After we finished, and were lying there and listening to the storm outside, he asked me more about my job. How I got into it. What the day is like. How I cope with all those hard questions. I told him about starting as a volunteer manager, about being asked to take on some shifts, about how much joy I get when I hear that I’ve helped someone, about Matt and how close we are, about clinical supervision and identifying triggers and how terribly hard it is some days.
He listened while stroking my hair. ‘I wish my job was important like yours.’
‘Coding is important.’
He laughed.
‘You could code for a charity. They have websites. They need coders.’
‘You know what? I could actually, couldn’t I? Sorry again, about Neil.’
‘Oh God. Your friends are going to hate me now.’ A pinch of anxiety rippled through our post-coital bubble. I suddenly cared about it, the awkwardness I’d caused, how I would face them in the future.
‘Don’t be daft, they won’t hate you. They all said how much they liked you.’
‘Yeah right.’ I buried my face into his armpit. It smelt of sour sweat mingled with new sweat, and yet I could not get enough of his scent. Would bury my face further in if I could. Snort a line of him.
His voice was heavy with sleep, but he still made an effort to be reassuring. ‘It could’ve gone better, for sure. But you’ll meet them again. And it was Neil who kicked it all off anyway. It’s about time he was told, to be honest.’
‘Are you sure?’
He tilted his chin down and planted a kiss on the top of my head. ‘I’m sure.’
The next peculiar thing is that I slept after that. Wrapped up in Joshua’s arms. A deep, heavy, dreamless sleep. The sort of great sleep you get when you accidentally nap in the afternoon. I only regained consciousness fifteen minutes ago, when the heat between our bodies got too much. The fresh air cleared by the storm is already forgotten – the heatwave well and truly back in action. But, when I woke, I was still in his arms, wrapped up in him, totally naked and comfortable, like we were a pack of wolves but without the rest of the pack. I’ve not been able to sleep next to a man since It happened either. I force myself to look away from Joshua and back at the ceiling crack.
I don’t know what any of this means.
I’m very confused right now, it has to be said.
He’s not behaving how I know men to behave. Intellectually, I’m certain this is only because I’ve been Gretel. That his lack of game-playing and mind-fuckery and not-really-knowing-what-he-wants and emotional-whiplashing is only a non-event because Gretel is a non-event. A safe, make-believe woman for him to be infatuated with. I mean, I’ve never met someone that it’s got so serious with so quickly, so it must be the Gretel effect, right?
But a tiny part of me is starting to believe. In him. In men. Maybe he really is a good guy. Maybe they do exist. Maybe I’ve been lucky enough to stumble across one because, for once, I wasn’t looking. They always tell you it happens when you’re not looking. The mattress shifts. Joshua stirs. I turn towards him and watch him wake up to this morning and my face.
‘Hello.’ His voice is gruff, sexy.
‘Hello.’
He pulls me into his naked body. I can feel what he wants pressing into my thigh. But he’s also staring at me in wonder. He leans in to kiss me on the lips. ‘Come here,’ he whispers. ‘I want a cuddle.’
Though inevitably we do more than cuddle.
*
‘You don’t have a coffee machine.’ Joshua’s wearing only yesterday’s boxers and looking around, offended, at our tiny kitchen. ‘You don’t even have a cafetière. I can’t cope under such conditions.’
‘I’ve got Nescafé.’
‘That’s it. I’m out. I’m leaving.’ He smiles to check I know it’s a joke. I smile back. We’ve been doing this all morning. Talking. Kissing. Grinning. Kissing. Grinning. Every sentence the other utters is worthy of a joyful smile and a congratulatory peck on the lips.
‘I have tea? Lots and lots of tea?’
‘I suppose it will have to do.’
I get out two mugs and the special Teapigs bags that I always get from my mother for my birthday – alongside the obligatory Richard and Judy Book Club novel, a small vial of Jo Malone Pear and Freesia, and