It Sounded Better in My Head - Nina Kenwood Page 0,35

might legitimately have a heart attack.

Thinking about his jeans makes me realise I’m wearing my distorted-face Prince Harry T-shirt and oversized pyjama shorts with hot dogs on them that I bought from the men’s section at Kmart. So, my pyjamas are not sexy. They are the opposite of sexy.

Alex shuffles around, and then leans over to the side of the bed and grabs two pillows off the floor (Mariella loves pillows, every bed has at least three more than are needed) and puts them under the sheet between us.

‘What are you doing?’ I say.

‘Creating a pillow barrier. I can’t sleep in jeans.’

Oh god, oh god, oh god. He is going to be pantless. He will be Without Pants.

I’m in a fan fiction of my own life. Except I want to be safely reading it on the screen, not lying here in hot-dog-patterned shorts, sweating and self-consciously braless.

‘Are you going naked?’ I ask, my voice a weird squeaky version of what it normally sounds like.

‘No! I’m wearing my jocks. Is that okay? If it’s not okay, I can keep the jeans on.’

‘No, no, it’s fine, take them off,’ I say, dropping my voice a little to try and sound like a worldly woman who is unconcerned about the amount of clothes being worn in the bed beside her. (I always imagine worldly women as having sexy, raspy it-might-be-a-cold-or-it-might-be-too-many-cigarettes kinds of voices.)

I listen to Alex wriggle out of his jeans and drop them to the floor. That’s it. The jeans are officially off. Deep breaths, Natalie. This is really happening.

‘When are you and Zach switching back?’ he asks, through a yawn. How can he be so relaxed? This is the most high-stakes moment of my life, and I say that as someone who considered her final English exam a matter of life or death.

‘At six-thirty. I’ve set my alarm,’ I say.

‘Are you really okay to share until then?’ he asks.

‘Yes. Alex, it’s your house.’

The only thing more terrifying than sharing the bed with pantless Alex is losing the chance to share the bed with pantless Alex.

‘Exactly. It’s my house. Which means you’re the guest who has to sleep with a random guy who bursts into your room in the middle of the night.’

‘You’re hardly a random guy.’ If he knew how much space he had occupied in my brain in the past four days, I would die of shame.

‘I know. But it feels weird. Anyway, the pillow barrier is here to create the illusion that we’re in separate beds.’

He has a lot of faith in this pillow barrier.

‘I feel very reassured. In fact, it feels like we’re in separate rooms. Separate houses even,’ I say.

‘That’s the power of a good pillow barrier,’ he says, and his voice has a smile in it.

We are both lying on our sides, facing each other. It’s dark enough that I can only see an outline of his features, more a sense of his face than his actual face.

‘So why was your night so horrible?’ I say, feeling braver than usual because it’s 2am on New Year’s Eve and I’ve had a small amount of pink champagne.

He’s quiet for a long time. ‘I got fired,’ he says finally.

‘Oh my god.’ I was not expecting that answer. ‘Why?’

‘Because my boss is an arsehole.’

‘Wow.’ I don’t know what to say. I feel terrible, because I know how much that job meant to him. Zach told me what a big deal it was when Alex chose to do an apprenticeship instead of going to university and how much their parents disapproved.

‘Yeah,’ Alex says.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I say.

‘It’s not your fault.’

‘I’m sorry it happened.’

‘Me too. I’ve never been fired before.’

‘What does it feel like?’ I say, without thinking. What a terrible question. I honestly shouldn’t be allowed to talk to people.

‘Pretty bad,’ he says.

‘What happened, exactly?’ It feels a little nosy to ask, but I sense he might want to talk.

Alex rolls over and lies on his back.

‘Long story short, my boss, Garry, likes to scream and yell at people. Like, I know that’s a thing all chefs do, or something, but this guy is really bad. I think there’s something seriously wrong with him. Anyway, tonight he was picking on me and this other guy, Felix. Mostly I just ignore him, but Felix lost it. He and Garry got into a huge argument and I sided with Felix. I told Garry he was being unreasonable, and that he can’t treat people like this, and at the end of my shift