lewis
Paul and I were sat in the Sixth Form common room on Monday morning before class. He was telling me everything about Rebecca Andrews's party, and telling me only the good things about the girl he had managed to kiss.
There was something different about my best friend. His eyes were brighter and his smile was wider. It seemed as though the party had changed him somehow.
After I left, Rebecca had finished off a bottle of wine and got started on the vodka. The alcohol diffused some of her bitchiness but there had been something off about her behaviour. Paul had known that it was down to me leaving, but everybody else just assumed she was PMSing or just feeling more of a bitch than usual.
The girl Paul had swapped numbers with was a university student. She was friends with somebody in our year at school and was home for the weekend. They had been texting since the party and they were planning on meeting up next weekend. Paul was smitten.
He was finishing up his story when the doors to the common room crashed open and in walked Rebecca Andrews, followed by three of her friends. She was wearing sunglasses despite the thick layer of clouds that covered the sky, and her hair was tied messily on top of her head.
The four of them settled into the sofas at the far end of the room. They all fell into the soft bottoms of the old couches, and their loud chatter immediately filled the air.
Rebecca removed her sunglasses and her eyes met mine. I tried to look away but there was something about her appearance that kept pulling me back. She looked different. Tired, maybe. I tried to shake it off. She probably had a rough weekend and still trying to recover.
Yeah, that was probably it.
But then it hit me. She wasn't wearing any makeup. And she was always wearing makeup. Even two years ago when the entire school had participated in sports day and was required to run laps around the school ground as a warm up, she still had neatly applied eyeliner and a face covered in foundation.
Paul was still talking, only he had moved onto the latest video game he was playing. I nodded along, barely absorbing what he was saying, as Rebecca was still maintaining eye contact.
"So what did you get up to on Friday night?" he asked, noticing that I wasn't listening to him talk about the new Spiderman game. "You never said."
"I met Poppy in town," I said, shrugging as though it was no big deal. Which obvious he saw right through since most of our weekends involved melting into beanbag chairs and staring at a screen.
"You? In a club?"
"It wasn't really a club," I told him. "It was a bar with a stage. A band was playing. It was fun."
"Fun?" he asked, frowning. "You left Rebecca Andrews's party for fun?"
I looked across the room, over his shoulder, to make sure she didn't hear her name. She didn't, thankfully. Her friend was too busy dramatically throwing her arms in the air as she told them a story.
"Yeah. Well, it was more than fun."
He sensed the change in my tone and stared at me, his eyes bugging out of his head as he waited for me to continue.
"She's just so cool," I told him. "Like, she's hot. Don't get me wrong, but she's just cool. Like all these girls are just clones of each other. They think the same things and they wear the same things. Poppy's different. So is Faye. They must have missed the girl-brainwashing day or something."
"So did you?" he said, throwing a wink at me.
"I don't kiss and tell."
His jaw dropped but he quickly shut it and smiled. "Yes, man."
I thought he was going to high five me over the table but thankfully he didn't. The room was beginning to fill with our classmates and we didn't need people staring at us.
I didn't tell Paul how I hadn't replied to Poppy's message over the weekend. She had text me just after I had crawled into bed on Friday night, or should I say Saturday morning, making sure that my drunk ass had got home safe. I had read the message late on Saturday after I had woken up gasping for water and in dire need of paracetamol. But something in me couldn't reply. I had very little recollection of the night before and couldn't bare to think that I had said something to her.
It had been almost a year since Maisy and I had broken up, and the thought of getting close to a girl and not remembering it... It made my head hurt more than the hangover that was pounding against my skull.
"I'm gonna head to class," I said, reaching under the table for my backpack. "I need to talk to Miss Jensen beforehand. See you in PE?"
He nodded, and I left before Rebecca could put herself next to me at the table.
The corridors were empty. Younger students were still in their form rooms, shouting 'here' to the register. I made my way to the science block and found Miss Jensen's classroom empty. I knocked on the half open door, regardless.
"Hello?" a voice came from inside the small closet on the other side of the room. The closet houses all of the glass beakers, scalpels, Bunsen burners and other science equipment.
I pushed the door open and Poppy's head appeared in the closet doorway.
"What are you doing here?" I asked, as she asked me the same question.
She shook her head and stepped into the classroom. "I was just returning a text book I borrowed."
Plausible. "Is Miss Jensen here?" I asked, though the second the question left my lips I knew it was a stupid question. She obviously wasn't.
"She's in the staff room."
Poppy looked smaller, somehow. She was all the way across the room, which probably had something to do with it. But the oversized sweatshirt she was wearing, I soon realised was all she wore to school, drowned her. I wanted to see the slight curve of her hip, and the small rise on her chest, like I had on Friday night.
She leaned against one of the tables, pulling the cuffs of her sweatshirt over her palms. She frowned. "You never text me back."
I looked at my shoes. They were once bright white, but time and mud had slowly taken their toll.
"I don't drink," I said. "Saturday was mainly dedicated to not dying, and Sunday... I don't have an excuse for Sunday. I know I should have replied, but I was scared I did something or said something when I was drunk. I don't know. I'm sorry."
She shrugged and smiled. "No biggie. You were pretty wasted."
"Hey!" I shrieked. "You were drunk, too!"
She stepped forward slowly, her Doc Martens smacking against the tiled floor. "But I can handle my drink."
She was inches away from me when she stopped moving. I could smell the peppermint gum she was chewing, mixed with the sweet scent of the gloss on her lips.
"So you don't remember Friday?" she whispered.
I shook my head. "Not all of it."
I could remember my new found confidence, and our kisses. After the drummer joined our table, things got pretty hazy. We must have had cocktails at some point during the night because I woke up with a small paper umbrella in my jeans pocket. But that was as far as I could get.
She pressed her lips together and examined my face. "You really don't remember." It wasn't a question. She was reading my blank, helpless expression. "Let me jog your memory."
She was stretching up, closing the gap in our heights as she stood on her tiptoes. She was about to press her lips against mine when Miss Jensen crashed into the classroom, oblivious to what she was interrupting.
Poppy and I quickly stepped apart as Miss Jensen set a very full coffee cup on her desk and straightened out today's see-through blouse. She was either unaware that the guys in her classes perved on her chest, or she just didn't care enough to wear a jumper over her shirts.
"Lewis," Miss Jensen said. "And Poppy. Getting some morning studying in?" There was a knowing look on her face, a small twitch in the corner of her smile that spoke volumes.
My cheeks burned red. I wanted to run down the corridor, and down the main school driveway and not stop until I reached home.
"Um, I was just returning that textbook," Poppy said, throwing her thumb over her shoulder towards the storage cupboard.
"You're both doing a great job," Miss Jensen continued. "Really though. Poppy, your grades are getting better by the week. Both of you, keep up the good work."
"Ha, thanks Miss." Poppy strode out of the classroom without looking back. I watched her disappear through the door to the stairwell before I forced myself to turn to Miss Jensen.
She was leaning on her desk, her long fingers stretched around her coffee. "What can I do for you, Mr Fletcher?"