Page 9 of I Love You, I Love You, I Love You

Where to now?

Chapter 5

The Twins suggest, ‘We could always go back to ours?’

The Twins’ house is a great idea. The Twins have a ginormous trampoline and a lovely calm supportive grandma dog. The Twins have alcohol, always. Which their mum buys for them because she’s safe like that and what’s better, they never drink it, so essentially their mum buys alcohol for everyone. The Twins have a bounty of supplies. Cookies, bagels, endless toast and multipacks of crisps. That bad ham in the shape of a bear’s face. Sky TV with, like, five remotes. And a house phone that you can use to your heart’s desire and a plug for everything and spare batteries and internet and no mention of a bedtime. The Twins have bags of unused untouched still fresh-in-its-packet make-up, wet-wipes, a selection of perfumes like a counter in a department store. Quality sanitary towels, tampons in all sizes. They have clean folded t-shirts in not-overly-stuffed drawers to change into that smell like washing powder, that you don’t even have to give back if you don’t feel like it.

‘Hey,’ one of the boys says on the walk, ‘that’s Sam’s house.’ Who’s Sam? ‘Let’s see if he’s in.’

OK, let’s. We all begin to chant, ‘SAM! SAM! SAM! … ’

Sam is quite a fit name actually. Sam sounds fit. Underplayed. Underrated. Subtle. You can’t go wrong with a Sam.

Ella 4 Sam 4 EVA.

And before we know it, we are standing at this Sam’s door knocking for him.

We all peer inside the small peach-coloured house, where everything seems incy wincy and matching and adorable like a mouse-house in a shoebox. The central heating blasts out.

‘SAMUEL!’ his mum shouts up the stairs. ‘DOOR!’

We await our destiny on the doorstep, us damp kids, nervously breathing in the body heat of each other. Come on, Samuel. Please be medium-to-quite-fit, not too-intimidating fit. Be just right. Maybe Sam will be the love of my life? Then this can be my in-laws’ house. Maybe Sam will be the one who reverses the evil spell cast against my poor fanny, who makes me realize that I do in fact have a pulse down there?

We await his reveal like a blind date.

Sam appears and a grin washes over his face like he’s about to bust up laughing at the state of us. He looks young. Small. Sweet. With big frenzied scatter eyes that are untrusting. He descends the stairs, but he’s not The One; I don’t get the burn I was looking for. But he isn’t alone.

There’s another boy too. He’s wearing jeans, a hoodie. And a cap.

They both take a seat on the stairs, the new new boys. Sam and this other one, they ask us where we’ve come from, why we’re roaming the streets soaking wet and as one of the boys fills them in, I watch this other boy taking the story in, this quiet thing, nodding along at the right beats. I look at him, zooming in close now, my eyes are microscopes, closer and closer …

And it’s almost like I can’t believe what I’m seeing.

This guy.

Sorry, who is this beautiful stranger? OMFG, this lovely face – plump lips, cupid’s bow, swollen and red like he’s just eaten a reaper pepper whole. Chubby cheeks. Smiling eyes. He’s delicious. My God. I go inside myself, through the willow trees of my childhood. And that’s when the world around me drowns out and all I hear are the rising power chords of Lenny Kravitz’s ‘Fly Away’ …

And the boy better run for his life. I am ON.

With just a look, I fall through the ground where I split, come undone like a seed and burst from my shell. His eyes trigger a network of roots and shoots that tangle and connect with a force strong enough to light up a city with full power. PING. PING. PING! My walls, with a wrecking ball of a look from him, pound down to grit and I am lost in the thunderous dust, inhaling only this new person. This starburst galaxy. This rip tide. This hurricane. And yet as sweet and delicious as crisp cherryade.

HE. IS. SO. FIT.

Everybody around me is talking but I’m in my head because see, he is there now, waiting, chill as hell, like he was there all along with an ice-box of snacks and beer, camping out in the canyons of my mind. Him and those browny-green confident eyes that swirl like my mood ring, carving promises, sparkling like fool’s gold, glinting to make a deal, twirling hypnotic, like the tip of a spinning rainbow umbrella and I follow him down to the meadows of his eyes.

So clichéd. So obvious. I can’t. And for the first time ever I am the chosen girl in the lift for the Soothers advert who gets kissed on the neck. A love bite. My blind spot. I’ve been bitten. Ouch. Can nobody see this blatant crime? Is everyone just going to sit back and let me get hijacked like this? Does nobody care that I’m clearly on fire?

‘This is Lowe,’ Sam says like it’s nothing, elbows on the stairs behind him. Knowing that’s the coolest name he’s ever said out loud before and he’s definitely the only ‘Lowe’ we’ve ever met. Jammy git. We don’t know how to respond to a name like this.

‘And what’s Lowe short for?’ Bianca barks, tossing her devil-red hair to the side. Oh no, she twists her nose-stud like stirring sugar into tea. Shit, she’s suddenly a tigress. She likes him.

‘It’s just Lowe,’ Lowe says.

Oh, IS IT now? THE FIT AUDACITY.

Lowe. Like ‘low.’ Like ‘low’ down. I find myself muttering it under my breath. Feeling my tongue press my teeth.

Lowe.

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