Page 10 of I Love You, I Love You, I Love You

On cue, soft cheeks blushing, Lowe stares down at his bobbly socks, and just when he’s about to overboil, he catches himself, he looks up at me with those huge eyes and I fucking die.

Blood thumps, clangourous, somewhere new and deep. I look away. He’s just a boy, for fuck’s sake. But what a fucking lovely face. He’s got vampire teeth, but then they are too kind to be inside the mouth of a vampire; they are here in this mouth. How dare he?

‘Right, we’d better get going.’

I cut the chat short. Can’t be doing with any of this love stuff, so bye bye now, thank you so much. I lead the way, disciplining myself like some martyr, a mean old spinster Sister running a convent. I won’t allow myself the joy, the privilege, the luxury of liking somebody, especially not a subject like this guy. It’s like throwing a blanket over a parrot cage; I shut out the light and plunge into the darkness. SHUT UP, BRAIN. SHUT UP, HEART. YOU TOO, FANNY. How dare I fancy somebody? Oh this is a nightmare.

WHY IS MY BODY BETRAYING ME LIKE THIS?

‘OK, we’ll just grab our shoes,’ Sam says and Lowe is already grinning again, reaching for his Etnies trainers (a fit boy MUST) like he knows he’s got me, just like that. Eyes flash, up and down, down and up. He hoists up his loose-fitting jeans.

‘Hey?’ I say with a question mark like can I help you? and find myself saying, ‘I’m Ella,’ even though no one asked. To which he nods. Like he’s letting it sink in.

I’ve just handed over my name and he says nothing in return.

This Lowe begins pushing out the front door his red BMX that’s been standing up by the radiator, leaning, equally as cool, as if it’s another friend that’s coming too. I mean, even if the bike became my boyfriend I’d be chuffed; it’s covered in stickers of all those Extreme Sports brands we look for that signpost us to hot boys. I can’t stop looking at him: the geometry of his hands, obsessing over his raw knuckles clamped around the handlebars, split and rough, his nails short and smooth with a slug of just the right amount of doing-stuff-grub, the way the ragged sleeves of his hoodie bunch around his elbows, his veined arms … I was not prepared for this.

And so, I do what I know best.

I mark up the friend-zone borders immediately, scoring the line through the air quicker than I’ve ever drawn it. And I place myself firmly inside.

Locked in. Where I’m safe.

Where nobody can call me sad or weird or annoying or fat or ugly or embarrassing or strange.

Where nobody can say No. Or I don’t feel the same. Or Sorry, no. Or Just friends.

Where I can’t get hurt.

I ignore him on the walk up to The Twins’ house in the rain. Over the stones of their front drive, past their spotless seven-seater and twitching security camera. I imagine my gooey-Meerkat-eyed self, lovestruck through the CCTV screen in night-mode, pixilated in black and white, the infection of him showing up in ultraviolet blobs all over my body. I ignore him. Even when we slosh past their granny Labrador and through their brightly lit show-home kitchen. And out into the garden which backs onto the common, with the epic dripping trees hunched over the great fence behind. I still ignore him. Even when we all kick off our shoes into a heap and climb up onto the huge trampoline. Even when Bianca deliberately takes turns to fall onto the boys’ laps and laughs and squeals and then accuses with an ‘OI, DICKHEAD? DID YOU TOUCH MY BUM?’ And this one boy Nas just puts his hands up in the air in surrender and says, ‘Not me!’ Even when everybody laughs as she rolls off, arms and legs everywhere and onto the next set of knees.

I still make no eye contact. I still ignore him.

Even when we all sit on the damp padded spring covering of the trampoline, in a circle, and I can feel the vibrations of everybody in the elastic, and people switch places, shift and swap with a budge up, move over and now I’m next to him; OH SHIT, chemistry – we seem to be static, hyper-charged off the electricity of meeting for the first time. Us with our soaking wet jeans with puddle water up to our knees – we don’t seem to feel the wet, the wind, the cold at all. Only sparks. Against plastic. Against rubber. And skin. There is shock. And I have to get up and do something or I might actually explode …

Music.

I run up to get the girls’ stereo, to The Twins’ lovely clean bedroom with their twin beds and Beanie Babies – I have this moment to myself to stop and breathe.

LOWE. Fuck. Who is HE? Where did he come from? My pulse quickens as I pick up the CD player. They have a good one with a CD and tape deck with speakers on long cables so you can really stretch them out. I grab my sacred fluffy rainbow bible of a CD wallet, which comes everywhere with me, and carry the whole thing under my chin, careful not to drop anything.

I avoid eye contact with The Twins’ mum as I plug everything in; I don’t want her to stop my scheming or be annoyed as I unplug the giant lamp with its fancy cream shade and possibly the goldfish water filter too, but I check for signs of life bubbles and they appear, so Beans and Hashbrown are absolutely fine.

In my mixed CD goes and that’s me thrown out for everyone to see – my taste in downloaded music (which definitely gave my family PC a batrillion viruses) up for judgement.

A few voices whoop, begin to nod along, mouthing the words to Green Day. Bianca takes this as an invitation to dance, thinking she looks sexy like a girl in the video but just no. Do not dance sexy to Green Day.

Out of the twenty new faces, all lit by one brilliant white garden floodlight that makes us look like a football crowd on TV, the sky spitting down, his is the only face I see.

‘Nice,’ he says.

I get this tightness in my throat. My chest heaves with a crushing feeling and I think I might be dying. Or maybe, just maybe, this is love?

Don’t engage, Ella – ignore him. And so I do. Even when cigarettes are handed around and vodka bottles with labels wet from the rain and beers, plastic bottles of cider which go down like lightning, crackle as they hollow out. My eyes gaze over Lowe. Stealing looks when he’s not looking, each micro-detail, hunted. Fingers. Lips. Eyes. Hair. Nails. Skin. Throat. Ears. Watching. Everything this goddam guy does. I see it. I take note. I absorb. Waiting for him to slip up, to do something, to reverse this want, to make a move with somebody else so I can be released from this grip.

And when it comes to the end of the night, when it’s time to say goodbye, when The Twins’ mum is politely waving everyone out the door like she wanted us to eat her out of house and home, Lowe smiles at me. He runs his hand around the rim of his cap and I see his wrists and clench my jaw involuntarily, so hard my teeth crack like almonds. He says, ‘Night, then.’

And I’m smiling so hard I forget to say it back.

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