by Katy Cannon
“Any idea when that might be?” I asked, only half joking.
“Well, I think Edward’s going to propose soon. And being engaged is usually very good for my romance writing.”
“Then let’s hope he has the ring waiting,” I said, gathering up my pages. “Because I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to finish this book, the way it’s going at the moment.”
“Of course you can, darling! Just remember. It’s all just one word after another.”
“Right.” I gave her a weak smile as I headed for the door.
Gran never was any good at taking her own advice.
Less than two weeks later, on the last day of the Easter holidays, Gran and Edward announced their engagement at our family Sunday dinner and I decided to take the night off from writing to celebrate. Hopefully Gran would get her mojo back now, and I could stop wrestling with Will and Eva and Tomasz the scriptwriter and get back to my own romantic tangles.
Actually, maybe I’d prefer the fictional ones.
I planned to spend the weekend ignoring romance completely and catching up on the chapters of Looking Glass I’d missed over the last couple of weeks. I’d been so immersed in my own book, and re-reading romances for inspiration, I hadn’t even checked any update emails, let alone read any new chapters. So, once the dinner was over and Edward had been dispatched home (“We’re not married yet, darling,” Gran had said as she’d waved him off), I disappeared into my room with my laptop, and curled up to lose myself in someone else’s story for a change.
Morgan Black had clearly been very busy over the last fortnight, too. They’d updated with another four chapters and I devoured them in record time. The story had to be reaching its climax now, I felt, and the pace was definitely picking up.
When I’d read them through once, I went back over them again, this time with my notebook at hand to make edit notes. Strange to think I’d be doing the same thing for my own book, if I ever finished it. I had a feeling it was probably much easier to see other people’s mistakes than your own.
An hour or so later, I sent off my notes to Morgan Black, checked a few of my usual sites and was about to shut down my laptop when a reply arrived.
I clicked on it, expecting the usual one-word reply. But this time, it read:
Thanks.
I thought you might have got bored of the story. Been a while.
Smiling, I opened up a new email to reply.
Not bored, just busy. Looking forward to the next chapter already.
And then, as an afterthought, I added:
Think you might finally see your way to letting Gwyn and Lydia get together?
The next reply came almost instantly, and we batted messages back and forth for the best part of an hour, debating the merits of a romantic subplot in a magical realism novel, and of love in fiction generally. I noted, not for the first time, how much easier it was to be myself online than in person. Behind a screen and a keyboard, I didn’t need to be Bea’s granddaughter, or the hard-to-get girl who didn’t date, or even Drew’s Frost, arguing about everything. I could just be me.
Before I knew it, it was nearly midnight and school started again the next day. School, where Zach and Drew would be waiting for me. I definitely needed to get some sleep before dealing with all of that. Not to mention pinning Anja and Rohan down where they couldn’t hang up on me or ignore my messages, and sorting out things between the two of them. I’d sent them a message asking them to meet me in the library in the morning – I just hoped they’d both show up.
Reluctantly, I prepared to sign off. Then Morgan Black’s last email came through:
If you want a preview of the last chapter, I should be able to send it over tomorrow? I want to get it right before I post it. There’s a lot riding on this one.
I grinned, before replying. Definitely.
Anja and Rohan were waiting for me in the library when I walked in the next morning, sitting as far away from each other as was possible while still at the same table. I sighed. So much for hoping that even if they hadn’t been talking to me much, they might have spoken to each other over the holidays. Clearly they hadn’t, and things looked like they’d grown worse and worse. Which meant it was up to me to fix them.
Starting with reminding each of them why they were friends in the first place.
“Hey, you two.” I dropped my bag on to the table and took a seat across the way from Rohan, hoping that Anja would move down the table a bit to join us. Rolling my eyes at Rohan, I mimed him taking his headphones off. He looked reluctant but he did it.
“So, how were your holidays then?” I asked, in my jolliest voice.
Rohan shrugged. Anja mumbled something about homework and training.
I sighed. Clearly subtle was not going to work here.
“OK, enough. Rohan, Anja told me what happened at the Spring Fete.”
He shot an accusatory glare at Anja.
“Not that she really needed to,” I went on. “It was blatant that something had happened between the two of you. But now it’s two weeks later and are the two of you really still freaking out about Rohan tripping over a sheep?” I gave a little laugh to show that I was joking.
Neither of them looked at me. “You realize this is crazy?” No answer.
Pushing my chair back, I stood up, glad there was no one else in the library so early in the morning to witness this. I paced to the head of the table where I could loom threateningly over them,. (Obviously only threatening if they didn’t do as I wanted them to do – which was basically stop acting like idiots. So I was threatening them for their own good, really. I was sure they’d see that. Eventually.)
“Look at it this way. Nothing actually happened, right? No kiss, no embarrassment. So really, the two of you should just be able to move on. Forget all about it.” I kept my voice light and inconsequential. Of course I knew that it was more than that. But I wanted them to admit it, too.
Anja jerked her head up, her pale cheeks blazing. “Tilly’s right. We really don’t need to talk about this. I mean, Rohan made his feelings very clear and I’m embarrassed enough as it is—”
Now it was Rohan’s turn to stop staring at the table and look up – not at me but at Anja. “You’re embarrassed? Why would you be embarrassed?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps because the idea of kissing me was so repulsive you decided to somersault over a rope line and crash into a poor, defenceless sheep instead.” Anja’s face was still bright red but there was a spark in her eyes – bright enough to tell me that she was done pretending it didn’t happen. “You couldn’t have said, ‘Sorry, Anja, I don’t feel that way about you, I think we’d be better as friends?’ I mean, it might not have the drama of the sheep leap but it would have been a hell of a lot better for my ego. Because honestly, Rohan, having a guy I thought was my friend so desperate to get away from me that he almost crushed farm livestock … not great. And I mean, it was only a kiss! One stupid, spur of the moment, ill-thought-out kiss. I mean, it’s probably just as well we didn’t kiss, because then—”
“You think I wanted to get away from you?” Rohan said, obviously still stuck on an earlier thought.
Anja sighed. “You basically ran, Rohan.”
“Straight into a sheep,” I added helpfully.
“I wasn’t… I didn’t…” Rohan stopped, swallowed and started again. “That’s not what happened.”
“It’s not?” I pulled up a chair and sat down again. It occurred to me, rather late in the game, that I’d never heard Rohan’s side of events – only Anja’s. And everyone knew a story always had two sides. Especially a romance.
Rohan shook his head. “I wasn’t trying to escape, I promise. It was just … you looked for a moment like you might kiss me.”
“That was sort of the idea,” Anja said drily. “Sorry it was such a hideous thought for you.”
“It wasn’t!” Rohan shouted, his words echoing off the bookshelves. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, except y
ou never wanted to talk about it, and you wouldn’t even answer my messages!”
“Then why…?”
“Because I couldn’t kiss you without you knowing the truth.” The words flew out of Rohan’s mouth in a rush and the minute they hit the air he looked like he wanted to take them back.
Anja frowned. “What truth?”
“The truth about how I feel about you.” Poor Rohan looked utterly miserable. But I had a feeling that this would all work out for the best. I could almost feel the story rising up in me, waiting to be told – or heard, in this case.
I couldn’t wait to see how it ended.
“And how…” Anja shifted her chair a little closer. “And how do you feel about me?” she asked, her voice soft.
“Anja … I’ve been crazy about you for years. I can’t believe you didn’t know that.”
Anja’s eyes widened until you could see white clear around the blue of her irises. “You … really? Me?”
Rohan gave a soft laugh. “Of course you. But you only ever saw me as a friend and I respected that. And besides … I knew I’d rather have you as a friend than not have you at all. That’s why I went after those other girls. And why … when you went to kiss me, I tried to step back, because I wanted us to talk first. I didn’t want us to kiss and then find out that it was just a joke to you or a spur of the moment thing you were going to regret later. I didn’t want to lose our friendship when you realized how much I felt for you – and you realized you didn’t feel the same way.”
“I never imagined…” Anja said, her voice small.
“I know you didn’t.” Rohan gave her a small smile. “That’s why I never thought it could happen. It didn’t even occur to you as a possibility.”
I shouldn’t be listening to this, I realized belatedly. But at the same time, I just couldn’t look away. Seeing my friends so close to finding the happiness they’d both been pushing away for so long … it was wonderful.
Pure romance. Seriously, how had I never realized until now how perfect they were for each other?
I had to put it in a book, some day.
“It wasn’t … it wasn’t spur of the moment for me, you know,” Anja said. “Except for how it was. I don’t know how to explain it. It was as if weeks and months and years of you just hit me all at once, and I suddenly knew. I knew I was meant to kiss you. And that I really, really wanted you to kiss me back.”
“And then I fell over a sheep.”
“And then you fell over a sheep.” Anja glanced around the library. “Except, there are no sheep here now, you know. If you wanted to, maybe, try again?”
“I could do that.” Rohan was already leaning in.
OK, I really shouldn’t be watching this.
As Rohan and Anja shared their first kiss, I slipped silently out of the library and into the hallway – and walked straight into Drew.
Of course. Because that was my life now.
I sprung back, grabbing my bag against my chest, and trying to pretend the act of touching Drew – even accidentally – hadn’t brought back every single sense memory of our kiss.
More than two weeks later, I hadn’t forgotten a single second of it. Damn.
“You might not want to go in there right now,” I said, too fast, because it was the only thing I could think of to say that wasn’t ‘I can’t believe we kissed, can you?’.
“Not go into the library?” Drew’s eyes were wide with confusion. “Is there … I don’t know, is there some sort of book-related disaster happening?”
I frowned. “What kind of book-related disaster could there be?”
“I don’t know. You just said not to go in there and I couldn’t figure out why and so… Never mind.” He shook his head.
Apparently now I couldn’t even manage sensible conversations with Drew.
“Anja and Rohan finally figured out they’re both crazy about each other,” I explained. “There’s a lot of kissing going on in there right now.”
Heat flooded to my face even as I said it. Drew didn’t blush, of course, but his eyes did grow darker.
“Well, there does seem to be a lot of that going around right now,” he said, his voice low and warm.
We needed to talk about our kiss, I knew that. And he’d just given me the absolute perfect opening. All I needed to do was take it, to say, “Actually, Drew, I’ve been meaning to say … that kiss, the other week, that was a mistake. We should just forget it ever happened, right?”
But I didn’t.
“I have to go.”
Keeping my eyes trained on the floor, I sidestepped him and rushed past.
“Frost,” Drew called after me but I ignored him. I might be a big advocate for talking things through when it meant sorting things out the way they were meant to be, like for Anja and Rohan. But for me and Drew? I didn’t even know what I wanted to happen there. So what good would talking do?
I turned left on to the next corridor, heading for the sixth form common room – not my favourite place but I was running out of hiding spots. Of course, I forgot to consider who else might be there.
“Tilly!” As I burst into the common room, Zach called out my name, sounding pleased to see me.
I gave him a weak smile and headed over. Someone else I had no idea what to say to. But he was still technically my boyfriend, after all. What else was I supposed to do?
“Hi, Zach.”
Stepping away from the group he’d been talking with, Zach moved towards me, leading me away to a quieter corner of the room.
“It feels like I haven’t seen you in ages,” he said, waving me into one of the empty chairs by the window and sitting down beside me.
“Well, it was the holidays. You were away. Did you have a nice time?” Could he tell that something was wrong? That things had changed?
“Yeah, it was great. How about you?” Apparently not. He just smiled at me as he always did and carried on as normal.
So I tried to do the same. “Oh, you know. Same old. Except Gran and Edward are engaged. They announced it last night.”
“That’s great news! Hey, maybe I can be your date to the wedding, huh?” Zach seemed thrilled at the idea, and I felt a surge of nauseous guilt just looking at him.
But I still couldn’t forget how wonderful it had felt to kiss Drew.
“What do you say?” Zach asked, nudging me with his elbow and for a moment I thought he was still talking about the wedding, until he added, “You free to get together at the Hot Cup tonight?”
Was I? Technically, yes. The book was still stuck, possibly irrevocably. The only plans I’d had for the evening was reading the last chapter of Looking Glass and sending Morgan Black my comments.
Now I thought about it, it probably wasn’t a great sign that reading an online story and critiquing it sounded like more fun to me than hanging out with my boyfriend, either.
“Sure,” I said, a little weakly. It had to be the guilt that was putting me off. Maybe spending time with Zach would remind me how much I liked him and help me figure out how – or if – to tell him about what had happened with Drew.
“Great! I’ll come find you after school.” Zach jumped up, pressed a quick kiss against my cheek, then grinned. “See you later.”
As I watched him go back to his friends, I studied him, taking in the TV star good looks and the sexy smile, and reminded myself that he didn’t seem to think my family were crazy and he liked me. So why couldn’t I shake the feeling that this really wasn’t the way romance was supposed to be?
The difference between Overs and Unders, Pa always said, was the difference between truth and lies. One was open, free, true. The other was hidden and secret.
My pa, you can tell, was always an Over.
“Why do they need fake names, if they’re not ashamed of what they are?” he always said.
My mother, however, had another view. One that I only understood the day I met Silas.
Under and Over (2015), Juanita Cabrera
The o
bvious side effect of getting Anja and Rohan to confess their true feelings hadn’t occurred to me until far too late. (Not that I’d have done things differently if it had. Probably.)
I was now officially a third wheel.
(OK, maybe I’d have got them to sign some sort of Best Friend Agreement that said they couldn’t just forget I existed while they stared into each other’s eyes for hours on end. That would have been sensible. As it was…)
In the last two weeks, since their first kiss, I’d watched them merrily skip over all the awkward dating stuff that Zach and I had suffered through, and settle straight into happy coupledom. Meanwhile, Zach and I seemed to have spent even less time alone together than before. He’d come round for dinner once or twice, though – my family adored him, of course, and the twins had only pelted him with toys once – and we’d hung out at the Hot Cup with his friends from the rugby team and their girlfriends, but that was about it. I couldn’t help but wonder if it meant something that I still hadn’t even met Zach’s family.
So while Anja and Rohan were still staring lovingly into each other’s eyes in the canteen, I was avoiding Zach’s gaze in case he could see my guilt. More than that, I was definitely avoiding his kisses.
Zach seemed to understand, at least, that I wasn’t into public displays of affection – a little handholding was as far as I was willing to go. But sooner or later, he was going to expect more from me – and I really wasn’t sure I could give it. Every time we were alone, however briefly, I felt nervous. What if Zach could tell I’d kissed someone else just from the way my lips felt against his?
I was going to have to tell him about Drew. Somehow.
But if I did, where did that leave us? I didn’t want to hurt Zach. Or lose him. Even if my heart didn’t beat quite so fast when I saw him across the school hall these days, he was still the gorgeous guy I’d fallen for. And honestly? I couldn’t quite forget the fact that if we broke up, I’d lose my romantic storyline for the book Gran still wasn’t willing to take over writing.