After the Athlete led the Artist into the modern apartment building in Farringdon, they stepped into a lift together.
They weren’t holding hands but they were standing close to each other and trading secret smiles, the Artist blushing and glancing down as the doors shuddered closed.
A fast uptick in his pulse as Sam swept into the foyer, watching the numbers above the lift climb.
. . . 8 . . .
. . . 9
The lift stopped.
He watched the digital panel, making sure it didn’t change, then he stepped into a second carriage, rode in it to floor ten and took the stairs down a level.
He could hear the party music before he emerged from the stairwell.
It was loud and percussive. A frenzied pop beat.
And when he stuck his head into the hallway, only one apartment door was open, with people milling around in front of it, vaping and chatting, music and light spilling out. Some of them were dressed in white lab coats. Others in blue hospital scrubs.
He pulled back, strategizing, then the lift binged and a group of strangers – students mostly, by the looks of it – rushed out, clutching bags filled with bottles of booze.
‘Whose party is this anyway?’ someone called.
‘Who cares?’ a drunk girl whooped back, thrusting her fists into the air.
There were enough people, he told himself.
There was enough noise.
And most of them sounded drunk.
Besides, he was a young Assistant Professor. It wasn’t totally out of the realms of possibility for him to say he’d been invited if they bumped into each other.
You can do this.
You have to do this.
You know you won’t be able to let it go.
So he slipped in through the door, shuffling between strangers towards the main living space, which was a riot of flashing lights and writhing bodies, and where a gaggle of people were gathered on a balcony outside.
He couldn’t see the Athlete or the Artist anywhere and when a drunken girl bumped into him he grabbed her arm and shouted, ‘Who lives here?’
‘Amy,’ she yelled back, her pupils glazed, a silly grin on her face. ‘It’s her flat-warming. We’re both studying medicine at UCL.’
She pointed to where a young woman dressed in green scrubs with a stethoscope around her neck was chugging from a bottle of prosecco, the revellers around her chanting encouragement, the foaming liquid trickling down the sides of her mouth.
‘Her brother lives here, too,’ the girl yelled. ‘Oliver.’
She was pressing herself against Sam, her body warm and pliant, but all he felt was a slick of disgust, his eyes scanning the melee, searching for the Artist.
‘Which one is Oliver?’
‘The hot one. He’s a rower. He’s—’
But as she peered around, she couldn’t spot him, and when she turned back, mystified, Sam was already moving off. He shoved his way back through the crowds, past the kitchen, trying doors in the hallway, interrupting a young couple who were necking in the bathroom. After excusing himself, he entered a bedroom that was empty aside from two young women who were sitting on the end of the bed, one of them sobbing into her hands, the other one rubbing her shoulder.
The one who wasn’t crying shot him a warning look as his eyes swept the room. He saw some weights and fitness equipment in the corner, a photograph tacked to a noticeboard of the Athlete arm in arm with his sister, the medical student, and what could have been an older brother, dressed in army camouflage fatigues. And then – in a moment of tingling horror – the flyer for the Artist’s interior design business crumpled on a desk.
A house-warming, he thought.
For two affluent young siblings.
One of whom might have invited the Artist to the party, perhaps sweetening the offer by saying they were interested in hiring an interior decorator for their new place.
‘What are you staring at?’ the girl with the aggressive gaze asked him.
‘My mistake,’ Sam said.
He started to back out of the room, but the music wasn’t so loud that he missed what she said next as she hugged her friend close.
‘I mean, so what if he takes some new skank to the roof? You said you two were done. It’s his loss, babe.’