It Could Happen...

The common room is so crowded, there’s nowhere to sit unless I take someone’s lap.  I can’t see anyone I’d feel comfortable sitting on. Instead I stand on the outskirts of the cluster of chairs, partially obstructing the narrow walkway so that people have to edge past me to get through.  I feel conspicuous and uncomfortable, even though I know that nobody will be looking at me.  I catch sight of myself in the clear Perspex covering the notice board, and straighten up my rounded shoulders.  Suck my tummy in - it doesn’t make much of a difference.  I’ve developed a habit of sitting with one arm across my stomach, instinctively hiding the unflattering paunch, but if I try to do that while I’m standing up I’ll look like a pregnant woman cradling her bump.  Fed up of hovering, unable to join in with any of the myriad conversations burring around the room, I leave and head for the kitchen to look for company.  There’s no-one there - the boys aren’t back from town yet.  Probably better that way; if they had been there I would have only sat and felt awkward for a moment before leaving them too.  Now I’m a nomad, wandering the school, not in the mood for conversation but reluctant to be alone. 

I’m not thinking, not even looking where I’m going, so it’s not surprising that in my numbed state of semi-consciousness I bump into someone in the corridor.  He mutters something sarcastic as I apologise, and I’m screaming  well why don’t you watch where the fuck you’re going you fucking wanker but in real life I just hunch my shoulders and hurry away, clutching my big purple folder defensively across my chest.  My loud and insistent thoughts are becoming more and more removed from my outward demeanour lately, turning me into a foul-mouthed savage on the inside while everyone around me still sees just a quiet, withdrawn girl with a sullen face.  I think about going to the library, but when I look at my watch registration is only five minutes away so I turn back towards the common room.  I don’t know why I’m disappointed that lunch is over - the minutes have been dragging by so slowly, it’s not like I want to stay in this state for ever.  At least when we’re in lessons there are things I need to be doing, and I’m not just drifting. 

The next day is a Friday.  I have been invited to a party in the evening - some girl called Kate, her parents are going away.  I don’t really know her, but she’s inviting everyone from my area of the common room so I’m included.  I can’t decide whether I’m looking forward to it or not - you can never tell whether you’re going to enjoy these things until you’re there - but it’s definitely better than sitting at home all weekend, so I’m pleased.  The day passes achingly slowly, and by the end of the final lesson I’m ready to bolt out of the room the moment we’re dismissed.  I clatter down the stairs to the cloakroom, eager to grab my things and go home to get ready for the party, but I slow down when I see that James is in the cloakroom too.  Now I will loiter, dragging out the time until he leaves and then I can go.  When you have a crush on someone, you hoard every moment with them.  Not that I’m particularly interesting company - I don’t think he really notices me.  I’m telling myself to speak to him, be friendly, be confident, but I have nothing at all to say.  Last time I tried to start a conversation with him, I started burbling on about the black mamba and how when it bites you you bleed from every orifice and then your extremities start to drop off.  I don’t think I even got the facts right - I’m sure now I meant green mamba.  Being a boy, he obviously found the idea of gruesome and excruciating death quite interesting, but it’s not really a great incitement to flirting. 

Now he’s gone anyway, and I gather my books and leave.  When I get home, I work out that I’ve got two and a half hours to get ready for the party, so I can afford to take my time.  It takes me a while to choose a top - for some reason they all seem to be low-cut and purple and very similar, and I want to look different.  In the end I go for a red, black and white silk one that I find at the very back of the drawer.  The label says it’s the right size, but it seems too big.  I hope the red doesn’t clash with my hair, which I dye deep flame red with henna once every three months.  Mum makes me eat some pasta before I go so I won’t pick at food while I’m out, because she’s getting impatient that I haven’t lost any weight in weeks and I still have two stone to go.  I don’t expect I’ll do any better this week, alcohol’s really fattening and there will be loads of it tonight.

Kate’s house is in a village a few miles away from mine.  I arrive promptly at seven - I never saw the fashion in being late - and she smiles as she takes my sleeping bag and shows me to the living room, the frozen smile of someone desperately trying to remember a name.  A few people are already there, and I take a seat next to a boy from my history lesson as he’s the only one in the room I know.  I’ve brought a carrier bag clinking with cans of Strongbow, and I offer him one, opening it for myself when he declines.  After a short while in which I prove once again that my phatic talk needs improvement, a carload of people from Spalding arrives and I’m relieved to find myself surrounded by my friends.

The party progresses quickly - my friends and I find that despite her bottle-blonde appearance and annoying voice, Kate has some very similar tastes to us, and we approve of the music she plays.  I can always predict what everyone’s going to be doing at parties like this - some of the girls are immediately ensconced in the arms of various boys, some get up and dance suggestively, some set straight to the task of getting as drunk as possible as quickly as possible.  I am in none of these categories. I sip my cider slowly, content for the moment to watch the others and let my mind wander.  We appear to have monopolised this lounge, while the hostess herself joins her other friends in another room.  It’s one of those big houses with multiple living rooms, where you can be at the same party as your best friend or your worst enemy and never notice their presence. 

Perhaps that's why I didn't see James at first, or perhaps he had turned up late - I don't know.  It was about half past ten when I saw him, though.  I had wandered through to the kitchen to find food, my tummy beginning to rumble despite the pasta, and I had my nose in the fridge when I heard his familiar voice saying my name.  I straightened up and spun around instantly, clutching a couple of cocktail sausages I'd found in there and dropping one which I kicked under the fridge and hoped he hadn't seen.  Then I arranged my features into a smile that wasn't too creepy and squeaked,
         "Hey!"
         "You alright?  I didn't know you were going to be here," he said, smiling at me so that I simpered stupidly and made a variety of expressive gestures to compensate for my useless voice. 

He gave a small laugh and turned to speak to someone else, rapidly drifting away with a hand raised in acknowledgement to my spluttered "See you later, then!"

I made my way back to the other room, chewing my sausages and kicking myself mentally for being such a stupid, socially hopeless retard.  When I returned to the sofa my friends had claimed, I flopped down with a melodramatic sigh to let them all know that I'd made a fool of myself again.  I'd tried to keep my thing for James secret at first because he's part of my friendship group so it's more delicate than a random crush, but it had gradually spread and I think it had been getting more and more obvious lately anyway, so now just about all of my closest friends knew about it.

"I didn't know he was going to be here!" I moaned to my best friend Scarlett.  "I would've made a bit more of an effort if I'd realised!"

"No you wouldn't," she pointed out bluntly - Scarlett has been my best friend since we started secondary school aged 11, and she knows that I always make as much of an effort as I can because I like to look nice.  "You would just have worried more and sucked your stomach in all night."

I realised that I had actually been doing that since I'd first heard his voice in the kitchen, and she laughed at the look on my face.  Just then James walked in with a couple of other guys, all bearing cans of beer.

"There you are! I've been looking for you guys everywhere, this house is huge!" he said, making room for himself on the sofa and hugging a few people in greeting.  Like I said, he hangs around with me and my friends, but he and I aren't particularly close so it's not like I've fallen for my best friend or anything.  Sometimes I think it would be easier if he was - at least then I'd be able to talk to him one-to-one without feeling awkward and either clamming up or worse, babbling.  As it stands, we see each other quite a lot in big groups, at parties or in the common room at school, but we never really talk properly and I don't know how to bridge the gap between acquaintance and friend. 

Emma is trying to steal his drink, and I look on as they wrestle playfully.  I have to admit that I'm a bit jealous.  Emma's really pretty, and such an outgoing person that she makes friends with anyone and can flirt constantly.  I know there's nothing in this play-fighting, she does it with most of the boys we know, but she used to go out with James and I often look at her and realise that if he can have the likes of her, he's never going to want me.

Scarlett digs me in the ribs and demands that I come with her to the other room.  I thought she'd noticed how I was looking at James and Emma, but she just wants to ask me if I'd seen William staring at her because she swears he likes her but she doesn't know if she's just being paranoid because they nearly kissed at Adrian's party...  I nod and agree, and she pokes me crossly.

"I asked you if you think I'm just looking for things that aren't there or if it's really noticeable - you can't just say 'yes'!" she protests.

"Oh, what? Sorry, I was wrapped up in my own adolescent agonies," I confess, and she rolls her eyes and leads the way back into the room.  I can tell she's been drinking because of the way she stands with her hands on her hips, looking self-important and businesslike, and as she clears her throat and gets everyone's attention I have a horrible premonition of what's about to come out of her mouth.

"Look, everyone's getting fed up of this now and it's sooo obvious anyway, so I think it should just be brought out so we can all get over it!” she rambles, and turns to me.  “Charley, just tell J... oww!”

This abrupt end to her speech was brought about by my rather impressive flying tackle which flung her to the ground and briefly turned a few heads as she wailed in indignant rage.  Pinning her to the floor, I glance up at my giggling friends and say,

“She’s absolutely pissed, she doesn’t know what she’s on about.”

As I reluctantly back off and let my best friend sit up, I catch James’ eye.  He is looking at me oddly, but I don’t know if it’s because he heard the first letter of his name before my attack and had guessed the secret, or just because normal people do not randomly fly at their friends mid-sentence.  I don’t have time to hold his gaze for much longer, because Scarlett has recovered enough to clout me round the side of the head and leave the room petulantly.  After a couple of minutes I wander off after her, feeling awkward in the company of my friends who now think I’m a maniac.

I drifted around the house for a while after that, returning to my friends every now and then (God bless alcohol, they’d forgotten I was a freak) and mingling intermittently with other acquaintances.  I was starting to make my way through bottles at quite a pace, and soon began to feel a bit light-headed.  I always have this idea that if I can hold my hand up in front of my face and it doesn’t blur into two, I can allow myself to drink more - but I’d forgotten about that tonight, and I think I was past that stage anyway.  My legs were beginning to feel pleasantly distant by about midnight, which was when I tripped over James as I stepped outside for some fresh air.  He was sitting in the doorway and I accidentally kicked him as I negotiated the tricky concrete step, making him look up from his phone which he had been brooding over.

“Oh, sorry James!” I exclaimed, too loudly.  “Did I hurt you?”
“No, no, I’m fine,” he said, returning his gaze to the mobile phone.  I sat down heavily beside him, arranging my legs in a ladylike manner and shivering in the cold.
“You know it’s terribly antisocial to text at parties,” I pointed out after a moment.
“Yeah, I know.  It’s just... it’s Laura, y’know.”
Laura.  Yes.  I know,  I thought to myself.  He had been texting her non-stop for days now - she was some girl he worked with, and I think he wanted to ask her out soon.  Last I heard though, she had a boyfriend. 
“How are things going with her?” I asked with the reluctant curiosity of a car-crash witness.
“I don’t know.  She said she was going to dump her boyfriend this evening, but she hasn’t text back so she might have changed her mind.  I didn’t think she sounded too sure about it,” he explained.  With a dejected sigh, he took one more look at his phone and shoved it into his pocket.  I moved closer along the step until I was nestled against his arm.

“I don’t know why she wouldn’t choose you,” I volunteered, buoyed by Dutch courage into honesty.  James looked at me with an unreadable expression, so I ventured further:
“I mean, given the choice.  I don’t know who this other guy is, but I’d choose you if I were her.”

His face remained inscrutable for a moment, and then broke into a small lopsided grin as he laughed shortly.

“Thanks, Charley,” he said, and he put an arm round my shoulders in a friendly squeeze.  It was just that - friendly, and nothing more - but the feel of his arm around me and the warmth of the vodka in my belly made me brave and I reached up, pecked him on the cheek and quickly settled back down with my head on his shoulder.  I could tell he was surprised from the way he tensed - not frozen in horror, but just by the unexpectedness.  My heart was fluttering madly, hoping he’d assume it had been a friendly platonic kiss like some girls are prone to, but when he lowered his face to mine and tilted my chin with his finger so I was looking into his eyes, I knew that he knew.

“So you...?” he murmured quietly, and I nodded in thrilled terror, my face turning redder and redder.  But then he smiled a warm, wide smile that softened his nut-brown eyes and made relief soothe my panicking reflexes, and in a slow movement that happened so smoothly I didn’t have time to hyperventilate, he kissed me.

It was not the biggest, longest, soppiest kiss in the world, just a brief meeting of mouths that was over before the unbelievable thrill had even finished traversing the length of my spine - but the way it felt to me that night, my entire life had always been hanging on the pivot of that one shivering, starlit moment.  As our lips parted, our faces stayed close, and with my nose brushing against his I breathed an incredulous giggle across his cheek.

Pressed close to his side as I was, I felt the vibration as his phone received a text message. 

His eyes dropped and his hand fell away from my hair where it had settled.  With an uncertain flutter he placed his hands in his lap, not wanting to do it in front of me but obviously desperate to read the message.  I scooted sideways to give him space, and made a permissive gesture with my own hands which were shaking, partly from the thrill of what had just happened and partly from the fearful knowledge that it was about to be ruined forever. 

James’ face was impassive as he read the message.  If there was one thing he’d proved tonight, it was a true talent for the poker face.  Then he snapped the sliding phone closed and returned it to his pocket in silence.  I was staring at him, but he didn’t meet my gaze.  He inspected the ground between his feet, studying every pebble with absent-minded scrutiny while his fingers tapped against each other and his brow lowered in thought.

He doesn’t want me.  How could I have been so stupid?  Why would he want me?  She’s obviously dumped her boyfriend, and James is going to ask her out now.  He just doesn’t know how to tell me.  Shall I do the nice thing and just leave now, never mention it again?

I turned my face away, peering down towards the end of the garden so that he wouldn’t see my damply shining eyes.  After the long silence, it almost made me jump when he spoke.
         
“I’m really sorry,”

I bet you are.  I didn’t turn around.

“I just don’t think it would have worked out.”

I sniffed loudly despite my resolve to stay stoically strong.

“Yes, I know.  Look, I really am sorry,” he continued.

Now my stony expression cracked into puzzlement - I hadn’t said anything.  Who was he talking to?  I turned to face him.

“Okay, yeah, I understand.  See you, then.  Yeah, bye,” he finished, and lowered the phone from his ear.  There was a soft bleep, brazen in the silence, as he ended the call.  Returning the mobile to his pocket, he placed his hand over mine.