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“You’re not getting in mate”, the bouncer said blocking my path to the door. This was turning out to be exactly the sort of night I predicted when Elle convinced me to come on that evening’s crewdate.
“Curry and Camera”, she’d said. “Come on it’ll be fun!”
“Okay, let’s not pretend like anyone with self respect ever sets foot in Camera.” I’d replied, grinning.
“Okay, fine. There’s this super fit guy on my course who’s said he’s definitely going to be there and I need backup so I don’t end up in the corner all night like some sort of antisocial saddo.”
I’d laughed at that. If ever there was someone who would never end up in the corner, it was Elle, with her striking looks and almost supernatural levels of charm. “Fine, but you’re getting my dinner and you’re paying for drinks at the club.”
“Deal!”, she said, quickly enough that I knew I should have negotiated more. This guy must be unbelievably hot.
“AND”, I added. “When you inevitably ditch me to hang out with your 10 new best friends, I want you to know that I am never going to let you live it down.”
She looked a little embarrassed at that. Memories of Issac’s 19th birthday party — where we dragged him out of the library and to the club, and where she had mysteriously disappeared in the queue, next seen the following morning at our post-birthday brunch — still fresh in both our minds. Despite her telling me about the events of the night in excruciating detail, I’m still not clear as to whether she even entered the club.
Sure enough, at the crewdate we’d ended up in the middle of the table and she’d managed to make summer plans with the boys across from us before the waiter had even come to take our orders.
The night had started out well enough for me as well. The Men’s Tennis Blues seemed friendly enough, and I ended up sat across from a handsome, if boring, boy, who was clearly interested. We were leaning closer to each other as time went on, and I was just debating inviting him to skip the club (no one in their right minds went to Camera if there was any possible alternative), when a loud voice behind me caused the whole table to jump.
A man from the rugby blues team, which until this point had been having an entirely unobjectionable crewdate at the table adjacent to ours, had stood on his chair and declared to the whole restaurant that it was time for sambuca shots. Cringing, I made eye contact with the boy across from me, but the moment was lost. I decided to cut my losses, drowning the inevitable awkwardness with wine and, eventually, the disgusting shots of sambuca that the slightly confused waiters brought to our table by mistake.
The rest of the night is slightly blurry after that. The rugby team somehow managed to join our group and Elle and I ended up sat next to the most gorgeous ginger giant of a rugby player who showed me exactly one picture of his border collie before I developed a hopeless and definitely unrequited crush. Goodbye sure thing, hello drunken pining.
The walk to the club went by in a similarly warm dreamlike haze. Elle had by this time managed to snag her hottie, a second year with a bizarre haircut and the most fashionable outfit I had ever seen on any person apart from Elle herself, and who by all accounts seemed even more into her than she was into him. I ended up joining the queue at the tail of the group, finding myself more keen on a kebab and bed with every passing minute.
Which led me to here. Being denied entry to the club with the highest concentration of pretentious student wankers in this city. An achievement in a town so thoroughly dedicated to the pursuit of student wankery. Tonight, I decided, was maybe more of a movie alone in bed sort of night, anyway.
As I turned away from the bouncer, heading back towards the high street and bed, a voice from behind me called out “Hey! Charlie, right? “
I turned around. The rugby lad from earlier, the one with the border collie, was bounding over from the smoking area. “Are you all right? Elle was so worried when we couldn’t find you inside!”
I pulled my phone out of my pocket to 10 messages from Elle and a missed voice call as well as a text from someone who I seemed to have added as Ginger Hottie the third 🤤💪, asking where I was. “Yeah, I’m good, the bouncer just didn’t think I was sober enough to get in”
The boy grinned at me. There was something infectious about the grin, as if he was laughing at an inside joke we’d had for years.
“I’m Nick by the way”, he said, and with a jolt I realized he had definitely seen his name in my phone. “Wanna get a kebab? I feel like tonight’s more of a trash TV and bed sort of night don’t you?”
I grinned up at him. Wow he was tall, and hench, and had the most beautiful brown eyes I’d ever seen. I must have been dopily gazing at him for a long time, because suddenly his fingers were in mine and I realized we were walking up the high street hand in hand.
On the way to the kebab van I learned: that he was from Kent; that he had two true loves in life, rugby and dogs; that he had been hoping to study education in Leeds, but was reading PPE at Wadham because it was the only degree his father would pay for; and that he had the most delightfully goofy sense of humor. I was preemptively congratulating myself on, to torture the metaphor, tripping and falling into pulling well above my weight when we reached the kebab van and I realized my mistake. For all of his attractive traits, nick had horrific taste in food.
“You cannot possibly have ordered cheesy chips and hummus. That’s the meal an alien who wanted to fit into human customs but had never actually ordered food before would get. And here I was just starting to like you!” I burst out, as he scooped a sodden fry into his mouth and groaned appreciatively. Goofy humor was all well and good but I drew the line at unconscionable meal choices.
“Hey, come on it’s the perfect blend of savory flavours”, he waggled a chip at me. “Would you like to try a bite?”
“Not even if it were the last food on Earth”, I eyed him suspiciously. “Oh no don’t tell me you’re one of those people.”
“What people?”, Nick asked, grinning as he popped another chip in his mouth. “People with excellent taste?”
“Shut up, I bet you like bubblegum ice cream”, I said, popping open my own food container as we strolled down the high street.
“It’s the most delightful of the flavours! Don’t you just love it when your food is blue?”
Our argument continued until he had dropped me at my door and when he left to walk in the opposite direction back to his own rooms and bed, he asked if he “and his delightful food choices” could take me out to dinner sometime.
When, still grinning, I flopped into bed and pulled my phone out to to start some harmless insta-stalking, I saw I had a new message from Elle. The timestamp placed it five minutes after Nick’s first message to me.
Elle
You’re welcome 😘