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Anthony Bridgerton, it turned out, was a messy drunk. This was a discovery that greatly tickled his brothers, Ben and Colin, who had been the recipients of many a stern front door lecture from him in the wee hours of the morning.
"I l – love – you guys," Anthony slurred, between hiccups. His hair – lightly tousled, gelled but not damp – was sticking up in all directions. A lock was plastered to his forehead from sweat. Colin wrinkled his nose. "You're the best brothers. Greg not withstanding."
"Can you repeat that again?" Ben grinned, brandishing his phone, thumb hovering over the record button. "I need to play it to myself every night, as I fall asleep."
Anthony made no answer. It seemed that he'd lost interest in the conversation, if his unfocused gaze, fixated on the tray of pink, sparkly cocktails passing their table, was anything to go by. Ben followed his line of vision. Feeling the attention on her, the waitress glanced back. Ben winked. If Colin attempted anything like that, the waitress would have laughed. Instead, she blushed.
Colin rolled his eyes. Having two brothers who were notorious sluts was tiresome at the best of times and downright exhausting at the worst. He'd tried to emulate them, once upon a time. Now, he was much more comfortable in his own skin. He was earnest. That was okay too.
Looking at Anthony, though, he wasn't sure he could credibly proclaim Anthony comfortable in his skin. It was funny, how their roles had reversed over the years. Anthony had always been the confident brother. The one who always knew what to do, after their father had died. The one who had been their father, in a way – been the father he'd never wanted to be. Colin had chafed under his direction. Had sworn at him more times than he was comfortable remembering – at the front door, coming home drunk from a party. When Anthony had expressed self-righteous concerns about the girl he'd been seeing. Had called him a prick, a prude, a stuck-up son-of-a-bitch.
Well. Anthony was probably all of those things. But when Colin had been in a car accident, last fall, the main thing he remembered when he woke up, crumpled and bruised, was his brother's face, staring down at him. His brother's face, full of fear.
Love could look a lot like asphyxiation, he'd realised then. All Anthony's nagging, all his irritating jibes - he'd just been trying to do his best in a family that had lost its rudder: their father.
Their relationship had improved significantly after that. Confronted by yet another reminder of their mutual mortality, Anthony had been subdued for weeks. And Colin? Colin had seen his overbearing brother in a different light. Where he'd previously sympathised with Eloise when Anthony had set yet another impossibly strict curfew, he recalled, instead, that unguarded, naked fear on Anthony's face. He was slower to anger when Anthony had scornfully suggested that moving in with Pen was yet another stepping stone in his ongoing existential crisis.
There was no need to rise to the bait, Colin had realised. He was certain of his relationship with Penelope. It was becoming increasingly obvious that Anthony, for all his bluster, had no such certainty. He clung to those he loved in a vain effort to circumvent loss, not realising that all he succeeded in doing was choking the life out of them.
It was with no small amount of affection and pity, that Colin had hugged Anthony at the door where he had received so many lectures before. Anthony stiffened at the contact, but he did not pull away. That could only be considered progress. "Pen and I will be fine. I'll be fine," he'd said when he released his brother. "I love you. I'll see you next Sunday for dinner."
He thought that perhaps Anthony's shoulders had slumped a little as he left, but he couldn't fix everything. All he could do was turn up, week after week, to Sunday dinner. To smile with cheeks full of mashed potatoes as Anthony quizzed him relentlessly about school and work. To pretend not to see Anthony watching him beadily across the table. To avoid turning around, as his brother's figure faded slowly into the rearview mirror.
"Family's complicated," Pen would tell him, later. She'd know.
It had taken time, but Colin almost felt that Anthony was his brother again, rather than a reluctant father figure. They'd finally gotten to the point where they were friends, almost – though never co-conspirators. Siblings, but never confidantes. And he had certainly never seen him like this.
"That's pretty," Anthony murmured, goofy smile gracing his lips. He swayed a little, transfixed.
Colin snorted. "What did you give him besides the tequila?" he accused Ben. "I've never seen him so sloshed before."
Ben had the grace to look abashed. "Just tequila," he confirmed. "But, um, we may have been pre-drinking before we met up with you."
Colin huffed out a laugh. They were closer in age, Ben and Anthony. Close enough, that Anthony had never tried to parent Ben – futile exercise though that would have been. (Futility, he noted, had never been a complete contraindication to Anthony.) "What possessed him to get so … trashed?" he asked, not entirely expecting a cogent answer.
The answer came from an unexpected quarter: the man himself. "I'm thirty-eight," he sighed mournfully. "I was supposed to be dead."
This macabre pronouncement did not help Colin in the slightest. He looked at Ben quizzically. Ben opened his mouth but was interrupted yet again.
"I'll never find love!" – this, loudly. Several women looked over and away with a grimace. Colin could hardly blame them. To look at Anthony, sprawled over the sticky table - one would never know that he had been named in Forbes' 30 under 30, nearly ten years ago. (Although, if one's greatest accomplishment was nearly a decade old … well, that was a little pathetic, was it not? Colin would never voice that aloud.)
"What do you mean?" he asked instead. "You're always going on dates. I've never known a week where you don't have a girlfriend."
"S … stop … s … s … slut-shaming me," came the sibilant reply. This time, it was punctuated by a burp. A woman next to them shifted a little further away. If she leaned any further, she'd basically be horizontal.
Colin tipped his chin at Ben. An explanation, he thought, was surely forthcoming.
Lovingly, Ben pulled Anthony's face out of the empty bowl of chips and set him back down in a pile of napkins, before answering. At Colin's look, he said, "For the drool," even though that hadn't been anywhere near the top of Colin's list of questions.
"Ah," said Colin. It seemed like the only reasonable reply.
"Uhg," said Anthony. Apparently reasonable was overrated.
Ben tousled his hair fondly. "Until two months ago," he said, "this one was convinced that he would die before he turned thirty-eight."
Two months ago had been Anthony's birthday. He had started the day with forced good cheer, but even Colin – not the most sensitive soul (by his admission) and a right oblivious pain in the arse (by Pen's) – had noticed that he had become more and more morose the further through the day they passed.
"Just tired!" Anthony had exclaimed, a little more manically than the question warranted, when asked. The grin on his face was pasted on. "Unfortunate side-effect of getting old!"
"Er." Colin set his beer down. The glass was already sweating a little ring of moisture onto the plastic tabletop. "Why, exactly?"
"Because Dad died before he turned thirty-eight. And the daft old boy here was convinced he'd do the same."
It seemed churlish to point out the obvious, but Colin had never favoured the subtle approach. "That's fucking stupid."
Ben sighed. Across the table, Anthony lifted his head blearily. He began to trail patterns in the water that was still seeping onto the table. "Don't tell me. Tell his therapist." He smacked Anthony's hand away. "Stop that."
Anthony giggled, then hiccuped, then was silent.
"Anyway, ever since the blithering idiot's worked out that he's not going to die, he's been in mourning of the life he could have lived. The time he's wasted."
"No one's going to love me now," Anthony announced. He attempted to put his wet finger in Ben's ear. "Sometimes I don't even like me."
Ben brushed him away. "Not when you're behaving like this," he scolded.
"Oh." Anthony put his hand down, thoroughly chastened. Colin fought the urge to laugh. It was all so absurd. "What about now?"
"Maybe now."
"Cool."
"That's fucking stupid," Colin said again, unable to stop himself.
Ben cuffed Anthony affectionately around the neck. "It is, isn't it? Never thought I'd get to my big age and have to be trying to find my ludicrous older brother a girlfriend."
Colin thought of Pen. She'd be awake still, sitting up in bed, toes peeking out from under the bedspread. Her iPad would probably still be on her lap when he walked in the door. She'd look up at him, and smile in welcome. Even the thought of it warmed him from the inside. Or maybe that was the beer.
Whatever. Either way, it was nice to have that certainty - to know where his home was.
Colin looked at Anthony. He wasn't drooling. Good for him. He deserved to find his home too.
"Are you serious about finding Ant a girlfriend?" he asked. It was just rom com enough a trope for Ben to be serious.
Ben shrugged. "Why not? He's not going to find one himself. He's too emotionally repressed. The stick up his arse isn't for pleasu –"
"Huh," Colin coughed. They were attracting some curious looks. "None of my friends, or Pen's, can stand Anthony," he continued. Anthony nodded wisely from his position, sprawled across the table. "Or at least, the ones who could have probably hooked up with him already."
"My friends aren't Anthony's type," Ben said, wrinkling his nose. "Or rather, he's not their type. No offence, Ant - buttoned down finance bros have other markets cornered."
"Maybe Daph or El might have some single friends?" Colin suggested, but knew at once that that was unlikely to bear fruit. Daph had caused a bit of a ruckus last year when she'd revealed that she'd been hooking up with Anthony's uni best friend, Simon. One thing had led to another, and the next thing Colin knew, Anthony had decked Simon in his objectively very pretty face. They'd all made (tenuous) nice now but Anthony's knuckles and Simon's jaw would probably never completely realign.
Eloise, on the other hand - well, she was Eloise. She'd rather die than see one of her friends date Anthony.
Ben was already shaking his head. "Out of the question. We'll have to think of something else."
"But what?"
Right on cue, Anthony piped up. "That lady's pretty," he announced.
They all looked. It was the most sensible thing Anthony had said all night. And he wasn't wrong, exactly. She was gorgeous. It was just that the lady in question was in no state to be picked up by a questionably suave (okay, entirely boorish) drunkard, as she appeared to be mid-break up with her male companion.
"I can't believe you," she was saying. Her anger was as self-righteous as her gleaming black ponytail that bounced as she spoke. "We have a dog together. Was he all a lie to you too?"
In her heels, she was as tall as the man cowering before her.
"Uh," the man said eloquently. He squared his shoulders and tried to regain his bluster. "Look. It was never going to work between you and me. You're practically married to your job - between that and your family, there was never any time for me. This is as much on you as it is on me. You just have to accept that."
"Is that so," the woman retorted, voice lowering dangerously. "You cheating on me was as much my fault as yours, was it? I have to accept that, do I? Accept this, you twat."
It happened in slow motion, or perhaps Colin wasn't as sober as he thought he was. (He wasn't.) The sudden lurching motion of the woman's hand, the dark red wine, like blood, spilling out over the rim of the glass. The man's eyes, widening in alarm, then humiliation, as the liquid splashed across his white linen shirt.
"Fuck you, Kate," he yelled, but the woman - Kate - had already stalked away, with all the grace of a wounded lion.
"Prick," muttered Ben.
Colin nodded vehemently. His earnestness appeared to have peaked.
"I think I'm going to puke," Anthony said cheerily.
***
Kate hated men.
Not all men, Edwina had reminded her, before she'd headed out for the night. You like Teddy, and John, and –
Yes all men, Kate had scoffed. Even Teddy. Especially John.
But that hadn't been exactly true, had it? She'd liked John well enough, or at least at the start. He'd been nice, which, in retrospect, probably wasn't enough to base a prospective lifetime on. They'd matched on Hinge - old school really - because who had the time to stake out bars or go on melancholy blind dates with her friends' leftover single friends. Never mind that she was now one of the leftover single friends. It was chic to have a hot girl summer in London. Who knew who she might meet on an Intrepid Active Adventure Tour.
Not that she'd be able to get enough time off for that. She was lucky to have a weekend free, at this point. That was how she'd gotten herself into this mess with John in the first place, wasn't it?
Ah, John. Even the thought of his name made her mouth twist dourly. He was a bad smell, a sour taste - a part of her life best forgotten. Even now – even if he hadn't gone and cheated on her – she couldn't really remember what it was about him that she'd liked.
He was employed, she supposed. That was a good start. The bar was in hell. He seemed to own an iron, which was another point in his favour. He didn't mind the books she liked - although, in retrospect, that was probably because he'd never heard of them. Hadn't she noticed his eyes glazing over when she'd rhapsodised over the latest Kazuo Ishiguro? That should have been a red flag - or an orange one, at the very least. Even the cheating – she wasn't even all that upset by it, more just by the inconvenience of a possible STI. Now surely that was a red flag on her part.
Red flags or not, Kate had ignored them all. It didn't really matter anyway, because her time for reading had kind of melted away in the face of her impending exams. She'd ignored it too when he'd declined to join her for family dinner. His family was important too. Maybe more important. They'd cross that bridge when they came to it.
And now they never would.
She'd noticed the pitying stares of the men from the opposite table as she'd set the now-empty wine glass back on the table. No need to shatter the glass, even though she was half-inclined to. No need to force the wait-staff to pick up a thousand little shards. Kate'd spent enough time trying to piece together broken pieces. She'd seen first-hand how futile that could be. Still, she'd avoided their gazes as she'd stormed out. One of their group seemed half on the way to alcohol poisoning already. If he didn't have a tactical vomit, she'd probably be seeing him in Emergency later.
John shouted something after her as she left, but she didn't turn back. Poor John, she thought. If there was one thing she'd learned about him – and it turned out that she hadn't really learned all that much; or not enough to realise that he was the kind of guy who'd cheat on his ersatz girlfriend – it was that he dealt exceedingly poorly with public humiliation. He'd always wanted them to put on a brave face, even after a fight, which they'd been having more and more of recently. To pretend to all the world, and his meagre Instagram followers, that they were the perfect couple.
Stop fussing, he'd say, when they parked at work. Look, people are staring.
It seemed to be the worst thing he could imagine: people staring. Lucky for him, really. Kate could think of a million things worse. Had experienced at least five things worse. But it seemed like a low blow to bring up the dead dad's club, so she'd stopped fussing, as requested.
Recently, she'd fussed less and less. John hadn't liked that either. If there was one thing worse that strangers staring, it was not being the centre of her attention. Her walking away now - not letting him get the last word in - well, that'd be anathema to him.
Poor John, Kate thought again. The cool night air hit her face, like a fresh breath after a storm. She savoured it.
Poor John. Shit boyfriend, in the end.
***
The lights in the bathroom were pretty. Also kind of blinding. But pretty though. When Anthony tilted his head to one side, like he was doing right now, they kind of blurred together like some pren – prent – pretentious street photographer bokeh. Syllabubs were difficult. Syllables. Syllabubs were yum. A little too much cream though.
What was he thinking again? The lights. They were pretty, but kind of difficult to see from his vantage point over the toilet. His memory was good though, thank you very much, Benedict. Lights – pretty. Benedict – not pretty. Unpretty? That was a song. Anyway they weren't as pretty as the woman from earlier. The fire in her eyes when she'd thrown the wine at the dirtbag of a man. Anthony was certain he deserved it. He'd know, having been a recipient of many a Grenache. Spanish wines were making a comeback this season. Bad time to be a white linen shirt.
God, was he puking again? This was quite excessive. He'd have to write a sternly worded letter to the manager. He'd have to – good lord. When had he eaten that?
***
"Is he done yet?" Ben asked, bored. He was leaning against the cubicle door as Colin patted Anthony awkwardly on the back as he threw up yet again.
Colin paused in his pats. "All signs point to no."
"God, how long is this going to take."
Retching once again filled the air. Ben wrinkled his nose. He took another step away, though he couldn't, in the name of solidarity, completely escape the stench.
His back hit something – no, someone – solid.
"Sorry, sorry."
"Watch it, mate."
He looked around and was greeted with a stony glare. "Oh. It's you."
It was the man who had met with a vinous termination of his relationship. Even now, he wasn't making a particularly strong argument for being the injured party, if the unpleasant glower on his exceedingly average face was anything to go by. He was clutching the remnants of his linen shirt – now a blotchy pink that resembled a badly done tie-dye – and, inexplicably, a black Sharpie.
Ben tried, and failed, to stop transforming into his very best F. Scott Fitzgerald self. "Bad luck, sport. Plenty of fish in the sea and all that." It was an unfortunate coping mechanism when confronted with a person he'd suddenly and irrationally decided to hate.
"Fuck off."
No one appreciated Jay Gatsby impersonations anymore, Ben thought, mildly wounded.
"Righto," he huffed. And then, conscious of the fact that he was sounded dangerously like his mother, "Well."
The man ignored him, opting instead to duck down towards the sink in an effort to baptise his shirt. It would take more than a few soakings to wash the stench of evil from that man, Ben decided. It would, in fact, take a whole bloody exorcism.
In the mirror, the man met his gaze. He straightened up. The effort was meant to be menacing but merely succeeded at being sodden. "What are you looking at?"
Ben fought the urge to reply a sardonic not much aye. The high road, he told himself, had better views.
"Sorry, do you mind?" he drawled. "You're dripping on my shoes."
Fuck those views. He'd always been afraid of heights.
The man took a step towards him, but slipped a little in the puddle he had created. Hoisted by his own petard, one might say. Foiled by his own spillage. Humiliating, really. He grabbed onto the grimy porcelain of the sink, his knuckles turning white with the effort to stay upright. The Sharpie skittered across the floor, like a harbinger of doom.
"Yikes," commented Ben. "Might need a bit more grip on your shoes if you're going to stay upright – or hang on to a woman."
The glare he received in return could have curdled milk. (Ben had always been a wee bit lactose intolerant.) There was still some fight left in the other man, likely borne out of some sense of shame or injured pride (Ben took great pains to have neither), but the sound of his soles squeaking against the wet floor made him think twice. He blustered, he swore, he clenched his fists like an Arthur meme, but ultimately, he left.
Ben called after him, "Must be a surprise to discover you have a sole!" but received no reply.
The toilet was serene again, save for the cacophony of dry-heaving emanating from Anthony's cubicle. Sparing a glance for his brother, Ben stalked into the cubicle that the odious man had just vacated to pick up the Sharpie. His artistic tendencies would not allow him to let a good Sharpie go to waste.
As he bent down to pick it up (mmm, ultra fine point), he caught sight of the graffiti on the inner cubicle wall. That man had nary an artistic cartilage in his body, let alone a bone.
Ben squinted to understand the chicken scratch. "Now, what's this?"
***
Getting Anthony into the bathroom was one battle. Getting Anthony to aim his vomit into the cistern instead of onto his own shoes, or, God forbid, Colin's shoes was a whole other struggle. Colin was what Pen affectionately liked to term a soft boy. Boi? The way she said it implied boi, though that surely felt a little too … five years ago. Still. Vomitus was definitively Colin's least favourite of the humours. Before tonight he might have said chunky phlegm. After tonight, his mind was made up.
"Do you think she noticed me?" Anthony gasped, between heaves.
"Who?"
Anthony didn't answer. His inebriation had reached the melancholy phase of the evening. He - good fucking Lord, how disgusting – rested his head on the rim of the toilet seat and stared into the middle distance. Surprisingly coherently, he said, "I just never thought I'd live long enough to realise I'd missed out on finding love. Or to regret it either."
Trying valiantly to ignore the ghosts of Christmas arses that had gone before on the toilet seat, Colin said, gently, "Why did you think you'd not live that long? Just because Dad didn't, or –?"
Anthony sighed. His head drooped dangerously close to the bowl. He didn't meet Colin's eyes. "Look, it's stupid. I just – I've never been able to live up to Dad. I've never been able to be Dad for you lot. I just thought – if he couldn't even make it to forty, what chance did I have?"
He lifted his head. "I know it's stupid. I've just – sometimes I feel so … so … not enough."
Colin realised he was still patting Anthony on the back, like one might a reactive dog. He didn't stop. "You've never had to be Dad for us, Ant. We like you better when you're just you."
"Yes." He let the sound slip through his teeth, like a sigh. "My therapist says that too."
"Lots of people like you, Ant. I don't know why you're so afraid of being alone. I meant what I said before – You've dated tons. Women like you."
Anthony scoffed. "It's not real," he said. "They never stay for breakfast in the morning. Or I don't. What a sad sack."
Privately, Colin agreed, though the scuffing that Anthony's expensive leather shoes were receiving at the metaphorical hands of the chipped bathroom tiles was likely a greater tragedy than his brother's love life. One of these things was rectifiable, after all. The other would likely be condemned to the Goodwill bin in the hangover hours of the morrow.
"Anthony," he started, full of good consolatory intentions. "Anthony, stop leaning against the toilet brush."
His brother jerked upright. "I think I've stopped vomiting," he announced.
"Good for you," said Colin. "But I'm going to need you to stay here for at least fifteen more minutes before I'm confident enough to call an Uber."
"Ubers are sticky," Anthony complained, just as Ben, who'd been having his own cross fade scene on the other side of the cubicle door, called out, "Hey, Col, leave Mister Sad Sack for a moment and come look at this!"
"I'm worried he'll drown in the toilet," grumbled Colin, but propped Anthony up against the wall anyway. All his joints clicked as he straightened up. There was a mystery stain on his jeans. Looking at it, he had to fight the urge to set himself on fire as he rounded into Ben's cubicle.
"That's Viscount Sad Sack to you!" chirped Anthony.
Both Colin and Ben ignored him. In big bold (ultra fine point) Sharpie letters was a sentence, spitefully scrawled on the toilet wall.
For a good time, call Kate Sharma on 07-123-456-789.
Next to the sentence was a drawing. It was at this Modernist work that Colin and Ben were squinting.
"Is that a dick?" Colin murmured. "Why is it bifurcated like that?"
"It's art, Colin. You can't just ask a man why his wood splits like two roads diverged."
"Is it art?"
"Maybe we're all the art," Ben mused. "Can't argue the Duchamp feel of this installation."
Colin glanced anxiously behind him. Anthony had been concerningly silent for some time now. "Did you call me here to marvel at the 'art', Benedict?"
"Hm, what? No. I called you here because that, my dear Watson, is the mobile number of the woman that your dear brother has been drooling over."
"I burn, I pine, I perish!" came from the other cubicle. It was reassuring, at least, to know that Anthony still yet breathed, even if his pyromaniac tendencies appeared to be coming to the fore.
"How do you know?"
"Powers of deduction. Not half an hour ago, I watched the dickhead dumpee emerge from this cubicle, pride wounded at his public flaying, Sharpie in hand. Who else would he have wanted revenge against but his erstwhile lover, the unceremonious dumper?"
"Dumper isn't the most flattering of terms –"
"Having sent the flapjack, the flibbertigibbert, on his sorry way, I thought to myself, why would one bring a Sharpie into the latrine? There are easier utensils to pleasure oneself wi –"
"Please don't continue –"
"And then it occurred to me! To besmirch the name of the one who has wronged him! Who, incidentally, was first wronged by him, so really, the cycle of wrong-ing continues on. The physicists would call that the law of conservation of energy, Disney would call it nants ingonyama, Taylor Swift would call it her boyfriend, but what really matters is that, dear brother, we have her number."
"What," Colin enunciated, "the fuck are you talking about."
Ben produced a mobile with a flourish. He tapped the screen. A grinning photo of Hy and Greg lit up.
"That's … that's Anthony's phone."
"Welcome," Ben said dramatically, "to the end of the thought process."
He unlocked it, clicking his tongue. "1, 2, 3, 4? So unoriginal. So deliciously predictable." The phone illuminated his face like a cartoon villain.
"What are you doing?"
"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm sending a message to Ms Eyes As Pretty as The Lights in this Hovel on behalf of our poor, incapacitated pater familias."
"You can't do that!"
"Not by myself, I can't." Without warning, Ben tossed the phone to Colin. Reflexes trained by decades of brotherly skirmishes and guerilla attacks, he caught it. The screen had gone black again. Gingerly, he unlocked it.
Hey girl, (Benedict had written) heard u wer looking for a gud time. I'd be up for that. Or down. I love going down if that's of any in in intrst if u want that lol.
"We can't send this," Colin hissed.
"Why not?"
"Your spelling is atrocious, for one."
Benedict waved an airy hand. "Girls like that."
"Do they?"
"I don't know. The screen was kind of blurry. I'm just doing my best, Col, for our beloved brother. Look how sad he is, like a pathetic street puppy. Do you want him to die alone?"
Colin peered around at Anthony. He was snoring happily into the crook of his elbow, arm resting on the toilet seat for balance. A little trickle of drool was slowly encrusting in the corner of his mouth. He really did look like a … a … a pathetic street puppy.
"We'd be helping. In any case, what harm could it do?"
Colin's thumb hovered over the screen. The blue arrow gleamed at him. Send? it seemed to mock.
At this juncture, it was important to acknowledge that while Anthony was certainly the most inebriated of the trio, Ben and Colin weren't exactly sober either.
Although. Would that have mattered? Sober or drunk, some things were inevitable.
Colin nodded at Ben. Send, their nods confirmed. With a decisive tap, the text message went winging through the ether and towards its unsuspecting recipient. As if presciently aware of the events of his life being set in motion, Anthony cracked open an eye to squint at them. Vacantly, he smiled.
"There!" Ben exclaimed. "Now was that really so hard?"
"What if it isn't her?"
"It's her," Ben said confidently. "Were you not listening before? My powers of deduction and all that? It was really elementary, my dear Watson."
"That's a misquote," Colin muttered under his breath. "Sherlock Holmes never actually says 'Elementary, my dear Watson' in the one sent – for fuck's sake, don't stir the toilet water with your finger Anthony, or so help me God –!"
***
The do not disturb mode had been Kate's constant companion since she graduated and started working. She slept poorly enough, especially during summer storm season that she had to do whatever she could to get a good night's sleep. The only times she would turn it off were nights when she was on call. Then, more often than not, she would be found pacing her kitchen, or making yet another cup of delicious, yet ineffective herbal tea.
There weren't really summer storms here. Still, old habits died hard.
Soothed by the waves of her wronged anger, Kate had slept through this particular night. Upon waking, her first conscious thought was that it really was very nice not having a scalding hot limpet marinating in bed next to her. The second was to wonder if John had progressed from the denial/anger phase of the break-up to the bargaining stage.
She reached for her phone. This turned out to be a mistake. The barrage of texts from John indicated that he was wildly oscillating between all three of those stages.
"Fuckwit," was Kate's pithy epithet as she swiped past all those notifications, only to stop at – "What the fuck?"
It was a reasonable response. The barely decipherable text message blared from her screen. Kate crinkled her brow and pressed her fingers to her temples, in an effort to stave off the inevitable headache. When she had finally read it, her first instinct was to throw her phone away from her. It lay on her bedspread, facedown and guilty.
"What the fuck?" Kate said again. She'd had only one glass of eye-wateringly expensive Bordeaux before she'd abandoned her second (cheaper) Pinot to John's shirt. Surely she hadn't been drunk enough to give out her phone number to a man who – from the sound of his text – probably didn't know how to count to ten.
She contemplated her options:
One, she could ignore it. Block the sender and banish him (surely it was a him – the wording reeked of male entitlement) to the Charybdis of the spam folder. This would, of course, be the sensible option. Kate was a sensible girl. Her pondering should really go no further.
Two, she could reply in an indignant rage. This would not be unreasonable – the spelling and grammar was the least egregious of that message and still, even that rankled. She could give in to castigation and capslock. She could teach him the error of his ways, even though she had long learnt the fundamental truth of dickheads who send text messages like that: They won't learn. They'll never learn.
Three. There shouldn't be a three. There shouldn't.
Three.
Kate stretched across to retrieve her phone. Stared at the offending text again.
Hey girl, heard u wer looking for a gud time. I'd be up for that. Or down. I love going down if that's of any in in intrst if u want that lol.
Really, it was almost beat poetry.
What was the harm, Kate thought. Her schedule had cleared significantly since she'd gotten rid of 190lbs of John-shaped garbage. It was always a pleasure to teach an arsehole a lesson, especially since she planned on learning nothing from the demise of her relationship herself.
Three, she might reply. Encourage it even. Only to pull a bait and switch at the last moment. Aha, she thought, cartoon-villain style, got you.
It was a very satisfying thought.
Her fingers clicked on the screen as she typed out a reply slowly. This was nothing special, just a good old catfishing. Plenty of fish in the sea, now that John had turned out to be a rotting pufferfish. That was how that proverb went, right?
Her hesitation only momentary, Kate hit a decisive send.
This was, of course, a peak example of the one golden rule of nature: make no important decisions before caffeination.
But in this circumstance, all roads, it seemed, led to coffee.
Kate had no way of knowing this, of course, but all roads, it seemed, led to him.
***
This hangover was a bitch. If Anthony rolled over one way, overwhelming nausea overtook him. If he stayed still and motionless, the dizziness found him regardless. Closing his eyes, all he could see was stars (non-poetically); all he could feel was a prodigious sense of shame.
God, what had he rabbited on about last night? The last thing he could clearly remember was being in Ben's dingy (officially termed 'bohemian') kitchen, doing tequila shots. He could still taste the sour tartness of the lime; the biting relief of the salt. What had possessed him? Tequila was the devil's drink.
It had been the double whammy of his birthday and the anniversary of his father's death, if he was honest with himself, which he really did try not to be. Edmund Bridgerton had passed over two decades ago. He had been the same age – well, just shy of – that Anthony himself was now.
Thirty-eight. It was a daunting number. He'd never planned to live this long. Now that he had – now what?
He was lonely, Anthony had realised, when staring down the barrel of the single candle he had placed on his single slice of cake. He'd been in motion for so long – planning all his siblings' lives (okay, interfering with their lives, really), ensuring the succession and ongoing success of their father's company, making sure that everyone would be fine without him (god knows they hadn't been when Edmund had died) – that stillness came almost too late for him.
The candle had flickered while he stared, the wax dripping steadily like sand through an hourglass. As a matter of habit, he closed his eyes, and thought of what he should wish for. In previous years, he'd wished for practical things – for his mother to stop crying, for Hyacinth to stop bullying her classmates, for Gregory to stop breaking his limbs – but all that was behind him now. All that had been resolved. And now, on his thirty-eighth birthday, surely he had earned the right to wish for something for himself. Hadn't he?
On paper he had more than enough. Everything he could wish for. Penthouse apartment, check. Series of hot girlfriends, check. Loving family (now that he had learned to stop imposing his plans on them), check. But now that his siblings were all grown up – or well on their way to being so – it was becoming increasingly obvious to him that … well … that … that he was kind of lonely.
It hadn't been a conscious choice, per se. Well. Mostly. He'd just been too busy and, if truth be told, too emotionally unavailable. All the women he'd dated understood that. He was here for a good time, not a long time. But week long flings and hook ups got exhausting when one was nearing forty. When one realised that one wanted to live.
But how did one go about finding love at the big age of thirty-eight? Most of his friends had married their uni partners. Some of them had gotten divorced in the time that it had taken Anthony to come to his senses. Most of them had moved onto their second wives, who they'd usually met through work, or at some kind of mid-life crisis hobby. Joke was on them. Anthony was done with his mid-life crisis. He'd thought it was going to be his whole-life crisis.
The apps were shit. None of his friends had single friends. No one met in a bar anymore. What he needed was a miracle. What he needed was a sign. What he needed was –
His phone dinged.
Anthony blinked. The noise was piercing. It reminded him that he hadn't had caffeine yet. Or that he needed to throw up. Maybe both at the same time, though that was surely an aspiration risk.
He threw one hand over his face, to try to block the sound out. It was unsurprisingly ineffective. His phone dinged again.
"Ugh," he grunted, eloquently. Trying valiantly to ignore the spinning of the room as he inched towards verticality, he sat up.
Benedict, it seemed, had helpfully stationed an empty grocery bag next to his bed in case of emetic accident. There was a large glass of water that Anthony had cleared not supped from. A note in Colin's near-illegible scrawl read 'DRINK ME'.
"This isn't fucking Alice in Wonderland," Anthony grumbled. His stomach lurched in response.
He picked up his phone, expecting a smug series of messages from his brothers. Instead, an unknown number greeted him.
Love a man who knows what he likes ;) I'm free Friday night if you want to make good on that promise.
"What," Anthony said aloud, "the fuck?"
He rubbed his eyes. The message did not go away.
Quickly, he typed a message to the Bridgerbro group chat.
Are you guys catfishing me?
The replies were swift.
What? We would never.
Except for that one time
Oh yeah, I forgot about that one time.
Maybe it was twice.
Anthony blinked.
Was I talking to someone last night?
The three dots signified that Colin was typing, but he remained so for a while. Ben's message came through near instantly.
Omg Ant, don't you remember Kate???? You were so into her. Nearly wrote a poem about her eyes. 🤮
Anthony frowned. It was coming back to him a little now. Dark hair. Disney princess eyes. Legs that went on for days. For some reason, she seemed illuminated in bathroom lights? Probably the hangover. Either way, his stupid heart suddenly seemed a little too big for his stupid chest. God. Were these those proverbial flutters, or was he getting palpitations? Typical of him to suddenly drop dead of an arrhythmia in the week that he had decided to live life to the fullest and all that bullshit.
I kind of remember, he wrote. I don't remember talking to her though.
You must have, was Ben's decisive reply. You were giggling over a text to her on the way home.
Anthony flinched as he scrolled up. Good lord. He hadn't used syntax like that since MSN Messenger. He pictured the woman – Kate – again, as his fingers tapped across the screen, almost of their own accord. He wasn't imagining it – the flutters in his chest, the way his stomach was trying to dance a samba (though that might just be the hangover). Whoever this woman was, she had made an impression, all right.
I'm so sorry about my first text. I have no excuse but tequila. Let me make it up to you? Friday night at Cassio's? 7PM?
It felt that he held his breath until she replied.
Sure. Sounds good.
It was fortunate that no one (particularly his brothers) was in the room to see the smile that broke out on Anthony's face. This was stupid, he told himself. Stupid, stupid stupid, to hang his hopes on a woman he'd met in a bar – one that he didn't even remember conversing with.
Still, he nearly jumped when his phone dinged again.
I hope you're not piking on your offer though, big boy.
Was he blushing?
I always take my promises very seriously. See you Friday.
He definitely jumped when his phone dinged again. It was Eloise in the Bridgerbros chat.
What the fuck are you guys on about
***
"I hate men."
Sophie looked up. "This seems like a reasonable opening statement, but where is the rest of your soliloquy?"
Kate threw herself into a neighbouring chair dramatically. "Look at this."
Sophie read the texts once. And then again. "Okay," she said. "Let's unpack this. Why are you engaging with what is clearly a fuckboy?"
Kate covered her face with her hands and screamed wordlessly into her palms. "I know," she moaned through her spread fingers. She seemed to melt into the table. "I think I was possessed by the spirit of Medusa. John pissed me off so much last night that I think I wanted to wreak vengeance on all men on the behalf of all womenkind."
"Insane," marvelled Sophie. "You're insane. John cheating on you made you angry – a reasonable and proportionate reaction, by the way – so you've decided to, what, waste your time teaching this loser a lesson?"
Not lifting her head from what may yet be its final resting place on the table, Kate grumbled, "When you put it like that, I can't see a single flaw in my reasoning."
"This is neither reasonable nor proportionate, Kate," Sophie admonished. "And neither will it help you get over your break-up."
A careless hand emerged and waved from the crumpled heap that had once been her friend. "John schmon," came the answer. "To be honest, I was pretty checked out of the relationship already. I think cheating is a shitty thing to do and he should burn in the – what circle of hell do the liars and the dirty dirty cheats of the world go to again?"
"Second."
"Hm. Seems shallow. They should be closer to the lava centre in my opinion."
"I'll pass the feedback on to Dante."
"Thanks."
Sophie sighed and put her pen down. This meant that she was done with levity and was going to be serious. "Are you sure you're okay, Kate … this seems like an inordinately bad idea."
Kate lifted her head. The grid pattern of the table was imprinted into her cheek. Cheerfully, she announced, "I can't think of a single flaw in my plan."
"And what exactly is your plan?"
Her reply came quickly. "I convince him that this is a universe in which I might want to fuck an illiterate imbecile – ooh, alliteration – and then laugh in his face before Paul Mescalling it and running away."
"Before or after fucking him?"
"Before, of course."
"Then that's not really Paul Mescalling it, is it?"
"Hm. Good point. I'll workshop the verb."
She looked so pleased with herself that Sophie felt herself relenting, even though she knew this was the stupidest fucking idea she had ever heard of in her life.
There was no conviction behind her gentle chastisement. "What happens when you don't manage to teach him a lesson? Fuckboys are notoriously difficult to train."
Kate grinned. It was a mildly terrifying sight. "I'm very convincing."
***
Tuesday:
07:30 Kate Sharma: Morning. Thought of you last night ;) x
07:40 Anthony Bridgerton: Good morning! I thought of you too when I was making a cup of tea. Do you like tea? We could go for scones and tea.
07:41 Kate Sharma: There are other things I prefer putting in my mouth.
07:58 Anthony Bridgerton: What's your favourite cuisine? Mine is probably Italian, but I'm open to new things.
07:50 Kate Sharma: I can be very open to new things.
07:55 Anthony Bridgerton: I'm glad to hear it. London is full of amazing restaurants.
17:30 Anthony Bridgerton: Hope you had a good day at work today. What is it you do again?
17:35 Kate Sharma: What I do at work is far less exciting that what I'd like to do with you out of work.
17:37 Anthony Bridgerton: Ha ha. I own a company.
17:38 Kate Sharma: Fucking figures
17:40 Kate Sharma: Ooh, I do like a man in charge.
22:23 Kate Sharma: wyd x
22:24 Anthony Bridgerton: Pardon
22:25 Kate Sharma: wish u were here
22:26 Kate Sharma: I'm kinda lonely ;)
22:40 Anthony Bridgerton: I'm sorry. Is it the holidays? Sometimes I find myself feeling the loneliest around the holidays.
23:11 Kate Sharma: I'm not a huge fan of the holidays either.
***
Wednesday:
06:00 Anthony Bridgerton: Sorry, I fell asleep. The holidays have always been a big chaotic time for me. Not to trauma dump but it reminds me that my dad isn't here. It makes me sad. What about you?
06:10 Kate Sharma: No, all g – I couldn't sleep. I don't really celebrate Christmas, so my sister and my stepmother celebrate with my stepmum's family. Which is fine and they've invited me and I absolutely don't want to go with them, but you know. Would be nice if I did.
06:11 Anthony Bridgerton: I'm sorry. No one should be alone at Christmas.
06:12 Kate Sharma: Even if they don't celebrate Christmas?
06:13 Anthony Bridgerton: Even if they don't celebrate Christmas.
10:22 Anthony Bridgerton: Oh my god, someone in my office has defrosted Michael Bublé early. Did you manifest this?
10:25 Kate Sharma: That's never been my journey.
10:26 Kate Sharma: I'm more of a Mariah Carey girlie.
10:27 Anthony Bridgerton: Oh my god, it is you. All I Want For Christmas just started playing.
10:28 Kate Sharma: I think that's just called a playlist, actually.
16:30 Anthony Bridgerton: Tell me I have to go to my little sister's recital.
16:32 Kate Sharma: That's kind of wholesome?
16:33 Anthony Bridgerton: It's a turn off, isn'i it.
16:40 Kate Sharma: Kind of the opposite, tbh.
16:42 Anthony Bridgerton: Love that for me.
***
"I have a problem." Kate announced, dropping her bag unceremoniously beside Sophie.
Sophie, who was well used to this, barely blinked. "What now?"
"I've been catfishing that guy all week and now I kind of like him."
"I'm going to need you to deconstruct that sentence."
Kate sighed. "Remember how I dumped John and then some guy started texting me on the same day? Absurdly crass but also drunk. You told me not to text back, so obviously I did anyway. You know – how I was feeling vindictive towards the whole male sex, so I catfished him to, I don't know, teach him a lesson or something. But he's actually kind of sweet, and we've been texting all week, and now we're going out on Friday, and I don't know if I want to catfish him anymore."
Sophie took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. There was a mug stain on the table next to her. The stack of marked essays didn't seem to have diminished from the last time Kate had unceremoniously dropped in on her. Like all teachers, marking season was Sophie's least favourite season. "Firstly, love the run-on sentence. Is this the guy you met at the bar?"
"Thing is – I don't think I did. He's sent me some pictures – mostly clothed, he seems pretty shy – and I remember seeing him across the bar when I was breaking up with John, but I have no idea how he would have gotten my number. We didn't even speak. He was pretty drunk, which explains the first text. He's been nothing but a gentleman since, except when I ask."
"Ew," said Sophie. "Love you babe, but I don't need to know about your proclivities." She twirled the pen between her fingers. "Hot guy. Gentleman in the streets, but allegedly freak in the sheets."
"I imagine his dick is really nice too."
"Please. I'll just pretend I didn't hear that. So what exactly is the problem then?"
"How did he get my number? I can't help feeling like this is a set up. Like maybe while I think I'm catfishing him maybe he's catfishing me and maybe we're just caught in one giant … um, help me with the metaphor here –"
"Fishing trawler?"
"Sure." Kate picked up the pen that Sophie had put down. She began drawing on her friend's arm. "I can't help thinking … it's weird that it happened the same night that I broke up with John right? And I haven't heard too much from him since the last time he texted me to call me a bitch for embarrassing him like that."
With a severe cluck of her tongue, Sophie took the pen away from Kate and put her glasses back on. They slipped down her nose a little. Kate, who was well used to this foible of Sophie's, smiled a little as her friend stared at her from over the top of her glasses. Her friend likely looked at many a misbehaving child like that.
"You think John has something to do with this?"
"How could he," Kate mused. "I've stalked this Anthony Bridgerton – if that even is his real name – on Instagram and I recognise none of his followers. There's absolutely no link between him and John. Unless – maybe he left something at the bar with my number on it?"
"Surely you would have gotten more calls by now then," said Sophie reasonably. "Or you could just call the bar or go back to check."
"It's closed until Friday. But that's a good idea."
"Bridgerton …" Sophie hummed. "I think I know some Bridgertons, actually. Let me check it out. They might be related." For some reason she blushed.
Kate thought of the two other men that Anthony had been with. They had shared enough of a resemblance to be brothers. "That would be helpful," she said. "At least to make sure that he's not a serial killer."
"Mm, no prob. Also … why don't you just ask him?"
"He seems convinced that we met at the bar. And my memory of him is that he was pretty plastered then. An unreliable narrator."
"Drunk, a possible catfish … what exactly do you see in this guy? Is he just a rebound? How sure are you that he's not a serial killer?"
Sophie was at least partially joking, but Kate considered her question seriously – or at least the part about the rebound. She had only just burned the photos of John three days ago.
"I don't think so," she replied, finally. "I know this sounds so stupid, but there's something about him. Something … nice. Maybe something real? I don't know. It's stupid, isn't it."
Sophie had returned to her marking, clearly losing interest in the conversation. Her glasses were now firmly back on her face. "Catfishing …" she murmured. "I'd be willing to bet that that's not the feline he's interested in … ow. Stop hitting me Kathani Sharma. I have papers to mark and that's my marking hand!"
***
Anthony was at work when his phone buzzed with another text from Kate.
Are you a serial killer?
He smiled.
Not the last time I checked, though my favourite is Crunchy Nut. Why? Are you?
Her reply came quickly.
Still contemplating diversifying.
He snorted, fingers already dancing across the screen to type out his response.
"Are you okay?" Benedict had snuck up behind him. "Are you … smiling? Laughing? Acting like a human being?"
"Don't get water on me," Anthony said flatly. "You might disrupt my internal electronics."
"Cute."
"What are you doing here anyway? You work on a completely different floor."
Ben wrinkled his nose. "Ew. I don't work here. I just … consult occasionally."
"You eat a lot of the free meals for someone who doesn't work here."
"My brother's the boss. Apparently that's a big deal."
Anthony scoffed.
"That's better," Ben said, still staring at him. "Maybe I've been sent from HR. People have been concerned that you might be … happy."
Anthony kept his customary frown on his face. "Don't be ridiculous," he said. "That emotion is not in my programming."
Ben seized a paperweight from Anthony's desk and began tossing it idly. Anthony watched the progress of the glass ball in the air. Anything to keep a straight face. "No, but really," Ben insisted. "You've been different recently. You didn't even snap at Eloise when she wrote out a treatise on the struggles of the proletariat in the group chat."
"In a different century, she'd have been the one telling the peasants to eat brioche."
"Probably in this one too. But you won't distract me." The paperweight stilled in Ben's hand. That was a bad sign. Ben was a bloodhound when he thought he was onto something.
It wasn't that Anthony wanted to keep Kate a secret. It was just that … it was kind of nice having something for himself. Ludicrous as it might be, this … text flirtation, if that was what it was, felt more genuine than any of the other flings he'd had in the last ten years. Maybe it was because they'd not actually met – unless you counted whatever had happened between them on that first night. Given he recalled none of it, Anthony certainly didn't. The only thing he was grateful to Drunkthony for was getting Kate's number. That had been an incredible work of art.
In any case, whatever was happening between him and Kate felt fragile. Precious. Even if it wasn't real, even if he was just a delusional arsehole, he wanted to keep it like this, a quiet tender moment that stilled and sharpened in the blur that was the last ten years.
Ben wasn't giving up without a fight though. "Spill it. What's going on, Ant?"
He had to think of something quickly – something innocuous. "Nothing," he said. "I'm just going on a date this Friday."
Damnit.
***
Thursday:
18:01 Anthony Bridgerton: What is it with younger siblings and having the noses of a hound when it comes to sniffing out gossip?
18:03 Kate Sharma: Honestly, I wouldn't know. I'm the beagle of the family.
***
"I feel bad," Colin declared flatly.
Benedict barely looked up from his phone, where he was swiping through his Tinder matches. "For that bloke? Don't be. He might have a third nipple, but I'm pretty sure he's a minor actor on the West End."
"Not for him, you prick. For Anthony."
Now, Ben did glance up. "Why? He's happy. We did that, Col."
"Exactly. He's too happy."
Finally, Ben put his phone down. "The fuck are you going on about?"
Colin wavered in the face of Ben's scrutiny. This was the problem with being the youngest of the older Bridgerbros. Where Anthony had his confidence to carry him forward, Ben his audacity, all Colin felt he had was an exhausting sense of nuance. "I don't know," he tried. "It feels strange, don't you think? What kind of person receives the – frankly horrendous – text we sent from Ant's phone and thinks 'mmm, I'd love to date that guy?'"
"You think she's going to blow him off?" Though slow off the mark, Ben's protective instincts had finally been activated. Never mind that they wouldn't have been needed at all if they hadn't gotten Anthony embroiled in all this to begin with.
"Well. Yes."
"And you're worried that his little rabbit heart won't be able to cope."
"Yes."
It was a mess of their own creation. Things usually were.
Ben picked up his phone again. He swiped past a couple of profiles with a haughty sniff. He had standards, that Ben did, but only when it suited him. Idly, he said, "That's an awful lot of emotional investment in someone he's never actually spoken to."
Colin nodded despairingly. "He's been smiling, Ben. Whistling even."
"Smiling and whistling? I'm clutching my pearls." But, despite his flippant words, a worried crease had appeared between Ben's brows. He so strongly resembled Anthony that Colin had to brace himself for a front-door lecture that wasn't forthcoming.
"Look," Ben said, with the air of someone doing Colin a very great favour. "I'll do some social media stalking. Kate Sharma, was it?"
But even as he waved his hand dismissively, Colin couldn't help but notice that Ben had closed Tinder and started typing Kate Sharma's name into the Instagram search bar with a concentration so ferocious it wouldn't have surprised Colin to see Benedict in a monocle to accompany his detective work.
***
Anthony called just as she was getting into bed. That had been a nice progression over the last forty eight hours. His voice was nice – low and gravelly, like something about this was a secret between the two of them. Something precious. Something shared. And he was funny too, and a good listener. She'd ranted about her colleagues for a good ten minutes before realising that she'd been monologuing. He hadn't minded though. He'd seemed happy to listen, and god, wasn't that an attractive quality in a man?
Kate glanced down at herself before she answered. Cute silk cami and shorts. Nice.
She hit the FaceTime button.
"Hey."
His camera opened up a little too close to his face; clearly, he hadn't been expecting the video call. Kate hadn't really either. His eyebrows raised for a fraction of a second before he pulled the camera back a little. That was admiration in his eyes. Nice.
"Hey yourself."
The anger of her break up with John had blurred Kate's memory of that night a little. She was pleased to discover that Anthony was as attractive as she'd remembered. He was sitting up in bed, hair tousled and chest bare. Even as she watched, he tilted the phone slightly so that the light was reflected off his well-muscled torso. Classic fuckboy behaviour.
It shouldn't have worked. It shouldn't have.
And yet –
"How was your day?"
They'd spoken on the way to work that morning. The wind had been cool on Kate's cheeks. She hadn't minded the crowds of tourists brushing by. Dodging around them had almost been a treat, like being in Mario Kart or something silly like that, with Anthony's voice, warm like coffee in her ear. Their conversation had been inconsequential – he'd been driving to work and she'd mocked him for being a gas-guzzling capitalist – but somehow it had kept her smiling through the day.
"Slow," she replied. "Couldn't wait to get to bed. I have Pilates in the morning." She didn't miss the flick of his eyes up and down her body, nor the slight pinking of his cheeks as he swallowed, hard, before answering.
"Pilates is good exercise."
She couldn't help but twist the knife a little. "It is. Keeps me limber."
"You look limber." His voice was husky.
"You can't tell that."
"Maybe I'd like to find out."
Now it was Kate's turn to swallow. She could see the pulse racing in his neck. It seemed to match her own. The silk of her pyjamas were suddenly chafing on her skin. Something in the room was too hot. Too cloying.
It turned her voice husky. "You wanted a fair bit more than that, if I recall your text correctly."
Anthony laughed. It was a very nice sound. She knew that already. They'd spent most of their time on the phone that morning laughing. She couldn't remember what about. "I'm glad one of us does, because I certainly don't."
"You don't make it a habit to drunk text girls in bars?"
"You'd be the first." The tension, which had dissipated with his laughter, was back.
Too much. This was too much and too soon. She hadn't even met the guy yet, not really. She had planned to stand him up for his audacity. Or – if she felt like attending their date – rewarding his text with another well-placed glass of wine to the chest. Why then, was she thinking about how that chest in question would feel against her bare skin? Or how immensely lickable it looked?
At the end of the day, it didn't matter if Kate liked the guy. The fact remained that he was a prick who thought that drunkenly soliciting a girl in a bar was the right thing to do. How had he gotten her number anyway?
He must have seen the exact moment that her defences came back up, because he frowned. "Are you okay?"
"Ha," she managed. "I bet you say that to all the girls."
The crease between his forehead deepened. "No, Kate. I really don't." God, she'd be hearing his voice in her dreams for days to come. Emphasis on the come.
"Ah," she said, not caring that she probably sounded like a crazy person. She'd been the one who'd FaceTimed him in the first place. "I've got to go."
***
Sorry, the text came later, after Anthony had confusedly jerked off. Being treated with tempestuous inconstancy was a real turn-on, it seemed, or at least when it came to Kate Sharma. He was sure he had never come so hard in his life.
Breathing hard and strangely ashamed of himself, he took a moment to reply. No problem, he wrote. Are we still on for Friday?
There it was – that sudden rush of relief that told him he was in too deep when the ellipses at the bottom of the screen gave way to a simple, Yes.
He was still breathless when he threw his phone across the room to try to get a grip (pun inadvertent) on himself. What was different about Kate, he wondered. He didn't usually spend so much time talking to a potential fling. There simply wasn't any point, not when he knew this was all just temporary.
Kate didn't feel temporary. Kate felt like a promise. Like potential. Like suddenly he could see a future.
"Ludicrous," he muttered to himself, and stumbled out of bed to clean himself up.
***
The bar where they met opened again on Friday, which was incidentally the same day that Kate had scheduled her planned date with Anthony. There had been an odd rolling in her stomach that afternoon when she left work to get ready for her date.
"Don't forget to call the bar," Sophie had called as they'd parted ways on the Tube.
"I won't," Kate had promised, but of course she had.
If she had chosen her most durable lipstick, if she'd painted her cheekbones with her favourite highlighter, if the spritz of perfume had been carefully applied around her collarbones and her cleavage, well. That didn't have to mean anything.
Their conversation had resumed after that one evening, carefully at first, then with more ease. Ease. That was exactly it. It was just so easy with Anthony, in a way it had never been with John. She couldn't help but feel that if they were in a relationship and if he'd cheated on her, she'd have been far more broken up than she had been after discovering John's infidelity.
That was a lot of ifs. It wouldn't stand up to further scrutiny.
Even as she slipped on her favourite first date black dress and the accompanying heels, Kate had to admit that she still had very little idea of what she was going to do on said date. Her initial intention to lambast Anthony to his face and practice her aim with yet another glass of wine to the face (she'd thrown it a little low on John) had all but faded away. She could barely remember her reasoning for catfishing him in the first place. Had it just been misdirected anger and hurt pride? Had she been over-zealous in her rage?
Still, she had reasoned with Sophie, earlier. He couldn't just go around drunk texting unsuspecting girls like that. It was just … rude.
"So, what," Sophie had said. "You're going to stand him up? Or meet him there and yell at him?"
Kate hesitated. She very much wanted to go. Could she confess as much?
In the end, she decided she couldn't. It would seem inconsistent.
"I think an in-person lambasting would be most impactful," she said at last. "Teach him a proper lesson, you know. Ruin another linen shirt, if I'm lucky."
Sophie looked at her inscrutably. Kate braced for her incisive judgement. But all she said, in the end, was, "Okay."
And that was that.
Kate's phone buzzed now. She'd been receiving an excessive amount of spam calls that afternoon. Ever-suspicious, she'd only answered one, to a cacophony of raucous laughter. Strange to be so drunk so early on a Friday afternoon, but maybe people had knocked off early. The rest she had sent to voicemail, though she hadn't had time to listen to them yet. If it was urgent, they'd call back.
She stared at her reflection in the mirror. The fluttering in her stomach was nerves – and anticipation.
Neither made sense.
She ignored it.
***
Anthony paced the footpath outside the restaurant he'd picked out for them. Were the flowers too much? He hadn't planned them. He'd been driving past the little florist on his way to dinner when he'd seen the tulips in the window. The next thing he knew, he'd swung a hard U-turn and was pulling over in front of the shop. The combination of cursing and honking was still ringing in his ears.
He looked down at the bouquet. There was still time to get rid of them. He couldn't remember the last time he'd bought flowers for anyone. Maybe his mother? That must have been a whole lifetime (his father's) ago. Was it old-fashioned now? Embarrassing, perhaps. He should get rid of them.
Looking frantically around, he had only just spotted a bin, which he was making a bee-line for, when a now-familiar voice stopped him in his tracks.
"Are those for me?"
Anthony turned on his heel instantly. "Hi. Hi. Yes."
He would have swallowed his tongue, if it would have stopped him from sounding like the blithering idiot that he was. It was just – she was just –
Too much. It was cliched and stupid but all he could do for a moment was stare. That brief glimpse of her on FaceTime hadn't been enough to prepare him. His dusty memory of that first night they'd met wasn't enough. He'd sup on this moment forever. He'd – god.
"You look beautiful," he said. Awe laced his voice and his face, but he couldn't bring himself to feel embarrassed anymore. Couldn't stop himself from pressing the flowers into her hand, and one hand behind the nape of her neck as he leaned in to kiss her on the cheek. Only, at the last moment, she turned her face, so that their lips were brushing, chastely. He felt the soft touch like a stab in his heart.
Too soon, it ended. "Hi," he said again. His face was inches from hers. She was so goddamned beautiful.
She smiled, and that was somehow more devastating. "Hi." She'd applied something to her cheekbones so that he skin glimmered. "Do you greet all your friends this way?"
"Only the ones I don't want to be friends with."
"Oh." It was charming how easy it was to fluster her. "I suppose you were clear enough from the beginning."
***
Sophie hadn't been expecting to receive a call from the fuckboy who she'd met at a live drawing class. He'd hit on her, badly, and she'd done what any self-respecting aspiring artist would have done.
She'd fucked him in the bathroom of the art class, and left him without a word.
Two days later, he'd requested to follow her on Instagram.
One week after that, he'd slid into her DMs.
He played the medium game, she'd give him that. Still, she hadn't fucked him again. Her art was terrible, but she still had her self-respect.
The Northern line was hardly conducive for a private conversation. She answered anyway. "Bit early to be booty-calling, don't you think, Ben?" she said, by way of a greeting.
An embarrassed silence was her only reply at first. "Hey Soph. You're just on speaker with me and my brother, Colin."
"Hi Sophie." Presumably that was Colin.
"Oh. Hi Colin." The train screeched to a halt. Sophie winced. "Um. This is … unexpected." Understatement of the year. She braced herself for a threesome proposition. Audacity was something Ben seemed to have in spades.
Ben's voice crackled as the train went into yet another tunnel. Black snot and poor reception were the two privileges of travelling this particular line. "I wanted to ask you about a mutual friend. Kind of mutual. Kind of friend."
"Cryptic," Sophie said. Maybe not a threesome then. "Go for it."
***
Ben tried his best to explain but it was a little bit of a lost cause. How did one confess to the girl he had a hopeless crush on that he had drunk-texted a girl from his brother's phone because his hapless brother had seen her from across the room in a bar and fallen in instant and inert love? And that, when holding said brother's proverbial hair back as he vomited his guts up, he had seen the number of the girl in question defamatorily scrawled on the bathroom wall and taken it as a sign?
Well. Apparently like that.
"Gross," said Sophie, who was apparently still stuck back on the excessive amounts of emesis. "Wait, so Anthony never texted Kate at all? And he's your brother?" Her voice' was tinny through the phone speaker. "Sorry, I'm on the Tube."
"What?" Ben said. "I can barely hear you."
"I said," repeated Sophie, her voice growing fainter and fainter. There was an awful sound of metal on metal in the background. "That's hilarious. What a small world. Of course you'd end up being related to the drunk-texting arsehole who Kate's been catfishing all week. She's on her way to berate him right now."
"She's what?"
But at that moment, the line crackled and fell off. The dial tone sounded in Ben's ear.
"Fuck."
He turned to Colin.
"It's bad news," Ben huffed. He sounded out of breath. "My gi – I mean, one of my friends is best friends with Kate. She knows all about Anthony."
Colin nodded. "Thanks for the recap but I was right here." He paused, for dramatic effect. "We have to save him."
***
Kate's phone kept ringing during dinner. She put it on Do Not Disturb after the third call that she'd had to send to voicemail. It was strange. She was off the roster for the month. There was no reason for her to be getting these incessant calls. She supposed it didn't matter – a therapeutic wait never hurt anyone. Only her favourite contacts would ring through now.
It was easy to put these mysterious calls from her mind. Loathe as she was to admit it, given her vengeful intentions, Anthony was a good dinner companion. If she'd met him like this – outside of a drunk text – she'd be halfway to infatuation.
Who was she fooling, really? She'd all but forgotten her initial intention to berate him. Had forgotten it the moment she'd walked up to the curbside and seen him, illuminated in the setting sun, flowers clutched in his hand. Tulips were her favourite. He wasn't to know. He'd brought them anyway.
"So what brought you to the bar that night?" she asked. A more romantic version of her might have thought, serendipity. She tried – and failed – to quash that version of herself.
Anthony looked bashful. "To be honest," he confessed. "I've not been having a great month. My brothers were doing their best to improve it."
"Ah. Is it too much to suggest they might have done it with thoughtful gestures, active listening, and both emotional and practical support?"
"Is that what the kids are calling tequila these days?"
She laughed. "Ah. You did seem particularly … "
"Foxed? Bosky? In my cups?"
"Plastered, I was going to say, but a rose by any other name, I suppose."
He spread his arms wide in a gesture of innocence that was utterly ruined by his mischievous grin. It was a charming sight. Kate's guts twisted a little to see it. "Guilty as charged."
"I knew it."
"What will my punishment be?"
Their eyes met. The grin had died on his lips. It had been replaced by a hunger that Kate recognised swirling in her stomach. The moment seemed poised to catch alight. Perhaps it would not be too much of a betrayal of the sisterhood to snog him, as she was suddenly inclined to do. What kind of glass house was she in, to be able to throw stones, after all? Had she not done questionable things, sent questionable texts, while drunk?
And if she was truly honest with herself, she would admit that the only reason that she had started on this crusade in the first place was because she was still angry at John for being unable to fucking keep it in his pants.
Men.
"It depends," she said, voice low and just for him, "on where the night takes us."
"I have some ideas."
"So do I."
"Care to share?"
"I do –"
But at that very moment, her phone rang. She clicked her tongue. "I thought I'd set it to do not disturb –" She broke off. It was Sophie. She had.
"Hello?"
"John wrote your number on the toilet wall at All Macks."
Her best friend had never been one to mince words.
"At the bar? What?"
"He's a fucking prick. But your boy Anthony there is a dickhead, because he and his brothers texted you for a laugh."
"For a laugh?" Kate suddenly seemed incapable of doing anything but repeating Sophie's words.
"I don't know, Kate. The guys at Macks seemed to indicate that whatever John had written was pretty crude. But Anthony and his brothers were the last ones out of there before it closed for the week, so no one else saw it, or, I'm sure you have gotten more messages since they're open again now."
"More messages?" The influx of spam calls suddenly made more sense.
"They've cleaned it off now, but I don't know, Kate. Do you want me to pick you up? It seems like your date might be a bit of a bust."
"That's okay," said Kate, still dazed. "Um. I'll just finish up here and maybe get an Uber home. Text you when I'm there."
Sophie must have said something but she couldn't remember, as she hung up the phone and turned her notifications back on. Initially, she couldn't tear her gaze away from Anthony's stricken face at her words, but then the buzzing started.
She couldn't face the voicemails, so she looked down at her text messages first. This was a mistake. Dick pic. Dick pic. Concerningly diseased-looking dick pic. How's this for a good time? Dick pic.
"How did you get my number?" she said abruptly.
Anthony blinked. Slowly, he replied, "We chatted at the bar, didn't we? I must have gotten your number that way."
"We didn't speak that night," she said. "You just texted me out of the blue. How did you get my number?"
***
How had he gotten her number? Anthony opened and shut his mouth like a goldfish. Helplessly, he shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "I was pretty drunk. My brothers said we hit it off though and I hoped …" What did he have to lose? "I hoped that that was true."
Kate's face was hard, but her eyes softened a little at his words. "I wanted it to be true too," she admitted. Somehow it didn't feel like weakness. "But Sophie says it was a prank. That my ex wrote my number on the wall of the men's loo. Your text, apparently, was the first of many. Has this has all been a joke to you?"
"No," he exclaimed fervently. "It hasn't. Kate – this has never – I've never –"
It was his phone's turn to buzz incessantly, causing him to lose his train of thought.
"Feel free to answer it," Kate said. "I've got a fair few numbers to block myself."
Anthony glanced down at his phone. It was the Bridgerbro group chat.
WAIT. ANT. DON'T GO ON THAT DATE.
IT'S A TRAP.
WE SET YOU UP.
WE'RE SORRY.
And then, a photo of the bathroom wall at Mack's:
For a good time, call Kate Sharma on 07-123-456-789.
Anthony shut his eyes. He could still picture the cracked, stained bathroom tiles, the cool porcelain beneath his arm, and Colin and Ben's blurry conversation overhead. It was physically painful to open his eyes. He knew exactly what had happened.
The hurt on Kate's face was a kick in the gut.
"I'm sorry," he said. He showed her the photo. She deserved to know, after all. "It was a prank. Not by me. My brothers texted you from my phone when they saw your number on the wall."
She blanched, but regained her composure very quickly. "I should have known," she said. "My ex is kind of vindictive. The staff at the bar have cleaned the wall, but it's probably too late. I guess I'll just have to change my number now."
"I should have known too," he said. There was the queerest feeling washing over him. Realising this had been too good to be true. That she was too good to be true. "I'm sorry. You're not mad?"
"At you?" She shook her head. "At first – but I guess not. In full disclosure, I should confess that I only texted you back to teach you a lesson. Like, you know, don't hit on girls you don't know and all that."
"Oh." It seemed like the only thing he could say. "Lesson learned, I guess?"
"I'm sorry I wasted your time. I guess I should call the pub and make sure they've scrubbed my number off the bathroom wall, hey."
"I'm sorry I wasted yours."
Soberly, they waved down the waitress for the bill. Anthony paid it. It was the least he could do. Their exit was significantly less exuberant than their entrance. Disappointment tasted like salt air in Anthony's mouth.
Yet, once outside the restaurant, they both lingered. They were standing very close, but not touching. Anthony could feel every inch of distance between them. When she moved, he swore the air on his skin moved too.
"Well." Anthony could feel this moment slipping away from him as Kate spoke. ""I guess this is goodbye. You didn't text me about going down on me and I didn't offer my services for a good time. Shame about the false advertising on both our parts."
He laughed, though it didn't seem very funny in the moment. "We need better representation, both of us."
She smiled. There was a strange gravity pulling them together. It was so strong that Anthony was convinced she must feel it too. If she did, she ignored it. The streetlight painted her golden as she turned away. Anthony was seized with a sudden longing, a sudden fear of loss. It made him hoarse. "Wait," he said. "Don't go."
She stopped instantly, face full of expectation, and that was how Anthony knew that this wasn't just him – that she felt it too. It was relief he felt then: relief and the strangest sense of something falling into place.
"Kate Sharma," he said. "I'm Anthony Bridgerton. I was just wondering – would you be interested in me showing you a good time?"
She stared at him. It felt like the longest moment of his life. Then, she smiled. "I'd be down for that."
***
In the Bridgerbro group chat:
21:00 Eloise Bridgerton: Won't someone fucking tell me what's going on.
***
There was a moment before Anthony Bridgerton opened his eyes where his foolish, hopeful brain told him that today was going to be excellent. And why wouldn't it? He'd had an excellent night last night. True, they hadn't actually had any of their planned dinner, but that wasn't to say that he hadn't eaten well. After their third round, they'd ended up on the floor of his living room, scoffing down cold pizza that they'd probably ordered somewhere between rounds one and two. Crazy as it might sound, Anthony thought he'd never been so happy in his life.
But now … now he didn't want to open his eyes. Kate's side of the bed might still be warm. If he lay very still and very silent, he might be able to pretend that she would still be lying next to him, instead of having fled sometime in the early hours of the morning.
They always left. He'd never given them any reason to stay – never wanted to.
Only, this time … he wanted to. Somewhere over the course of this ridiculous week, his stupid brain had decided that this was it. That Kate Sharma was his person.
How desperately he wanted to be her person too.
In any case, even if she had left, that wasn't the end of the world, he reasoned. He still had her number. She'd seemed to enjoy the evening as much as he had. There was no reason he couldn't text her, arrange another date, and go through the whole slow process. Never mind that he wanted to skip to the end. If he was going to live now, he wanted to live with her.
"I can hear your brain thinking."
Anthony's eyes flew open. Her pillow was still warm because she was still there.
The smile on his face was goofy, but he didn't care. All he cared about was the fact she was still there and she was smiling back.
"Or is that just your teeth grinding? How you don't get lockjaw, I'll never know."
He should say something, Anthony thought. Something real. Something that would make her want to stay. "Seems unlikely. Lockjaw is a bacterial infection."
Ah. His stupid mouth. Never mind. If he had his way, he'd have the rest of their lives to say the right things. Be the right person.
In any case, she was laughing, and that, and the way the sunlight was falling on her shoulders, made him think that he had said the right thing. That, for once, he might be the right person.
"So," he said. "I know this is a little bit early, but … do you have any plans for the holidays?"