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life,’ Charlie replied. ‘You’re amazing, you know?’ He knew me well enough to recognize my near-tears whimper and started talking fast. ‘You have so much drive and ambition; you’re so dedicated to achieving your goals. All you need to do is redirect that energy to a new goal. I’m not saying you shouldn’t care about your job – you should. It’s just that it can’t be the only thing you care about. There can’t only be one thing that makes you happy.’

      ‘Are you happy?’ I asked him, not letting go of his hand. I was a bit worried I might never let go. ‘In general, I mean, are you happy?’

      ‘Yeah,’ he nodded slowly. ‘I’m happy. I like my job, I’ve got good mates, I like my flat. There are things I’d change, but overall I’m not complaining. Are you happy?’

      ‘Am I happy?’ I repeated. ‘I don’t think I’m really anything.’

      It was hard to say out loud, but as soon as I did, I knew it was true.

      ‘What would you change?’ I asked him, waiting to start feeling drunk. I really wanted to be drunk. ‘You said there are things you’d change.’

      ‘Oh, obvious stuff.’ He squeezed my hand and scuffed the toe of his shoe in the dirt under the bench. ‘I’d like my own place. I’d like Arsenal to be doing better in the league. A smoking-hot girlfriend who would do my washing so I didn’t keep running out of socks would be nice.’

      ‘I am so sick of buying you more socks. What do you do, eat them?’ I asked with the closest thing to a laugh I could muster. Bravely, I rested my head on his shoulder and breathed in. He was wearing the aftershave I’d bought him for Christmas. He smelled cool, spicy and familiar. It made my stomach melt, my fingertips tingle. ‘You’ve got loads going for you. You could get a hot girlfriend if you really wanted one. You’ve got everything.’

      ‘And so have you.’ He dropped his head on top of mine, our coppery curls meshing together, and put his arm around my shoulders. ‘You just haven’t realized yet.’

      ‘I’ve got sod all,’ I said, trying to pretend that the teenagers weren’t totally eyeing up the bottle in my hand. ‘As you have quite rightly pointed out.’

      ‘You’ve got me.’ Charlie said. ‘And I’m all right.’

      ‘Oh, don’t.’ I laughed out loud. ‘Don’t even.’

      This wasn’t the first time Charlie and I had got drunk on a bench. This was not the first time one of us had talked the other through a crisis. But it was the first time he’d looked at me with such dark eyes. The first time I’d felt his thumb gently running back and forth over the back of the hand he was holding. And the first time that I had ever felt his heart beating as fast as mine.

      ‘I’m all right, aren’t I?’ he asked. ‘Tess?’

      I felt goosebumps on my bare legs and twisted round to get a better look at him. His dark, gingerish five o’clock shadow was starting to come through and his dark, dilated eyes were ever so slightly bloodshot from getting up so early, driving so far and drinking so much. He leaned his forehead against mine and repeated himself in a whisper.

      ‘Tess?’

      Words were my thing. Words were my actual job. I used them every day, manipulated them, moulded them, made them dance around in circles, but at that moment there wasn’t a word in the world that would help me. And so instead of trying to say something funny or clever, I took a deep breath and kissed him. For a moment, I couldn’t tell who was more shocked. Neither of us moved – we just sat there, frozen, Tess pressed against Charlie. My cold, vodka-burned lips against his cold, vodka-burned lips.

      And then he kissed me back.

      It was slow at first and I wasn’t quite sure it was happening but I was too scared to pull away. And then I felt the slightest movement against my face, the tickle of warm breath on my wet lips. For ten years I had wondered what it would feel like to kiss Charlie Wilder on the mouth, and now I knew. It felt spectacular. The arm around my shoulders tightened and his other hand crept up to my face, cradling my cheek in his palm while our lips became better acquainted. I wrapped my arms around his back and ignored the little voice in my head that was shouting, ‘And now we’ll never, ever let go!’ As well as the vodka, I could taste the beer on his breath. I hated beer but I didn’t care. I was kissing Charlie Wilder and Charlie Wilder was kissing me.

      ‘Wait.’ Unable to stop myself, I pulled away with a pained expression. ‘You’re not kissing me because I’m sad, are you?’

      ‘I don’t think so,’ he replied, his voice broken and just short of breath enough to make my heart pound.

      ‘And you’re not kissing me because you’ve been drinking?’ I just could not stop myself from asking these ridiculous questions. Who gave a shit if he was kissing me because he’d been drinking? I hated myself so much sometimes.

      ‘Maybe? A little bit,’ he admitted, leaning back in for another kiss. ‘Can you stop overthinking this now, please?’

      ‘No,’ I replied, pressing a smile against his lips. ‘Have you met me?’

      The teenagers across the way started whooping at us approximately four seconds into the second kiss, and although the sun setting across the mill pond was as close as my village ever came to beautiful and romantic, they were very, very off-putting.

      ‘Back to yours?’ Charlie asked. I took a deep breath and held it in for a moment. He wasn’t just suggesting we go home, he was suggesting we Go Home Together. ‘Tess?’

      ‘Where else are we going to go?’ I asked lightly, pretending I wasn’t absolutely bricking myself. I hadn’t had sex in almost two years, and while we were being entirely honest, it had not been a good experience. This wasn’t just a casual shag after a rubbish party to check I still knew how to do it. This was Charlie. I was going to have sex with Charlie.

      ‘There’s always the back seat of my car.’

      I pulled away to look at him, not sure whether he was joking or not. Nor sure whether I wanted him to be joking or not.

      ‘But while I know that would continue the dodgy teenage theme of the evening, I think I’d rather take you to bed,’ he said, his voice was all low and rough. I’d never heard it like that before. ‘If it’s not too weird?’

      It was weird. This whole thing was weird. I was sitting on a bench wearing a gold sequinned miniskirt, kissing a boy I’d been dreaming about kissing ever since the first night I’d lain on my plastic-covered mattress in my hall of residence. I should have said it could wait. I should have said no, we couldn’t sneak into my parents’ house and have sex on my bottom bunk. But where was the fun in that? Besides, I’d had a third of a half-bottle of own-brand vodka and Charlie Wilder wanted to have sex with me. I was eighteen again. Whatever happened next, I blamed the sequins.

      ‘It’s not weird at all,’ I said, practically jumping off the bench and dragging him down the street. ‘Let’s go.’

      And just like that, we were together.

       CHAPTER FIVE

      The next morning, I woke up wrapped in the same pale blue duvet cover I’d left behind when I’d moved to uni and a pair of arms that were brand new. Too scared to move, I tried to keep my breathing slow and even. I was in bed with Charlie. I was in bed with Charlie and neither of us was wearing any clothes. And the reason we weren’t wearing any clothes was because for the last twelve hours we had been at it.

      I closed my eyes on my childhood room, my exam certificates hanging on the walls, my favourite photos lining the shelves, and tried to commit as much of the night to memory as possible. It was hard to keep the events straight, not because I’d been drunk but because I was suffering from a distinct case of what Amy always referred to as Boink Brain.

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