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СКАЧАТЬ my character into a bloody pulp on the screen in front of us. ‘How can you possibly be so bad?’

      ‘Because I’ve been drinking for the last hour on an empty stomach,’ I said, adding a hiccup for emphasis and throwing my controller down onto the sofa in protest as he ripped the head off my character with unrestrained glee. ‘And I don’t have a penis.’

      ‘Loads of girls are good at games,’ Charlie argued as his phone lit up on the sofa between us. ‘You’re just shit. Thank God the pizza is here so I don’t have to kill you again.’

      Folding my legs up underneath me, I watched him run downstairs to pick up the pizza and smiled the smug smile of a woman who was spending the evening playing computer games and drinking wine with her crush. It was every girl’s dream, wasn’t it? Here I was, wearing his favourite Arsenal T-shirt and a pair of big floppy socks, looking adorable. Or at least I looked adorable in my imagination; I had no interest in checking out how true that assumption was in a mirror. This was everything I’d ever wanted. Well, maybe I hadn’t pictured quite so many rounds of Mortal Kombat in our future, but the pizza was definitely a plus.

      ‘Dinner is served!’ Charlie pushed through the door with an enormous white pizza box, a matching plastic bag hanging from his wrist. ‘Do you want some Coke?’

      ‘Is it diet?’

      ‘No, it isn’t diet.’ He placed the pizza carefully on the not-really-clean-enough floor and handed me a napkin.

      ‘Then I’ll stick with the wine.’ I held out my glass for a refill.

      ‘Wine and pizza …’ He grabbed the almost empty bottle from the side table and poured. ‘We’re practically Italian.’

      I flipped open the lid of the pizza box and ignored him.

      ‘Hawaiian pizza?’ I asked. ‘I suppose you think you’re funny.’

      ‘I want to hear about it – Amy wouldn’t tell me anything.’ Charlie handed me a piece of kitchen towel in lieu of a plate and grabbed a huge, gooey slice of pizza before settling back onto the sofa. ‘Actually, she kept saying I was a cockwomble and told me to stop calling her. Was it amazing?’

      ‘It was amazing.’ I chose my words carefully, focusing on my memories of the sea and the sand and the smell of morning pastries and pretty pink flowers and pineapple that tasted nothing like the pineapple on this pizza. ‘It’s really beautiful.’

      ‘I still can’t believe you did it, Tess,’ he said. ‘Packed up, flew halfway round the world. It’s so not you.’

      I shrugged, picking pieces of sad, tinned pineapple off my pizza. He didn’t know the half of it.

      ‘Being me wasn’t getting me very far, was it?’ I said, wiping my hands on a paper napkin and wrapping my hair around itself in a bun on the back of my head. ‘And I needed to get away from everything.’

      The skinny blonde elephant in the corner of the room coughed delicately and tossed its hair.

      ‘Everything?’ Charlie repeated.

      ‘You know, work and everything,’ I said, attempting to clarify without using the V word. If I never heard the V word again as long as I lived, it would be too soon.

      Charlie wrapped his huge hand around his delicate wine glass and nodded. ‘Vanessa.’

      And we’d managed fifteen seconds. Not bad going.

      ‘You know …’ He cleared his throat and took a drink. ‘Me and her, it was nothing to do with me and you.’

      ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ I said, meaning it entirely.

      ‘It was a thing.’ For some reason, he hadn’t stopped talking. ‘It was not a clever thing, I know, but it was like she was in one box and you were in another and I never even thought about you being in that box because you’re you and she’s her and you were in a more important box anyway. Does that make sense?’

      ‘None, not even a little bit,’ I replied. ‘I really, really don’t want to talk about it.’

      ‘I never had feelings for her,’ he said, continuing to talk in spite of specific instructions to the contrary. gesticulating wildly and using his pizza as a prop. ‘It was all, well, it was all that it was.’

      ‘It was just sex,’ I said, my mind wandering over to the last time I’d heard those words.

      ‘I know I’m an idiot and I know I was dick-led and I know you’ll never forgive me …’ I looked away but heard the clink of the wine bottle on the rim of the glass. ‘But yeah, it was just sex. I’m a bloke. I was drunk and a fit girl came on to me and I am fully aware that it was the worst decision I’ve ever made.’

      Sipping my wine, I considered his words for a moment. Two weeks ago, that sort of defence would have made my head explode but now, having made my own bad decisions, with my own fit bloke, I could almost understand. Almost.

      ‘If I could take it back, I would.’ Charlie climbed off the settee, his long legs kneeling in the lid of the pizza box before he pushed it away and I watched it skate across the room and disappear under an armchair. ‘If I’d known what might happen with you, I would never—’

      ‘You’re drunk,’ I said, half-hopefully. ‘We don’t have to have this conversation now.’

      ‘I’ve had two weeks to think about this, Tess,’ he said, taking the wine glass and paper-towel pizza plate out of my hands.

      His breath was warm and sharp from the wine but he smelled the way he had smelled since the very first day I had met him. A mixture of Head & Shoulders, the Issey Miyake aftershave he had spritzed on before he left the flat this morning and underneath all that, the same comforting Charlieness that had wrapped itself around me a thousand times.

      ‘I know I fucked up. And not just by what I did and who I did it with, but by not realizing how amazing you are bloody years ago. You’re my best friend. You make me laugh, you take care of me; you’re the one who is always there. You’re shit at beat-em-ups but I don’t care. There are too many awesome things about you. I can’t believe I didn’t work this out before.’

      ‘Like what?’ I said, nervous laughter in my voice. ‘What’s so awesome about me?’

      ‘Everything,’ he said, grinning. ‘We like all the same films, we like all the same TV shows, we like the same music. God, it’s like we were made for each other. You’re basically me and I’m basically you.’

      I wanted my wine back. Was that true, really? Did we like all the same things? And did I want to be with someone who liked me because I was exactly like him? I hated to admit it but I had a feeling it would be more true to say I liked the things he liked so we would have more reasons to spend time together. We never, ever did anything I suggested – because I never suggested anything.

      ‘I need you in my life,’ Charlie said, not put off by my contemplative silence. ‘And not as a mate. I didn’t realize how much I needed you until now. Just don’t tell me it’s too late.’

      As it was, he didn’t give me a chance to tell him anything. Instead he took my hands in СКАЧАТЬ