no-one plans to take the path that brings you lower

Shitshitshitshitshitshit.

I slept with Nick last night.

Headdesk, epic fail, facepalm, die.



Okay, backtrack:

I did make it up to Coventry on Thursday night, as my parents acted with unseemly haste to get rid of me. Kinda. They had a point: the snow wasn't going away, and was predicted to just get worse. If I didn't go up then, it was a bit now or never. So I did, and I'm currently in Coventry. The first night was kind of awful - I realised how homesick I was pretty early on, and it didn't help that the house was really cold. So I curled up with Margaret Atwood and The Wire, turned the heating on, and ate chilli chocolate in bed. Louche. Very.

On Friday I felt a lot better, and Ashley came up in the afternoon, which was really nice. I forget how well I get along with Ashley half the time, because when he's stressed about having no money and not doing any work and he's a bit drunk (which is most of the time when Joe's here) he's far less nice to know. I can't stand his passive-aggressiveness when he's in that kind of mood, but as we hadn't spoken in weeks and it's hard to be stressed when term hasn't even begun, it was actually quite cool.

The less cool thing about the day was that the workmen at the end of the road cut our power (apparently accidently) for a couple of hours, which was very dull, but not too bad. It does top off the general assertion that since we've been away, EVERYTHING has gone wrong with the house. Our drains froze, and we had to pour boiling water on them and pray that they didn't refreeze immediately; our always slow-to-react kitchen lightswitch actually snapped off, and so we could have been electrocuted any time in the last four months, our heating timer's gone off the wall and resetting it in the dark isn't fun...

So in short, most of my days recently have been settling back into the house, running around fixing shit and catching up with Ashley. All cool. Last night however, Nick left a message on Facebook asking if anyone was up for drinking, so Ash and I went to meet him at the Duck (with a brief detour to go frolic in the snow on Hearsall Common. We found a snow-altar and danced around worshipping it. I know, Classicists are geeks). We had a few drinks there, started quoting Black Books at each other and realised that Nick had never seen Spaced, so we invited him back to ours to watch it. We went to Tescos, got some booze, came back to ours, curled up in the lounge with Spaced and vodka, and got faintly hammered.

So far, so good. We're all happy drunk and talking bollocks, the world and his wife is drunk-texting/calling us and it's all fun. I'm amazed Jenny could see the keypad, and I suspect she couldn't (she asked twice if 'askew' was there), but it was hysterical.

Then Ashley went to bed, and Nick and I were curled up on a sofa together, very very close.

Just to clarify, last time Nick came over to ours, it was after George's party about two months ago: he brought tequila, we stayed up all night talking, then we kissed. A lot. We stopped ourselves thankfully, but it was a close call. We also didn't talk about it until the night I went home with Tom, when Nick suddenly remembered and wanted to discuss it. I wasn't so turned on by that idea: it's not like another bloke had his hand on my thigh or anything, it's not like I didn't have other things on my mind. Mainly contraception-related, but still, I wasn't happy. I even said to Ellie that if Nick had made a move, I wouldn't have gone home with him, because there'd be strings and Tom was offering me something far more immediate and far less complicated. When we'd had about seven tequilas at the Christmas Symposium, Nick and I did discuss our non-relationship, but the gist was 'Claire, you're hot and awesome, but nothing's happening'. Which was good. It worked for me. So to be honest, I thought I had it all figured out.

Then I'm on top of him kissing him, and my little house of cards comes crashing down.

I can't remember deciding anything at any point, I just knew at some moment that it was going to happen. Then we went upstairs to my room, and things got complicated. (Sidenote: excellent euphemism, because it's not really.)

Much later, he made me promise that things wouldn't get weird with us later. Excellent, that's what I want too. However, he also said that I should call him any time I wanted more of the same. Fuck, have I acquired a fuckbuddy? Hell. It's a bit of a bind: if I texted Nick saying 'fuck me', he'd mock my lack of subtlety, so now every time we go out together (which isn't as often as some other mates) we'll be wondering if something will happen. On the other hand, if I don't, it's like saying 'cheers dude, but never again'. This window will close soon unless I act on it. Unfortunately, I don't know what I want, apart from to wake up clothed and non-sticky. I kind of refuse to be yet another notch on someone's bedpost. However, if that's what I want, I really, really, really go about things in the wrong way (ie. having a lot of spontaneous, one-night-stand-ish sex).

Three things about this strike me as ironic. Firstly, one of my resolutions in a post on Mookychick was to treat my guy friends better. I was thinking of Nick: I had the horrific feeling I was leading him on, so I was going to behave better. Cross that one off the list. Secondly, Joe drunk-texted me when I said that Nick was there and we were watching Spaced, saying 'don't do anything I wouldn't do'. Now, bearing in mind that Joe's a whore, that's pretty ironic. Thirdly, this is like the New Year's Eve of Year Two Term Two, so if I spent this NYE getting laid, this could bode well...

...or really really badly. Which to be honest, is what I'm fearing right about now.

I have stubble rash over a lot of my face. It's driving me ballistic.

Fuck. I need to stop being such a fucking whore.