Beside You

Chapter 10: Realising

Chapter 10: Realising

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I watched the way she played the ukulele, her eyebrows furrowed in concentration and her tongue poked out a little. She lifted her head to look at me, smiling as she did so. Her smile was so cute, it was genuine and reached her eyes.

Admittedly, she wasn’t the most popular girl in school, and neither was she the prettiest, but she was her own kind of pretty. That was why I liked her. She was different. Unique.

She would never know how I felt though. I could ask her out, but that would be stupid. It was obvious that she didn’t like me back. The way she looked at Calum was exactly the way I looked at her. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that she had a crush on him.

But this was high school. You get a crush on someone, they don’t like you back and you move on. So all I could do was to move on.

~*~

I wanted to make her happy. Okay so I was being stupid to offer to be her pretend boyfriend to make Calum jealous, but still, it would be a step closer to her. Even though I was putting myself in the biggest friend zone yet, but the moment the year nines made the assumption crazy thoughts started going through my brain.

Michael slammed his books down next to me.

“So are you two serious?” Michael asked.

“Me and Elaine? I think so. I really like her,” I added truthfully.

“You’re not just using her or whatever?”

“No! I would never use her for anything. Look dude, I really like her, I know it’s shitty to date your friend’s sisters but um…” I tried to make my brain think faster, “well things just happened…” I trailed off lamely.

“I’ll forget about the friend if thing if you promise to not break her heart.”

“Well I don’t think at our age we’re really old enough to break someone’s heart.”

“You’ll be surprised at how much you can like someone; you could end up loving someone before you know it and you can be pretty charming. So do you promise?”

“Yeah I promise, I wouldn’t dare to break her heart.”

Never ever.

~*~

I was debating in my head over and over again whether or not to take her hand. The thought was inviting, but what if she pulled away? But then again, in my defence, we’d held hands a lot over the last couple days. Only for show though. I finally decided to just go for it. I held my breath and then clasped her hand in mine.

I could feel myself growing pink while I asked her whether she’d had lunch. I thought it was a good idea until Calum and Maddie rocked up at Nando’s. It made it worse when Calum slid into the seat next to Elaine, leaving Maddie to sit next to me. I decided to focus my attention on my lunch instead. Barely anyone spoke, but occasionally I would grunt something.

As soon as I was finished I mumbled some excuses and then left Nandos with Elaine quickly. Man that was probably the worst date ever.

~*~

“I’ll go get some sleeping bags.” I went and found four sleeping bags. “You can sleep on my bed Elaine, seeing you’re the girl.”

“I’m fine sleeping in a sleeping bag,” she said. “I don’t want to hog your bed.”

“It’s fine.”

“Okay then… Um… could you lend me something to sleep in? It's just I don't think skinny jeans are the most comfortable things to sleep in. ”