie and make up some steamy story about a summer fling under foreign skies with a smoking-hot local. Although Andie probably wouldn’t have believed me.
‘Come on, Lily,’ she urged, using the same wheedling tone that had got us into countless clubs and bars for free over the last two years. ‘Who was the guy who broke your heart?’
This time I waited until I’d reapplied my eyeliner before replying.
‘Who says my heart has ever been broken?’
Andie’s grin slowly slid away when something I hadn’t even realised had escaped must have shown in my eyes.
‘It’s okay, Lily,’ she said, sounding unexpectedly contrite. ‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. Even though I do tell you absolutely everything.’
She did. I knew more about the guys she’d dated than I’d ever wanted to. I wasn’t a prude – far from it – but there were images burned into my brain that I’d probably never be able to erase, of her passion-fuelled relationships that had shorter sell-by dates than the milk in our fridge.
‘It was no one,’ I said after a long moment of internal debate. I knew Andie, she’d be hounding me all night for more information if I didn’t say something now. She’d follow me at the party like a determined stalker, convinced that was how good investigative journalists got their stories. For all I knew, it might very well be true.
‘It was the boy who lived next door to me.’
For a moment Andie looked a little disappointed at the cliché, but perhaps she caught a whiff of the wistfulness that still, even now, managed to creep into my voice whenever I thought about Josh ... despite the fact that I tried very hard not to do so anymore.
‘Ahh ... I see, the classic next-door neighbour shtick,’ she said, nodding wisely. ‘You fell in love when you were toddlers splashing around in the paddling pool, but he never knew you existed until you were sweet sixteen, when suddenly ... bam ... he was head over heels.’
‘He’d moved away by the time I was sixteen,’ I corrected. ‘And we were never a thing.’
She leant forward, balancing her weight on her forearms, positioning herself up in my grill. Her face was close enough to admire how carefully she’d applied her own make-up tonight. She’d definitely made a big effort for her blind date.
‘Oh, that’s even worse. Unrequited love. You never told him how you felt, but he still broke your tender teenage heart, didn’t he?’
