Jess nodded. “I get it.”
“You have a similar experience?”
She shook her head. “No. I’ve seen enough teen romance movies where the bad boy gets magically reformed by love, though. And I’ve always wondered about the longevity of it. Like what happens if she turns around and breaks his heart? Does he go back to being a bad boy, but worse? Like is he now that bad boy in an adult book? Or is he…” she petered off as I was laughing at her. “What?” she asked, smiling.
I shook my head. “You think I’m a bad boy?”
“Two things,” she said as she held up her hand to count them off. “You called yourself a bad boy yesterday–”
I could guess the second thing. “And you’re an expert at knowing the type by sight.”
She shrugged. “You’ve got the vibe, Mabo,” she teased and I appreciated the reference – it seemed Prince Edwards wasn’t the only school to use ‘The Castle’ as a teaching resource.
“The vibe? And what exactly does the vibe constitute?”
She waved her hand at me. “Only a bad boy would wear ripped black jeans on a summer camp,” she laughed. “Add in the scowl and that brooding confidence, and I think you’re giving ol’ Byron a run for his money.”
“I’m giving Byron a run for his…?” I spluttered, trying not to laugh.
She nodded. “Yes. Although, you’re obviously only half-baked.”
“Half-baked?” I wasn’t sure if I should be impressed or insulted.
“Not yet reached your full bad boy potential.”
“How do you figure that?”
She looked me over and I felt, for once, like I wasn’t found wanting. Whatever I was, she liked it. Or, at the very least, she didn’t dislike it.
“You smile easily.”
“Only you could make that sound like an insult.”
“Maybe I think it is.”
“Maybe it’s just you,” my stupid mouth countered.
“What’s just me?”
“That makes me smile so much.”
It wasn’t what I’d intended to say. In hindsight, it seemed like a ridiculous thing to tell your partner for an assignment that you weren’t going to see again after another two days. Then again, she’d said something equally ridiculous – based on her facial expression right after it – before lunch. So, I was glad when she didn’t seem to put too much stock in it and we would both move on from our momentary lapses.
She snorted. “In that case, I will try my hardest to reign in my natural hilarity.”
“A thousand times, thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she sniggered.
“How about you then?” I asked.
“How about me, what?”
I picked at the grass at my feet. “I gave you the bare minimum of my tragic backstory. What’s yours?”
She rearranged on her patch of grass. “Daddy issues.”
“Daddy issues?” I clarified, my imagination going into overdrive. “I am seriously going to need more than that.”
She smiled softly and I could see hidden pain in it. She looked back over the cricketers, her face scrunching against the glare of the sun. “He has a habit of being a bit shit to the women he dates. Or marries, for that matter.”
“So, less experience, more role model or lack thereof?” I clarified.
She nodded. “All evidence points to romance is a lie. Ergo I don’t believe in love. And you can’t fall into something you don’t believe in.” She tapped the side of her nose wisely, but she seemed…stiff.
I nodded. “I agree.”
“Excellent. I’m glad we’re on the same page.” Her voice was a little strangled. Her posture was a little tense, and I wondered what was going through her head.
“For the sake of argument, though…” I started and she looked at me.
I wasn’t sure why I’d started with that. There was this niggling feeling in the pit of my stomach that had made me all restless and blurted it out without my consent.
“I’m very interested to know where you’re going with this,” she laughed. But at least she seemed more relaxed again.
“No. No.” I shook my head. “I mean, we’re supposed to be discussing the whole love thing, right?”
She nodded and swallowed hard. “Right. No. Sure.”
“Right. Which presumably means we have to look at our beliefs and come up with what we think about Romeo and Juliet’s love, right?”
“That checks out.”
I nodded. “Sure. So… I mean,” I cleared my throat again, not sure why I was feeling so damned self-conscious all of a sudden. “Shall we… Should we do that, then?”
“Sure. I guess we’ve both decided love is a crock of shit. Right?”
Jess looked at me like she was checking with me that that was our standpoint. I had a strong urge to avoid telling her what she should or shouldn’t believe. I felt like I should kind of say no for some reason. It was like I didn’t want her to give up and I didn’t know why I cared.
But I nodded once. “That is right,” I said awkwardly.
“Good. So, how do we feel about the play then?”
I leant back on my hands. “Well for starters, it was a different time. Wasn’t it? Like Lady Capulet says she’d had Juliet by her age.”
“Right. So, the idea of marriage wasn’t that weird.”
“No. It was like, normal.”
“Exactly,” she said. “But love, though?”
“It was kinda crazy. The fact that they’d just met and then they were like obsessed with each other and then promising to get married the next day.” I paused as I thought of something. “Was that before or after she knew about Paris?”
“Before…?” she said uncertainly.
That had been my thinking. “So, it’s not like she was making a good situation out of a bad one. It wasn’t all ‘I have to marry someone, it may as well be this guy I want to fuck’.”
She snorted as her nose wrinkled. “I don’t know if she was thinking about fucking him.”
“Oh, please.” I looked at her and we were both smiling.
“When I was thirteen, I sure wasn’t thinking about it.”
“Maybe not,” I conceded. I couldn’t remember what I’d been thinking about at thirteen. “But the idea of someone getting married before their like…mid-twenties is considered young these days. Imagine if we both decided to get married as soon as we were both eighteen. We could have known each other our whole lives and people would still look at us and assume we can’t know anything about love.”
“I don’t blame them. I don’t think adults know anything about love either. If they don’t, how are we supposed to know?”
I was happy to concede that one, too. “True.”
“I wonder if it’s society or some like genetic memory that makes marriage before a certain age weird?” she asked.
“After the centuries of arranged marriages women have been subjected to, I wouldn’t be surprised. Plus the way they’ve been treated by husbands?” I leant back on my hands in an effort to stop pulling at the grass. “Every X chromosome probably has an inherent aversion to the very idea of marriage as an institution.”
“How does that work for guys then?” she asked with a smile.
“Oh, easy. The Y one is so stupid it just overrules everything else.”
She snorted again. “You know, I’d believe that.”
“I was just pulling that one out of my arse.”
“Oh? I couldn’t tell.”
I failed not smiling again. “No?”
Jess shook her head, a warm grin on her face. “Who was even watching the children in Middle Ages if they could just get married without like anyone knowing?” she asked.
“The forever unnamed nurse,” I replied wistfully.
She snorted “Makes a strong case for bringing up your own damned offspring.”
“Wish someone had told my parents that.”
“You had a nurse then, Juliet?” she asked me.
“Fuck that. No. We did that shit ourselves.”
There had been a little too much venom in my tone. I’d heard it. Stood to reason that she had too. She said nothing about it though, instead changing the subject.
“Was Lady Capulet fucking Tybalt or Paris, you think?” Jess asked.
“Both?” I wondered.
Jess nodded. “Good for her.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. There was something about my Romeo that just made me smile around her. I didn’t worry it was dangerous. Neither of us were into the whole romance thing. So, we could totally spend a few days hanging out without anything more coming of it.
7
Jess
Who’da thunk he’d have depths? I didn’t need him having depths. I also didn’t need him being funny and interesting and smart. Not that I was in any danger of falling for him. I just had to remind myself of that fact a few times an hour.
That morning in our intensive, we’d covered up to the end of Act 4 of the play – Juliet was officially ‘dead’ – and were on the last legs of our experiment. Ryan and I had hung out and wandered around talking our assignment between lunch and dinner. I’d been very aware of the fact this was the last day we had to investigate the idea of romance and Ryan and I had barely made a dint in it. I wasn’t surprised given our mutual standpoint on the matter, but that wasn’t necessarily going to help me get my essay done. Though, truth be told, we hadn’t really been terribly good at keeping each other focussed or on track.
At dinner, our friends and their partners had joined us and we’d all been quite rowdy. The whole mess hall had been quite rowdy. It was like we all knew this was it, the last main time we were ever going to spend together. Those last night feels were dancing around us all, and the teachers knew better than to try to settle us all down – as long as we were somewhat behaving, it was all good.
Both classes had been given free-reign after dinner and there seemed to be a general consensus from every student there that more swimming was going – nay needed – to occur. The girls and I weren’t the only ones who’d taken to wearing our bathers as a matter of course every day. I just hadn’t taken advantage of it much since Tuesday because I’d been dutiful to my assignment and stuck with Ryan, who I was yet to see in anything other than ripped jeans and sneakers.
A few kids ran past us, laughing and whooping.
“You guys have to come in!” Norah cried from a ways down the bank.
I shook my head and saluted her lazily. “I am…all good. You have fun, though.”
“I plan to!” she squealed as she ran off.
It wouldn’t be proper dark until about half eight, maybe nine, that time of year, which gave them an hour’s more swimming at least. I didn’t have a watch and my phone had been switched off and in my bag since Monday afternoon what with the lack of reception and all.
“If you want to swim–” Ryan started.
“I don’t,” I interrupted. “I’m good.”
He laughed. “All right.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I’m just surprised you’re still hanging with me instead of your friends.”
I shrugged. “I’ve got the rest of my life to talk to them. Besides, I don’t see you with your friends.”
He nodded. “True. I’m far too lazy to get up.”
“Ditto.”
Instead of swimming, we watched the others swimming. Our friends made appearances at various times and either hung out or, in the case of Tibby and Norah, tried convincing us to go swimming. Ryan and I talked, commenting on what other people were doing and coming up with utter nonsense. It was easy and it was actually not a bad way to spend the rest of the night.
By the time most of the kids were either having hot milo in the mess hall or had gone to bed, Ryan and I were still sitting out on the bank of the billabong. Now there was less and less noise coming from the rest of the camp, I was starting to think that we’d been forgotten by the teachers and counsellors.
“Do you think they’ve forgotten we’re out here?” I asked.
“Hm?” Ryan replied. “They probably think we’ve gone to bed.”
“Did you want to go to bed?”
“You’ve known me apparently enough time to fall in love with me, what do you think?”
“I recall there being something about not being a morning person, so I’m going to assume no.”
“A thousand times, no.” I heard the smile in his voice. “Feel free if you want to.”
I shook my head. “I’m good.”
“You want to see how long we can stay up for?”
“Are you questioning my ability to stay up as late as you or how long it will take for someone to catch us and send us to bed?”
“Both?” he huffed.
“Okay. Let’s see how long we can stay awake then.”
We sat in silence for a while and I felt like we should be talking. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable, like I had to break it to ease some sort of tension. Rather I had an impending sense of…time. Like I was running out of it.
I ran my hand through the end of my messy bun, a brilliant reminder that my hair had remained unwashed since my swim on Monday night. “What’s going to happen next?” I asked.
“Okay, so I’m ‘dead’ and you’re exiled,” Ryan replied, wrapping his arms around his knees.
Wasn’t quite what I’d meant once I’d said it, but I was happy to ignore what I might have been meaning to say for something less serious. “But I’m going to inconveniently hear about your death from Benvolio, miss the messenger and find you in the crypt.”
“Excellent. What now?”
“Wanna do the joint suicide scene?” I asked him.
“Look, why not. Nothing better to do.”
“Cool. You worked out where we can nab some poison?”
“Wait,” he said suddenly. “Can I be Romeo?”
I huffed a laugh. “Why now?”
“Because I’m just not sure I have the balls to stab myself.”
“Well, of course not. You’re Juliet.” I grinned at him.
He gave me a shadow of a smile back. “I doubt that’d stop you.”
My shit-eating grin turned into a smirk. “Was that a compliment?”
“What? A guy can’t compliment a girl now?”
I shrugged. “It doesn't seem fair if you’re refusing to fall in love with me.”
“Why?” He looked me over like he was about to smile. “Are you falling in love with me?”
I scoffed, knowing – assuming – he was joking. “I thought we weren’t falling in love.”
“Amen, sister.”
He held his fist up and I tapped it with the side of my own.
“How was the water when you went in?” he asked.
I shrugged. “All right once you’re in.” Then, realising that was a really weird thing for him to have asked, looked at him. “Why?”
“Wondered if it might be worth it.”
I smirked. “I suppose you’ll expect me to go in with you?”
“Of course. You’re not allowed to swim alone. Everyone has to buddy up.”
I snorted, “I don’t have my hat.”
Ryan looked up to the star-sprinkled sky. “I think we’re good.”
“You don’t have your bathers on,” I reminded him.
“I have this amazing ability to change my clothes.”
“Believing is seeing. I haven’t seen you in anything else this week.”
He gasped sarcastically. “I’ll have you know this is totally a different plain black t-shirt than I was wearing yesterday.”
I didn’t even think. I just took it in my fingers and had a proper look at it. “I want to say it’s…baggier…a little…maybe?” I wondered. “And the neck’s…wider?”
He nodded. “Bingo.”
I looked up at him and found him smiling. “Well aren’t I very clever?”
“Yes. You are. Shall I change?”
“You really w
ant to go swimming?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because what’s more clichéd than a midnight swim?”
“Seriously?”
“Partly. Frankly, I’m worried you’ll fall asleep without some activity.”
“And if I fall asleep in the water?” I laughed.
He shrugged wildly. “I’m not going to let you drown, Romeo. Geez.”
I huffed, “Yeah, all right. Keep your pants on, Juliet.”
“Impossible if I’m going to put my boardies on.”
“Oh, you won’t keep your jeans on?”
He shook his head. “Wasn’t planning to.”
“Brilliant. I’ll be here.”
“I’m dismissed, am I?” he teased.
I nodded. “Yes.”
He dragged himself off the ground. “Okay. Don’t go anywhere?”
“Worried I’ll sneak inside and leave you hanging?”
He cocked his head to the side for a moment. “Something like that.”
“All right,” I assured him. “I’ll be here.”
He jogged off – almost like he was actually looking forward to coming back – and I looked back out over the water rippling in the moonlight. It was peaceful. The warm wind brought the smell of gum leaves to my nose. The only sounds were crickets and rustling of leaves and the slight noise of people at the mess hall. It was too late for mozzies. I happily got lost in it all.
“You’re still dressed,” was my first clue that Ryan was back.
I turned to him and barely kept in my snort.
“What?” he asked, only pretending to be affronted.
I shook my head. “No. Nothing.”
“What?” he pressed.
“I can see why you’ve only worn jeans this week.”
He looked down at himself. “What exactly does that mean?”
“Just that I would also wear long pants…” I couldn’t finish the sentence with a straight face. There was nothing wrong with it, it was just weird seeing his actual legs.
He gave me a half-smirk that made my heart hitch. “Okay, Miss Judgemental. Let’s see what you’ve got under your clothes, then.”
I shrugged nonchalantly. “Okay, then.”
Be Mine: Valentine Novellas to Warm The Heart Page 33