I gaze down at my half-eaten birthday cake. It’s a big, pink thing. Like a cupcake for a giant or a drunk 27-year-old woman hoping for diabetes ASAP, covered in a heap of pink frosting, littered with dolly mixtures and jellybeans, reminiscent of something fresh out of a Willy Wonka novel. The box it came in said that it was intended to serve twenty, but by the time Millsy and I cut ourselves a piece the other night, there was much less than eighteen slices of a similar size left. It seemed like a reasonable portion size at the time, but as we munched our way through it whilst watching old episodes of South Park, we started feeling increasingly sick. Millsy, whose motto is “workout more to eat more” was the first to bow out, but I wouldn’t be beaten. It was the middle of the night, but we were still a little tipsy and when Millsy is drunk, he regresses to being a stroppy toddler. He threw the remainder of his cake in the bin, but he was so sickened with it that he couldn’t stand to watch me eat mine either, so he took my cake from me and threw it away too. I’d have been angry, were it not so funny. He denied all knowledge of it the following morning.
It’s 1am, and I’ve just got in from a Matcher date from hell with Deano – but, aren’t they all? It was so bad, I had to go to a bar and chain drink cocktails to try and forget that it happened, but now I’m home, starving and in need of something to soak up all the booze, and I finally feel strong enough to tackle the cake again.
I pop the kettle on and grab myself a big, sharp knife from the drawer. I cut myself a generous wedge and pick at it with my hands, eating it straight from the box. Well, Nick likes me to keep the kitchen tidy, so it’s one less plate to wash. I am raining cake down on the kitchen table as I shovel handfuls into my mouth, but it’s so sweet and glorious my only qualm is that I’m technically not getting as much cake in me as I potentially could. My God, cake is wonderful.
I observe that one side of the cake is not quite even, and shave some off with the knife, like a sculptor perfecting a piece of art – a piece of art I’m eating by the slice whilst simultaneously picking jellybeans from the top with my other hand.
‘Jesus Christ,’ I hear Nick’s voice behind me. ‘Look at you.’
‘Fuck off,’ I tell him through a mouthful of cake. ‘It's my birthday cake.’
‘It’s not even been your birthday,’ he reminds me, as though I might not be aware of when my birthday is (or isn’t).
‘I’d had a bad day, so Millsy bought me it,’ I tell him. ‘Isn’t it past your bedtime, granddad?’
Nick rolls his eyes as he heads for the cupboard and removes a glass, before filling it with water from his lame little filter jug that he keeps in the fridge.
‘Just getting a glass of water,’ he tells me.
Watching him drink makes me suddenly thirsty, so I turn on the tap and lean over the sink to drink from the stream of water.
‘You’re like an animal,’ he observes. ‘And I thought better of Joey, eating cake. He’ll struggle to keep his body like it is, if he puts junk in it.’
‘He’s always eaten shit, and he’s always been a babe, so he’s fine,’ I reply snippily, straight to the defence of my friend. ‘Anyway, he’s a sweetheart. I’d had a rough day at work, so he bought me a birthday cake, because birthday cake is my favourite,’ I inform him, shovelling another handful into my mouth, as if my point needed proving.
‘First of all, birthday cake can’t be your favourite, because a birthday cake is any cake that is eaten on a birthday. Second of all, how bad can your workday be in a coffee shop, seriously? You want to try spending a day in my shoes, people’s lives are literally in my hands.’
‘Mate, you’re a gynaecologist, the only things literally in your hands are vaginas.’
‘Only a few more weeks of obstetrics and gynaecology for me,’ he reminds me. He’s doing that rotation thing new doctors do where they sample a bit of each area of medicine. Judging by the few stories he’s told me, this won’t be the area of medicine he chooses to practise, I’ll bet.
‘So why was your day so bad, did you give someone decaf by mistake?’ he teases.
Annoyingly, he’s not far off the mark. We had the grumpiest cow of a woman call in, asking for a skinny mocha with an extra shot. I was working on the till and Millsy was making the drinks. He prepared her coffee while I placed the granola bar she has requested in a takeaway bag – something people hardly ever buy because they look like all the loose bits that have broken off from all the other cakes, swept up and glued together. It didn’t take us long at all, still, she tapped her perfectly manicured nails on the counter impatiently. I handed her order to her and watched as she headed for the door, but as she reached for the handle with one hand, she raised her takeaway cup to her mouth to take a sip before turning on her heels and marching back up to me.
‘Is everything all right, madam?’ I asked in the friendly manner they insist we adopt when speaking to customers. Even the ones we want to hit over the head with a milk jug.
‘I asked for a double shot and this is not a double shot,’ she says angrily, slamming the cup down in front of me.
I glanced over at Millsy.
‘It is, ma’am,’ he replied. ‘I definitely put two shots in there.’
‘Are you two saying I can’t tell?’ she snapped. ‘Don’t you need any training at all to do a job like this? My God, they could train monkeys to do better. At least they’d acknowledge that the customer is always right.’
I took a deep breath and gritted my teeth, because although every fibre of my being was telling me to grab the panini press and throw it at this bitch, I knew that my actions might by frowned upon in the eyes of my employers/the law.
‘Not to worry, we’ll make you another one,’ I told her, but it wasn’t enough.
‘I want to watch him pour each shot in, because clearly he needs someone to count for him. Honestly, if he spent less time at the gym and you spent less time drawing your eyebrows on, you could maybe find jobs you were competent in.’
I glanced over at Millsy, smiled sweetly and said: ‘When you've made this lady’s drink, there are some boxes of coffee that need moving from the back door, please.’
Millsy nodded, knowing exactly what he needed to do. The truth is, we don’t even have a back door, that’s just our secret code for teaching a lesson to horrible customers – the ones who truly deserve punishing. Never mess with the people who are serving you food and drinks.
I watched Millsy switch from using regular to decaf coffee with the sleight of hand skills of a seasoned magician. As he poured the two shots of fuck all into the customer’s cup, she applauded him sarcastically.
‘There, that wasn’t too difficult for the two of you, was it?’ she asked rhetorically before taking a sip. ‘Much better.’
OK, so maybe we shouldn't be playing coffee god, but she asked for it, and by the afternoon when the caffeine withdrawal headache hit her like a ton of bricks, I hope it made her realise that she needs to be nicer to people, because if karma doesn’t get you, vigilante baristas will.
Nick, clearly irritated by the fact I’m not rising to the bait, carries on talking to me.
‘I thought Joey was never setting foot in here again?’ he says. I find it weird that Nick calls Millsy by his less used nickname, rather than his preferred name or his actual first name.
‘You were away for the night,’ I remind him. ‘He won’t come over when you’re here because you’re the reason he has to climb out of the skylight for a cig.’
‘I told him he can’t do that either.’
‘Yeah, and that’s why he won’t come over when you’re here, you’ve got so many rules: don’t smoke in the flat, don’t climb onto the roof – you’re a drag, man,’ I ramble, occasionally glancing at the cake as I wonder if I can manage any more without throwing up. Nope, no more.
Nick heads back towards his room. Well, it is way past his bedtime.
I scoop my hair up with my hand and let it fall down around one side of my face, sighing heavily. This catches his attention and he stops before he opens his door.
‘Are you OK?’ he asks, almost begrudgingly.
‘I’m fine,’ I assure him, heading for the sofa and plonking myself down.
I tip my head back and rest my eyes for a second. I don’t know if I’m exhausted from all the late nights and early starts, or if I’m maybe slipping into a diabetic coma from that slab of cake I just effortlessly devoured, but I can’t keep my eyes open.
I give myself five minutes before forcing my eyes open again, only to see Nick standing in front of me, except now he’s got his nerdy plaid dressing gown on – untied, showing off the body he’s spent hours in the gym perfecting.
I stare for a moment longer than I should, stopping only when Nick takes a seat next to me.
‘Want to talk about it?’ he asks.
His moment of concern takes me aback.
‘What do you care?’ I snap.
Nick places his hand on my bare knee and gives it a gentle squeeze.
‘Look, I know we don’t get on, but I’m allowed to care about you, right? I mean, you must care about me a little – what would you do if you found out I left for work one morning and got hit by a car?’
‘I guess I’d care,’ I reply. ‘But, like, about the stress of finding another roommate so I could afford to stay here – I could wind up with someone even worse than you.’
Nick laughs at the joke I didn’t realise I’d made. That’s when I realise his hand isn’t on my knee any more, it’s on my thigh, and the gentle squeezing he was doing before has turned into more of a caressing motion.
I shift my gaze from Nick’s hand to his eyes. He’s looking at me in a way I’ve never noticed him do before.
‘What are you thinking?’ he asks.
‘I’m trying to work out why you’re being so nice to me,’ I reply. ‘It’s out of character.’
‘If you think that’s out of character,’ he starts slowly, as he runs his hand up my thigh, ‘then try this.’
Before I know what’s happening, Nick is pushing me back on the sofa, pressing his body down on top of me. He grabs a fistful of my long wavy locks firmly with one hand as he pulls off his dressing gown with the other. As much as I dislike Nick as a person, I have never been able to deny that he has one hell of a body – in fact, it’s one of the first things I noticed about him when we first met. All that eating clean and exercising near-constantly is really paying off for him, I admit it, but I never imagined I’d wind up in a situation like this with him, and now I’m not just looking at him, I’m really looking at him, and I want him more than anything right now.
He kisses me keenly, like he’s been waiting all these months to do it and now he finally can, he can’t control himself – least of all his hands.
When I came home tonight I figured Nick would be in bed because it was late and he always gets nice early nights. That’s why I felt safe kicking off my heels, slipping off my dress and putting on one of Nick’s gym vests that I grabbed from the dryer, so I didn’t have to make the long trip to my room to find something comfortable to wear while I devoured my birthday cake.
Usually that’s two offences that would land me in Nick’s bad books. My first offence is strolling around inappropriately dressed, the second is wearing Nick’s clothes. He hates that. He says I leave them covered in glitter and stinking like a mid-range prostitute. Perhaps that’s why he’s so keenly pulling the vest over my head, throwing it to one side before running his hands up my body, slipping my bra straps off my shoulders, kissing my collarbone, gently flicking his tongue against my skin.
Just when I think it can’t feel any better, Nick slips his hand into my knickers and I can’t help but moan wildly. My moans of pleasure get louder before quickly changing. As I raise my hand to my aching head and grumble in pain, I slowly open my eyes, only for the sunlight to burn them. That’s when I realise it’s morning, and that I must have fallen asleep on the sofa. I’m still wearing Nick’s vest, which means I dreamt the whole thing. Shit, another sex dream about Nick!
‘Why does this keep happening to me?’ I ask myself.
‘Because you make bad choices,’ Nick replies, startling me. I glance towards the kitchen and see him standing there, smartly dressed, eating cereal as always.
I quickly break eye contact with him, absolutely mortified. I mean there’s no way on earth he could know what I’d been dreaming but I feel like he’s looking straight through me, like he can see it written all over my face.
‘What happened last night?’ I ask him, concerned.
‘Not much, you went on a date with one of your Matcher psychopaths, came back steaming drunk, ate enough cake to kill you and then fell asleep.’
‘Oh. So I didn’t say or do anything bad?’
Nick stares at me for a moment.
‘Erm, no, only all of those things I just listed to you.’
‘That’s OK then,’ I say, exhaling a deep sigh of relief.
‘Well, I’ve got to go shopping and then get to work. Another day of fucking around, is it?’
‘I hope something really gross happens to you at work,’ I reply, massaging my temples.
‘You could use your free time to do something good,’ he suggests.
‘Good?’ I reply, saying the word slowly as I cock my head. ‘What is…good?’
Nick laughs.
‘I’m serious,’ he insists. ‘Do something to change the world.’
‘Like?’
‘Like give blood, that’s such a little thing to do to make such a huge amount of difference.’
I frown.
‘Needles,’ I tell him. ‘Nope.’
‘You’ll only feel a little prick – stop it,’ he snaps at me, before I have the chance to reply with a ‘that’s what she said’.
‘So is that how you spend you free time?’ I ask him.
‘I wouldn’t call it a hobby,’ he replies. ‘But blood donation, platelet donation – what’s twenty minutes or a couple of hours to make a difference?’
I feel my eyes widen with horror.
‘Mate, do you want me bleeding dry or something?’
‘Mate,’ he replies mockingly. ‘It looks like someone beat me to it. You’re looking very pale this morning.’
“Mate” is one of those words that has crept into my vocabulary – something that happens to me all the time with slang words. At first I’ll use words sarcastically, then as in-jokes, then suddenly, that’s it, words like “mate” and “BAE” and “on fleek” are in my day-to-day vocab.
“Mate” is definitely something I have picked up from Millsy, who calls everyone from me to his mum to his doctor it.
Hanging out with Millsy and my brother Woody growing up, I do worry that I’ve turned out “more boy” than I should have. Maybe that’s why I don’t have too many female friends. It’s like when a kitten gets in with a litter of puppies and thinks it’s one of them. It will act just like its adopted siblings, play like a dog, eat like a dog, truly think like a dog and feel like a dog…but at the end of the day, it’s still a cat. I’m a cat amongst the dogs. I find stupid gross-out comedies funny. I swear like a sailor who keeps stubbing his toe on the same bunk bed. I get riled up over football and borderline homicidal when I play FIFA.
Sometimes I think it would be nice to have female friends, but I just don’t seem to get on all that well with girls. Sometimes I think they’re ridiculous creatures, especially when it comes to the opposite sex. They have no chill. They’ll text a guy a million times and wonder why he isn’t texting back. Worse still, they’ll sleep with a guy on the first date, thinking it will win him over, only for him to ghost. And what do they do when he ghosts? They decide not to text him for a few days. Because that will teach him, and if he replies, he must be really interested, right? Surely if you’re trying to figure out a guy, it makes more sense to withhold sex instead of text messages?
‘It’s just my hangover,’ I tell him.
‘It’s not taking care of yourself,’ he corrects me. ‘It’s drinking too much, not sleeping enough, thinking you can eat Coco Pops for three meals a day and survive.’