‘Starting a relationship with someone you live with is like going from zero to one hundred,’ I say, letting my hair fall to the side so he has better access to my neck.

‘I know.’ Still kissing.

‘We can’t escape each other.’ I nuzzle closer to him.

‘I know. What on earth will we do?’ He nuzzles me back.

‘And I need this house. I have nowhere else to go. Neither do you.’ I slide my hands under his T-shirt because I’ve been dreaming of touching his back, his chest, his stomach, all of him, and it feels unbelievable that I actually can.

‘I know. We are trapped, together,’ he says, his nose touching mine.

‘So, seriously, what do we do?’ I say, pressing closer to him.

‘We just…ignore it.’ He leans down and kisses me on the lips.

‘I’m not really built for ignoring things,’ I say, between kisses.

‘I’m very good at it. Follow my lead,’ he says.

‘You’re corrupting me.’

‘How about this? For the next hour, we ignore it. Just one hour.’ He gives me his full sparkle smile, dimple and all. I’m not made of stone. I cannot resist that face.

‘All right,’ I say. ‘One hour.’

He walks me backwards towards his room still kissing me.

39

39

I’m lying in Jesse’s bed. More accurately, I’m lying on his mattress on the floor, because he doesn’t have a bedframe. He doesn’t have a bookcase. I’m looking around and realising there’s almost no furniture in this room at all. Not even a desk. His laptop is on the floor next to the mattress. He apparently just has a floor-based lifestyle and I never noticed.

I’m too scared to ask when he last washed his sheets.

Okay, rule one.

From tomorrow, my room will be the room we spend time in. I am not a floor person.

‘Ta da!’ he says, walking in with our stir-fry and rice now in bowls and neatly presented on a tray.

Eating sloppy takeaway in someone else’s bed should give me stress hives, but I am trying not to scare Jesse with all my anxieties in one go, so I am pushing that particular worry away. It is easy to calm myself about anything right now, because we’ve just spent forty-five minutes kissing and fooling around in his bed, and my brain is soft and squishy with pleasure. I can already feel myself becoming addicted to him, wanting to touch him, be near him, be next to him at all times.

We eat and chat, and I decide it’s time to bring the topic around to the living situation because I can’t hold off any longer.

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘So. Are we—?’

‘Are we what?’ he says.

‘Are we in a relationship?’

‘Yes,’ he says, eating a piece of broccoli. ‘That’s a safe assumption at this point.’