How We Met (12 page)

Standing there, on the steps of 5 South Road, she still wasn’t sure if he had now, either: ‘You should come over next week,’ was all he said. Would there be other people? Was that him asking her round for dinner? On a date? Mia hoped it was, because she was already falling for Fraser Morgan. She had fallen for him the first moment they’d kissed, or rather the moment she’d pinned him down and suctioned herself onto his face (it still made her cheeks burn and it was over a year ago now), deep under the spell
of Shane Parry, Fresher’s Week ‘
Hypnotist Extraordinaire!!
’
– and Destroyer of her Undergraduate Love-Life thus far,
too, as far as she was concerned. As if putting her into a trance and instructing her to snog members of the audience wasn’t humiliating enough, he’d also made her eat an onion as if it were an apple beforehand so, when she kissed them, she must have stank.

Sensibly, she had claimed amnesia ever since.

She breathed out once more and gave the brass knocker two bold strikes. Fraser answered immediately, as if he’d been lurking behind it. He was holding two full bin bags and looked flustered.

‘Ah! Out with the old rubbish and in with the new,’ she said. Why had she said that? It was idiotic and overly self-deprecating, the sort of thing her housemate Anna always warned her against. (Don’t put yourself down, boys hate that kind of shit.)

Fraser laughed. ‘Sorry?’

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Please ignore that comment.’

He put the bags in the wheelie bins. ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘I’ve been cooking up a storm.’

‘Quite literally, I see,’ said Mia as she stepped inside the house.

The first half of the lounge was OK – there was a table set for two for dinner no less (check!), but then, as if there’d been a natural disaster and they’d only got so far with the clean-up effort, the closer she got to the kitchen, the more the debris built, so that the kitchen was almost completely blocked by half-emptied Tesco bags and saucepans ‘soaking’.

But he’d cooked! Or at least was still cooking. That had to be a good sign, and there were candles. She bit her lip as she followed him through the lounge; felt a little bubble of excitement rise in her belly. Why would he have gone to the trouble of candles if this were just a mate coming over? Why would he have invited her on her own in the first place?

So she was excited, but also curiously embarrassed too, because now she had evidence that Fraser did have romantic intentions at heart, how was she supposed to behave? Should she have worn something nicer than a pair of jeans? Brought a bottle of fine wine rather than a four-pack and some cheese-and-onion Pringles? Should she be flirting? Right now? Arranging herself on the sofa, a glass of wine in hand?

Obviously, she did none of these things; instead she overcompensated by being larky and matey and totally asexual. Unfortunately, so far in her life, Mia had only been out with cocks. Cocks, as it were, were all she knew. Vain, cockish men were totally unthreatening in their way, after all, since if you didn’t actually like someone, there was a limit to the fall-out should it go wrong. And she could flirt with cocks – it was a very simple formula, one she’d seen her mother play out time and time again: laugh at their jokes, flutter the eyelashes, show a bit of cleavage and – hey presto! – you generally got a snog.

With Fraser Morgan, however, she felt curiously out
of her depth. For the first time in her life, she actually liked spending time with someone; she had actually found a member of the opposite sex who could make a trip to
Asda fun. The amazing thing was, the feeling seemed to
be mutual, and it unnerved her – especially now when she appeared to be on
a date. She didn’t know what to do with herself, so of course she snapped open a can from the four-pack and hid her face in it.

‘So, Delia Smith, let’s have a look then …’

She tried to sidle into the kitchen and have a nosy, but Fraser blocked her, putting his arms out.

‘What are you doing?’ Mia giggled.

‘Er, can you give me a minute? I’m not really finished yet. In fact, if you were to go in there at the moment, you might get the wrong idea.’

Mia frowned. What did that mean? Had her assumptions been wrong? Would she think he was cooking a romantic meal only to discover that he was cooking for his flatmates who were soon to arrive? Which would be fine, of course, absolutely fine.

Actually, what had happened was that he had tried to assemble the moussaka, got the layers in the wrong order, so had disassembled it, putting all the different components – mincemeat, tomato sauce, potato – on any empty surface he could find, but then she’d knocked on the door so he hadn’t got any further.

She peered over his shoulder, but he moved, suddenly and comically, to block her view, but not enough to stop her getting an indication of the carnage going on in there.

‘Fraser, what are you doing in there? Slaughtering something?’

‘You could say that. Actually, it’s a sort of work in progress, a culinary collage if you will, but about to be revealed as a work of art.’

‘Right.’

He put his hand on her shoulder and Mia tensed, self-conscious. He never touched her, he must be drunk.

‘Look, just have a drink, make yourself comfortable, and I’ll be right with you, OK?’ He ushered her away from the door. ‘I’m a bloke. I can’t multitask!’

Fraser shut the door and disappeared into the kitchen. Shit, he was drunk. Why had he allowed himself to get quite so drunk? In the ten minutes before Mia had turned up, aside from dismantling the moussaka, he’d decided to have a quick shower to sober himself up, but the water had been far too hot and the cooling-off period far too short, so now he could feel sweat running down the back of his shirt. She looked lovely, though. God, she was lovely. As was the fashion, Mia had her blonde hair cut in what was known as a ‘graduate bob’, or was it graduated bob? – short, swingy and cut into her neck. It wasn’t every girl who could pull this off but Mia, Fraser decided, as he peered at her through the tiny gap in the door, definitely could. She had a beautiful neck and a pretty, sort of pointy nose, so she looked great in profile. She had lovely eyes, too – grey, a bit slanty and wide set, which she enhanced with this smudgy make-up malarky, something she’d informed him once was a ‘smoky eye’. It made her look strong, as if she could deal with anything life threw at her and as if
she knew stuff, but not like Becca or even Melody knew stuff, but proper stuff – stuff, Fraser knew instinctively, that was worth knowing.

Mia stood in the lounge now, bemused and a little bit excited in equal measure. Clearly he’d gone to some trouble, but she’d never seen her friend like this, flustered and nervous. It made her feel the same.

She looked around the living room. It was way nicer than the student house she shared with Anna and Liv, which required protective footwear to enter the kitchen.

It was tidy, for a start, and had signs of civilization such as a magazine rack, actual lamps (rather than a lava lamp that had died long ago and so now sat in the corner like a fetid pond) and a large cream sofa sporting various tasteful cushions.

‘Wow, your house is classy.’

‘That’s one of the bonuses of living with a couple,’ called Fraser from the kitchen. ‘Melody and Norm are basically married already. Melody can’t leave the house without buying a cushion.’

Mia laughed.

‘So where are Melody and Norm tonight?’ She squeezed one eye shut, waiting for an answer.

‘In Surrey – “Terribly sorry, I’m from Surrey …!”’ Must stop making shit jokes, he told himself. You’re not funny, you’re just pissed. ‘They’ve gone to Melody’s parents’.’

‘Oh, right, nice one,
’ said Mia, trying to sound nonchalant. ‘So, er … I won’t get to see them tonight, then?’

Mia had met Norm and Melody a few times since meeting Fraser and liked them a lot.

‘
’
Fraid not, you’re stuck with me.’

He stuck his head around the door.

‘Gosh, you’re joking,’ said Mia, sucking air through her teeth. ‘Shall we go out?’

‘You’re very funny, aren’t you, Miss Woodhouse? Now you can put some music on if you like.’ He went back into the kitchen to fret over his sorry little mound of moussaka once more. ‘The CDs are by the sofa.’

Mia grimaced; this request always made her shudder. She was good at films and books, films and books she could do – but music? She had appalling taste in music. Or rather she didn’t have an opinion, something she had so far managed to conceal from Fraser. She wouldn’t want him to think she only went to his gigs to see him …

She walked over to the CDs.

‘So what are the other Witches of Eastwick doing tonight?’ asked Fraser, referring to Liv and Anna.

‘Liv’s gone out with Boring Ben …’

Boring Ben was Liv’s much older, very patronizing, very boring boyfriend whom she’d had since she was about twelve and who seemed to think she was still that age. Everyone hated him.

‘And Anna’s gone clubbing to Wigan Pier.’

‘And you hit the jackpot by coming
round to mine, eh?’

Mia ran her eyes across the CDs, reckoning she knew only about four in the first ten.

There was only one way through this, and that was comedy.

Ba-ba-da-da-ba-daaaaa

A few seconds later came the familiar drum intro to Phil Collins’s ‘Something in the Air Tonight’.

‘Hilarious, Mia. Another totally hilarious gag,’ Fraser shouted from the kitchen.

‘What?’ she said. ‘Are you dissing the legend that is Phil Collins? A musical genius of our times – it’s you that owns the CD! Although actually, if you really want my favourite, then it’s got to be “One More Night”. Now that, Fraser, is a tune.’

You sound like you’re trying too hard. Stop trying to be funny. Just be yourself.

‘Actually, rubbish music aside, his drumming is second to none.’ Fraser appeared at the kitchen door. ‘Sadly though, my cooking is not.’

‘Oh, come on now, you don’t have to be modest.’ Mia walked towards the kitchen and this time Fraser let her in. ‘Are we going to have to get another rotisserie chicken from Asda?’

She eyed the fruits of Fraser’s efforts: basically a small mound of mush in the middle of a vast, terracotta pot.

She tried not to laugh.

‘Fraser, why did you just not put it in a smaller pot?’

He bit his thumbnail. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Or just make
more
of it.’

‘I don’t know – it was a spatial awareness problem coupled with time restraints.’

She looked up at him.

‘You know how it is.’

‘Fraser, are you drunk?’ she said.

‘Yes, I am,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately, I am drunk.’

‘Out of ten?’

‘Not too bad. Six?’ His eyes shifted to the side. ‘OK, seven.’

She took another look at the very small moussaka.

‘We’ll have to fill up on Pringles,’ she said.

They sat down, ate the miniature moussaka very, very slowly so it would last longer, Phil Collins’s
Greatest Hits
in the background. At first, they laughed. How ironic! How amusing they were! But after a while the comedy sort of tapered off, until they realized they were actually sitting listening to love songs in candlelight and for a horrifying fifteen minutes the conversation dried up.

Thankfully, they then got extremely drunk – Mia played catch-up – and eventually they were bantering as they always did.

‘Well, I think, fair play to us,’ announced Fraser, putting his knife and fork down. ‘I reckon we did a sterling effort in making that moussaka last a whole hour.’

Mia put a hand to her jaw. ‘I’ve got lockjaw now, must have chewed the same mouthful seventy-two times.’

They laughed, and yet, Mia still felt they were sort of avoiding the issue.

But Fraser was actively thinking about the issue. In fact, ever since Mia had walked in tonight looking gorgeous, graduated and downright snoggable, he had wondered how to approach ‘the issue’.

Best take the bull by the horns.

‘OK, let’s go upstairs!’ he said, suddenly.

‘Gosh, steady on …’

He rolled his eyes and tutted. ‘To listen to music.’

Of course they were already listening to music, but were also drunk and sufficiently relaxed enough now to ignore this small inconsistency, and so carrying a half-bottle of red wine and both their glasses, she followed him up the stairs to his bedroom.

Both being of the belief that alcohol and musical instruments were a match made in heaven, they banished the stereo and got stuck into their homegrown efforts, Fraser playing ‘She’s Electric’ by Oasis and Mia singing along. It was something she’d done many times for karaoke, with Liv and Anna, in various bars, but alone, in Fraser Morgan’s bedroom, it took slightly more doing, and she already knew, as drunk as she was, that she was going to be embarrassed about this the next day. Not that that stopped her: more Oasis, Babybird and a track by Crowded House that she clearly didn’t know the words to, so chose to dance to instead, erratically mumbling a lyric or two.

‘Right, more wine!’ declared Fraser, eventually. ‘I reckon we definitely need more booze.’

He sang to himself as he went downstairs and Mia went to the bathroom. Someone had put a notice above the lavatory: PLEASE DO NOT DO BIG SHITS IN THIS TOILET!! Which really tickled her and so she sat there, having a wee on Fraser’s loo, snorting to herself with laughter.

So this was going terribly well. Surely she’d be getting in Fraser’s pants by the end of this. Let’s crank this whole thing up a level from mates! She told herself, drunkenly. Let’s get this show on the road!

Maybe I should just hurl myself at him. No, no, look at what happened last time she did that. Precisely nothing. That was the problem. She flushed the chain and pulled up her trousers and it was only as she did so that she noticed the cool blue hue of her legs where the cheap jeans had been. If she ever did make it into Fraser Morgan’s bed, she would have to do it with the lights off.