Student (9 page)

‘Ah,’ I hear him say. ‘Now this can mean...’

‘I’m going down to the chill-out room,’ Steve says.

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘You’d better watch out,’ Steve tells me halfway down the stairs. ‘Persia’s seriously into your boyfriend.’

‘It’s OK,’ I tell him. ‘I got there first. Aidan wouldn’t encourage her.’

‘Come in here a minute,’ he says, as we pass his room. I follow him inside, thinking he’s going to offer me some more speed, then remember that he doesn’t use drugs, or so he says. He pushes the door to, then presses me against it, kisses me hard. Shocked, I let him. Only when I feel his hard-on rubbing against my groin do I push him away.

‘Just because somebody got there first doesn’t mean you have to stay with them,’ he tells me. ‘I’m really into you.’

In the silence that follows, we both become aware of movement beneath the coats.

‘Hey!’ Steve says. ‘That’s my bed you’re using! Get a room, why don’t you?’

While he’s distracted, I leave.

Mark’s in the chill-out room, sat next to Helen. Somebody’s asleep on Vic’s bed. Trance music is playing and there is a computer screen mounted in each corner of the room, on chairs or shelves. Steve comes in and moves a laptop so that he can sit down. Its screen is showing a glass of fizzy mineral water, lit from behind. Each bubble is a brilliant balloon. The screen opposite us shows an open fire, burning. I wonder where Vic found a real fire. Mark sees me looking at it.

‘Kind of warms the room up, doesn’t it?’

‘Kind of.’

‘Enjoying yourself?’

‘Yeah. Especially now that Aidan’s here.’

‘Aidan’s here?’

‘Upstairs. Doing the jigsaw you gave me. It’s a big hit.’

‘It was meant to be just for you.’

I give him a smile. Helen lifts her head. ‘We’re heading off soon,’ she says. ‘Feeling a bit trashed.’

I look at my watch. Ten past two. The last couple of hours have flown by. On the video screen next to Steve, the glass of water is nearly flat. Then it vanishes. A moment later, another glass of effervescing water appears. Or maybe it’s the same one, on a loop. I get up and hug Mark goodnight, thank Helen for coming, say I’m sorry we didn’t get much time to talk. I mean it as I’m saying it. Helen says we must get together, just the two of us. What for? To discuss the magic that is Mark? She gives me her mobile number.

Downstairs, the dancing has fizzled out and the beer is all gone. I make myself a vodka and coke and pour another coke for Aidan. Upstairs, Aidan is under the mosquito net. Persia is still doing the jigsaw, aided by Vic and Tina. I can’t hear what Stuart’s saying to Aidan. They sound serious but fuck it, this is my bed. I even bought those net curtains. I reach into the confessional.

‘I thought you might like a drink.’

‘Bless you,’ Stuart says. ‘I’m gagging.’ He takes the coke before I can explain that I meant Aidan. I step back out, look at the map of the world for a moment. They’re nearly done. I can tell at a glance that there are two pieces missing, but the others haven’t noticed yet. I’m not going to tell them. I’ll need to start coming down soon. There’s all this energy surging through me and I need to channel it, into dancing or, better, sex. Maybe a joint will help. I go back to the chill-out room.

‘Where’s Aidan?’ Steve asks.

‘Still having his reading.’

Steve gives me an inscrutable look. I want to challenge him, to ask what right he has to be so pleased with himself, but this is the chill-out room. Conversation, except of the most desultory kind, is frowned on. So is making out, although a couple of Vic’s friends are clearly unaware of this. Or maybe it’s me who’s unaware. Three of the four screens are now showing porn — straight, woman on woman and man on man. They’re kind of fascinating. I’ve never watched real porn before, apart from fragments on the internet. I’d better get away before Steve gets the wrong idea. On my way out I lean over and tell Steve something that he may find useful.

Going up the stairs, I pass Stuart coming down.

‘That boyfriend of yours, he’s seriously fucked up. You do know that?’

‘You mean his cards are fucked up?’

Stuart rolls his eyes. ‘The cards are just a bit of fun. If I were you, I’d whisk him away from that femme fatale who’s been eyeing him all evening.’

‘Don’t worry. I’m working on that.’

Steve joins me on the stairs. We agree to operate a pincer movement. In my room, everyone is searching for the missing pieces. I point out that they are almost certainly under the almost completed jigsaw.

‘But we’d have to wreck it to find out,’ Tina says.

‘Let me know if you find them,’ I tell her. ‘I hate to do an incomplete jigsaw.’ I reach out my hand to Aidan, who gets to his feet. ‘I’d like my room back in a few minutes,’ I say, in what is meant to sound like a grown up voice. ‘Aidan and I have got some catching up to do.’

Persia stands, a blurred look of resentment crossing her face. She feels like she’s been with Aidan for a couple of hundred years and had already assumed a kind of ownership.

That’s when Steve makes his move.

‘Persia, I wonder if you could help me.’

I lead Aidan downstairs for another drink, another spliff. He might come over all vague, but he always has a big stash of ready rolled spliffs on him. We go outside.

‘It’s a nice night,’ he says. ‘Look at the moon. Look at the stars. Do you miss the sound of the sea here?’

‘We can’t hear the sea from my house in West Kirby.’

‘Oh. Right.’

He’s gorgeous, I think, but so impractical, so fucked up. What did he and Stuart talk about tonight? Do I really want to take him on? Do I want to be taken on? He kisses me.

‘Where are we going?’ I ask him.

‘Stuart says the cards aren’t definitive. The future’s in my hands.’

‘I should hope so.’

He holds my hand and I fall in love with him again. That is, I feel something like love, though this is hardly surprising given all the stuff pounding around my brain. In a few minutes, my room will be free. I can take Aidan up there, lock the door and make love to him beneath the moon and stars. Aidan chooses this moment to give me my present, an emerald eternity ring. He puts it on my middle finger for me.

‘It’s lovely,’ I say. ‘You’re lovely.’

‘You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,’ he says.

When we go to collect Aidan’s bag and coat from Steve’s room, the door is locked. The coat is on the landing and the bag has already been taken upstairs to my room. From the landing, we can hear Steve doing with Persia what Steve does best. Aidan giggles, something I’ve not seen him do before. We undress in silence and sink beneath white, translucent nets.

Tessa leaves post-it notes on the fridge.
Soya milk for my use only — please respect my allergies. Does anyone but me unload the dishwasher? Gas bill due.
Finn frowns when he sees Vic, who is the worst offender in the housekeeping stakes. I make a point of picking up a J-cloth whenever I’m in the kitchen at the same time as Finn or Tessa. So far, I seem to have them fooled.

As a household, we haven’t exactly bonded. Things have been in decline since the party. Next day, Finn and Tessa did most of the clearing up before the rest of us got out of bed. Being medics, they work long hours so they resent having to do more. In addition, they’re a couple, and two years older than us, so it’s hardly surprising they don’t want to hang out with me, Steve and Vic all the time. Or at all. Our shared Sunday meals dribbled away by November. Now it’s February and they never join us down the pub.

Steve, since he kissed me at the party, hasn’t made any moves. Tonight, he tells us that he has a job.

‘I’m working the phones at a ticket agency in town. It’s a prime deal. Once you’ve been there a month, you get free tickets for shows as a bonus. And you get to reserve paid tickets before they go on sale. So if you ever want to see anything at the Arena, Rock City, Rescue Rooms, the Concert Hall even, I’m your man.’

The free tickets are a temptation, but I expect other girls will get first dibs. These days, I see more of Mark than I do of Steve. I usually have Vic in tow, so nobody can accuse us of having a thing. Mark moans about Helen, who has a separate life she doesn’t invite him into. I moan about Aidan.

‘It’s like having a virtual boyfriend,’ I tell him in the Peacock.

‘Did I tell you about my virtual girlfriend?’ Vic asks and starts telling me about how she had her first encounter with another woman when she was thirteen. She used to spend all her free time on this website called Second Life, which sounds like a multiplayer version of The Sims.

‘I have no way of knowing if she was really a girl,’ Vic admits. ‘Or a teenager, like her avatar. But the way I see it, who cares? You never really know what other people are like. You can’t get that close.’

‘Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen when you fall in love?’

Vic gives me such a disgusted look that I feel embarrassed to my core for using the word ‘love’. Then she gives me a lecture.

‘What people call
falling in love
or
romantic love
is better defined as
limerance
. It’s an obsessive state that some people fall into. If one person gets it, they’re seen as a stalker or a psycho, but if two people feel it equally for each other, that’s what we call ‘mutual limerance’ or ‘falling in love’. For most people, it never lasts more than a few weeks or months. It’s a drag when one lover loses it long before the other, but it’s also inevitable. Some people get limerance far more strongly than others and some get it much more often — young lesbians especially, which is why I know a lot about it. Other people never feel it at all. Maybe they’re the lucky ones.’

I’ve never heard of ‘limerance’ before and suspect it’s something she read up this week for her Psychology module. Later, I look the word up on Wikipedia. Turns out she’s got it right, near enough.

We smoke a joint.

‘What is love?’ I ask, digesting this new idea. ‘Is it what’s left after you’ve gone through the limerance period?’

‘Better minds than mine have given up on that one,’ Vic says. ‘Maybe there’s no such thing as true love. It’s a convenient fiction that allows people to stay together after the limerance period. An excuse for marriage, having kids and all that shit. An antidote to loneliness.’

I muse on this for a while, then look at my watch. Shit. ‘I have to go to work.’

I head off to Moxy’s on Lower Parliament Street, in the centre of the city. I’ve started doing three shifts a week, serving shots to pissed-up local yokels who don’t give a shit about finding love or limerance, just so long as the evening ends in a fuck or a fight. Sounds gross, but I quite enjoy it. We’re so busy that it keeps my mind off other stuff.

Easter vacation. This is where it gets serious. I have coursework to finish and exams to prepare for. Together they’re worth 30% of my final degree. I decide not to go home until I’ve finished two essays and message Zoe to tell her. I saw a lot of Zoe over Christmas, though I’ve not been round to her house since the party where I met Aidan. I don’t want to run into her dad. Sometimes she phones. We talk about Aidan and she keeps me in touch with what’s happening in West Kirby. I’ve never told her what happened with Bob. We’re not responsible for our parents’ mistakes, so why bother her?

A-level results day feels like a lifetime ago, but it was only 20 months. Time is relative. I’m more than halfway through my degree and those five terms passed in a flash. Distance is relative. West Kirby is only three hours drive away, but feels like the other side of the world. Yet if I don’t get a job before I graduate, I might have to move back there.

Everyone goes home for Easter weekend except me and Steve. I haven’t seen Aidan since Christmas. Some days, he feels more like a patient than a boyfriend. We email less and less. Last time I phoned, I only spoke to his mum. She said he was coming out of himself, a little. I persuaded Zoe to go over and see him (her news is that she’s training to be an estate agent). She said he was OK with her, so maybe it’s just me he’s lost interest in.

They’re short-staffed on the holiday weekend, so I do more shifts at the bar. The money’s good. If someone had told me a year ago that I’d become adept at dealing with drunks and enjoy flirting with strangers, I’d have laughed. But I’m cool with it.

Steve’s still up when I get back from Moxy’s, no matter how late. We have a drink together, though sometimes I’d rather go straight to bed with a book. He doesn’t try it on, just makes it clear that if I find myself free, he’d like to be front of the queue to ask me out. Which is flattering. He has enough women on tap for him not to be desperate to have sex with me. There’ve been at least half a dozen since Persia.

But I haven’t had sex with Aidan since the night of the party. I’ve never had regular sex, full stop.

The ticket agency quickly promotes Steve. He’s on ‘difficult calls’, or ‘complaints’, as they used to be known: tickets that haven’t arrived or turned out not to be as good seats as they were supposed to be. He can mollify anyone. And he’s already started getting freebies. Tonight, when I got in, he asked if I’ll be back from West Kirby in time to see a show at Rock City. If anyone else asked, this would be a date, but we’re house-mates, so it’s not.

‘I’d love to, thanks.’

‘You’re not going to change your mind and stick around at home to see Peter Pan, are you? Because, you know, it’s the end of next week and..’

‘I’ll be back. I’ve got loads more work to do that I need the library for. And I’m behind the bar again a week on Saturday. Anyway...’

‘Anyway what?’

If I tell Steve I’m thinking of packing in Aidan, he’ll make a pass at me. Tonight, I’m weak. I might succumb. Which would be mad, because we live in the same house and I don’t like him enough to go out with him. He’s arrogant and slippery and greedy, not to mention silly and adolescent sometimes. Also, I’m not the sort of woman who cheats on her boyfriend. I’m not. But is Aidan really my boyfriend when I haven’t had a word from him in more than two weeks? I’d like to discuss Aidan with Steve because, despite what I’ve just said, he is a sharp guy. But to discuss Aidan honestly, I’d have to talk about the accident, which would feel like a betrayal of Aidan, who made it clear how much he hates it when people know.