Page 44 of You Float My Boat

‘Oh great,’ he piped up behind me, his excited voice breaking through the chatter. ‘We won the tournament last weekend, it was a really nail-biting final. You should come down and watch next time.’

A nail-biting chess final. I’d played chess at school, but only because it got me out of a series of detentions that I had no interest in completing. My headmaster had said if I played on the team for one term, my punishment would be null and void. Therefore chess club was a no brainer.

I didn’t mind it, and we won more than we lost. Not sure I’d ever describe chess as nail-biting, however. But I probably hadn’t played the way Gordon played.

‘Sounds good. As long as I don’t have a race, count me in.’

‘Excellent. I shall,’ he replied, as we stepped back onto the street side by side. ‘Hey, Charlie, isn’t that your girlfriend?’

I frowned, ‘What?’ I didn’t have a … ‘Wait, what?’

‘Yes, I’m sure it’s her. In the bright green jacket.’

My eyes snapped up, following the direction Gordon was pointing. Sure enough there was Violet, walking along the opposite pavement, her arms laden with books. She was wearing her muppet green coat, but in lieu of the navy hat with the pink bobble, she had on an enormous pair of noise-cancelling headphones. Even from this distance I could see the soft glow of her cheek from the cold air, and her face was lit up with a smile that made me want to know what she was listening to.

She was also not paying the slightest bit of attention to where she was going, but luckily that coat was warning enough to anyone walking towards her that they moved out of the way.

‘It is her, isn’t it? Her coat’s very bright.’

I grinned, it certainly was.

Anything else Gordon said fell on deaf ears, as I was already jogging halfway across the road and narrowly missed a couple of cyclists who made their annoyance known.

I stopped in front of her. I knew she hadn’t been looking where she was going when she almost walked into me.

‘Hello.’

Her blue eyes flared wide, and her nose crinkled the way it always did when she was a little confused or annoyed, though I hadn’t quite got it down which was which. She pulled off her headphones to rest around her neck. ‘Hey. What are you doing here?’

‘I just grabbed a coffee and spotted you.’

There was something about her smile that I felt deep in my chest. A twinge … a heavy thump … I dunno. But it was there.

I tried to rub it away, but it wasn’t budging. In fact, the longer we stood here staring at each other, the more pronounced it got.

‘Hello, Violet,’ puffed a voice to the side of us, thankfully breaking whatever moment had been going on between us.

‘Oh, hey Gordon.’ She turned her smile to him, ‘Where did you come from?’

‘I was talking to Charlie but he ran off the second he spotted you,’ he tutted, and I had to drop my head to hide my amusement. ‘He does that a lot.’

Violet turned to me, one perfectly arched eyebrow raised in question. ‘Does he now?’

My shoulders jerked up in response because there wasn’t much more to say. Plus, I was trying to ignore the way my cheeks suddenly warmed.

‘Where are you going with all these books?’ I nodded to her hands, and peered at the spines. The biggest one looked like it weighed a minimum of five kilos. ‘Wilson’s Guide to Every Literary Character Ever.’

‘Returning them to the library, need to swap them out.’

‘Oh yeah? For what? A guide to all the books ever written?’ I grinned.

Her teeth might have sunk into her bottom lip to stop herself from laughing, but it couldn’t disguise the amusement in her eyes. ‘Something like that.’

I couldn’t tell you where it came from but the second the idea popped into my head, there was no stopping me.

‘Great, we’re walking that way.’

‘No, we weren’t,’ added Gordon before I could stop him too.

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