Emily was frowning down at the newspaper and eating her lunch in the crowded cafe when someone else planted their own cup of coffee right in the middle of page three. Her head jerked up and she smiled at the expressionless face of her best friend. "Effy! Where the fuck have you been?"

"Assignments. Where the fuck have you been? You never call me anymore."

"I've been busy," Emily frowned. How exactly have I been busy? It felt true at any rate, all her days seemed incredibly full all of a sudden. She looked forward to sleep every night, craving for it to switch off her frantically rushing thoughts. Her mind seemed constantly on overdrive, always fucking whirring away over something. It was exhausting.

"Busy with your newer cooler friends?" Effy asked sarcastically, but Emily knew she was hurt.

"No one is cooler than you Effy. It's not humanly possible." Even if you are a massively nerdy swot these days, she smiled at her friend.

"Right. Not even the famous Naomi Campbell?"

"Naomi? Not remotely cool," she smiled fondly. Best not tell the clown story.

"Funny thing I read about her the other day," Effy's eyes bored into hers. "Seems she's a big muff muncher, apparently."

"So?" Emily felt herself begin to blush. Stop blushing. Why am I blushing? Stop over- thinking everything! Fucking hell…

"So she tried it on with you yet?"

"What? No! She broke up with her girlfriend a couple of weeks ago…she's totally broken hearted over it. We're just friends. Obviously," she added as an after thought.

"She's hot. Like, really…I've seen the pictures."

"Fancy her do you?"

"A little. Do you?"

"…Effy…I'm not…why are you doing this?"

"Because you're my best friend and you happen to be my brother's girlfriend," Effy wasn't letting up on the eye contact and Emily felt herself begin to squirm.

"So you obviously know I'm straight then, don't you?" she pointed out, starting to feel irritated.

"Completely," Effy agreed. "Well, except for that one time you made it with a particularly foxy brunette, who was way out of your league by the way."

"Yeah, well, you jumped me. And I was high."

"Emily." Effy looked genuinely pissed off for the first time Emily could remember in years. "I never fucking cared that you told everyone I kissed you. I didn't give a shit what anyone thought about me, and I know you did. So we're cool. But when you tell a lie so many times that you start to believe it yourself, then I start to worry about you. You can't lie to me about this remember? I was there. You came onto me, and you loved every fucking second of it, all of which you initiated. And you weren't on any fucking drugs."

"Right," she acknowledged softly, with a fiery blush. But it didn't feel right. She'd told it so many times over - to Katie, to Cook and everyone else at college, even to Tony. She'd thought about it happening that way so many times now that it felt like the truth. Instead the idea that her shy little fifteen year old self would have suddenly picked the most popular girl in school to hit on…that she'd acted on nothing but exactly what she truly wanted no matter what that thing was…that she'd ever had those kind of balls…Effy's story was the one that felt frankly unreal to her now. Even if it was the truth. "Sorry," she added, finally looking her friend in the eye. "Thanks for keeping schtum."

"No problem," Effy's voice was light. "We're not in college anymore though, Em. No one's going to shove you round in the corridors or write 'dyke' on your locker. So why the lie?"

"Just, habit…that's all." Emily begged Effy with her eyes just to leave it. God this is uncomfortable. Effy looked at her for a long minute before finally taking pity on her.

"How's Tony then?" she asked, letting her off the hook - for now. "I miss the fucker, but don't tell him or anything. How do you feel about the Michelle thing? You're okay with it right?"

"Um…yeah, of course," she replied. What?

"Of all the people to be staying in the same apartment block, hm? In all of bloody London? I can't believe she even wants to be friends with him again…he was such a complete fucker to her in college. My brother is such a wanker sometimes."

"Fuck yeah," agreed Emily emphatically.

.

.

So she'd been distracted somehow. Obviously, she must have been. Because otherwise Tony would have told her about bumping into his ex by now. They talked about everything. No secrets. Well, almost. She knew, absolutely without doubt that as soon as she went home and spent some proper time with her boyfriend, and let him know she cared about his life and what he was up to, that he'd tell her. No question at all. Okay, so Tony had been a tiny bit of a huge, giant, cheating man-whore in his college days, but he was different now. Adult. In their whole entire relationship, she'd never worried once about him straying. He loved her, for one thing, and he made sure she knew it. And for another, she let him have his freedom. She knew her boy was faithful, so she never quibbled a bit of harmless flirting, since the extra attention always made him so goofily happy. She trusted him, one hundred percent.

She walked in the door at the end of another day, knowing that this one at least, would have a good ending. Tony was back home in Bristol for the next four nights and she'd missed him, badly. Between Naomi still hiding out at her mother's house, Effy head down in her books and Tony being away all the time, she'd found herself having way too much alone time. No wonder her brain wouldn't shut up. Immediately as she opened the door to their apartment Tony was up off the couch, hugging her tightly. She breathed in the warmth of his body. "Missed you," she sighed.

"You too," he kissed her cheek. My cheek? She kissed him properly. "How's London treating you?" she asked, pulling back to examine him.

"Fine, great. Y'know…big, crowded, grubby. But the job is fucking incredible. Wait til you hear this-" Tony launched into a long story about an expose he'd been entered into in secret, something about M.P's expense accounts again. Emily tried to pay attention, but her fucking brain was racing again. Tony. Tell me the bit about Michelle. How you bumped into her and it was awkward. How fake and awful and plastic she is now. Right? How you go out for drinks and wonder what you ever saw in her. Fucking tell me.

"Sounds amazing Tone," she told him as she grabbed two beers out of the fridge for them, feeling a sudden need to drink. "How's everything else going? Going out with your workmates much? Socialising?"

"You kidding? Mostly too fucking tired at the end of the day," he grinned at her. "Turning into a proper old man. Think I need to invest in a pipe and a pair of slippers to take back with me; it's that dire."

.

.

They ate dinner together. Tony cooked. "I'm surviving on takeaways most nights," he told her. "No fun in cooking just for yourself."

"I do it," she said quietly.

"Yeah well, you're better at being alone than I am. You enjoy it."

"What's so wrong about being alone once in a while? When you know you've got the rest of the week with someone you love?"

"Love you too Red," he stood up, ruffling her hair affectionately and completely missing the pointed tone in her voice. He started carrying the plates over to the sink. She was just about to open her mouth to ask him when the fuck he started ruffling her hair instead of trying to take off her knickers to express his feelings for her, when her phone's annoying ringtone started up. She picked it up to switch off the interruption so she could try and start an honest conversation with her boyfriend finally and find out what the fuck was going on. Then she saw who was calling and her thumb immediately pressed 'answer' instead without consulting her.

"Naoms!" she walked away from the table, happy to finally hear her friend's voice again.

"Hey Ems. This isn't a bad time is it?"

"No, not at all." Why can't I stop lying to people? "Does this mean you're out of exile then?"

"I had no choice in the matter," Emily could hear the smile in Naomi's voice. "My mother has now tried to set me up with her best friend's daughter, our postman's sister, and a complete stranger she met working in Whole Foods. I had no idea there were this many lesbians within two streets of my mother's house. Think she's scared I might cave and take Alicia back, so she's decided moving me on at once is the best way forward."

"Best way to get over someone is to get under someone else?" asked Emily, not sure what she hated most - the idea of that scary bitch Alicia getting her claws back into her friend, or Naomi abruptly disappearing from her life into that new fog of love Effy always ended up in whenever she met a new bloke. I'm jealous, she suddenly recognised the emotion that was making her frown so hard. Of course I am. I'm jealous of the fact that she's going to get into something new and exciting and all I get is a wake-up call to work harder to keep the boyfriend I've already got.

"She knows me well," Naomi laughed. "Unfortunately she also has terrible taste and they were all completely fugly."

"God, you're so shallow!" Emily tried to hide her relief.

"What? I'm all about the eye candy, me. Besides…horrible personalities…all of them. Horrible."

"You didn't even talk to them did you?"

Naomi coughed in response. "Anyway I'm home now. Want to do something with me?"

Yes. I really, really do.