Page 13 of Oar Than Friends

Oliver:

I thought you didn’t want her falling in love with me.

Arthur:

Twat. You’re the worst best friend.

Instead of the buzz from another message, a shrill ring sounded out because Olly had quickly gotten bored from typing.

‘Mate, just text her!’

I groaned in response, mostly because I’d run out of words to use. My brain had been working overtime recently.

‘Why are your knickers twisting over her?’

‘They’re not … it’s just … on top of everything else.’

‘Arthur, you deserve some fun. You’ve had a bullshit few months, except the time you spent with yours truly, obviously. You’ve got, what … an hour of lectures a week and seventy-five thousand hours of rowing? I’m sure you can squeeze in a couple of trips up the M40 to see a girl you haven’t stopped talking about for three days. At this point it almost feels like I’m the one who wants to date her,’ he grumbled.

I ignored the vicious and uncharacteristic pang of jealousy, and shoved away any unwelcome thoughts from his final point.

Three days. Jesus, it felt like a lifetime.

Technically it was less than that; fifty-six hours to be precise.

Fifty-six hours, and I’d thought about her for every single one. Even the few hours I’d tossed and turned in fitful sleep her eyes had swum through my brain. Because there was no way I could ever forget those eyes.

Brilliant green, like the luckiest clover, and edged with delicate cobalt flecks; from the moment I’d turned to see her standing over me I hadn’t been able to look away. For that brief second, the pain searing through my body after she’d trampled on me had been forgotten, like she was the antidote to all ailments.

I still hadn’t figured out which had shaken me more; having my balls squashed or seeing her for the first time.

She was undoubtedly the most beautiful woman I’d laid eyes on. Almost doll-like, with a slightly upturned button nose, thick walnut-coloured hair and a deep-set dimple on her right cheek that sank further when she’d smiled at me, but with a fierceness that flashed across her features the longer I stared at her. A fierceness which told me she had no clue who I was. That she hadn’t spent the summer reading about the sordid escapades of my dreadful father, or somewhat heartbroken mother, splashed across the front pages of every national newspaper, searchable with the click of a button.

That as far as she was concerned, I was just a guy she’d fallen over, and was kind of annoyed at.

She was a breath of the cool Cambridge air which had been breezing around us.

I’d always found it relatively easy to attract girls, even when Oliver Greenwood was around, but up to Saturday night and the early hours of Sunday, I’d never really felt the need for a connection outside of a bedroom; rowing had always taken priority and provided a convenient excuse to get away. I’d never been totally captivated by the way a woman’s mouth moved, or how they curled their legs underneath themselves like they could have been a contortionist in a different life.

I’d never opened up.

Beyond a handful of people I’d known most of my life, and a couple of the boys on the crew I’d sworn to secrecy, I’d never shared my desire to teach. To be a teacher of minds, and impart what little wisdom I had to others.

Coming from my family it was nothing more than a frivolous pipedream.‘Change lives through politics,’my dad would bark at me whenever I mentioned teaching. But talking to someone about it, albeit briefly to someone who didn’t know about the complications of my family, yet clearly understood exactly how it felt to be setting your future aside for another’s dream, was liberating.

From the moment I saw her I knew I was going to kiss her. Unfortunately for me, it had only been a nanosecond of surrounding her mouth with mine, tasting the faint juniper notes from the gin on her lips, before we were rudely interrupted by the guy who was still talking in my ear.

‘Oz, I’m telling you, just text her. Stop being such a pussy.’

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