2007

It was late 2007, rapidly approaching Christmas, when Kelly fell into my lap.

And I mean that in the literal sense as well.

I was in a trendy gastropub in Manchester where my colleagues were having an unofficial pre-Christmas night out. The bar was, unsurprisingly for the time of year and the high level of pretentiousness of the venue, very busy, and as Kelly tried to pass our table on the way back from the bathroom, someone jostled against her and sent her flying on top of me.

"I'm so sorry!" She exclaimed, trying to remove herself from me. Unfortunately she was more than a little tipsy (as was I, I should add) and some of the sequins on her dress snagged on one of my shirt buttons. This meant she was still on my lap and effectively gyrating against me as she struggled to extricate herself.

And I found myself struggling to not get . . . hard. Because, let's face it, she was inadvertently giving me a lap dance.

"Look, stop moving about; let me try and free us" I eventually said, with a nervous laugh. It was loud in the pub (of course - because why wouldn't you blast music at full volume and force everyone to shout over it!?) and I had to speak directly into her ear to make sure she heard me. My lips accidentally brushed her skin and I was pretty sure she shivered. Once again, I felt a stirring down below. I needed to remove this girl from me as quickly as possible before I completely mortified myself.

And then, I found myself thinking, maybe I can try to get to know her better?

Once she stopped flailing around it was far easier to locate where exactly she was hooked onto me and untangle us. She slid off me with a relieved sigh, and we both laughed.

"Sorry again," she said ruefully. "That was embarrassing." I realised then that she was also Scottish. It was always nice to meet a fellow Scot in a foreign country. Manchester might have only been a few hours drive away from home, but sometimes it may as well have been the other side of the world.

"Ah, don't worry, you're not the first girl to fall for me," I said jokingly, realising suddenly that was true as I remembered Christine falling out of the bathroom onto me all those years ago. Pushing that thought to one side before I got dragged involuntarily back down memory lane, I slid out of the booth. "Can I get you a drink to make up for your traumatic experience?"

"That would be amazing," she said gratefully, following me to the bar. "I hope you realise I don't make a habit of throwing myself on guys in pubs though."

"I guess I should be flattered I was your first then," I teased. I was already taken-aback by how easily our banter flowed; I'd never been particularly great at chatting girls up. It was also starting to sink in just how pretty she was - her hair blonde and wavy, her eyes an unusual light green colour - and there was just something about her that immediately intrigued me.

"I'm Kelly." The girl smiled at me as I passed her a glass of wine. She tilted the glass towards my pint. "Cheers!"

"Ryan." I replied, as we clinked our drinks together.

"No way, my surname is Ryan." She started to giggle. "So if we got married, and you decided for whatever reason to take my name, you would be Ryan Ryan!"

Oh. A nervous chuckle escaped my lips.

Suddenly she seemed to realise what she'd said and a blush crept over her face. "Oh God, I can't believe I just said that. Please just ignore me." She put her wine down and covered her red face with both hands. "Fucking hell, I am so bad at this."

She was a wee bit clumsy, spoke without thinking, and was a blusher.

She was basically the female version of me.

For some reason, hopefully not a narcissistic one, that made me warm to her even more. It was the first time I'd felt this comfortable with a girl since . . . Well, you know.

Kelly was a year older than me, I discovered. She worked for a marketing business too, and had grown up near Edinburgh, so we had a laugh about working for rival companies and being from rival cities, even engaging in some brief trash talk.

"This place is a riot," she said, after we'd been chatting for ten minutes or so. Or trying to chat. Like I'd mentioned, the level of noise made it a struggle. Occasionally it would die down and you could almost hear yourself think, but then it would rise up again and consume us like some kind of sound tsunami. "Is it terrible that I'd rather be at home watching cheesy Christmas films?"

"I know what you mean," I nodded. Emboldened, partly by the alcohol, I decided to take her comment as a hint and just go with it. "Do you fancy getting out of here, and watching one at mine?"

She grinned, confirming my hunch."I was hoping you might say that."

We left to find a taxi, while I frantically hoped I hadn't left my flat in too much of a state that morning.

I heated up some mulled wine, and we half-watched a festive film while we flirted and chatted on my sofa. Eventually, inevitably, the talking turned to kissing and a bit of on-top-of-the-clothes action.

But before the aforementioned action could become a bit more under-the-clothes, Kelly called time on it.

"I'm completely into you, and this, don't get me wrong," she said, sitting up and pulling the hem of her dress back down. "But I'm not going to be some drunken thing you regret in the morning."

"You wouldn't be," I told her honestly. It was weird, but somehow I already knew that she was going to be so much more to me than that. "But I get it."

"I'd like to see you again though," she said quietly. "If you want to, obviously."

It wasn't the first time I'd been in this type of situation. But it was the first time I'd actually wanted to see where things might go. To see if there was any potential chance of a future.

This was actually a huge step for me.

It turned out that we actually had more in common than I could have imagined. Including, when we discussed our pasts in a bit more detail, a surprisingly similar backstory. The difference with Kelly's, though, was that she had eventually got her long-standing high school crush. It had just ended up being a bit "too little too late".

"You watch these high school rom-coms where the couple you're rooting for gets together in the last few minutes of the final act and you know, deep down, it's not going to be a happy ever after," she told me a few days later over dinner, her expression wistful. "That's pretty much how it was with Rob."

After a will-they-won't-they friendship for years, they'd finally hooked up, funnily enough, at prom. Had an amazing summer together, agreed to try long distance as she'd already accepted a place at uni in Manchester. And, within a matter of months he had started seeing one of her best friends behind her back, leaving her heart-broken.

"I was an idiot; I really thought he was 'the one'," she'd scoffed. She shook her head and grabbed a slice of cheesy garlic bread from the plate we were sharing. "You had one too, right? The doomed high school romance?"

"How did you know that?" I asked and Kelly smirked, shrugging.

"I dunno; I can somehow sense these things. Folk like us, we have a vibe."

"Mine didn't even make it to the romance stage," I admitted.

"Unrequited, eh?" She winced. "I'm not sure if that's better or worse."

I couldn't disagree with that. What if I'd got together with Iona and then she'd broken my heart anyway? I'm not sure I could have really coped with that either.

'Whoever she was though, she was an idiot to let you slip away," Kelly continued, winking reassuringly at me.

It was probably for the best that nothing had ever actually happened between me and Iona, I decided then. I smiled across at Kelly, offering her the last slice of garlic bread.

Suddenly, it actually seemed like here was where I was meant to be.

It really pained me to put Ryan with anyone else... but hopefully you do like Kelly too.

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