‘I sensed you were about to say something you shouldn’t.’ She kissed me again, but only quickly. ‘You’re a goddamn ten, Edi, and, frankly, I don’t think you’ve made the most of this open relationship deal. If Rowan is out there doing …’ She waved the end of the sentence away. ‘Do you know what, arses to him. It genuinely does not matter what Rowan is out there doing. It matters what you’re doing, how you’re playing this.’ She turned me around with an urgency to face the crowd. When she spoke again, I could feel the heat of her breath just under my ear and it was doing terribly distracting things to me. ‘Now, pick a woman.’

I laughed. ‘Why a woman?’

‘Why not a woman, Edi?’ She reached across the table to grab her glass, but stayed behind me still. ‘Why not anyone at all in this room?’

‘Did you do this?’

‘What?’ she asked and took another sip.

‘Experiment.’

‘Once upon a time. But I’ve never been with a man if that’s where this is going.’

‘So, why should I be with a woman?’

‘Because you might want to be? Because you can be?’

‘Why do you think I need this, Fred?’ I felt myself getting defensive, as though this were a mangled rerun of the car-crash conversation with Rowan that started all of this. There was the same confused knot in my stomach, rising part-way to my throat. ‘Wait,’ I started, an uncomfortable worry rising, ‘are you trying to get rid of me?’

‘Oh …’ Another kiss, but this time on the cheek. ‘Make no mistake, Edi, I am taking you home tonight. But you don’t want me permanently.’

‘Why?’

‘Edi, come on. Who actually ends up with the first person they have sex with?’ She slammed her palm to her forehead as soon as the question was out. It was the first time across several dates that I’d seen Fred flush in the cheeks, with what I guessed was embarrassment. ‘That wasn’t … I didn’t …’

I kissed her, then, to ease her floundering. ‘It’s okay,’ I replied, and it was. Because even though the question should have hurt, somehow it didn’t. It only felt a little like being told something that I already knew.

Chapter 34

Before

Faith’s first girlfriend had just left her for a boy, and it was the talk of the college. The ex-girlfriend and the boy she’d ‘turned straight for’ made no secret of their relationship. They turned up to college not two days later, hand in hand as though the girlfriend’s foray into lesbianism had been exactly that – a quick adventure.