Page 27 of Still Falling for You

A few weeks later, the trip day arrives, and I find myself trapped in an odd feeling of déjà vu. The coach is cramped with twenty-eight ten and eleven-year-olds and six members of staff plus the coach driver. I’m sitting in the front because I still haven’t gotten over my travel sickness. The subtle smell of budding teenagerhood, salt and vinegar Pringles and Danielle’s Carolina Herrera perfume is not helping with the queasiness.

The tension in the coach is denser than wading through Oobleck. There seems to be a below-average amount of blinking, and everybody is watching everybody like we’re playing Wink Murder and I didn’t get the memo. Becky’s attention keeps steering towards Alex who’s sitting in the middle of the coach next to John, and the two males keep throwing daggers at each other.

At the back of the coach, Danielle is seated next to Rob, the year three teacher roped into the trip despite his best efforts. When spying on Alex, she keeps yawning into her hand while Rob is talking one hundred miles per hour and scrolling down his phone. I bet he’s talking about his copywriter girlfriend. He’ll talk to anyone about her, whether they’re willing to listen or not. A vindictive part of me feels like gloating, but I’m a fully grown adult so I only gloat on the inside. Maybe the corner of my lip lifts a notch, but who cares?

A commotion in the middle of the coach makes my gaze fix on John who is manspreading and encroaching on Alex’s personal space. Alex looks like he’s ready to gut him. He tells John to move, but John frowns and says something that makes Alex’s eyebrows rise in a challenge. A moment later, John shifts his invading knee, and Alex goes back to gazing out of the window. When Becky catches me watching, she leans in.

‘Apparently, Alex had a stern conversation with John lastweek, and since then, they’ve been ready to challenge each other to a duel.’ Despite Becky’s over-dramatic words, I appreciate her forthcomingness.

‘What was it about?’ I lean closer. The school’s ways must have rubbed off on me because I can’t seem to stay away from any gossip that involves Alex. I feel deeply ashamed but not ashamed enough to stay silent.

‘Unprofessional behaviour on school premises and spreading slanders.’ She pushes her chestnut hair behind her ears with jittery hands. ‘I know John can sometimes be a bitcheeky.’ She pauses before she adds, ‘But I feel this is only going to fuel John and Danielle further.’

She gives me a meaningful look, not wanting to directly say that the gossip was about me, but I catch her drift. I can’t stop the sigh that escapes my lips. I feel so enraged at the unfairness of the whole situation. I’ve landed in the middle of something that has nothing to do with me.

As soon as my insides start gurgling halfway through the journey, I pop a mint leaf in my mouth and chew. Someone coughs somewhere behind me, and when I turn my head, I catch Alex looking at me strangely. I force myself to face the front again, but my cheeks are heating, a well of memories flooding my mind.

John and Rob swap seats, Rob ending up sitting next to Alex who is as antisocial as they come. When Rob tries to initiate a conversation, Alex freezes him mid-sentence. Rob hurriedly plucks out his phone and carries on scrolling. Lydia would have had a whale of a time on this coach. She’d probably ask for a bag of popcorn.

Finally, after an excruciating hour, we arrive at Newley Farm. All the children line up, eager to embark on their adventure, while I fight hard not to puke in the nearby bramble bushes, visualising taking in the fresh air, a wildflower meadow and butterflies, my pretend happy place.

After all the kids are counted, they’re led by Alex and Danielle, closely trailed by John, Rob and Becky towards a red-brick farmhouse surrounded by kitchen gardens on one side and a paddock and vast fields on the other. I hang back, pretending to be busy looking at an oak tree with a rope swing dangling lopsidedly in the chilly wind to my right while I’m trying to persuade my body not to vomit out my breakfast.

Life is good. The sun is shining, and I haven’t embarrassed myself and gotten the nickname Miss Pukey. That is until I realise they’d abandoned me with all the lunches and equipment. The coach driver gives me an impatient look, informing me while loudly chewing spearmint gum that he needed to be on his way about five minutes ago.

Dressed in my favourite ’90s green-and-grey lumberjack shirt tucked into high-waisted flared jeans decorated with embroidered flowers, I fear I’m overdressed for the task. I scan the muddy path decorated with four-by-four tread marks leading towards the house, trying to find an easy route that doesn’t exist. The brown cowboy boots that I bought on Vinted for twenty quid are already caked in the slimy greyish mud that surrounds the farmhouse. It can only get worse from this point. I sigh but heft the heavy bags, nevertheless. I can show Alex I can fix my problems and that I’m not a quitter. Also, I know that nobody will need the equipment until after lunch so nobody should notice me gone or witness my embarrassment.

Five minutes later, I’m lugging three massive bags filled with lunches, water and equipment towards the house. I’ve only made it halfway when my left arm starts going dead. There’s a fifty-fifty chance they’ll have to amputate it if I don’t do something about it right now, but I know that if I put the bags down, I won’t be able to pick them up again.

The nape of my neck starts sweating, and I make an exaggerated huff slash growl to defuse the tension in my body that I hope nobody will ever hear.

Just as I’m thinking I might have avoided anybody witnessing the lowest point of my career so far, a familiar person strides purposefully towards me with a frown. When he realises what I’m doing, he sort of freezes mid-step. It would have been almost comical if the person didn’t have a mop of ginger hair and the coldest green serial-killer eyes. Once Alex is back in motion, like Frankenstein’s monster reanimated, his frown deepens and the corners of his lips shape into an unpleasant upside-down ‘u’.

My body simply stops collaborating. My gaze snags on the shape of him and refuses to move away from his form. It’s the way he moves that sends my pulse off the charts and into outer space. His walk has always been predatory, like a panther. Both the forest green jumper and dark blue jeans he’s wearing mould around his athletic body perfectly, making my breath uneven. Despite his off-putting scowl, my heartbeat speeds up and it angers me to no end that my body still reacts this way to him. I’m sure that if I were a guy, I would have a massive boner right now.

‘Why are you carrying the bags on your own? Everyone’s waiting inside,’ Alex grumbles. My proverbial boner is gone. He huffs something under his breath that sounds a lot likeJohnandarsehole, but I would not imagine in my wildest dreams this version of Alex would ever say anything this unprofessional.

I get all defensive, and the bags drop to the mud with a splat. A fine spray of mud covers his jeans from boot to knee. I don’t feel regret at the sight of what I’ve done. Instead, my achy arms cross and my chest puffs up like an over-inflated balloon ready to pop with the lightest of touches. I’ve had enough of being people’s pincushion. Just because I like to keep to myself doesn’t mean I will let people walk over me.

‘You can’t seriously be angry at me. I’m trying my best here, but it’s only me and a lot of bags that seem to be packed with sand and bricks just to spite me. Nobody prepared me orinformed me I’d be a porter or that I would get involved in heavy labour because I would have worn my combat boots.’ I point to my ruined mud-dip-dyed jeans and add, ‘And overalls.’

I huff hair out of my face with irritation and push it back, hoping it stays there forever. When I push it back for the third time and it falls back, I’m ready to explode. What happens next makes me utterly still. Alex invades my space and pushes the stray hair behind my ear, skimming the shell of my ear with his fingertip for a moment. I’m so shocked I run out of steam, and words. Officially, my rant is over.

‘I’m not angry,’ he starts. My eyes narrow in disagreement. At seeing my reaction, he presses his lips together, making the rosy colour go deep pink. ‘…with you,’ he finishes. Suddenly, he seems oddly out of breath. Startled, I realise that he’s holding in his temper, and what shocks me more, I believe him.

I shift my weight from left to right because I didn’t expect him to say that. I’m suddenly reminded of his impatient flare-ups aimed at his mother, the world and general human stupidity. I’m starting to gather that maybe his detached air has been a mask all along because one moment he looks utterly beyond himself but the next, he seems composed. I guess he hasn’t changed that much after all.

He picks up all three bags off the ground, hefting two of them over his shoulder with ease, not caring that he’s smearing mud all over his jumper. We carry on walking towards the farmhouse in tense silence.

With a quick glance over his shoulder, he informs me, ‘John and Rob were supposed to help you with those. I specifically asked them to carry those bags so you could lead the trip. You deserve to reap the benefits after planning all of this.’

A surprisedohescapes my lips. I think that it’s sort of nice that somebody is vexed on my behalf, that is until he spoils it with, ‘You should have asked somebody to help when yourealised you weren’t getting any.’ Either he’s really bad at this social communication thing called polite conversation or he’s trying really hard to piss me off again. I can’t quite decide. Either way, I’ve reverted togrrrmode.

‘I can fix my own problems. Thank you very much.’ I throw his previous words back at him. At my comment, his shoulders stiffen, his cheeks turning radioactive hot. I think he’s feeling embarrassed.

We’ve reached the door of the farmhouse when John’s cheerful voice announces from behind us, ‘I’ve got this.’ I grimace at his unhurried approach. He offers me a quick grin, not reading my rigidness. ‘Sorry, Holly. I promised to help and then I got stuck.’ His unhurried attempts to take the bags from Alex’s hands don’t give me apologetic vibes.

Alex’s frown becomes glacial as he moves out of John’s reach. I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that look. ‘Is that why Holly was hefting all this baggage on her own?’ He speaks to John in deadly slow words. ‘Because you got stuck?’ He saysstucklike it’s a foul word. ‘Stuck doing what precisely?’

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