The Show Must Go On

Chapter Twenty-Five: UFO

Chapter Twenty-Five Soundtrack: UFO by Olivia Dean

The party is off to a shaky start. The music is too quiet, I think, but I'm not confident enough in my taste to risk anyone actually hearing it. I've laid out food, but too much, and everyone is awkwardly avoiding the pizza and crouton-heavy salads and are instead picking at the olives. Assuming my guests would bring booze, I've not got enough wine, and the empty bottles in the recycling look accusingly at me. No one is tipsy enough to have fun.

Only eight people are here, I remind myself, and it's still early. But yes. Shaky start.

And that would be fine, normal even, if it weren't for—

A knock on my door. 8.30 exactly.

My hand hovers on the handle, and I pause for a breath. In. Out. My fingers are trembling and I don't know why.

I swing open the door.

Nas is waiting in my hallway, and the music and the food and the drinks don't matter at all, because he's smiling, that smile that he saves for when he's truly happy, and he's smiling at me. His dark eyes crinkle with it. He seems taller, standing in my doorway, wearing an oversized jumper, and his hair sticks up at the top, like he's just run his hands through it. I'm close enough to smell his cologne.

I inhale, deeply. Cloves. Warmth. Nas.

Then he chuckles, and I realise how weird it is to silently smell someone, and now it's too late to be normal. Do we hug? His arm is half extended, maybe for a hug, but instead, I shake it. I shake his hand.

'Welcome.'

My humiliation is complete.

'Thanks,' he says, and I realise that he can't come in because I'm blocking the doorway. I stumble back, nearly tripping on my feet, and now he's inside my flat. Someone is with him, but I'm too distracted to care.

His eyes take in the crocheted throws strung between my shelves as makeshift tapestries; the ferns hanging in rattan pots from the ceiling; the piles of dog-eared books that I use as coffee tables. The next words out of his mouth suddenly matter more than anything else. I can't even process who is standing beside him as I watch him look around. His eyes land on my engagement photo and the vein in his neck pulses.

'We brought you this.'

He offers me two bottles of wine—finally—and now that the welcoming is done, I look at the woman beside him.

'You're so gorgeous.'

Did I just say that?

It seems I did.

She is gorgeous though, so beautiful that to acknowledge her in any other way would be dishonest. 'Hello' wouldn't have covered it. I've always comforted myself with the thought that models are airbrushed, but meeting this woman, I discover that some people really don't have pores.

She rolls her eyes, which, great, cool, I guess. That's nice.

Nas gestures her in and, with a crooked smile, asks 'Can I have the grand tour?'. The woman wanders towards the kitchen counters, ignoring my friends and searching for a drink.

Just us, then. 'Sure.'

I gesture expansively around my living room/kitchen/precariously-stacked library. The dual temptations to put on a stupid voice and pretend I'm an estate agent, or to clam up and refuse to let him in, war within me: I can perform or I can conceal, but neither are normal things to do with house guests, so instead I drop my hands and say, 'This is my living area.'