My vision is bleary on the phone screen but my brain refuses to rest and Reddit is the only distraction I have available to me in our hostel. It's barely midnight but everyone else has already gone to bed—Caleb needs his beauty sleep for tomorrow, Eilidh just has the sleep rhythm of someone who has their life together, Rishi "is lazy" in his words, and Allan just follows whatever it is that everyone else is doing. So it's just me awake.
We booked a hostel room with four bunkbeds and yet it still cost a fortune and a half for a weekend stay. The beds ain't even got curtains around them—hence why I'm on the surprisingly comfortable armchair in the corridor rather than my bed. I don't wanna disturb everyone with my stirring and scrolling.
I'm ten minutes into an r/AITA comment section dragging some bloke for complaining that his long-term girlfriend won't do all the domestic work for him anymore after getting a promotion when footsteps scuff the stairs. I jolt and drop my phone, my body's instinct to run to the toilet before some stranger sees me here in my pyjamas, but it's Joe who emerges from the staircase.
We're mirrors of each other's "caught red-handed" expressions though neither of us've done owt wrong. Joe shrinks like I'm a parent who's caught her out past curfew.
'Hi...' Her voice is raw. Has she been crying?
'Hiya,' I respond, sheepishly picking my phone off the floor.
After evaluating, Joe approaches me. This hostel is nowt but dusty windowsills and freezing water, but some manager has invested in a reading nook in the corridor of each floor to lure guests into a false sense of security about what they're in for. There's a brass coffee table with a fake flower in a vase and two velvet armchairs that match the teal of their reception. The set is placed awkwardly two-thirds down the hall with the communal toilet and stairs on one end and the rooms at the other, presumably for no other reason than because this is where the electric sockets are. Suppose the creature comforts budget ran out at "extension cord".
Joe lowers herself into the seat like we're at Buckingham Palace.
I rotate my phone in my hands as I drink her in. She has further elated her fingerwaves with a row of rhinestones glued to the side parting that catch even the dull corridor light. The silver is carried over to the tangle of necklaces tucked into the collar of her oversized shirt. It rides up her thighs as she squirms in the velvet armchair that don't look half as pet-able as the velvet of her emerald trousers. My palms remember exactly what those trousers feel like, exactly what her curves feel like through them.
'You look stunning.'
Joe attempts a smile through her anxiety. 'Thanks. You too.'
'Oh.' I glance at my frayed t-shirt and joggers. 'This is actually my date outfit.'
'Is it?'
'Yeah. People go mad for it. Especially the bonnet—it really ties the whole look together.' I flip the maroon satin the way Caleb does whenever he wears a long wig. My heart somersaults when Joe laughs.
New drinking game: Take a shot every time my love for her grows a new leaf despite the number of times I prune them.
'How were the date?' I hope I sound platonically curious.
She exhales slowly, staring at the cotton carnation between us. 'Um... It was good. But I don't think I'm ready for all that. I thought I was...'
Tears brim in her waterline and she groans at them. 'I feel like I'm running in place. No matter what I try, I'll never get away from her.'
YOU ARE READING
NIKKI & JOE, CASUALLY | ✓
RomanceNicolás Velez is done with casual sex. Listen, yes, he might've slept with everyone in his flat within the first week of living in halls and had a respectable run on Grindr, but what eighteen-year-old wouldn't? He's almost twenty-four now, though...
