Do you think my life is chaotic?
LOL
obvs
what kind of question even is that?
Nvm
it's a mess
but like
one I love very much, ofc
But like
Okay
Not my life, but do you think *I* am chaotic? Like, ME? PERSONALLY?
oh, hundred and eight percent
Lucy follows it up with a picture from a couple of weeks ago – it's one I sent our group chat, of a TV aerial on the house next door, with my bra hanging off it, after I'd left it on the bathroom windowsill and it blew outside. #BraGate had made us all giggle for days.
I can't even manage a faint smile now.
Lucy follows up quickly asking if I'm okay – it feels like too much to explain, and I'm not even sure how to answer that, so I tell her of course I'm okay and ask how she's coping, locked down with her future sister-in-law. She responds, but I ignore the texts, the glow of my phone shining up at the ceiling as I lie on my back in Nate's bed, completely unable to sleep.
"No, no," he'd said earlier, smiling but insistent. "Really. You take the bed. I'll sleep on the sofa."
"That's not fair. It's your bed. I'm the one who got stuck here."
"You're the guest."
"Not by choice."
Nate had scooped up a pillow and a pile of carefully-folded blankets, his smile gone and a stern look on his face. His eyes had been doing that adorable crease-around-the-edges thing, though, like he was trying not to laugh. "You're taking the bed, Immy, and I'm taking the sofa. It's my house, I make the rules."
And, fine, I'll admit: even if the whole chivalry thing was just an act, it was still hot.
"You could just share the bed with me, you know. I don't mind. We did last night. We did a lot more than share a bed last night, mate."
Nate blushed, but shook his head. "Yeah, but that was... different?"
"If you say so."
I feel like such an arsehole right now, though. Taking up this lovely, comfy double bed, wide awake and likely not going to sleep for a few more hours yet, while he's stuck out there on the sofa.
I sigh, roll over, and reply to Lucy's texts for a while before she tells me she's going to sleep and we'll talk tomorrow. I scroll through Twitter for a couple of minutes before everyone there seems to have gone to bed, too.
It's gone one in the morning when I give up trying to sleep, cocoon myself in the duvet, and shuffle out to the living room. The duvet drags behind me, the fabric whispering over the laminate flooring; it seems so loud in the silence of the flat.
It's not just the flat that's so quiet, though: it's everything. There's no sound of cars on the roads outside, no sirens, no shouting. I know this is a nicer neighbourhood than where I live, but even so... It's disconcerting, like someone stuck the whole world on pause.
Nate's sprawled on the sofa, blankets half-kicked off. Nate's not exactly what I'd call a tall guy, particularly, but somehow he's managed to take up the entire three-seater sofa and has his feet hanging off the end of it. He's wearing pyjamas but the t-shirt has ridden up, exposing his soft stomach. His arms are thrown out, one to the side and one above his head, and his mouth is hanging wide open.
I shake him awake.
"Nate. Nate. Nate-Nathan-Nate. Honeypot. Wake up."
For a cute guy, he wakes up in the most unattractive way. He smacks his lips together, head rolling and eyes blinking, letting out a quiet little fart, and mumbling, "Whassamatter?" before he seems to remember some random girl is living in his flat for the week, and now she's waking him up in the middle of the night. He sits up, rubbing his eyes and asking instead, "Immy? What's up?"
"You drool in your sleep, you know."
Automatically, his hand comes up to the line of dribble on his chin, and he scrubs it away. I wriggle my way into the gap he's made between himself and the arm of the sofa; the duvet's bigger than I thought, though, and he has to shuffle out of my way.
"You woke me up to tell me I drool in my sleep?"
"Yes."
He lets out a short, disbelieving laugh, before frowning curiously at me and saying, "Did you call me Honeypot?"
"Yes. And it suits you, so shut up."
"Okay."
"Do you really think I'm chaotic?"
His frown deepens, the amusement disappearing from his face now. "Oh. Still hung up on that, huh?"
"Just a little."
"What time is it?"
"One forty-three."
He sighs. "Okay, yeah. Fine. I think you're a chaotic kind of person. You just seem to have a lot going on. Which, you know, I didn't really mind, when we matched on the app, because I was just looking for something casual. It just seemed like every day, there was a new batshit crazy thing you were stuck in the middle of. And I'm not being funny, but you did pretty much invite yourself over to my flat in the middle of a global pandemic when you didn't even remember my name."
"Well when you put it like that..." I chew on my lower lip for a minute, then ask him, "Didn't you think they were funny, though?"
"Think what was funny?"
"My stories. Whatever – batshit crazy thing I had going that day."
Nate shrugs one shoulder. It knocks against me. "Sure, a bit. I mean, yeah, you told a funny story, but mostly I just read the messages thinking, how the fuck does this much stuff happen to someone? I mean, you had an email threatening you and your housemates with bailiffs, then the next day you went to eight different shops because you realised you had no toilet paper and you came back with a crate of wine instead... There was the neighbourhood cat you left food out for, and then it got into the house and you couldn't get it to leave again... It just seemed like a lot of crazy stuff going on. I don't think I'd have believed it was all happening in real-time if you hadn't sent pictures."
I blink at him. "You say that like that sort of thing's not normal."
"Do all your other friends do stuff like that?"
"Well, not... Like, not exactly, I guess... And for the record, I did buy toilet paper. Not just the wine."
"Good to know."
We both fall quiet, until Nate claps his hands softly to his thighs and says, "Vodka, or tea?"
I don't remember the last time I turned down the offer of some vodka, but I give him a small smile. "Tea would be great. Thanks."
This time, when Nate gets back with two steaming mugs of tea, I'm hunched in the corner of the sofa, sticking my hands out of my self-made blanket burrito to take the mug off him; Nate doesn't even so much as look like he wants to admonish me for risking spilling tea on his lovely clean duvet.
"You know," I mumble, "I think you managed to do in one day what my therapist has been trying to do for a year."
"Nobody ever called you chaotic before?"
"Not the way you did."
"Changing your whole perspective on yourself for a guy? And you called yourself a feminist in your bio."
He's teasing, though, so I cut him a mock-glare.
"Should charge you for it," he muses, rubbing his chin melodramatically. "What do therapists charge these days?"
"One night of hot sex and a stolen Ramones t-shirt."
Nate laughs so hard he snorts, which makes me giggle, too, just a bit.
"I want that shirt back at the end of the week."
"Not gonna happen."
Although, I think, it would be only fair not to steal such a great t-shirt, at this rate.
"So you, um... you see a therapist?"
"I thought loads of people did these days. I thought it was hashtag-stylish." I roll my eyes. "Of course I see a therapist. Like, half my friends do."
"Yeah, no, loads of mine do as well. Or did, at some point." Nate nods, slowly, thoughtfully, and I wait to see what he's going to ask me next. Probably wants to know why I see a therapist. Or what I think is so screwed up about me that my life is so chaotic.
But what he says is, "It's not like it's easy, you know. This whole... this." He offers up a grand, and appropriately vague, sweeping gesture around the room. "I'm not saying some of my mates are even half as mad as you, but some of them seem to be stuck, too. And then some of them are off getting married and having babies and buying houses with south-facing gardens and it's like, way to show up the rest of us – but then they feel like they're the ones getting left behind when someone starts posting about their year travelling in Asia and volunteering to build schools in Africa."
"What?"
"What I mean is, everyone's just... moving at different speeds. We all think we're on the same track and that we just missed the train, but the fact is, nobody's on the same track, and not everyone's even on a train."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Yeah." Nate's face scrunches up and he grimaces, scratching his head. "It sounded better coming from the vlogger I got it from. It sounded smart when he said it. But that's kind of my point, right? Or, his point, I guess, that I stole. What I'm trying to say is, just because you're not in the same place as other people, doesn't mean you have to make up for it by putting on this whole... persona. When I said you were chaotic..."
"You meant it," I interrupt. "And I know what you were trying to say. I know. I get it from my friends all the time, but when they say it, it's like... expected? It's just, 'Oh, Imogen's off being Imogen again!' and we all get to laugh about it. You know my friend had to send me money, so I could pay you back for some fucking underwear?"
Nate laughs, then seems to catch himself, like it's inappropriate.
"No, see, that's what I mean? Laugh away. I couldn't even afford knickers, Honeypot. I am stuck on lockdown in a total stranger's flat, you're right, whose name I didn't even remember, totally broke, and this feels pretty average for me. Like, that shouldn't be happening, you know? I am chaotic."
"You're a goddamn hurricane," Nate tells me.
But he says it softly, almost reverently, and with a gentle smile that makes me blush and look away.
"If you're broke," he says, "I mean... it's literally my job to manage projects in the finance world. I'm no stranger to a spreadsheet. I could... like... I mean, it's not like there's that much else we can do all week, right? Maybe we could take a look. See if you can get un-broke. Or, a little way there, at least."
I gawp at him, feeling my eyes fill with tears.
And I suddenly feel so stupid, because maybe it could've been this easy all along. Maybe I could've just asked my parents or my friends to help me figure something out, instead of asking them to bail me out.
My therapist has a lot to answer for, if Nate can manage to turn my life around in a mere week.
"You'd do that for me? Even after I forgot your name?"
Nate laughs. "It'll cost you one Ramones t-shirt."
"You drive a hard bargain, Honeypot, but you've got yourself a deal."
And, to seal it, I lean over to kiss him.
Well, that's the end of Part 1! I hope you guys enjoyed getting to know Imogen and Nate in the first day of the London Lane lockdown... next week, we'll be upstairs with Danny and Isla, who've only been dating for a month and are now having to deal with living together, in Part 2: The Honeymooners.
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