on his fingers, feeling the pulse from his wrist beat through my hands. ‘I really like you too.’
‘So?’
‘So, I guess that means we’re “going steady”.’
He digests what I’ve said and then his face splits into a smile, carving through the stubble on his cheeks. ‘Really?’
‘Of course.’ My smile matches his. I laugh. He laughs. Happiness spews out of us. Our hands mesh. I feel like a confetti cannon should fire out over us. Joshua leans over to kiss me. He leans over to do it again. He’s a different man – changed, loosened. We’re interrupted by the food arriving, forcing us to release one another’s grip.
‘Coming out for ramen was a brilliant idea,’ he says, picking up his chopsticks. ‘The things you make me do, Gretel.’
I pick up my own chopsticks, smiling back. He’s different because he’s relaxed. Because I’ve reassured him. He has pinned Gretel down. We are on the same page after all.
He, quite cutely, checks a few times. ‘It’s not too soon? I keep counting how many dates we’ve had and thinking maybe it’s too soon.’
‘It’s not too soon.’
We kiss again. We slurp our ramen and giggle about how unattractive we both look. We order more drinks. We kiss more over the table, knocking over the nut grinder. We kiss out in the heavy air of Soho, pressed against a wall. We hold hands on the Tube. We stumble into his flat laughing and kissing.
The way he looks at Gretel … If only I could be looked at like that by a man. I pretend I am her, because it’s easier, because it’s nice to pretend for myself sometimes. Pretend I am fun, carefree, that I’m not dragging myself through life with tonnes of trauma and baggage trailing behind me like chains, pinning me to my sadness. I need a cold shower, I say. He needs one too. We shower together, shrieking at how cold we can make the water go. Kissing with our bodies slick, him looking like a child with his hair wet, teeth clashing with teeth, laughter turning into shivers, wrapping ourselves up in his towels and rubbing one another dry. We inevitably make love, and I not-so-inevitably find myself climaxing again. Clutching onto his hair and turning my head into the pillow.
‘Are you OK?’ he whispers, between my legs.
‘Yes.’ It’s the truth.
We lie together afterwards like pretzels that weren’t separated properly in the factory. A tangle of limbs. He keeps stroking my face. I can feel so much love coming off him, but it’s not for me. It’s not for the person I am. I want to hide in this moment. Curl up in it. Pretend it’s the truth. Pretend a man is capable of loving me the way Joshua seems to love Gretel. Does any woman get to feel like this? Better women? Ones with less raggedy edges? It seems so unfair that the people who deserve love like this the most, the ones who have gone through the most torture, are the ones who are the least likely to get it. How the legitimate need for it repels it, and increases the odds that you’ll never get it. We reward simple people with love. People without trauma. And we punish those who dare to get scathed by life, even when it’s not their fault, like their pain is a contaminant.
I lie in Joshua’s arms and focus on his touch as he traces my stomach with his thumb. ‘I’m going to miss you this weekend when you’re away on this hen do,’ he says.
‘I’ll miss you too,’ Gretel says.
I will miss him.
And what that means scares me.
? Gretel’s Guide to Becoming The Girlfriend and Staying The Girlfriend
* * *
You’re a girlfriend now. That changes things. Girlfriends have different requirements from girls who are merely dating. You’ve made it past the first round of tests, but the stakes are higher now, and therefore the prizes better.
Girlfriends need to be that bit more nurturing than dating girls. You need to cook him meals and rub his head and ask how his day was and actually give a shit about his response. Don’t nurture too much though, it annoys them. If you overdo it, they will flinch and act like you’re trying to break them. ‘It’s not a big deal, don’t make it into a big deal,’ is a sign of over-scrambling the nurturing eggs. Best not to talk too much when you’re nurturing. Stick to the cooking and the head rubs, the silent nodding,