Loveless. Alice Oseman

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      I quickly switched my phone screen off before Tommy thought I was ignoring him.

      ‘Uh …’ I began, not quite knowing what I was going to say before I said it. I held up my oversized denim jacket. ‘If you’re cold, you can borrow my jacket.’

      Tommy looked at it. He seemed unfazed that it was technically a ‘girl’s’ jacket, which was good, because if he’d protested, that probably would have been it for my crush.

      ‘You sure?’ he asked.

      ‘Yeah!’

      He took the jacket and put it on. It made me feel a bit uncomfortable, just knowing that some guy I really didn’t know very well was wearing my favourite jacket. Shouldn’t I have been pleased about this development?

      ‘I was just gonna go sit by the fire for a bit,’ said Tommy, and he slouched against the wall, leaning ever so slightly towards me with a smile. ‘D’you … wanna come with?’

      That was when I realised he was trying to flirt with me.

      Like, this was working.

      I was actually going to get to kiss Tommy.

      ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Let me just message my friends.’

       Georgia Warr

      hanging out with tommy lol

      School romance was on my list of favourite fanfiction tropes. I also loved soulmate AU, coffee shop AU, hurt/comfort and temporary amnesia.

      I figured school romance was the most likely one that would happen to me, but now that the possibility of it happening was more than zero, I was freaking out.

      Like, heart racing, sweating, hands shaking freaking out.

      This was what crushes felt like, so this was normal, right?

      Everything was totally normal.

      

      When we got to the fire, we were the only people there. No kissing orgy in sight.

      I picked a seat near the blanket pile and Tommy sat next to me, balancing a beer bottle on his chair arm. What would happen now? Would we just start making out? God, I hoped not.

      Wait, wasn’t that what I wanted?

      A kiss had to happen, anyway. That much was clear to me. This was my last chance.

      ‘So,’ Tommy said.

      ‘So,’ I said.

      I thought about how I was going to initiate the kiss. In fanfics, they just say Can I kiss you, which is very romantic to read but sounded so embarrassing in my head when I imagined saying it out loud. In movies, it just seems to sort of happen without any discussion beforehand, but both parties go into it knowing exactly what’s happening.

      He nodded at me, and I glanced at him, waiting for him to speak.

      ‘You look really nice,’ he said.

      ‘You said that already,’ I said, smiling awkwardly, ‘but thanks.’

      ‘S’weird we didn’t really speak much at school,’ he continued. As he spoke, he put his hand on the top of my chair, so his hand was weirdly close to my face. I don’t know why that made me feel so uncomfortable. His skin was just there, I guess.

      ‘Well, we weren’t really friends with the same people,’ I said.

      ‘Yeah, and you’re pretty quiet, aren’t you?’

      I couldn’t even deny that. ‘Yeah.’

      Now that he was so close, I was struggling to even see what exactly I’d been attracted to for seven years. I could tell that he was conventionally attractive, like you can tell pop stars or actors are attractive, but nothing about him really made me feel butterflies. Did I know what butterflies felt like? What exactly was I supposed to be feeling right now?

      He nodded as if he already knew everything about me. ‘That’s all right. Quiet girls are nice.’

      What was that even supposed to mean?

      Was he being creepy? I couldn’t tell. I was probably just nervous. Everyone gets nervous around their crushes.

      I glanced towards the house, feeling like I didn’t really want to look at him any more. And I spotted two figures hovering in the conservatory, watching us – Pip and Jason. Pip immediately waved at me, but Jason looked kind of embarrassed and pulled Pip away.

      They both wanted to see what would happen with Georgia and her seven-year crush.

      Tommy leant a little closer to me. ‘We should talk more, or something.’

      I could tell he didn’t mean that. He was just stalling. I knew what was supposed to happen next.

      I was supposed to lean in, nervous, but excited, and he’d brush my hair out of my face and I’d look up at him beneath my eyelashes, and then we’d kiss, gently, and we’d be one, Georgia and Tommy, and then we’d go home, giddy and happy, and maybe it’d never happen again. Or maybe he’d message me, and we’d decide to go on a date, just to see what would happen, and at the date we would decide to try going out, and on our third date we would decide to be boyfriend and girlfriend, and a couple of weeks after that we would have sex, and while I was at university he would text me good morning and come to visit every other weekend, and after university we would move in together in a little flat by the river and get a dog, and he’d grow a beard, and then we would get married, and that would be the end.

      That was what was supposed to happen.

      I could see every single moment of it in my head. The simple route. The easy way out.

      I could do that, couldn’t I?

      If I didn’t, what would Pip and Jason say?

      ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘I know you haven’t kissed anyone before.’

      The way he said it was like he was talking to a newborn puppy.

      ‘OK,’ I said.

      It irritated me. He was irritating me.

      This was what I wanted, wasn’t it? A cute little moment in the dark?

      ‘Hey, look,’ he said, a pitying smile on his face. ‘Everyone has a first kiss eventually. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s OK to be new at, like, romance and all that.’

      New at romance? I wanted to laugh. I’d been studying romance like an academic. Like an obsessive researcher. Romance would be my Mastermind СКАЧАТЬ