He looked like he was figuring out a very hard maths sum. He also looked pissed off. I was so scared. I liked him, I really really did. But I needed to know he liked me, and that meant asking.
“Do you like me?”
“You know I do.”
“But what do you like about me?”
“I just told you, you’ve got great tits.”
“What else?”
He scratched his head, he actually scratched his head, then gave me this horrid look. “Well, until two minutes ago, I liked that you didn’t ask these sort of questions.”
“What sort of questions?”
“You know…” He put on a high squeaky voice. “Do you like me? Why haven’t you messaged me? Can’t we go to Pizza Express before we go back to yours? Can I sing in your band? Are we going out now?”
“What’s wrong with wanting to go to Pizza Express before you let someone sleep with you?” I asked.
Guy threw up his arms. “See! I knew this would happen. I liked you, but I worried you’d do this. Why does it always have to get so serious so quickly?”
“And having sex with someone isn’t serious?” I felt like my world was breaking.
“Well yeah, it is…I suppose… But, why does it always have to be…I dunno…so full on emotionally?” He gave me another weird look. “I thought maybe you were different. You seemed all breezy, you didn’t nag when I didn’t message you. You’ve been seeing different guys, like I see different girls. You didn’t seem that bothered about that Ethan guy or that pussycat boy. I thought maybe it could work…you know, casually?”
I listened in horror to his description of a girl called Evelyn who wasn’t anything like me at all. “Oh God,” I said, almost to myself. “You think I’m a Girl-Next-Door Slut.”
Guy squinted. “A girl next what?”
An urgent need to put on my jeans. I began scrabbling into them, desperate to cover my skin, to get some of my power back. I’d tried too hard to be normal for Guy. I’d tried too hard to be carefree and breezy, like I thought other girls were. But they’re not…
It couldn’t just be casual for him, could it? It didn’t make sense. He’d, like, proper stared at me before kissing me, and he’d told me, to my actual face, that he cared… None of it made any sense.
“I think I’m falling in love with you,” I told him, desperately, trying to coax some feeling out of him.
The whites in his eyes doubled. If we were in a cartoon, they would have rocketed out of his skull on stilts. “What? Evie? Seriously? What’s going on?”
Emotion raced up my throat, catching in the back of it. “I thought you really liked me…”
“I do like you. But…love…what? Are you crazy?”
“You were so nice at the party.”
“What party? What? When you were off your face? Well someone had to look after you. I didn’t know that meant you’d go all psycho…”
Everything I said bothered him more, like my words were stink bombs I was lobbing in his direction. “Fucking hell,” he muttered to himself, running his hands through his hair. “This is mental. You’re mental…”
That word. That ruddy word. Tears leaked from my eyes. I’d fought so hard to dodge it… He saw my tears. “Oh God, you’re not fucking crying now? I can’t handle this.” He stood up and put his T-shirt on. I cried harder.
Were these my options? Easy lay or mental? A lie, or alone? Were these the only options boys gave you? Was it mental to want someone to love you? Was it mental to want to be courted before you let a guy put an actual piece of his body inside your body? Was it mental to want a message after you’d kissed someone? Was it mental to want the most normal thing in the world – a relationship? One that didn’t make your heart feel like it was full of bogeys?
Was it mental to not want your heart stamped on until it shattered?
Or was it my fault? Had I just fallen for an alpha-
jerk, casting a lovely boy like Oli aside, because I was a screwed-up benevolent sexist and Amber was right all along?
Guy watched me cry with growing impatience.
“Evie, stop. My mum will be back soon.”
I let out a gulp. “You said they were at the theatre.”
“Well, they’re not. They’re out for dinner. They’ll be back by eight.”
I calculated it through my sobs and threw my hands down when I figured it out. “So, what was your plan? For after we’d had sex? To send me home once you’d got what you wanted?”
“No,” he said, but his face said yes.
My tears turned into angry ones. “You’re pathetic,” I said, knowing it was true but my ribcage still exploding. “I know you have more feelings than you’re letting on! You’re messed up!”
Guy just shrugged – his attitude towards everything. Shruggy-shrug shrug in a well-if-you-don’t-like-it-don’t-fancy-me way.
“And your band is really pants,” I added.
“Pants? What are you, twelve?”
“I’m going now.”
“Fair enough.”
No “please don’t”, no “I’ve made a horrible mistake”. No “but I’ve loved you ever since we played that game of conkers”.
Just a “fair enough”.
It wasn’t fair though. Feelings never are.
I gathered up my stuff and dashed in humiliation from his red smelly room.
Forty-two
I was filthy.
I couldn’t believe how contaminated I’d allowed myself to get. I ran home in the early winter darkness, skidding on ice, sobbing whenever I stumbled.
Filthy filthy filthy filthy filthy.
His duvet – duvet! It probably hadn’t been washed in months. Months! And that room, the smell! What had caused that smell?
I fled past street lights, ignoring them. I’d touched them all before and it’d done nothing. I wasn’t normal. Guy didn’t see something special in me. He just thought he was going to get laid.
He’d called me mental…
My foot slipped on a patch of black ice and my ankle twisted violently in on itself. I screamed and fell face down, my hands breaking the fall, grazing the pavement, scooping up gravel and dumping it inside my palms.
“No…”
I stayed there, splayed across the pavement and whimpered.
He’d touched me.
I’d let Guy’s filthy hands touch me. I could feel the imprints of his poking fingers all over my body – they throbbed with germs, with filth, with wrong. He’d known how to undo my bra. That meant he’d undone other bras. That meant his poking fingers had poked other girls. Did they have diseases? How would I know? Guy hadn’t asked me any questions about my sexual health before undoing my bra. That could only mean he hadn’t asked the other girls either.
BAD THOUGHT
You could have HIV now…
I whimpered once more and tried to get to my feet, wobbling like Bambi on the ice.
Reasonable thought
You won’t, Evie, you can’t catch it like that. You know that…
BAD THOUGHT
All right, herpes then? That’s contagious as hell and transmitted through touch.
BAD THOUGHT
And HPV. You’ll definitely have HPV now.
BAD THOUGHT
And you missed out on the jab for that because you didn’t trust them to sterilize the needles properly.
The dirty bits of my body throbbed again. I could feel the bacteria multiplying, the infections digging into my skin. What had I done? How had I allowed this to happen to me? I had to get home. I had to get clean. Now. Maybe if I was really quick I could stop all the germs in their tracks?
So I ran. With a busted ankle and two bleeding hands splattered with gravel, I ran.
Rose was in the hallway, her face blotchy as I exploded through the door.