by Alice Oseman
Even after we started going out, I was convinced he was going to break up with me. Why would anyone want to be with someone who can’t even put food in their own mouth? It didn’t take him very long to realise I had some weird food issues. And by the autumn, I was horrible to him all the time. I must have been the worst person to hang out with in the world.
And then there was that stupid night in October. When Nick came to see me in the hospital – the normal hospital that I stayed at for a while before going to the psychiatric one – I asked him why he hadn’t broken up with me yet.
He looked at me like I’d suggested I wanted to die all over again and said, “I can’t just stop being in love with you.”
And then he cried and held me.
And that was that.
Nick lives in this huge detached house a couple of streets away. Apparently his family always have these giant Christmas parties with like a hundred people, and since this is our first Christmas as a couple, I was going to drop in for half an hour in the evening anyway once most of my relatives had entered a wine-induced slumber, but now here I am at only 4pm. And he wasn’t exaggerating. The front door is open, people’s voices echo from every window, there are flashing lights coming from the living room, and I can feel the bass vibrations through my feet. It’s a wonder they haven’t been reported by their neighbours.
Charlie Spring
(16:02) i’m outside! xxxx
I stand and wait on their doorstep. Just walking into the house would probably be a bit awkward, and I doubt anyone would hear the doorbell if I tried to ring it. Luckily, Nick quickly appears at the doorway.
He looks at me for a couple of seconds, and then folds his arms. “Fucking hell, you didn’t even bring an umbrella?”
I glance up at the sky. I hadn’t even noticed it was raining, but when I look down at myself, I realise that my clothes are completely soaked.
“Oh,” I say, and look back up to find him there.
“Hey,” he says with a grin.
I don’t think that Nick is a normal boyfriend, or that this is a normal relationship. If I could choose to be with him all of the time, I would, and that’s awful because I know that it’s unhealthy and you’re not supposed to be obsessed with the person you’re in love with, because you’re supposed to be a person on your own too, but still, every single time, I would choose to be with him.
Maybe I’m just fifteen and an idiot.
“Hi,” I say and step inside.
He shuts the door and turns to face me, his grin gone. He brushes some of my drenched hair out of my eyes. “You look like shit, Charles.”
I just let my forehead fall on to his shoulder. “Mm.” His arms wrap around me instantly and I lift mine to hold him too, and he rests his head against mine and his hair brushes my ear and he pulls me against him. We stay like that, in the cold porch, just for a few minutes, without saying anything, without moving, and then he whispers, “You okay?” and I start to cry, because that’s always what happens when people ask me that question. I really don’t want him to see me cry, because there’s been far too much of that recently and it’s Christmas Day, so I try extremely hard not to move from his shoulder, but that doesn’t stop him seeing. When he pulls back, the tears are streaming down my face.
He looks, his eyes becoming so pained and sad, like they always do when he sees me cry. Then he removes a handkerchief from the back pocket of his trousers. The sheer ridiculousness of Nick owning a handkerchief immediately makes me snort out a laugh, which makes him smile too and raise his eyebrows, and I do stop crying as he methodically wipes my cheeks.
“Why do you have a handkerchief?” I ask. I hate how my voice sounds when I’ve been crying.
Nick breaks out into a grin, still brushing the thing against my face like he’s dusting a bookshelf. “Don’t say that like I’m too much of a chav to own a handkerchief.”
“But you are too much of a chav to own a handkerchief.”
Nick laughs. It’s so lovely against the sound of the rain and the low bass of whatever music they’re playing in the living room. “Okay, maybe it was a Christmas present that I put in my pocket just to prove to my nan that I would actually use it.” He puts it back into his pocket and then takes my face in both of his hands. “And what d’you fucking know? I did use it.”
I smile at him, his hands feeling so warm against my skin. “Maybe your nan knows me better than you do.”
“Are you suggesting that you want to date my nan?”
“There are so many reasons why I do not want to do that.”
“Good.” He hugs me again, his arms reaching round my waist. “Thought I had some competition for a minute there.”
“You don’t have any competition,” I say, running my hands up to his shoulders, wanting to just stay here forever with him in the porch, live here in the half-dark winter with the rain falling next to us, make a bed out of the coats and a fire out of the coat rack.
“You smooth little bastard,” he says, leaning in with a smile and I meet him with a kiss that turns into a longer kiss than I think either of us planned but everything is suddenly far too nice for it to end … everything suddenly feels like Christmas, I actually feel something, I run a hand through his hair and he pulls my hips against his and our lips brush as he changes direction and … I actually … feel … something …
“Well he weren’t bloody joking about the bisexual thing, was he?”
Nick and I jolt apart and turn to find that we’ve drawn an audience consisting of a guy with hardly any hair, who must have been at most in his mid-twenties, another guy of similar age, wearing all black, three children under ten, and an elderly woman who looks a little bit confused.
The guy who spoke, the almost-bald one, finally moves his attention away from me to Nick. “Gonna introduce us, mate?”
“Oh, yeah,” Nick replies, still in a slight daze. He moves behind me and pushes me further into his house, with his hands on my shoulders, towards his family, who seem to be multiplying in numbers as more people walk through the hallway and realise that I’ve arrived. “So this is Charlie.”
A good half an hour is spent introducing me to every single member of Nick’s family, who for some reason all want to meet me. Everything is, “Oh, so this is Charlie, then?” and nobody asks any awkward questions about hospital or how I found Christmas dinner or anything like that. Throughout most of this, I’m carrying the new Nelson family puppy, Henry, who is the tiniest and palest pug puppy I have ever seen. Henry falls asleep in my arms and I fall immediately in love with him.
Nick’s mum still has her cracker hat on and, even though I’ve seen her numerous times since I came home, she gives me a hug lasting at least ten seconds longer than is socially acceptable. I don’t really mind, though.
After that, Nick drags me up to his room so I can change clothes, despite my protests that I don’t mind staying in my soaked jeans. At least my jeans slightly fit me.
As I’m changing, Nick’s lounging on his big double bed. He’s wearing his usual old beige chinos, but with them he’s got on this bright red jumper with reindeer patterns all over it. It’s disgusting and absolutely hilarious.
“I like your jumper,” I say, as I’m doing my belt up. “It’s very sexual.”
Nick blinks, clearly not paying attention to anything except me getting changed, and looks down, as if he’d forgotten what he was wearing. “Oh,” he says. “Yeah, I know, right. So seductive.”
“Yeah, I would bang that jumper.”
“I would be very interested in watching that happen.”
I pick up my damp jeans from the floor, chuck them at his face, and laugh as he dramatically rolls off his bed in an attempt to catch them.
“I like your jumper,” he says, after crawling back on to his bed, a small smile playing on his lips. “Whoever picked that out has proper taste.”
I’m momentarily confused and then realise I’m wearing Nick’s navy Adidas jumper.
I st
ole it off him when he visited me for the first time at the psychiatric hospital. I hadn’t been allowed to bring a lot of stuff with me and I’d spent the majority of my first night there crying because I felt so lonely and pathetic, which I admitted to Nick when he visited the next day as we cuddled up on my new bed. He made that pained look of his and immediately took off his jumper and gave it to me and said that if I wore it at night, maybe it would feel like he was there too.
And it did. It smelt like him.
“Oh. Oops,” I say.
I inspect myself in the mirror. Nick’s jeans, pretty much the same as mine, but several sizes larger, looks ridiculous on me. I groan heavily.
“I look like a nineties boy band member.”
Nick appears behind me. He’s not actually that much taller than me, he’s just bigger. Which is fine from, like, an aesthetic perspective. But not from a clothes-sharing perspective.
“Well it’s this or trackies, and I guarantee my mum will have something to say if you turn up to our Christmas party in trackies.”
“I think trackies would make me look even more like a member of Boyzone.”
“Nothing wrong with Boyzone.”
“Everything’s wrong with Boyzone.”
Nick meets my eye in the mirror. We stay silent for a moment, and then he takes my hand, so I turn round to face him.
“You gonna tell me what’s wrong?” he says.
I don’t really know what’s wrong. Well, everything, really. My parents pretending I’m not ill, everyone else treating me like I’m some kind of reformed serial killer, the dinner making me want to scratch out my insides. Two hours of sleep, too much thinking.
“I just … wanted to have a nice day,” I say and I feel myself welling up again and I want to punch myself in the face.
“Okay,” he says, slinging an arm round my shoulders and walking me out of his room, then kissing me on the top of the head. “Let’s do that, then.”
“Oh, all right, Charlie?”
Half an hour later, Nick’s gone to the loo and I’m suddenly facing David – Nick’s older brother by four years – while I’m drinking a glass of water in the kitchen.
David’s not really like Nick in any way except for their identical dark blonde hair. David’s a lot shorter – shorter than me, actually – and completely up himself. He goes to a posh university and hangs out with lots of private school guys who do rowing and wear quilted jackets. He frequently cheats on his girlfriends and then boasts about it.
Nick and David don’t really like each other and I don’t think David likes me very much, either. When Nick came out to him as bisexual, David laughed and told him he was just covering up being gay.
“Hey,” I say.
He grabs a beer bottle from the fridge. It’s definitely not his first.
“So you all cured and stuff, man?” he says.
“Er …” This is possibly the most ridiculous question I’ve received all day. “Well, that’s not really how it works, but sort of, I guess.”
“Oh, ace.” He takes a swig of beer and stares at me like I’m a zoo animal.
“How are you?” I ask, purely out of there not being anything else to say.
“Oh, I’m really good, thanks, yeah,” he says. “Uni work, rowing, you know. Work hard, play hard, mate.”
“Cool.”
“So what’s happening with you now? You allowed back at school yet?”
Allowed. Everything about him irritates me.
“I’m going back next term,” I say.
“Oh, nice, nice.” He takes another swig. “So, like, I’m super interested – what’s it like in a mental hospital? Did you meet anyone really crazy?”
I just stand there, silent.
“’Cause, like,” he continues, “I was watching this documentary on schizophrenia the other day and literally it’s just fucking awful, innit? All that talking to yourself and stuff. And these people, they had to be locked up to stop them hurting themselves, you know?”
My grip on my glass tightens. I could just leave. “Well, I don’t have schizophrenia.”
David blinks. “Oh, yeah, man, obviously. But you must have met people like that, surely, in that place?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Just fucking crazy, innit. So fucking sad.”
“Yeah.”
“Must have been fucking awful to not want to eat anything as well, mate. Sounds shitty.”
I don’t say anything.
“Like, did you ever get so hungry that you just had to eat something? That’s what I don’t get, like, the people who just stop eating and die, you know?”
And then Nick walks into the room.
By the look on his face, he’s obviously heard David’s last comment, and it probably doesn’t help that I shoot him a look of severe distress.
“Are you done interrogating my boyfriend, David?” he asks, not politely.
David frowns and holds out his hands. “Mate, we were just having a chat!”
“D’you seriously think Charlie wants to talk about that stuff on Christmas Day?” Nick snaps, and it’s been a while since I’ve seen him get this angry. “What the fuck?”
David snorts and takes a sip of beer. “All right, all right, calm your tits.”
“Fucking hell.” Nick puts his arm around me and walks us out of the kitchen and down the hallway. Once we’re out of earshot, he says, “He’s such an insensitive little prick.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not.”
“David’s always been a dickhead,” I say. “He’s still doesn’t think bisexuality is a thing. I can see it in his eyes.”
Nick huffs out a laugh. “Yeah. Last time I mentioned how hot Scarlett Johansson is he told me flat out I was lying.”
I laugh too. “Classic David.”
Nick leads us into the tiny alcove by the garage door. His arm drops but his hands find mine.
“Thanks,” I say and kiss him gently. I wish my whole family could understand what he understands. This is why I’d rather be here than there.
“I just …” The pain in his eyes returns, the same look he has when I cry in front of him. “I just wish people could understand. Why do they find it so hard?”
My voice gets quieter. “Maybe it is hard.”
“I don’t find it hard.”
“That’s because you’re amazing.”
He laughs then, his eyes going all crinkly and the pain draining away. “Shut up.”
“Do you wanna go play Mario Kart now? One of your cousins wanted some kind of massive tournament. Also I need to spend more time with Henry. I’m already getting pug withdrawal symptoms.”
“Fine.” He laughs again. “Fine. Jesus. Okay. It’s Christmas, we’re fucking gonna have a nice day.”
I laugh and think for the billionth time how even though I’ve got the worst deal in many parts of my life, at least in this part I’m the luckiest person in the entire world.
When Nick had said that it was chaos in his house, he’d meant it. By the time we get back to the living room, there’s a proper disco going on, compiled mostly of tipsy middle-aged people, and a rather enthusiastic game of toy-car racing happening in the hallway with people’s shoes as obstacles. After I beat Nick five times at that, we somehow get dragged into a game of Monopoly, which is promptly ruined when Henry gallops over the board, followed by a Mario Kart tournament with Nick’s older cousins, which I also win, which is weird, because Oliver always beats me at Mario Kart at home.
Then we go back to Nick’s room to exchange presents – I’d left mine in there when I was getting changed and Nick had suggested we socialised before we opened them. I got him shoes (Vans) because he’s been saying he wanted them but can never afford them, and he got me new headphones, because mine are broken. But we also both got each other the most stupidly romantic cards ever – his has pictures of us all over it and I drew all over mine. I kiss him after I read his card to me and he kisses me back with more enthu
siasm than I’d anticipated and basically we end up staying in his room for at least forty-five minutes.
And suddenly it’s seven o’clock and we’re sitting on a sofa with Doctor Who on in the background, my legs resting over his and his head on my shoulder. Some kids are sitting on the carpet building a Lego pirate ship and Nick’s mum and various aunts and uncles are busy organising the buffet tea on the dining table. I’m literally about to fall asleep—
“Charles, just so you know, your phone has been making sounds for the past five minutes.”
“Oh.” I sit up a little and Nick does too, a sleepy smile on his face. I withdraw my phone from my pocket to find the screen covered in unread texts.
The messages are all from Victoria. Nick leans in to read them too.
Victoria Spring
(17:14) Hey when are you coming home?
(17:32) Please reply to me
(17:40) At least just tell me when you’re coming home
(17:45) Mum and Dad are kind of upset I don’t think they’re gonna shout at you
(18:03) I think Mum’s sorry tbh
(18:17) Oliver wants to know when you’re coming home, he wants to play Mario Kart
(18:31) Can’t believe you left me alone with Clara you fucking twat
(18:38) She’s trying to get me to talk about the general election please come home now
(18:54) If you don’t reply soon I’m literally gonna walk to Nick’s and get you
(18:59) I’m not even joking
(19:00) Charlie
(19:01) Charlie
(19:01) Charlie
(19:01) Seriously
(19:02) Ok right I’m walking to Nick’s
Nick doesn’t say anything but I can tell he wants to. I instantly feel like shit.
I’ve just done what I always do.
Run away instead of dealing with the problem.
“I should probably go home,” I say.
Nick runs his fingers through my hair. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want me to go home, but he still says, “Yeah.”
Neither of us make any sign of moving.