Free After the Party by Lisa Jewell

the end of the corridor, revealing a small white room filled with a large white bed, a pale ash console table with a flat-screen TV on it and a wall of fitted wardrobes. Over the bed was a large canvas of a small hand holding three fat peony blooms.
    â€œHa!” Ralph said, putting his rucksack on the bed. “One of my Jem paintings.”
    â€œYeah,” said Smith, his hands in his pockets. “I’ve hidden it in here.”
    â€œYeah, charming, I noticed.”
    â€œWell,” he said, “it’s a great painting but it’s a bit, you know . . .”
    â€œYeah, whatever.”
    â€œNo, really, I wouldn’t have paid a thousand fucking quid for it if I didn’t like it. It’s just a bit girly, that’s all. And I think it goes in here . . .”
    Ralph nodded and smiled, rubbing his chin skeptically.
    Smith smiled. “Anyway,” he said, “it’s five o’clock, what do you want to do? Take a shower?”
    â€œ Have a shower.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œ Have a shower, not take a shower.”
    Smith rolled his eyes. “Have a shower? Have a sleep? Hit the town?”
    Ralph considered the weight of his eyelids against the dryness of his eyeballs. He thought about the grimy film that covered his entire body and the stickiness of his scalp. But then he thought about trying to locate his toiletry bag inside his badly packed rucksack, finding a whole clean outfit to change into afterward and the fact that by the time he took his clothes off he’d probably just want to collapse in bed and that this was his first night in LA. Away from his family. That he only had six more nights before he had to go home again. That he wasn’t here to shower and sleep, but to live and breathe.
    â€œThe town sounds good.” He smiled.
    â€œCool,” said Smith, “let’s go.”

Chapter 10
    S mith drove.
    He had a swanky little Chevrolet, in forest green. It was very clean. Ralph thought about his car at home. He thought about the empty potato chip packets stuffed into the storage panels in the door, the lumps of rock-hard chocolate brownie in the footwell, the sticky orange juice cartons wedged between the backseats and the cluster of tiny plastic toys that seemed to reside nowhere in particular. He thought of the backseat, once a spacious bench for the ferrying around of friends or paintings or trays of pansies from the garden center, now home to two large and ugly child seats. It wasn’t his car, it was his family’s car. How luxurious, he felt, to have a car of your own.
    He stared out of the window at the scenery. Low-level shopping arcades, wide pavements, thirty-foot palm trees, men and women in beachwear, unfeasibly small dogs, Rollerblades, baseball caps, frozen yogurt, parking lots, beach umbrellas, beach clubs, whitewashed walls overhung with golden angel’s trumpets, tessellated paving, potted cacti, a spangle-fronted cinema, Mexican food, Spanish food, French food, food from the Pacific Islands and acre after acre of soft white sand.
    For a moment it struck him as bizarre that he willingly lived in a damp corner of Herne Hill in a house the color of cigarette butts. Why would he do such a thing when this place existed?Had he chosen to live where he lived? Was it a decision he’d ever consciously made? And if so, what was he thinking? London had its charms, it had pubs (which he rarely visited), it had a magnificent river (which he rarely saw), it had cultural diversity and tradition and elegance and beauty. It had trees and parks and a trillion restaurants. But of what use were any of these things to Ralph when all he experienced of it was a dank loft room, a treadmill at the gym, the occasional half-decent takeout and even more occasional beer and meal out with Jem? They had gyms here. They had children’s playgrounds. They had good restaurants and places to drink beer and people to talk to and