The Art of Letting Go (The Uni Files) (7 page)

Later.

I am still hanging, and I am still thinking of what could have happened. I am full of remorse, but I am not sure if it is remorse at what did or didn’t happen.

I think I would have done it, a couple more minutes in that hallway and I would have been undone. I can’t remember the last time I felt like that. Felt like I was being consumed by fire.

I am not sure I ever have before.

I have not seen Ben today although I can hear him moving about his room with my stalker hearing.

I am not the only one feeling remorse. Meredith is having a rather large dose herself. I found her earlier being sick in her sink.

“So did you?” I ask, crash-landing on her bed.

“Lilah!”

“Well did you?”

“No.”

“Really?” I lean up on my elbow to study her.

“No, really! I passed out.”

She looks really sheepish and I completely wet myself.

“It’s not funny! It’s embarrassing!” She elbows me.

“Don’t worry, Mer. If he thinks you’re worth it, he’ll wait for the right time.”

“Will he?”

I know Tristan. He is a bit of a ladies’ man, but he definitely seems keen this time. Well, he
has
seen her twice. That is keen for Tristan. But then there is the small issue of the age gap. He is quite a bit older, chronologically speaking, although he does possess the mental and emotional capacity of a fifteen-year-old.

She jumps up to be sick again, and I doze to the lovely sound of my friend retching her guts up.

“What about you?” she asks, returning to a horizontal position next to me, wiping her face on what appears to be a T-shirt.

“What?”

“Um, smoochie smoochie in a boothie.”

“I can’t believe you just tried to make that rhyme.”

“Well?”

“Well, stuff happened but not everything.”

I would say that it had been pretty bloody close. There had been hands in inappropriate places—very inappropriate.

I am going to hide under my duvet today. I will face Ben tomorrow. Tomorrow I will be the grown-up, mature woman I am supposed to be.

30th September

Or tomorrow I will just giggle all day like a teenager. Every time Ben talks to me I break down into hysterical girly giggles. It’s embarrassing and mortifying and everything in-between.

“Lilah, do you want to work on that source together?”

Giggle, giggle, and giggle.

“Lilah, can I borrow your Athens book?”

Giggle, giggle, and giggle.

“Lilah, do you prefer ketchup or mayonnaise?”

Giggle, giggle, and giggle.

Okay, I am not giggling anymore. John has just texted me. He wants to see me on Friday. What on earth am I going to do? I really don’t want to see him. I don’t want to admit that none of this is real, that I have a life outside of the walls of this campus where giggling is foreign to me.

I want this to be my reality.

What am I going to say when he asks me what I have been doing at Uni? The beginning of Uni has not gone at all the way I expected. I have learnt nothing about history whatsoever. The only thing I have learnt is that I am an outrageous lush who will soon be arrested for indecent behaviour in public if I carry on the way I am.

October

1st October

Has it really been just over two weeks at University? I feel like I am in a crazy bubble. An alternative reality, completely removed from my existence before. My life could be lived to a Taylor Swift album right now. If my life was ever made into a movie that is all there would be: Taylor Swift belting away in the background a song for every day that I sit here on my bed listening to Ben through the wall. She would croon about all sorts of teenage love and angst.

Ugh! I am not a teenager, I am nearly twenty-frickin-six!

Maybe it is not just my brother who finds mental maturity challenging. I need to stop drinking so much and snogging people, then I would not be having these issues.

Today I waited for Ben after class. Okay, I did not wait for him exactly. I slowed my pace right down so that effectively I would be walking just in front of him as we left the room. Then I looked up in surprise as if to say,
Oh hey! Fancy bumping into you here by the
door! Let’s walk across campus together so I can walk in puddles of my own drool.

He knows my moves, though, and he just grinned at me and took my folder.

I giggled the whole way to the library.

Yeah, I am really mature.

2nd October

5.00 p.m
.

It was a group effort at the library this afternoon. I did no studying at all. Well, not of any books.

The study desks in the library are the kind with the built-in shelves, so you feel like you are sitting in a cupboard. I had maturely gathered all the books I needed and propped them on my shelf, feeling all very big, important, and highly intellectual.

I had chosen a desk, and Ben took the one opposite, so basically we are facing each other, apart from the weird cupboard thing blocking my view.

Or so I think. Then, after about a half an hour of playing footsie, and trying not to giggle, I realise that I can see his reflection in the window. The bright October sunshine is streaking through the super-sized window turning the top floor of the library into a greenhouse, and he is staring right at me in the window. And he probably has been the entire time, waiting for my pitifully slow brain to catch on. He winks when he realises that I can finally see him. I go bright red and the temperature of the room cranks up about a million degrees. He giggles and pretends to concentrate on his reading, writing the odd note down in a battered notebook.

I spend the next hour doing some serious Ben studying. I am pretty sure that when it comes to the final exam, if there is a paper on the theme of “Ben” I will get a First. My parents would be so proud.

Question One: What is the exact colour of Ben Chamber’s hair?

Answer: Black, with a slight hint of chestnut in the sunshine.

Question Two: What is the subject’s trainer of choice?

Answer: Converse, with no preference on colour and not necessarily coordinated with an outfit.

Question Three: Where is Ben Chamber’s slightly crooked tooth positioned?

Answer: Right incisor. He sometimes taps it with a biro when thinking.

And so on.

5th October

I am just finishing my study (I read a paragraph, it’s better than nothing) and putting my folders and books away when there is a knock on my door.

“Yep,” I shout, expecting Meredith.

I have to see John tonight. And, well, quite frankly, I don’t want to. Simple.

I watch the door open and am slightly taken a back to see Ben. Over the last few days I have struggled to make conversation with him. What do you say to someone when you have ripped their clothes off in a cab but now have to live next to them acting like it didn’t happen? It sort of limits the conversation, so I’ve stuck to “mature” forms of communication like giggling at him and staring.

A lot.

“Hey.” Ben’s blues twinkle at me and the freckles crinkle.

I just stare for a moment. I keep visualising him with his shirt undone—it’s kind of distracting.

“I wondered what you were doing. I thought perhaps we could have that date we talked about, if you fancy it?”

Fancy it? I would love it!

But then I remember what I am supposed to be doing tonight.

Bugger!

“Shit! Sorry, Ben, I have other stuff going on.”

A moment of silence hangs between us... He knows what I am doing. Then he says something I am not expecting.

“Are you pissed off with me about what happened at Fez?”

I jump up to walk over to him.

“No! What on earth are you talking about?”

His hand slides down to mine, and our fingers entwine. It is the most natural feeling in the world.

“I just thought maybe I overstepped some boundaries, you know, in the cab? You have been giggling and acting really odd this week—well, odder than usual.”

I flush instantly, remembering what the overstepping of the boundaries involved and the subsequent giggling.

He runs a finger along my heated cheeks. “I did overstep them, didn’t I?”

“No, you didn’t. I would have overstepped them completely, if I had been able to.”

He stoops a little so he can look me in the eye. “I would have, too.” The blues crinkle at me.

“I’ll see you tomorrow then, Lilah,” he calls as he heads out of my door.

The way he says my name, so low and intense, makes my stomach completely flip over.

What the hell am I doing? Seriously, what am I doing?

Sod it. I am going to tell Ben that a date sounds like a really good idea.

6th October

12.45 a.m.

I have just managed to say a chaste goodbye to Ben at my door. By chaste I mean there was definitely kissing and fumbling but clothes remained intact and fastened. That’s chaste, right?

What a date!

Seriously, if that was a first date, then what would a second date be like, or a third? Or, I don’t know, what would forever be like, if I got to wake up with him every day?

I can’t think now. Need to sleep. Sleep good. Think tomorrow.

The Date

A date done Ben-style is unlike any I have ever known. It blows any other first date completely out of the water.

It’s a good thing I said yes. He made it sound spontaneous, but I think he must have gone to a lot of effort. Well, a lot of organising effort.

Ben navigates us through the public transport system, the whole time not telling me where we are going. We end up outside a pub that looks a little on the dodgy side, right in the heart of Borough Market. He walks calmly up to the door and pushes through, exuding an air of confidence that I could only ever dream of, while pulling me through the door after him, holding me close to his side.

The first thing I am surprised by is the sight of Meredith and Tristan, more so by Tristan, but it seems these two are a double act these days, so I choose to ignore it.

The second thing I am surprised by is the sight of the rest of his band mates all standing over in the corner with their instruments behind them. I have seen them in passing at Fez Club, but we never talk. I swing back around to Ben and find him watching me closely, gauging my reaction.

Wow!

“I told you, I am going to make you mine. Figure I can help you make up your mind,” he explains.

He is grinning like a Cheshire Cat, completely in his element and looking so incredibly hot it is taking every ounce of willpower not to jump him right now.

This is amazingly perfect. I love live music and now the sexy boy from next door is going to sing live—to me! It does not get any better than that. All thoughts of John, and where I should be, completely run from my mind. They do not just run, they leg it on a 100-meter sprint.

I jump up and plant my lips on his. He smiles and kisses me back. My hands are in his hair and I can feel my body start to melt inch by inch towards him when there is a sarcastic cough behind us. Tristan.

Wanker.

Ben makes a show of dragging over a stool into the centre of the room and placing me on it before walking over to the rest of the band who all greet him with bro-hugs, you know the kind that proclaim, “Yeah, we are guys, but we hug. So what?”

Ben slides out of his jacket and heads towards the microphone. My knees are practically jack-hammering up and down with anticipation as I stare at him. His blue check shirt is catching against the lights, and his hair is almost jet black in contrast.

“So anyway, this is a date of sorts,” he speaks into the microphone.

His voice sounds so outrageously sexy that it’s a sheer miracle my knickers don’t just explode right there and then.

Ping.

He gives me a nod, which I return, beaming like a bloody idiot.

“This is for Delilah,” he announces and laughs into the microphone as he starts to pick out the notes to “Hey There, Delilah.”

No, he really is going to play it. Funny-funny!

I can feel Meredith and Tristan pull up chairs alongside me but I don’t take my eyes off Ben as the band start to play.

Forty-five minutes later, after playing a completely off-the-cuff acoustic set, Ben tells the bemused crowd at the pub that he needs to have a break to snog the sexy brunette sitting in the middle. I duck my head down to avoid the stares as the whole place breaks out into cheers and clapping. He strides towards me and I jump out of my seat like a thirteen-year-old at her first concert. I wrap my arms around his neck and place my lips against his. He is hot and sweaty, but if anything, that makes him even sexier.

Damn that man!

The rest of the pub all start to cheer or maybe jeer, but I just keep my eyes closed and ignore the jibes and calls.

This may possibly be the single best date ever.

Taylor is singing “Fearless” in my head. I am feeling pretty fearless.

Nothing can ruin this. Well, nothing apart from a girl dressed only in a scarf.

The Green-Eyed Monster

After the set, we are just sitting chilling out with everyone and chatting away. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a girl in tight, tight skinny jeans and a scarf as an excuse for a top stalking over. She comes around the back of Ben’s chair, trailing a finger along his shoulder.

He stiffens automatically and the rest of the band goes deathly quiet.

“Benjamin” she purrs. “It’s been a while.”

I stare in confusion at her as she turns her catlike look on me, glancing with complete disdain at his hand in mine.

“So you’re the new girl then?”

Her words make my lungs freeze and my chest tighten. What does she mean by, “New Girl?”

“Go away, Caitlin.
You’re
not welcome here.”

It is Dave, the drummer, who addresses her, but Ben is giving her a scathing look, which would make me crumple into a ball. She seems undeterred though, and leans down to whisper into his ear. I am sitting too close not to hear.

“When you are bored with her, you still have my number . . . Benji . . .”

She just called him Benji! What the hell is that? Benji?

I cannot believe it. I thought he said he hadn’t had a “
proper girlfriend”
before? I am in shock. There is a moment of uncomfortable silence, then everyone starts chatting again. It is a bit forced, though. Ben remains still, apart from his thumb, which is tracing circles on my palm. He doesn’t say anything.

I stand up and push away from the table. I don’t know how he manages it, but his expression is a perfectly balanced combination of sheepishness and defiance.

“I am going for air,” I announce.

Ben moves like he is going to follow, but I hold my hand up. I can’t speak anymore, so I just walk towards the door. I can feel his gaze burning along my back.

Outside, it is cold and dark so I start to pace whilst participating in the mother of all internal dialogues. I neglected to bring my coat out with me, but there is no chance I am going back in there. I would rather freeze to death.

Date or no bloody date.

Surely only a girlfriend would call him Benji, right?

He only told me a few days ago that he has never had a proper girlfriend. I have admitted to a boyfriend so why is he withholding information from me?

Benji? I would never call him that. It sounds like a dog’s name.

Stupid bitch.

Benji . . . Benji . . . Benji . . . Benji . . .

Oh God! He is a player, isn’t he?
And I have fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker.

I am pacing in the empty market when I hear the door of the pub open, a slash of light illuminates the pavement around me.

“Lilah,” Ben says coming close and putting his hand on my arm to slow down my pace. “What are you doing out here?"

“Thinking.”

“Thinking what?” He is trying to placate me with a voice that is too calm.

“Who is she,
Benji
?” My voice is acidic and dripping sarcasm. “I thought you said you never had a 'proper girlfriend' before?”

He looks at me, pushing both his hands through his hair, as frustration floods his face.

“Jeez, Lilah! I said I had not had a serious girlfriend before, not that I had never had sex.” He looks regretful the moment the words are out of his mouth. Too late for him to take them back.