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Lucas ignores me. “I’m talking six hours a day, every day.”
“Right,” Gilly says, smirking. “I bet you two are having a lot of fun ‘studying’.” He makes air quotes with his fingers.
“I didn’t realise you were keeping track of the time I spent with my girlfriend,” I tell Lucas. “Sounds a bit stalkerish.”
His expression darkens for a millisecond before smoothing out into blank nonchalance, and he huffs a cruel laugh. “More like I’ve been enjoying having the apartment to myself for once,” he says. “It’s nice not having you constantly around.”
I look down at the desk we’re sitting around, suddenly interested in the grains in the wood. I feel like I’m thirteen again.
Gilly pokes me in the arm, and I muster up a smile.
“So, how far have you gotten?” he asks, a mischievous smile lighting up his face.
“Gilly,” Hugo hisses, and there’s a thud as Gilly is kicked in the shin. “Don’t ask weird questions.”
“It’s not weird,” Gilly protests, but he gives me an apologetic smile. “Sorry, man. I didn’t mean to be invasive.”
“No, it’s okay.” The back of my neck is warm, but I don’t feel uncomfortable. It’s more that this is new to me. In high school, I never had conversations like this with my friends, and it’d be nice to get their thoughts and advice.
I’ve never had sex before, and I want to be as good at it as possible. I don’t want to disappoint Cleo.
“We haven’t slept together yet.”
Gilly snorts. “Who says ‘slept together’?”
“What else am I meant to say? ‘Fucked’? That sounds so vulgar. And stop interrupting me if you want me to tell you the story.”
He raises his hands in surrender. “Alright, sorry. Go on.”
“As I was saying, no, we haven’t gotten that far yet. Just making out and touching.”
To be honest, it hasn’t been very exciting. I thought kissing my girlfriend would flood me with adrenaline, but most of the time, it’s kind of…boring.
“That’s all?” Gilly asks. “How long have you been dating for now?”
“Three weeks.”
“Three weeks? Dude, what the hell are you waiting for?” Gilly goes on to give me advice but shuts up when a nearby desk crowded with mature-age students give us a dirty look after he starts listing off his favourite sex positions.
Hugo claps his hands together. “Let’s talk about something more appropriate,” he says. “Your birthday’s coming up,” he says to Gilly.
“Right,” Gilly says, perking up. “I’m turning twenty. Gone are my teen years, hello being a proper grown up. It’s quite tragic, really.”
“Gilly and I have already started organising the party,” Lucas says, speaking for the first time in a while.
Hugo and I blink.
“You have?” I ask.
“Yeah, Lucas is actually kind of good at planning,” Gilly says, smacking Lucas on the back. “Alright, so at first, I thought about having a house party. Sounds good, right? But we quickly realised we couldn’t do that because, well duh, I don’t have a house. All I have is a tiny room at my student accommodation building. And we also thought about having it at one of the games rooms in the building.”
“But they don’t allow alcohol in public areas,” Hugo says.
“Exactly!” Gilly says, “So, in the end, I decided, screw the big party thing, I’m just gonna have a dinner and then drinks afterwards. We’re gonna stay out all night and get wasted.”
Lucas explains how he did some research and they ended up booking a banquet room at a pretty nice restaurant in the city. Fifteen to twenty people will come — I don’t know how the hell Gilly has that many friends — and we’re allowed to bring plus ones as long as we ask him, to make sure there’ll be enough seats.
“Oh!” I say. “Can I bring Cleo?”
