Tessa in Love (14 page)

T
he end of exams brought a lot of parties and I went to all the official ones with my year. I stayed up through all the late nights and celebration, although I was used to being quiet and coupley now, and a lot of the time I just wanted to be home alone with Wolfie. But not everyone in my year would be staying on for A-levels, and this was precious time for us. The fact that we would be going in different directions made all my friendships feel suddenly closer. In the future, the truth was, we’d have to make an effort to stay in touch, which was something we’d never had to do before. There was a lot of crying and hugging and promising to be friends for ever, and I thought that, as painful as
this
was, it was nothing compared to what would be happening in a week between me and Wolfie. One important difference would soften the blow: we knew we’d be together again before the year was over – he would be back in the autumn. But I found the thought of separating from my new friends, Lara and Jane, very painful too. When I was growing up, I often sort of felt I was in the wrong crowd. I had some good friends, but I never felt right at the centre of the gang; I wasn’t quite, you know,
settled
with them. I sometimes felt myself pretending to laugh at things I didn’t find funny, or making out I liked bands or TV programmes more than I really did. But, with Lara and Jane, although I’d been intimidated by them to begin with, I felt they were much more on my wavelength; we had more interests in common and seemed to think the same things mattered. I knew we’d stay in touch because of Wolfie, but, in a way, I hoped they thought of themselves as my friends – because of who I was, not because I was their friend’s girlfriend. As they were going straight to university, not taking a year off like Chunk and Wolfie, they wanted to spend as much time with the boys as they could and, although Wolfie and I wanted to spend time on our own, we wanted to see them too. That was how we ended up spending our last night together with everyone.

It was Jane’s idea to go camping. It would just be the five of us – Matty didn’t want to go. In the after-exam parties, Matty and Jim Fisk had started to become a sort of item -perhaps it was more like friendship to begin with, when Matty was still getting over Lee, but lately it hadn’t been looking all that platonic. I hadn’t seen this coming and I was really pleased for both of them. Jim seemed to be happier about it than anyone I’d ever seen. When they were out together, he couldn’t stop looking at her – he was absolutely devoted. Matty, who’d been going out with Lee for too long, and had got used to him comparing her to other girls, was swept off her feet by Jim’s sweetness. I didn’t have much hope of attracting a girl like Matty to a night of lying in a rock hard field being eaten by flies, and Matty’s mum was dead against it anyway. Really, I just wanted to make sure she didn’t feel left out, because a few months before, when Wolfie and I were just starting out and she was coming to the end of her relationship with Lee, we’d sometimes found it hard to understand each other. It had shaken us both up. Now, we were beginning to get back on track – but more than that, we’d really started getting each other more and growing closer. Because I’d never had a boyfriend before, we’d always had the kind of friendship where Matty seemed to do all the living, and I advised her and loved hearing her stories, but didn’t really take part in the same way. These days we learned from each other and supported each other, and our friendship was once again one of the best and the most important things in my life.

‘You and I have all summer,’ Matty said. ‘You’ll be sick of me soon enough. Make sure you and Wolfie get away from the others, though. He’s
your
boyfriend, and you need some time. And give him my love.’

Chunk was allowed to borrow his dad’s car to take us to the field we were camping in, which was in the Peak District. My mum knew everyone, but she wasn’t mad about us being driven by someone so young and inexperienced, and demanded to have a word with him before we went – this involved her practically testing him on the entire Highway Code. I was incredibly embarrassed – Wolfie and the girls were making fun of him behind her back, as he stuttered his way through stopping distances. She also gave us a big stack of tupperware boxes of food, told me about thirty times to phone if we had any problems, and kissed me a lot. On the surface, she was so much cooler than Matty’s mum, but when it came down to it, mums were mums. Eventually, I just resigned myself to it, and let her go ahead, realising there was no point shrugging off her affection just to try to look cool.

‘My mum used to be the same,’ Lara whispered, when the car doors were shut.

The boys put up the tents. They wanted to. Lara, who’d been a Girl Guide and who, she revealed wickedly, had put up Wolfie’s tent for him the night he and I got back together, laughed quietly at them for doing it wrong and predicted the point when they’d admit they needed our help. The three of us girls were giggly and close, lying on our backs and watching the sun turning gold as it started to set, and I didn’t feel nervous at all with them, or young, the way I once had.

‘Thanks for letting us share him tonight, Tessa,’ Jane said. ‘You could have dragged him off for a private romantic evening. We’re going to miss him too. Both of them.’

‘No, we’ve really been looking forward to tonight,’ I said. ‘And how lucky are we with the weather? It’s the most beautiful night of the year. It’s perfect.’

‘You’ll still hang out with us this summer, without Wolfie, though?’ Lara said.

I paused before answering.

‘I know I’ve sometimes been a bit frosty with you,’ Lara went on, ‘but I was just annoyed with you for really pathetic reasons. I... Jane?’

‘Well . . . we’ve got a bit of a confession. And it’s definitely not true any more, so don’t worry. Lara was
sort of
annoyed at you for stealing Wolfie from me for a
tiny
bit,’ Jane said. ‘But he and I were never going to make a go of it.’

‘Before we
knew
you, though!’ Lara said quickly.

‘You
fancied Wolfie?’ I asked Jane. I was feeling sort of sick and scared, because everything I’d believed about Lara had been true – she really hadn’t liked me much for a while, though I’d thought it was because
she’d
liked Wolfie, not
Jane.
I sort of wanted to curl up and die, all my early fears of annoying them flooding back. More importantly, if Wolfie had known how Jane felt, would he have fancied her? Might we never have gone out? But I knew he loved me and these were crazy insecure things to think.

‘Well, for a bit,’ Jane said. ‘But you know, in a really stupid way. I didn’t do anything about it, and he always thought of me as a sister, and I feel the same about him now. He’s like my brother, I mean. And I’ve fancied other people since him and I ... but you know, Lara just thought you came out of nowhere, and she ...’

Lara took over. ‘I just thought you were a bit of a twinkie, you know? Sort of an airhead.’ I didn’t feel insulted, because she was grinning, her voice ready to crack up, and Jane was starting to giggle. ‘Because you’re so pretty and trendy, and I always thought Wolfie and Jane would end up together. I was totally wrong – you’re fab. And Wolfie’s so into you. God, I was stupid.’

Because she was making fun of me, I felt better. Do you know what I mean? She was relaxed enough to not come over all sugary and apologetic. I did like Lara’s bluntness. When people are straightforward, it’s easier to tell when they really mean something. She propped herself up, raising her eyebrows as she looked at me, careful to make sure I knew she wasn’t being hurtful. She was smiling and laughing, and soon, so was I.

‘Pretty and trendy, me? Are you crazy?’ I said. ‘Have you
seen
Jane?’

‘Yes, Jane’s beautiful, but I always knew how deep Jane was ... you, I thought...’ Lara laughed. ‘I’m actually insulting you again. Look, I get it now. I was an idiot.’

‘Hey, even
I
thought I was an airhead,’ I said, laughing. ‘God knows what Wolfie saw in me.’

‘We all know what Wolfie saw in you,’ Lara said. ‘You’re great.’

‘Yep,’ Jane said, nodding. ‘I always liked you anyway,’ she joked, looking pointedly at Lara.

‘Well, you’re both great too,’ I said. ‘And if Wolfie really thought of
you
like a
sister,
he’s stupider than even Lara thinks.’

Right on cue, one of their tents collapsed, and we all looked up and saw the two boys hidden in its folds, and laughed again.

‘No, but he and I have always just been friends,’ Jane said, taking my hand and squeezing it. ‘I swear.’

‘Thank you,’ I told her.

***

The guys joined us for the sunset, which was spectacular. We lay side by side watching it deepen and soften, then the stars began to show, then the sliver of a new moon. Chunk talked about how he was terrified of flying, and Wolfie talked about how much he’d miss all of us. He kind of choked up when he mentioned me, and stopped talking and rubbed my neck. Chunk and Jane and Lara kept on talking, and Wolfie and I looked at each other, and right at that moment I believed we knew exactly what the other was thinking. My eyes filled with tears. I suddenly had this horrible feeling of falling. I felt lost and sad and afraid of losing him forever, and I could see the same thing in his eyes. It was just incredibly intense: we wanted to hold each other really tightly, but we were still with everyone else, and we couldn’t. I thought about the way we’d spent that day together doing nothing and still not wanting it to end, and how for months and months to come, I’d be doing nothing
without
him.

‘I’m not worried about us,’ I said to him later, when we slipped off for a walk over the hillside on our own. ‘Remember Silver Day? I didn’t mention this at the time, but actually I consulted a fortune-teller, and ...’

‘When? Oh, not that creepy machine in the penny arcade?’

‘Yes.’

‘I saw you looking at that. I thought you were afraid of it.’

‘I was. That’s why what she said must be real,’ I said. ‘She was too scary to be just a machine.’

‘So what did she tell you?’

‘I’ll show you,’ I said, smiling up at him. I looked for the crumpled little slip in my purse, but it wasn’t there. I’d lost it sometime without realising it.

‘Oh my God, it’s gone!’ I said. ‘It said our love would last. Honestly it did. Oh no, do you think that’s a bad omen?’

‘Well,’ Wolfie said, putting his palms out, pretending to weigh up the possibilities in his hands. ‘On the one hand, you had that very important piece of documentation saying our love would last. . . but you’ve lost it. That is pretty serious. On the other hand ... I’m completely
nuts
about you, you superstitious looney!’ He put his hands on my face and kissed me. ‘I think we’re safe.’

The others fell asleep: we stayed up all night and watched the sunrise together. The birds went a little crazy beforehand, swirling and chirping in the navy blue sky. I closed my eyes, and leaned against him, the tiredness beginning to weigh my head down at last.

‘Are you really going to wait around for me?’ Wolfie asked.

‘Hm?’ I said, not opening my eyes.

‘I suppose it’s just started to occur to me that you may meet someone in the summer and forget what you feel about me right now,’ Wolfie said, sort of smiling, but without a trace of a joke in his voice. ‘And I suppose it’s just started to occur to me that I’m quite worried about that.’

‘Don’t!’ I said, amazed. ‘I won’t! You know how much I care about you.’

‘Yeah, sometimes I just have a hard time believing you’re for real,’ Wolfie whispered. ‘You’re the sweetest, cleverest, kindest person I’ve ever met. I don’t want to take any risk that might end up with me losing you. And I’ve signed up to this summer work without really thinking about that risk, and now I’m scared, and I feel like an idiot for not worrying enough about this before and for being so selfish and, even though I’ve worried about leaving
you
alone for the summer, I’m actually wondering now how I’m going to make it through four months without you.’

‘The time, you know, it’ll go like
that,’
I said, sleepily trying to snap my fingers, but just making them brush together.

‘Come here,’ he said, letting me curl up against his chest, holding me in both his arms, so I felt warm and safe and loved. When I woke up, I was in the same place, and Wolfie was awake, his lips resting on my forehead.

O
ur goodbye at the airport was much more stressful than our last night together. I was no more than a muscle away from crying at any time; Wolfie was tired and worried that he’d forgotten things; Chunk was late; we were all running around, panicking, trying to be normal with each other and failing. Chunk’s parents were there seeing him off and had given me and Wolfie a lift to the airport. But Wolfie’s dad hadn’t come – he only had me. That meant, of course, that we could be drippy and romantic and hold on to each other and say all the right things. But he was more worried about going than he wanted to say, I could tell, and it was making him distracted and even distant. Sometimes he’d sort of catch himself while he was looking up at the flight information boards – then he’d turn back to look in my eyes and, without saying a word, wrap his arms around me so tightly that I could hardly breathe and kiss my forehead.