‘Good start.’
‘Terrible taste in drink spots.’
‘Ouch.’ A hand flies to his chest.
‘Semi-decent chat.’ I arch an eyebrow.
He protests. ‘I have carried this whole conversation!’
‘And incredibly insulting,’ I say in conclusion.
‘Fair enough.’ We both laugh. ‘So, what do I get out of ten? You’ve got to rate them all, right? To give the series some sizzle. Oh – and nicknames. I can be Mr Mysterious.’
‘What part of you has been mysterious?’
He crooks his neck as he ponders. ‘Nothing yet, but I’ll work towards it once it’s out there.’
I shake my head and laugh. ‘That is not how this works.’
‘“Mr Mysterious blew me away with his stellar conversation and great insider knowledge of the city’s best spots...”’ He scribbles a fake pen in the air.
I reach over, snatching his fake pen from his hand and emphatically snapping it in half. He plays along, gasping loudly and picking up the invisible pieces before we both dissolve into a hearty laugh.
‘Another round?’ he asks.
‘You must be crazy,’ I scoff. ‘Half of those made me retch.’
‘A glass of wine, then.’
‘You told me they didn’t do wine!’
‘Because you had to try the beer. You’ve tried it now. You can have wine.’ He gets up.
I scowl at him, but it rolls off his back that now faces me as he makes his way to the bar. I watch him closely. He speeds through the crowd, slowing one time only to throw me an annoyingly triumphant smirk over his shoulder.
We go through three more rounds and talk well into the night, eventually even switching to water just so we can stay and keep chatting. We lose ourselves in conversation about our lives back in London, his dating life, my ex, and everything in between. We both gasp at the 2.53 a.m. time stamp when the last orders bell rings. Then he insists I can’t walk alone, despite my protests, and wheels my case down the uneven streets towards my accommodation.
With all the drama of the day, I hadn’t yet had a chance to check in or even see my accommodation in person. So when we near the severely underlit street, I have to double check that I have, in fact, got the address right. Unfortunately, I have.
There’s a mysterious brown stain smeared across the door, but, still, I shine my phone torch and reach into the lockbox for the key. The door creaks open. I flick the light switch and it shakily buzzes to life, revealing chipping paint and a stark, empty room with nothing but a wire bedframe in the centre.
‘I haven’t been paid yet, so it’s all I could afford,’ I say as we creep closer to the bedding and its dubious-looking stains. ‘Plus, it looked nicer in the pictures.’
Albeit, not by much. But it at least looked like a place that wouldn’t leave me riddled with disease. He circles the space a couple times, his nose crumpled tightly, before looking me in the eye.
‘You can’t stay here.’
He opens the door to the bathroom and an all-consuming stench overwhelms us, our hands flying to our noses. I gag.
‘It’s not that bad,’ I lie meekly, trying to breathe through my mouth.
I don’t want to stay here – no person in their right mind would want to stay here – but I can’t afford literally anything else.
Honestly, between the goodbye partying, the new holiday wardrobe and all the random travel accessories the internet convinced me to buy, I could barely afford this place to begin with. And I need to save my credit-card limit as much as possible... Who knows when my first payment will come through?
He swings the door shut again but not before a cockroach emerges, scuttling across the floor. I look up. He’s even more horrified than I am, but it quickly shifts to something far more pragmatic. He walks over, grabs the handle of my suitcase once again and heads back towards the door.
‘You’re coming to mine,’ he says.
