How We Met by Katy Regan

it. Thick, darkish hair that had a nice, almost wartime wave to it when he actually washed it. Blue, almond-shaped eyes – his best feature – if it weren’t for the fact they were half blind , but he never got round to getting his eyes tested, meaning he was permanently squinting. This often got misread as a scowl by people who didn’t know him, which was something Mia thought was a great shame and easily remedied, but Fraser seemed to prefer to go through life with impaired vision.
    He had a cute, sort of squishy nose, which was scattered with freckles and, she noted today, broken capillaries, hinting at the excessive drinking he’d been doing of late. A nice mouth. The teeth a bit discoloured after a long and intense affair with Silk Cut, but a nice mouth all the same, with expressive lips. This morning, sporting a shocker of a coldsore.
    ‘What?’ said Fraser suddenly.
    ‘What?’ She came to. ‘Nothing. You’ve got a coleslaw, that’s all.’
    He smiled – that’s what Liv always called them – and put his finger to it, self-consciously. ‘I know. I started with it last night.’
    ‘You make it sound like labour and don’t touch it! You’ll spread herpes all over your face.’
    Fraser tutted.
    ‘Anyway, I was just thinking,’ she continued, ‘about what you said, about Liv having a laugh at you. I mean, besides it being a bit morbid, why would she want to have a laugh at you? She loved you.’
    Fraser took a deep breath; there was no point dragging this out any longer, it was killing him. He covered his face. ‘Oh, God, I slept with someone.’
    Fraser didn’t know what he expected Mia’s reaction would be, but three small words that conveyed neither sense nor feeling, and a face like he’d just told her he had a fungal infection, wasn’t really it.
    ‘What? Oh.
Eeeew
…’ She was actually recoiling, screwing her face up.
    ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he said.
    Mia didn’t really know what
that
was supposed to mean. They were just the first noises that came out of her mouth.
    ‘Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything, it’s just … God, OK.’ Something strange was happening to her facial muscles and her voice but there seemed little she could do about it. She attempted to smile. ‘So who was it?’ she slapped her knees with her palms. ‘Come on!’
    ‘Karen,’ said Fraser.
    ‘Karen?’
    ‘Yes, you know, Karen from the Bull.’
    A cruel ‘Ha!’ escaped from Mia’s mouth. That didn’t seem like something she could help either. ‘What? The really old one who looks like Ness from
Gavin and Stacey
?’
    ‘She’s not really old, she’s forty-two.’
    Mia felt her eyebrows rise involuntarily and put them back, sharpish.
    ‘And she looks nothing like Ness from
Gavin and Stacey
.’
    ‘She so does!’
Rein it in, rein it in.
‘A bit. I mean in that she’s got dark hair and she’s, you know … curvy … ’ REIN. IT. IN.
    ‘You mean fat.’
    ‘I did NOT say fat, you did. Also, she’s …’
    Fraser cocked his head.
    ‘What? Easy. Bit of a slapper?’
    ‘I did NOT say slapper, you did! No, I was going to say bubbly, actually.’
    ‘Bubbly,’ said Fraser, flatly.
    ‘Yes, bubbly. You know, outgoing, chatty …?’
    ‘Mmm,’ said Fraser, unconvinced. ‘Anyway, crucially, she’s not Welsh, she’s from Hull.’
    There was a long and sudden pause.
    ‘Well, I’m sure she’s very nice,’ Mia said, eventually.
    ‘She is and she’s got a very pretty face.’
    ‘Well, we all know what
that
means.’
    Fraser’s mouth dropped open.
    ‘Oh, Fraser. It was a joke!’
    Neither of them said anything for a moment. Fraser was confused and yet he wasn’t even sure what he was confused about; he just knew he’d expected a proper discussion or even a motherly telling off about one thing – i.e. the fact he’d slept with someone,
anyone
, the night before Liv’s reunion – and he’d got something else entirely.
    ‘I just think it’s a bit disrespectful,’ Mia