Page 7 of Exhale

“Then it’s just you and me,” he said, quietly but firmly. “I won’t put up with you having Grindr and stuff like that if you’re my boyfriend. No dates, no open relationships, none of thisit’s just sexcrap. I don’t want to do that because…no way. I’ve tried it in the past, and I just can’t deal. I latch onto people, and I want all of them, the full one hundred per cent. If I’m going to fall in love with you, I need you to fall in love with me back, not just want to meet up once a week to fuck me senseless and then leave me to bloody crumble with anxieties about what we are to each other. Things like that are a hard no.”

“That sounds fair.”Fair?My head was a stupid place.

“It’s all in or nothing,” he insisted while I nodded like a puppet. We were definitely on the same page. Same book. A whole library’s worth.

“Are you good at texting?” he asked, running his finger down his list. “I mean, if you’re late, will you tell me?”

“You sound like my little sister. She gets very anxious if she doesn’t know what’s going on. I text her all the time.”

“I’m not a child.”

“Hey…” I grabbed him again because this was apparently the way I was with him. I tugged the sleeve of his jacket, clumsily manhandling him until he was in my arms, while he was awkwardly sat on his chair. I hugged the shit out of him, feeling a little intoxicated as I sniffed his neck. He smelled good. He smelled so damn good I almost wanted to cry. Here he was. My boy. My own very handsome little princeling. And there was a wetness in my eyes from my own stupidity.

“I’m an idiot, I know that. I’m an emotional twat. I cry at the drop of a hat, and I can tell you that when I love someone, I love the shit out of them. Ask my ex-girlfriend. She’ll want to meet you. Then she’ll spill all my secrets and bad habits and probably make you run away and never want to see me again. But she’s the best, my Kizzy, and I promise you, you will love her too. What I’m getting at is this. I will text you. Every fucking day. I will tell you how I feel when you’re not with me, and I will tell you how I feel about you every time I see you. Because I’m just like that. My mouth churns out my feelings all the time, so you’ll never have to doubt me. In fact, you’ll probably have to put a sock in my mouth because there’s pretty much no way of stopping me once I start.”

“Dude, you'll have to stick shit in my mouth...I'm the one who talks too much.!” He smiled so hard that I had to kiss him again. Sloppy, gorgeous kisses where his giggles were relentless as I mauled his poor face. I kissed his dimples and his eyelids and his cheeks and the tip of his nose. Then the lady at the next table made some noises, so I sat up properly and tried to gather myself back together.

“If you’re not careful, I’ll do exactly that.” I smiled at him from under my hair. I was high. High on childish stupidity and a daydream that was suddenly close enough to touch.

“Come on, let’s go home,” he said, mumbling something apologetic about our inappropriate public displays of affection.

I couldn’t say anything back, so I stood up and took his hand. This boy of mine.Mine.I could already see it all, my imagination running away with me before I could stop it. I could see our future selves sat together on a blanket in the grass, laughing and running through fields of flowers. Yeah. I had a very vivid imagination. I was falling fast, and there was no way back once my head started churning out ideas. I was diving into this headfirst, and as I stood there with his hand in mine, I realised I absolutely loved it.

LEO

“Tell me your deepest darkest secret,” I said, grinning at him. We were walking slowly, his hand still in mine, our arms swinging happily between us.

“Er…” He made a face that had me regretting ever opening my mouth. Yup, that was me. Making people uncomfortable with strange questions had always been my special gift.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.” I groaned. “But in a few minutes, I will probably…well, hopefully, have your dick in my mouth and my fingers up your arse, and there’s nothing more intimate than that. So perhaps, tell me something that you have never told anyone else?”

“Is this still part of the interview questions?” He smiled, biting his bottom lip. He was a flirt. A goddamn flirt and I loved that. But at the same time, people like him flirted with everything that moved. He was also insanely attractive, which meant I would have to fight the whole entire world for his attention. I know that was a dick thing to even think, but I was the jealous type, and my anxieties were haunting me with every word that left his pretty mouth.

“Okay?” He squeezed my hand, like he was seeking reassurance that he wasn’t scaring me off. I squeezed back, proud. Whatever he told me, I would still love him. Even after he’d left me.

“You can tell me anything. Secrets are no good to anyone. I’ll tell you all mine.”

“I want to know everything about you.” He was too quiet. Subdued.

“There isn’t much to tell,” I replied, my heart doing a little jolt. “I’m too boring and normal. Never broke anyone’s heart, that I know of. Never broke a bone or burnt down our house. I was just this kid who loved books and had a good relationship with his mum and all that. No drama. Well, I hated it when my mum moved back to France, and I get into these big depressive slumps whenever I have sex with someone and they dump me before even getting the condom off.

“You need to stop getting hung up on those guys. They aren’t worth it. Not everyone is like that.”

See? Now I’d pissed him off, and we hadn’t even made it back to my flat.

“I don’t really have any secrets,” Jamie continued. “None that matter anyway. I’m straightforward. Well, apart from that I tend to rush into things, completely lose my confidence and then struggle to get back up to where I was. I start things and then I fail. But it doesn’t matter. I’m just who I am.”

He exhaled, blowing air into the afternoon sun as we crossed the main road down towards the dull, grey high street. The bright advertisement on a bus shelter in the distance was the only splash of colour in sight.

“You sound like me.” He did. I recognised those highs and lows. The bursts of confidence, followed by lows laced with complete and utter failure.

“Give me the tour,” he said, almost absentmindedly. “I want to know stuff about you, so I can picture your life in my head. I want to know so when you tell me you’re on your way to a lecture, I’ll know where you’re going. Little things like that.”

“It’s just…my life doesn’t get more exciting than this. I walk here, along this road. There’s a supermarket down there by the train station. A good kebab shop on the corner.”

We walked on in silence, neither of us knowing what else to say. It was clearly going to be one of those pivotal moments when he’d realise I was a total flake, because this? It was too good to be true. But he was still holding my hand as we approached the bus shelter. He was still mine for a few more precious moments.

“I take the bus to uni from here, every morning. The 8:38 bus. Brings me right up to the campus main gate for nine.”

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