Trouble (20 page)

As Jay shudders, I can feel it echoing in my own body. He’s running the back of his nails down the skin on my tummy, edging up the elastic on my pants as I tense up, knowing what happens next and not knowing all at once. Where is this going? Because this isn’t just some guy I’ve known for a few hours, a few days, a few weeks – this is Jay.

And there are very different rules for Jay. I think.

Our pants come off pretty quickly. As does my bra.

His fingers trace over every inch of my body, over my breasts, my sides and back up to my face. And then he stops and holds my face in his fingertips and looks me in the eye.

“Has anyone ever told you how gorgeous you are?”

I don’t say anything.

“You’re something special, Hannah.” He sweeps forward and kisses me on the forehead. Jay pushes me back on the bed and kisses me, his tongue pushing right into my mouth, before working his way down my body, and down and down and…

Oh. My. God.

I’m in a world of awesome as Jay leans over to get a condom out of his bedside drawer and pulls it on. As he pushes into me there’s a hiss of breath from both of us and it’s uncomfortable for a second, but then I find I’m trying to burrow into him, pushing back just as hard, kissing whatever bit of skin that comes close, my hands gripping his back, his shoulders, his bum… I’m not thinking about what I’m doing, I’m not trying to be good, not trying to think like he’s going to mark me out of ten. I’m just there, in it, feeling it, wanting it so much and then more and more and…

It’s over too soon. It wouldn’t have lasted long enough if it had lasted all night. I just want more of him than there is.

When he pulls out I deflate.

We curl up on our sides, our foreheads touching, a hand resting on the other’s body as we kiss and smile at each other, eyes lit up. There isn’t much talking. Mostly smiling, kissing, stroking. I feel a bit stiff – bruised almost, although it lessens as my heartbeat slows to something like normal. After a while, I slide my hand down his body. Then I slide down to join it. Jay doesn’t take much persuading when I come back up.

“I’m good to go if you are?” he says, running his hand across my thigh and chuckling as I sigh and roll my eyes back. I did not mean to do that, but it’s not like I have much control here. Around him I don’t need it.

Jay scrambles over me and opens his drawer.

“Shit.” He grabs his wallet open. “Fuck.”

“Yeah – that’s what I’m waiting for.”

“No condoms.”

This would be the point where I’d have some in my handbag or my pocket or my bra. Only I don’t. Jay climbs back next to me, frowning.

“Never mind,” I say. “You don’t need condoms to do this.” My hand goes straight down and I start again, kissing his neck until he relaxes. Soon we’re fooling around, kissing, stroking … and it feels good. This is enough, I tell myself firmly. This is totally enough.

But tomorrow Jay will pack up and leave for university. There’ll be no sneaking off to do this some other time unless I manage to go and visit him, but I can’t see that happening. There’s always the hope that Jay will come home one weekend but…

It feels so good to be this close to him. Why do I want more than this?

“We could…” I start to say, then stop. Jay stops what he’s doing, but I shake my head. “Don’t stop.”

He starts up again. It feels amazing. I close my eyes and shuffle down until I can feel him hard against me, then I slip up and under and around until he’s almost…

“Hannah.” Jay pulls away, but I shift so he’s trapped and I look him in the eye.

“I’m clean, I promise.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Jay says. “Tell me you’re on the pill or something.”

I nearly do. I so want that to be the truth.

“You could pull out, or I could take the morning-after pill,” I say hopefully, twisting my hips so he can feel me against him. It’s killing me, being this close.

“I could…” He edges in, just a little, and I bite my lip in ecstasy. I want this so much. “Or you could…”

Out again.

“We could…”

In again.

“But…”

Out.

“Please, Jay.”

In. All the way.

“Have it your way,” he mutters, before we stop being able to say anything at all.

The second time is better than the first. Longer, slower, more intense. There is no one I trust more than Jay and, just like I asked, he pulls out.

And so it ended now, him pulling away, his hands warm from holding me. How did a kiss turn into Jay – the first boy that I’ve loved, that I
still
love – telling me that he can’t do this with me, that everything that’s happened was a mistake? How did a kiss turn to this? To nothing but silence? I was so stupid to hope things were about to change… The tears I’m crying as I stare out of his car window are no longer for my baby, for my family or for Jay – they’re for me.

Because tonight I have learned that Jay is not the boy I thought he was and, as it turns out, Aaron isn’t quite the boy I thought he was either.

Two let-downs in one night is more than I think I can handle.

SUNDAY 14
^TH
FEBRUARY
HALF-TERM

AARON

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on with you and your missus, or are you just going to sit there and lose at cards?” Neville says. If I hadn’t already moved our “date” from Friday, I would have cancelled – but even sitting here with a cracking headache, losing every hand and wondering whether I’ll bump into Hannah is better than the wrath of a Neville scorned.

“Hannah’s not my missus.”

“She’s carrying your baby, sunshine. That makes her something more than a friend.”

“Whatever,” I say and slump back in the chair and gingerly touch the bridge of my nose. My face hurts. So does my hand. “It’s not mine.”

Did I really just say that? I open my eyes to see whether Neville heard me, but there’s nothing wrong with his hearing aid and he’s looking at me keenly, waiting.

“You absolutely
cannot
tell
anyone
this. Not the pretty nurse you gossip with when she checks your blood pressure, not the receptionist when you try and charm your way outside.” I look at him seriously. “And especially not Hannah’s gran.”

Neville’s looking at me under lowered brows. White wiry hairs emerge from the tangle like antennae and they quiver as he stares at me.

“I know how to keep a secret.”

Possibly – provided he remembers it’s a secret he’s meant to be keeping. I guess it’s too late now anyway.

“We’ve never had sex.” Neville frowns, waiting. “I offered to pretend to be the father to help her out – to protect her from everyone at school, to give her support in front of her family.” But that’s not why I offered. “I offered because I wanted to help her. I wanted to do something meaningful.”

Neville slurps his coffee, working his jaw as he thinks over what I’ve just said. “‘Meaningful’. That’s a telling word.”

“What do you mean?” I expected him to ask about the real father. I didn’t expect this.

“You think there’s something meaningful in helping out a girl in a way no sensible boy ever would. You two barely knew each other at the start of the year and yet you signed up for this?”

“Hannah needed helping and I need to help – I need to feel like I can do something that matters, like there’s a reason—” I stop myself.

“A reason for what?”

I can’t tell him. I can’t tell anyone.

“Nothing,” I say. “I just wanted to help her out. I like Hannah. A lot.”

Neville raises his eyebrows and I tut.

“Not like that.” Probably not like that. “She’s special.”

“Not special enough if she don’t know the daddy of her babby.”

“Stop it.” I know he was only joking, and I don’t mean for my voice to sound so harsh, but after last night… I’m glad it’s half-term. Dad asked if I’d help him fix the fence and there’s my cousin’s wedding at the weekend. I’ve enough excuses to avoid Hannah until I can get my head straight and be the person she wants me to be.

Neville stands up, joints popping, his movements stiff. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, boy.” He looks down at me. “But one day you’ll realize she’s not the only one who needs a friend. And, when you do, you’ll know I’m here for you. You might think you’re good at hiding whatever it is that’s troubling you, but you’re not as good as you think.”

“There isn—”

“Now get off your arse and help an old man walk to the toilet, will you? I need a piss.”

SATURDAY 20
^TH
FEBRUARY
HALF-TERM

AARON

We get lost on the way there. I’m not surprised since Mum refuses to buy a satnav and Dad gets so carsick he can’t read a map. So it’s down to me to look up our location on my phone and navigate us to the church.

Cousin Sarah’s wedding. Had Dante experienced any of my mum’s family get-togethers, I’m sure that he’d have allocated a tenth ring of hell for such occasions. Mum is stressing out so much that the steering wheel is less a tool with which to direct the car and more a prop around which she can curl her shoulders as she snarls at hedgerows and passing pheasants. Dad has wisely reverted to silence after the map debacle. All three of us are aware that we are walking into an afternoon of whispers and “concern”, when distant relatives will stare at me as if I’m about to break down on the spot.

It has been agreed that no one needs to know that I’m a pseudo-sire to a school friend’s child as well. My parents know that I know who it is, but I’ve not given them his name.

Jay.

I want to be angry with him. I want to think that he took advantage of Hannah. But this is
Hannah
and I remember very clearly what she said the night I pulled Tyrone off her:
No one can make me do anything I don’t want to do … least of all that
.

In all the time I’ve known her, there hasn’t been a single time when I’ve questioned that statement. Not even now.

A week after I found out, instead of being angry with Jay, I find that I’m angry with Hannah.

TUESDAY 23
^RD
FEBRUARY

HANNAH

“Aaron’s here!” Robert calls up the stairs.

“Aaron!” Lola screeches from inside the bathroom and comes running out in her bathrobe, all pink from the bath, leaving Mum kneeling by the bathtub, giving me a look as if I was supposed to stop her. I hear Lola launch herself at Aaron and I peer over the banister to see him hugging her before putting her down and shooing her back up the stairs before him.

“… past your bedtime?” I hear as he gets nearer.

“It’s story time now,” Lola replies, then she turns and grabs his hand. “You can read to me. Two chapters of
Mr Gum
.”

“One chapter, Lolly,” Mum says and looks at Aaron. If you drew a fat black question mark above her head her thoughts couldn’t have been clearer.

“Mum, Aaron’s—” I start to say, but Mum cuts me off with a look and Lola wins, as always.

I go and wait in my bedroom, notes spread out on my bed and Post-its ready to be peeled off and stuck in the right pages of my study guide. I shouldn’t resent him spending time with Lola, but I do. Aaron was someone who was meant to be mine. He’s
my
friend, doing something amazing for
me
, not a stand-in brother for Lola, not another person to help Mum out. By the time he comes in I’ve worked myself into a pretty dark mood.

“Sorry. She insisted on another chapter. I didn’t know what to do so I just carried on for one more and then she was half-asleep anyway.”

“Explains why you took so long,” I say and turn away.

“Yes, that’s why I just said it – I was explaining.” He sits down on my swivel chair and looks at my notes scattered everywhere. “Where do you want to start?”

I shrug. Now Aaron’s here to help with my revision, all I want to do is strop at him. I want a fight with someone.

Actually, I want a fight with Aaron since he avoided me all last week. When I told him how things were with Jay – and when it all started – it was down the phone. Not exactly ideal. I expected him to say something. I don’t know what. Maybe I thought he’d tell me that he was there for me? Or that he understood? That it didn’t change things? But he said nothing at all.

Then he went away to some wedding and, now he’s back, it’s as if we never had that conversation. And he’s here for me. He seems to understand. As if nothing’s changed at all.

“What have you got so far?” he asks.

When I hand him my latest notes, half of them slide out of my hand so he has to pick them up from the floor and I resist the temptation to scuff them about with my foot. Aaron skim reads what I’ve done.

“It’s a good start, but I think you need to explore the relationship between truth and belief a little bit further.” And he’s off on one, talking about the book like it’s something he really cares about.

I glower at him as he talks. He’s really good-looking, which annoys me. I thought he was quite cute when he started, but he’s had a haircut since and the more you know him, the better he looks. Some boys are like that, aren’t they? I guess personality has a lot to do with attractiveness, which is why when you get to know half of them they instantly become less fit.

“Aaron?” I cut across whatever he’s saying.

“Hm?”

“What happened at the wedding you went to?”

He shrugs. “My cousin got married. Mum got a bit drunk. Dad danced. Badly.”

“Were there girls there?” I’m not sure what’s making me go in this direction, but there’s something niggling away at me.

“Uh-huh.”

“Pretty ones?”

“I guess.” Aaron’s looking at the book, deliberately not looking up at me and I see him swallow, just once and I know. I just
know
.

He so pulled someone at the wedding.

AARON

So I pulled someone at the wedding. So what? It’s not as if I’m going to see her again.