Chapter Two
Darren
Robbie had always been my best bud. He was great, and He was aproper laugh, too. I remembered how we were inseparable as youths. We had never wanted to leave each other, and apparently it was very ‘cute’.
I looked to the girl to my left and saw all the qualities I admired in Robbie, as well as added bonuses. Jamie was kind, clever, and mature, but at the same time she knew how to be a teenager. She was pretty, definitely pretty, and she watched her weight without even trying. She didn’t get obsessive about things, for example; her weight, but she always worked hard to get what she wanted. She was… determined.
I’d always thought that I would fall in love with my best friend. Robbie was my best friend, but I would refuse to love him in any other capacity than a friend. Jamie was the girl version of Robbie and I loved her. However, it was just sisterly love. And I was always so annoyed with myself because of it! I was furious with my heart for making me feel nothing but brotherly affection towards Jamie. I couldn’t even put my finger on why I couldn’t lust her, too!
I smiled as I pulled up outside the familiar house. I had experienced everything here, from my first steps to my first time. That was a funny story!
Robbie had decided to host a party while his parents had been out of town. Jamie had bartered. She would keep her mouth shut if she were allowed to come along and invite some of the folk from her year to this party of the month. I laughed quietly as I remembered how Robbie had grudgingly agreed, and then spent the lead up to the party complaining how it would suck having third years at a fifth year party. However, it didn’t suck at all – the party was great, and I got together with Olivia.
Olivia was in the year below me, and we hit it off straight away (with the confidence boost that you only get once downing a crate of Bulmers as fast as humanly possible). She was gorgeous, truly a stunning specimen, and was really confident, which was strangely attractive. And the confidence wasn’t totally fabricated by alcohol. She walked into the house shaking the snow from her hair casually, removing her leather jacket and hanging it up on a coat peg with her friends flocking around her. She took in her surroundings and smiled the most amazing smile you will ever see as she noticed all the lads that had noticed her enter gawking at her.
She had super long tanned legs that were bare. She wore a skimpy yellow silk dress that barely covered her arse. However, there was no possibility of it flying up as she danced, because it was elasticised at the bottom. Her bust protruded over the top of her dress, making her boobs look amazing. Her one -inch heels were black with a yellow sole that made her stand out. She took her phone out of a pocket hidden in the folds of her dress and checked the time. She smiled and put her phone back in her pocket and turned to her friends. By this stage most of the boys had managed to put their eyeballs back in their sockets and dragged their lolling tongues away from this new arrival, and Robbie snapped me out of it.
“Oh Lord. Olivia is here? I never knew she was coming!” He had shout/whispered. Olivia was like royalty at Balerno High, and it was amazing for her to be at Robbie’s party. She had made her way through the crowd and straight for us. She congratulated Robbie on the party then asked me for a dance, pulling at my shirt and leading me to the garden where the music was being played.
We danced all night long, until Olivia brushed her lips against mine and then started pulling me back into the house where we… well, we got pretty busy.
Olivia and I never got together, to her apparent disappointment, but what was I going to do about it? I couldn’t trust that she’d get drunk and go to a random party and have a random shag with a random bloke. And I didn’t want to sleep with her, because I didn’t want a STD, to be perfectly honest with you.
“You coming in?” asked Jamie, bringing me back to the present.
“Umm, sure. I need a chat with Robbie.”
“Dude,” she laughed, “you were on the phone to him last night!”
“So I was,” I said, laughing along with her. I took the keys out the ignition and opened the door to my car, jogging around and catching the door before Jamie did. My mother had always taught me to be a gentleman, and that constituted opening the door for a bird getting out your car.
“Thanks,” Jamie said, smiling at me as she delicately got out the car. Her smile was truly amazing, and one of her many best features.
“No problem,” I told her, flashing a grin back at her. I cocked an eyebrow as I noticed how her eyes glazed over and she stopped moving. Was she ever going to get out of the car?
As I waited for her, I really looked at her – the girl I had grown up with. I had seen her through all her problems in life, and I helped whenever I could. From dealing with braces (she had complained because she’d ‘just look like the average nerd’) to her first kiss (I was quite unhelpful there, seeing as I couldn’t exactly show her, even though I wanted to, just to see…).
The thing that bugged me was that I could feel nothing more than brotherly love towards her. It was destroying me – and I couldn’t explain it. I wanted to feel jealously when that Chester dude was ‘chatting her up’ in the maths classroom, but I didn’t. Maybe it was because I knew there was no chance in hell Jamie would fall for him, or maybe it was because I didn’t care who Jamie dated. No, scratch that, I did care. I cared very much. I wanted Jamie to be happy, with someone I approved of, who wasn’t going to muck her around. I wanted her to be with someone that loved her with all his heart, and I wanted her to love him the same way. I didn’t want Jamie to experience heartbreak – not now, not ever.
A loud cough brought me back to the present, and I looked around, finding Jamie standing next to me, looking at me like I was mental. I was still holding the car door open for her.
“Umm, what are you doing, Darren?”
I was wondering why I can’t love you as anything more than a brother, I thought. But I could never say that to her – even if I did love her like that, there was no guarantee she loved me the same way. So I had to think of another excuse for my slow reactions.
“I was trying to demonstrate how the world would get nothing done if we did things at snails pace, as you did, getting out that car,” I told her, flashing her one of my winning smiles.
Again, her eyes glazed over, like she was thinking about something, someone, she loved.
Come on, heart, make me feel, I thought. Then I did feel. I felt happiness – happiness that she was happy and loved something or someone.
Returning once again to the present, I closed the car door as Jamie said, “are you coming in? Robbie’s been desperate to see someone his age – there’s only been me recently.”
“Yeah, sure,” I replied, smiling at the prospect of seeing my bud again. I’d been at so many interviews for University recently, as had Robbie, and we’d hardly had the time to see each other. Jamie led the way to her house, opening the black rusted gate with peeling paint and up the stone steps to her white front door. The garden was wild, with perfectly green, even grass only three centimetres long, but wild bunches of lavender and a hedge that needed shaped. A green shrub spilled over the fading orange wall and it looked like it was trying to reach the pavement to escape. The beds were a burst of all different colours, thousands of different kinds of plants and flowers with a few rose bushes hidden in the mess too. In the height of summer, the garden smelt delicious.
Jamie opened the front door and wandered in, calling out a greeting as she flung her coat into the hall. The hall was packed full of coats and bags with no noticeable order or any sort of organisation. Everyone would walk in and throw their coats and bags on the bench pressed against the wall. Some would land on the bench; some would land on one of the many hooks on the wall. There was a high seat/stool thing that was placed beside a phone attached to the wall, I had often come home to find Jamie perched daintily on that seat, chatting away to Tiff, or her Dad if he was away on business.
Wait rewind… Did I just call this place my home? I suppose it was kind of my home. I had spent so much time here, and I loved the house with its craziness and chaos. Well, what’s that saying? ‘Home is where the heart it’. My heart definitely lay here, with all the people I loved.
I strolled into the living room that I had spent the majority of my childhood in. It never changed. The wacky personality of the house was what I loved most of all about it. The walls were a pale lemon colour, but it looked amazing in the sunlight – especially at sunset. The blue sofas were low and squishy – if you sat in them you would just sink. I had always sat on them and prayed the sofa would just devour me so that I would never have to leave. The TV was flat screen and fastened to the wall. The dining table was Japanese style – a low, square table with cushions situated all around it. There were no computers downstairs, but upstairs there were three laptops; one for Mr Black, one for Darren and one for Jamie. Even though the Black’s house was full of odd, mismatched furniture and Japanese style dining rooms, but Mr Black always had enough money to spoil his kids the perfect amount.
I had sometimes thought that Mr Black had made sure to always have enough to give his children the chance to get whatever they wanted (within reason, of course) because he couldn’t give them their biological mother. However, neither Jamie or Darren could complain – Mr Black had mourned for nearly five years before getting on with his life and re-married the previous summer to Sam, a woman that had a twenty year old sister, Claire, who regularly visited. When Claire was about, it meant girl time for Jamie, and a gorgeous girl to flirt with for Darren. And, my God, was Sam’s sister hot!
Oh, speak of the devil…
“You’re looking as gorgeous as ever,” I complimented the beautiful Claire who was sitting on the sofa with her back to me and talking to Robbie. I smiled cockily as she spun around in shock at my arrival.
Clutching her heart, she said, “Darren, you scared me! Hello, how have you been?”
Robbie winked at me, as I gave Claire the once over. Her blonde hair was shoulder length, and her fringe made her face seem rounder. She was wearing a long, blue loose top and a pair of those hideous leggings that looked like jeans – jeggings or something. Her feet were wrapped up in a fluffy pair of white slippers, keeping her feet warm.
“All the better, now I’ve seen your lovely face, Claire. And what about you?”
“I’m engaged!” she squealed, waving her glittering finger at me. Great, another beautiful goes over to the dark side of marriage, while the rest of mankind have to suffer at the loss of another great body that is unattainable.
“Lucky man!” I said, trying to be enthusiastic. I looked at Robbie and he was pretending to cry behind Claire’s back. I felt the same way and so I slyly nodded in agreement. “So, are you just here to tell Sam?”
“Yeah, but she’s working right now,” Claire told me, nodding her head.
“Can I hear the story? Is this the guy you’ve been dating for two years now? Pete, or something?” Jamie asked/called from the kitchen.
“Yeah! Wait ‘till you hear the story, it’s so cute!” And with that, Claire jumped up from the sofa and proceeded into the kitchen to chat to Jamie.
I sat on the sofa next to Darren and asked him about university.
“I dunno where I’m going yet. I got a few conditionals, and I had some interviews that I went to, but only one unconditional, but that was from Essex, and I’d rather stay in Scotland, to be honest,” Darren said. He was going to do a course in drama, because he was excellent in it. “I’ve got rehearsals for Peter Pan too, so I’ve been busy with that.”
“Well, at least one good thing comes out of that…” I said, tailing off and winking at Robbie.
“Yeah, it’s great I can add the role of Peter to my CV!” he said, not catching on.
“Dude, I meant your blatant love for Tiffany Gold, and the whole ‘thimble’ scene!”
“I – I don’t love Tiff! I mean, I – she, pretty, but – it – yeah, but – thimbles are for sewing – and – well, the thing is – umm…”
“Dude,” I laughed, “can you hear your self? You’re stuttering with embarrassment, you’ve gone beetroot red, and you grin like a maniac every time you see her or her name is mentioned. Will you please just ask her out!”
“It’s more difficult than that! She’s Jamie’s best mate, and if, by some small chance Tiff and I did get together, and it went wrong, it could jeopardise Jamie’s friendship with her, and the fact that we’re acting together too, if we had a fall-out, that would mess up the whole play, and it’s just generally better if I didn’t do anything. Don’t pressurise me, Darren, I won’t change my mind.”
Stupid idiot, why couldn't he just man up, remember he had balls and get on with it.