His eyes went to mine.
‘Would you be okay with that? Are you comfortable with it just being us?’
I couldn’t think of a single guy I knew who’d bother asking me that. Suddenly the two-year age difference between Josh and the boys I usually dated was even more apparent.
‘More than okay,’ I said, wondering if I was being too obvious, but not really caring.
‘Then let’s do it,’ he said, throwing an arm around my shoulders in a purely companionable way.
There was a small parade of shops beside the bus stop, one of them a twenty-four-hour SPAR.
‘Shall we pick up something to drink?’ Josh asked, glancing at the brightly lit shop.
‘We probably should, unless you fancy cherry cola.’
His laugh was the same, but strangely more grown-up than it had been. So many changes. Uncovering them was like a treasure hunt, and I was an eager explorer.
Inside the shop I gravitated towards the special offer section, with the wines my student grant preferred, even if my palate didn’t. Josh however had gone to an entirely different section.
‘Do you like Merlot?’ he asked, holding up a bottle that cost four times more than the ones I’d been looking at.
‘I don’t know. How good is it at taking the enamel off your teeth? That’s usually the type I go for.’
That laugh again. If it wouldn’t have looked weird, I’d have taken out my phone and recorded it, just in case tonight was all I was ever going to get before he walked out of my life again.
He bought the bottle, refusing to allow me to pay anything towards it. He slipped it into the rucksack he’d collected from beneath a pile of coats at the party. As he closed the flap, I glimpsed a rolled-up sleeping bag and wondered where he’d be staying tonight.
The bus journey flew by. We went upstairs, even though the lower deck was practically empty. I climbed the steps first, glad I’d chosen to wear the jeans that fitted me better than all the others in my wardrobe. Josh was keeping up a constant flow of conversation, but it faltered as though he’d briefly lost his train of thought as he ascended the steps behind me.
The lounge in our house was quite frankly awful. The settees were lumpy and uncomfortable, and it didn’t matter how many colourful throws and scatter cushions we used to disguise them, they were still gross.
‘We could sit in here, if you like,’ I said, opening the door like a reluctant estate agent and showing him the bleak option, ‘or we could hang out in my room.’
It wasn’t as provocative as it sounded. My bedroom was on the ground floor and would have been the formal dining room of the house before the landlord converted it to a student rental. It was bigger than the other bedrooms, and had a fireplace and Frenchdoors that led on to a garden we did absolutely nothing with, so was kind of a jungle.
‘This is huge,’ Josh exclaimed, looking around in amazement at the room that housed a double bed, wardrobe, desk, and a small two-seater sofa bed. He crossed the room to stand before the French doors. ‘Do these open?’
‘If you can get past the stuck-on paint they do,’ I said, already heading to the kitchen for wine glasses.
By the time I returned he’d managed to open both the doors, allowing a warm summer breeze into the room. Something fragrant from the neighbour’s garden was in the air, suffusing the room with a soft musky aroma.
Josh opened the wine with a corkscrew on a penknife he plucked from his rucksack.
‘You still carry a penknife around with you?’ I asked, not sure why it made me happy to discover traits of the boy I’d known were still there.
The conversation and the wine flowed easily as we sipped on our drinks and travelled down the lanes of our memories. Every sentence seemed to start with aDo you remember when ...I remembered it all. I always had, and yet for some reason I was surprised that Josh did too.
We sat side by side on the sofa bed my parents had bought –‘in case you want to have guests,’as they’d said at the time.
‘I think it was more to ensure that anyone staying overnight didn’t have to share my bed,’ I told Josh with a grin.
He looked oddly shocked at my words, before slowly shaking his head. ‘I keep forgetting that you’re all grown-up now. I keep thinking of you as still being fifteen.’
I blinked several times, not sure if I was brave enough to say the words, but knowing I couldn’t stop them from coming.
‘I’m not a kid anymore, Josh.’
I took a large gulp of Merlot, trying to drown the thought that I’d never felt less mature than I did right then, with his gaze on me. I’d caught him looking at me several times, and each time he did I was powerless to stop the breath from catching in my throat.
