CHAPTER TWO
It's nearly midnight when I get home, tired, tipsy, and looking forward to seeing my best friend in the whole wide world. I'm almost home free, free to take my bra off and sling it over the back of the sofa, eat crisps even though I am already stuffed to the gills, and pass out in front of the TV with my dog snoring blissfully next to me.
However, there is a short but, as it will later turn out, pivotal intermission, in which my old friend and the literal boy next door comes out of his house at ten minutes to midnight to say hi.
"Eugenie," he says, as he opens his door, a bottle of beer in hand. He is casually attired in joggers and white T-shirt and brown bare feet. He raises the beer to me, with a lopsided smile, and I am forced to concede once again that he is objectively quite attractive. Somehow at exactly the same time as being a total nerd-ass loser. He's also one of my favorite people.
"Happy almost birthday."
"Milesington," I reply. "Have you been waiting by your window all night for me to come home?"
His actual name is Miles, but when he moved in with his gran fifteen years ago, we all teased him for being from London and therefore posh (even though he came from a Hackney high-rise). Then when he found out what Genie was short for, he teased me for being named after a princess (even though I am actually named after my great-great-grandmother, who apparently was also a magical priestess). So ever since, whenever he calls me by my unabridged name, I call him Milesington. Because, you know. That's what old friends do, right? Have silly in-jokes. And that took much longer to explain than it should have.
"Yeah, I've had my nose pressed up against the window hoping to catch a glimpse of you," he says dryly. "Birthday dinner go okay?"
"As okay as dinner with my family can ever go," I say. "Which is to say a sort of mix of warm fuzzy love, anxiety, inadequacy, and bad jokes. What about you? It's Friday night. Why aren't you on a date?"
"I'm saving myself for you," Miles tells me, before adding, "For your birthday tomorrow. Now we're all getting on, I can only manage one big night a week. But I'm looking forward to it. The old squad back together again, at the club. Having it large."
"I was thinking more like a quiet and early one," I say. "Just thinking about going to a club makes me feel tired. Anyway, I gotta go in. I am drunk and I want to hug my dog. Laters."
"Wait!" Miles reaches into the potted rosebush outside his front door and brings out a birthday gift, wrapped in brown paper bags from the gift shop of the museum where he works. "I wanted to give you your present. So you'll have something to open when you wake up."
"Milesington!" I cry, delighted. "Thank you!" I shake it and it rattles a bit.
"No rock this year," I say. You might think, Why would it ever be rocks? and the answer is because Miles is a geologist and he really likes rocks. I have a collection of several "interesting" rocks he has given me over the years.
"Can I open it now?" I plead.
"No." He smiles. "No. Tomorrow. Not now."
"Thank you." I rock forward and hug him, finding myself leaning into him a little more than I anticipated, so that my soft torso collides with his firm chest. We stand like that for a moment, until Miles awkwardly pats me on the back.
"Right, then," he says.
"I think I might need you to push me back into the standing position," I say. "I'm a bit squiffy."
"I got that." Gently he puts his hands under my elbows and returns me to a near-vertical position. "Sounds like Rory has had enough of waiting for you."
My dog scratches and barks on the other side of the door.
"Yeah, I'm going in now. Night, night, night, night."
I sway against my front door. It seems that my ankles are by far the most drunk part of me and standing up vertically is a considerable challenge. Meanwhile, Rory, who knows I am on the other side of the front door, has started barking like a maniac, wondering what the holdup is. Or the fall-down, in my case.
"Wait, before you go..." I lean back to look at Miles, who immediately looks at his feet. "The...the thing is that...that... Rory excavated another massive hole under the fence while you were out," he says. "So, there's that."
"I knew I shouldn't have let Dad put that bloody dog flap in," I say.
"Yeah, so I'm really worried it's stressing Matilda out," he says. "Cat therapy. It's expensive."
"How can you tell if she's stressed?" I ask. "Her face is always the same."
