“Excuse me,” I say to Aisha and her mother and I join their hands that I was holding.
“Are you okay?” I ask her as she stops in front of me.
“More than okay,” she says quickly. “I bumped into Hannah in the loos. We talked. Everything’s okay.”
“Oh,” I say, one hundred questions on the tip of my tongue. I swallow each one. “That’s good.”
“Yeah,” she says as she takes another step closer, a lot closer. Close enough that the curve of her breasts press against my chest. Quickly, I look around us and see Aisha and her mother still dancing to the side of us, both of them singing along to the chorus of Next’sWifey.
I move to step back, to give Mina space because maybe she got knocked into me by someone dancing behind her, but her hand grips my arm and keeps me close to her, so close I can feel the warmth and softness of her body.
Oh, God. I really don’t want to think about the warmth and softness of Mina’s body, let alone feel it.
But that’s when Mina pushes up on her toes and presses more of her body on more of mine as she comes up to talk in my ear.
“So, I’ve done some exploring, and it’s no cloakroom but I’ve found a storage cupboard we could escape to.”
“What?” I pull my head back, astonished. But Mina is unblinking when I look at her.
“I reckon Aisha will be cutting the cake soon and then it will be time for her Spotify playlist of slow R&B love songs to come on so it will be the perfect time to disappear and have some cloakroom fun like last week, just in a storage cupboard this time.”
“Mina, I…” I begin, but I don’t have the right words, any words. So I steal some from a song I admittedly like far too much. “We don’t have to take our clothes off to have a good time.”
This does make her blink at me. “Charlie, did you just quote a naff 80s pop song to me?”
“Hey! Nothing naff about that anthem!”
She waves her hand between us. “Whatever. I didn’t say we had to strip naked. I said we could go and enjoy level two of this Evening of Fun.”
“Mina, you’re drunk,” I say and it does go some way to explain her behaviour.
Another wave of her hand. “I had half a glass of wine three hours ago. I’m sober.”
I can’t even argue with her. She drank as much as I did and despite feeling quite giddy from all the fun we’ve been having, I don’t feel at all drunk. In fact, my sobriety is what makes me finally find a rational explanation for Mina’s proposition.
Hannah. Their conversation in the bathroom. Whatever happened, it made Mina feel the need to move on more proactively. To do the getting under someone new in order to get over someone old. It’s a rebound thing.
Now there’s some logic to hold on to, it’s much easier to look Mina in the eye, steadfastly, and say what I need to say.
“No, Mina,” I speak slowly and as gently as I possibly can. “We don’t need level two.Youdon’t need level two. We’ve been having plenty of fun, just like this.”
For a split second, Mina’s face falls, but just as quickly that look of disappointment disappears and she pouts at me. Those pretty, sweet and plump lips. I pray she doesn’t make me turn her down again.
“But what ifIwant to? What if I want to go to level two with you?”
Fuck.
“It’s possible our levels aren’t quite lining up but I’m pretty sure we went way past level two last Saturday night.”
There’s something in my words that has Mina’s eyes darkening and her tongue darting out to slicken her bottom lip.
“And wasn’t that fun? Don’t you want to do more of that?”
Fuck, yes. A thousand times, yes.
“No,” I say, somehow.
“You really don’t?” She looks appalled and crestfallen, all at the same time and it yanks hard on my heart.
