I proceeded to get drunk in record time. Maybe because I’d skipped dinner in favour of reading fanfic and eating a bagel in bed, or maybe because I drank the equivalent of six shots in forty-five minutes, but whatever it was, by ten o’clock, I felt genuinely relaxed and happy, which was definitely a sign that I was not in my right mind.

To reiterate: I’m not advocating this sort of thing. But, at the time, I didn’t know how else to deal with what a long, stressful week it had been, and the prospect of many more long, stressful weeks I had to come over the next three years.

I suppose it’s fair to say I was not enjoying my university experience thus far.

We headed into town at around ten o’clock. Rooney was insistent. I would have protested, but I did want to see if clubbing was any better if you went with your friends. Maybe I would enjoy it if Pip and Jason were there.

Pip and Rooney were both at least a bit tipsy and had been dominating around eighty per cent of the conversation. Jason had been kind of quiet, which wasn’t unusual, and he didn’t seem to mind when I slotted my arm through his as we walked into the centre of Durham, to try and minimise the amount of swaying I was doing as I walked.

Rooney kept swapping between bantering with Pip, then turning round to me, her long hair flying about in the gusty October air, and shouting, ‘We need to get you a MAN, Georgia! We need to find you a MAN!’

The word ‘man’ grossed me out because it made me picture a guy far older than me – no one our age was a man yet, were they?

‘I’ll find one eventually!’ I shouted back, even though I knew that was bullshit and nothing in life is certain and I didn’t ‘have time to figure things out’ because I might just have a brain aneurism at any moment and then I’d be dead, without having fallen in love, without having even figured out who I was and what I wanted.

‘You don’t have to find a man, Georgia,’ Pip slurred at me once we were inside the club, queueing for the bar.

It wasn’t the dank, sticky club from the other day, but a new one. It was fancy, modern, and out of place in historic Durham. It was playing cool indie-pop – Pale Waves, Janelle Monáe, Chvrches – and we were surrounded by people dancing under neon lights. I had a bit of a headache, but I wanted to try and enjoy it. I wanted to push myself.

‘I know,’ I said, thankfully out of earshot of Rooney, who was talking intensely to Jason about something. Jason looked moderately overwhelmed.

‘I’ve already accepted that I’ll never find anyone,’ said Pip, and it took a moment for the full implications of that to sink into my brain.

‘What? What happened to you’ll find someone eventually because everyone does?’

‘That’s a straight-people rule,’ Pip said, and that shut me up for a moment. Every time she’d told me ‘you’ll find someone eventually’ … had she even believed it about herself? ‘It doesn’t apply to me.’

‘Wh– don’t say that. There just weren’t many out girls when we were at school. You didn’t have many options.’

Pip had kissed two girls during the time we’d known each other – one of whom repeatedly denied it ever happened, and the other told Pip she didn’t actually like her that way, she’d just thought it was a joke between friends.

Pip looked down on to the sticky bar surface. ‘Yeah, but, like … I don’t even know how to, like … date. Like how does that even happen?’

I didn’t know what to say to her. It wasn’t like I had the answers, and even if I did, we were both too tipsy to make much sense of them.

‘Is there something bad about me?’ she said suddenly, looking me right in the eyes. ‘Am I … really annoying … am I just really annoying to everyone?’

‘Pip …’ I wrapped one arm round her shoulders. ‘No, God – no, of course you’re not. God. Why d’you think that?’

‘I dunno,’ she grumbled. ‘Just thought there might be a specific reason as to why I’m forever alone.’

‘You’re not forever alone when I’m here. I’m your best friend.’

She sighed. ‘Fine.’

I squeezed her, and then our drinks arrived.

‘D’you think, since I’m your best friend, you could try not despising Rooney with every fibre of your being? At least for tonight?’

Pip sipped her cider. ‘I will attempt it. I can make no promises.’

That would have to be good enough.

As soon as we’d finished our drinks, Rooney started dancing. She also seemed to be on speaking terms with various people in the club, so kept vanishing to socialise elsewhere. I felt bad for thinking it, but I actually didn’t mind, because I got to have some time to myself with my best friends.

And it turned out that clubbing was slightly better when you were with people you know and love. Pip managed to get us to do our usual stupid dance moves, and after that I was smiling, and laughing and almost felt happy. Rooney even joined us, and Pip managed to keep her dagger-eyes to a minimum. If it weren’t for the scary older students crowded around us and the ever-present threat of Rooney trying to set me up with a guy, I would have been having a genuinely good time.

Unfortunately, this only lasted half an hour before Rooney intervened.

Me, Jason and Pip had gone to sit down on some leather sofas when Rooney appeared with a guy I didn’t know. He was wearing a Ralph Lauren shirt, peach chinos and boat shoes.

‘Hey!’ Rooney shouted at me over the music. ‘Georgia!’

‘Yeah?’

‘This is Miles!’ She pointed at the guy. I looked at him. He smiled in a way that immediately annoyed me.

‘Hi?’ I said.

‘Come dance with us!’ Rooney held out a hand to me.

‘I’m tired,’ I said, because I was.

‘I think you and Miles would really get along!’ said Rooney. It was painfully obvious what she was trying to do.

And I did not want to go along with it.

‘Maybe later!’ I said.

Miles didn’t seem too bothered, but Rooney’s smile dropped a little. She stepped close to me so that Miles couldn’t hear us.

‘Just give him a try!’ she said. ‘You could just kiss him and see.’

‘She’s fine,’ said Jason’s voice from one side. I hadn’t realised he was listening in.

‘I’m just trying to help –’

‘I know,’ said Jason. ‘But Georgia doesn’t want to. You can see it on her face.’

Rooney struck him with a long stare.

‘I see,’ she said. ‘Interesting.’

Miles had already wandered off towards some friends, so Rooney turned to Pip, who was also listening to the conversation with a stern expression, and said, ‘Quintana? Shall we dance?’

She said it like she was challenging Pip to a duel, so Pip of course accepted and went to dance with Rooney like she had a point to prove. Rooney wasn’t sober enough to understand the point that Pip was trying to make: Rooney hadn’t got to her. Except she obviously had. I sank back into the sofa with Jason and we watched Rooney and Pip dance.

It almost looked like Pip was having fun, were it not for the Mr Darcy-like grimace on her face every time Rooney got too close to her. Lights flashed around them, and every few seconds they would be hidden from view by other dancing bodies and smiling faces – but then they’d return, and they’d be a little closer to each other, moving to the music. Rooney towered over Pip, mostly because of her giant heeled boots, but she was a few inches taller normally anyway, and when Rooney put her arms round her, I felt suddenly worried that they’d both just fall over, and then Pip started to protest, but must have found herself ignored, realising she’d got herself into this situation and now had to deal with it.

For a moment I thought Rooney was going to lean in and kiss her, but she didn’t.

Pip shot a glance at me, and I just smiled at her, then stopped watching them. They weren’t going to murder each other. Hopefully.

Jason and I ate a packet of crisps Jason had procured from the bar and we talked, and it reminded me of what we’d do on the school play dress-rehearsal days when we weren’t needed in a scene. Pip was always a lead role so she was busy the whole day, but Jason and I would get to sneak off and sit behind a curtain somewhere, eating snacks and watching TikTok compilations on my phone, trying not to laugh too loud.

‘D’you miss home?’ Jason asked.

I thought about it. ‘I don’t know. Do you?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, closing his eyes and leaning his head back. ‘I mean, I’m a bit homesick, I guess.’ He chuckled. ‘I miss my dads, even though they’ve called me every day. And I’ve already watched the Scooby-Doo movie four times. For comfort. But school was hell. I don’t miss school.’

‘Mm.’ Uni wasn’t any better so far. For me, anyway.

‘What?’

‘I like being here,’ I said.

‘At uni?’

‘No, here. With you.’

Jason opened his eyes again and turned to me. He smiled. ‘Me too.’

‘GEORGIA!’ screeched Rooney, stumbling over to us from the dance floor. ‘You’ve found a MAN.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘This is my friend Jason. Remember?’

‘I know who he is,’ she said, crouching down in front of us. ‘I know exactly what’s going on here.’ She pointed a finger at me. ‘You.’ She pointed at Jason. ‘And him.’ She clapped her hands together. ‘Big. Messy. Feelings.’

I just shook my head, and I felt Jason shift a tiny bit away from me while he laughed awkwardly. What was Rooney talking about?

Rooney patted Jason on the shoulder. ‘S’nice. You should just tell Georgia, though.’

Jason didn’t say anything. I checked to see if he knew what Rooney was talking about, but his face didn’t give anything away.

‘I don’t get it,’ I said.

‘You’re very interesting,’ said Rooney to Jason, ‘and very boring at the same time because you never do anything.’

‘I’m going to the loo,’ said Jason, standing up with an expression on his face I only saw on him when he was drunk – deep irritation. But he wasn’t drunk. He was genuinely pissed off. He walked away from us.

‘That was really rude,’ I said to Rooney. I think I was genuinely pissed off too.

‘Are you aware that Jason is into you?’

The words hit me like lightning.

Are you aware that Jason is into you?

Jason. One of my best friends in the entire world. We’d known each other for over four years, we’d hung out more times than I could count, I knew his face as well as my own. We could tell each other anything.

But he hadn’t told me that.

‘What?’ I croaked, my breath gone.

Rooney laughed. ‘Are you joking? His crush on you is so obvious it’s actually painful to watch.’

How was this possible? I was excellent at recognising romantic feelings. I could always tell when people were flirting with me, or each other. I always knew when Pip and Jason had crushes on people.

How had I missed this?

‘He’s a really lovely guy,’ said Rooney, her voice softer, as she sat on the sofa beside me. ‘Have you really not considered him?’

‘I …’ I started to tell Rooney that I didn’t like him like that, but … did I even know what romantic feelings felt like? I thought I’d had a crush on Tommy for seven years and that turned out to be nothing.

Jason was a really lovely guy. I mean, I loved him.

And suddenly the idea was swirling around my brain and I couldn’t stop myself wondering. Maybe this was like all those American romcoms I’d spent my whole teenage life watching; maybe Jason and I were meant to be like the two leads from 13 Going On 30 or Easy A, maybe ‘he’d been there all along’, maybe I just hadn’t tapped into my romantic feelings because I felt so comfortable and safe around Jason and I’d just written him off as ‘best friend’ when in fact he could have been ‘boyfriend’ instead.

Maybe, if I reached out, if I pushed myself – maybe Jason was the love of my life.

‘Wh … what do I do?’ I whispered.

Rooney put her hands back in her pockets. ‘I’m not sure yet. But –’ she stood up, her hair falling around her shoulders like a superhero cape – ‘I think we’re going to be able to solve your little never kissed anyone situation.’