There was a long pause that Rose decided to fill with an obvious question. ‘What’s it like for the women?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I’ve noticed what some of your fans can be like when you start dating someone. They aren’t exactly very nice.’
Rose had seen how fans would launch online attacks on any woman Milo was seen with, filling their Instagram accounts with hate. Many of them were young women themselves, incandescent with rage because the man of their dreams had been taken from them.
‘Oh, right. Yeah,’ he sighed. ‘I really hate that they have to go through that. One or two people I’ve dated have spoken to me about it. But, sadly, there’s not much I can do.’
‘Isn’t there?’
‘I can’t control every person on the internet, Rose.’
‘No, but they’re your fans, aren’t they? Surely that gives you some degree of control.’
He smiled. ‘Yes, they are. But I’m not responsible for them. Just as you’re not responsible for … I don’t know … anything awful your colleagues have ever done.’
‘I’m not sure that’s the same.’
‘Okay, look. Yes, I hate it. Yes, I know how horrible it must be to go out with me. But what am I supposed to do? Hide away and devote my life to celibacy?’
‘I don’t know,’ she shrugged, aware that the more she challenged him, the sooner she’d be shown the door.
He laughed and took both her hands, his body the closest to hers it had been all evening.
‘Rose. Can I tell you something?’ he asked.
Unable to say anything with him standing so close, she simply nodded.
‘You are so much more beautiful than you realise.’
She exhaled the only air that was left between them. ‘How many people have you said that to?’
‘Not as many as you’d think.’
If there was a moment that Rose was supposed to have left, they’d long passed it by now. But if there was a moment that Milo was going to kiss her, they were in it right now. She had fantasised about this. Dreamed of it. Longed for it. It was strange, then, what she did next.
‘I’d love another gin and tonic please,’ Rose said, moving over towards the bottle.
Milo had run out of gin and handed her a glass of something brown that tasted like whisky. Her mouth wrinkled at the flavour of it as it burned her throat.
‘Do you have any mixer?’
‘Sure,’ he replied, grabbing a bottle of tonic water and topping up her glass by a centimetre.
He held up his own glass to hers. ‘A toast,’ he said.
‘To what?’
‘To a great night – and the beginning of a beautiful friendship.’
She laughed. ‘God, you’re lame. Cheers.’
The next time Rose looked at her phone, it was 1.03 a.m. She had two missed calls from Luce. Not unlocking it, she turned her phone off and put it back in her jacket pocket. Milo was in the bathroom, or getting more drinks, she couldn’t remember. She was sitting on the sofa staring at Uma Thurman’s fringe.
There was no way of knowing how many drinks they had each had, or how many hours they’d spent talking, or even what they’d talked about. Something about exes. Something about Cribs again. Did she start asking him about those rumours surrounding Leonardo DiCaprio? Rose had been talking for a while before he got up to pee. And she had definitely spoken about Ed and let slip that he had dumped her. Or had she said she’d dumped him? All she knew was that things started to happen around her in slow motion. Like they were happening to someone else and she was watching the action unfold.
Milo came back from the bathroom and the music somehow got louder. He extended his hand to Rose, inviting her to dance. He pulled her body into his, raising her hands above her head and moving her hips in sync. He rolled her out and Rose twirled, noticing the ease with which he flung her out and brought her in again, bending her back so that her head almost grazed the carpet before quickly pulling her close to him so their lips almost touched. He spun her round and round until she collapsed onto the sofa, giggling in a drunken dizzy daze.
Soon, they were taking turns choosing songs. He played a song she pretended to know; she played ‘Wannabe’ by the Spice Girls. They moved together and apart: her with a glass of something resembling nail varnish remover in hand and a pair of his sunglasses perched on top of her head, him empty-handed, eyes hungrily fixed on her swaying limbs.
‘If I ever get married, this is a song I’d dance to at my wedding,’ announced Milo, tapping at something on his phone. ‘There,’ he said, as a gentle guitar riff started to play to the backdrop of some piano. The introduction of a growling vocal. It was beautiful. ‘You like it?’ he asked her, smiling.
‘Who is it?’
He didn’t answer and instead moved around the living room, slowly rotating his hips.
She closed her eyes and listened, wanting to take it all in. The voice transported her somewhere else. She wasn’t in that room any more. She wasn’t even on solid ground. She was floating, her limbs gliding in the direction of the current.
It wasn’t clear when or how she and Milo started kissing, or who kissed whom. But the second she felt his tongue inside her mouth, everything suddenly shifted into a moment of clarity. A sense of hyper-awareness of what was happening. Senses enlivened by his touch, Rose could tell it was a good kiss. The kind you replay over and over until the memory of it becomes the thing you remember rather than the kiss itself, which only makes it better. His tongue was soft and gentle. She moaned as his hands moved through her hair and then she felt them on her hips, pushing her back against the wall, his erection firmly pressed into her.
They reached out for more of each other, their limbs twining around one another like growing branches, finding new parts to touch and grip tightly. His body guided her to the bedroom, mouth not moving from hers as he tugged at her flares, managing to peel her out of them by the time she fell back onto his bed. Rose gasped as he pushed his tongue inside her, hands roving her hips. She arched her back, fingernails digging into his duvet.
By the time he was thrusting himself into her, the clarity Rose had acquired earlier began to dissipate. She caught herself studying Milo’s face. Entirely unfamiliar, it was contorted in the way it is when someone has sex but somehow worse than she had seen before. His mouth had curled up into some sort of snarl, nose wrinkled and angry. He was groaning loudly, saying words that made her wince, words that made her want to close up into a compact, airless shell.
He turned onto his back so that she straddled him. She relaxed a little when she was on top, the drunken haze taking her elsewhere. Closing her eyes helped, too. She pushed her palms into his shoulders and moved herself to a rhythm that felt steady and full. It felt better, like she could go through with it. At least in a way that would make him feel like she’d enjoyed herself. It was the least she could do.
When it was over, Milo offered to get a car to take her home. She agreed and didn’t question why he came in the car with her, nursing a bottle of tequila they both drank from in the back seat. The alcohol slipped down more easily now, a quick potent burn that warmed every part of her. She could tolerate it.
