Peer Pressure

by Chris Watt

  ‘Five, Four, Three, Two, One!’

  Cheers erupted all over the country, as the New Year rang in. Katy and Rob embraced, both feeling the effects of a bottle and a half of wine. Then it was Jodie’s turn. Her mother came in for a hug and a kiss first.

  “Happy New Year, sweetheart.”

  “Happy New Year, Mum.”

  Katy let go of her daughter and turned to pick up her drink. That was when Rob leaned in to give Jodie a hug.

  “Happy New Year, Jodie.”

  And then she put her arms around him and went in for a kiss. It was only a split second, but while Rob was aiming for the cheek, Jodie moved her head slightly and planted a very quick, but certainly tender kiss on his mouth. As the kiss broke off, Jodie gave Rob a quick smile and whispered,

  “Happy New Year, Rob.”

  And for a brief moment, Jodie felt a certain element of triumph, as if, everything she had been working towards that term had finally paid off in this one kiss. But the triumph was ultimately shallow, as an hour later, with a quick re-appearance from Sean to pick up Laura, sadly literally, and take her home, the party came to an end and while Jodie felt something had passed between she and Rob in that one second kiss, as all three ascended the stairs to go to bed, she was sadly aware that she would be sleeping alone that night, as Rob disappeared into her mother’s room, next door. The triumph, it would seem, was bittersweet.

  THIRTY-NINE

  The end was inevitable.

  Sean had decided to leave it until after New Year, just to allow everything to get back to some sort of normality, but he had made up his mind that his relationship with Laura was over and that today would be the day he broke the news to her. He knew what to expect, of course. Laura was the kind of girl who didn’t keep her emotions too far beneath the surface and Sean was sure that when he told her what he intended to tell her, they would most probably break out.

  Nevertheless, Sean had rehearsed the break up in his head for a good week.

  ‘You’re whiney, you talk too loudly, you allow whatever is in your head to come out of your mouth before thinking about it, you like to talk about sex constantly and your public displays of affection cross the line on a regular basis.’

  In the end, he decided this particular method of honesty, might not be the most tactful of ways to go about this sort of thing. So, when Laura finally appeared at Sean’s house, a good hour after he had phoned her and asked her to come round (her constant lateness was another bug bear that pissed him off royally), he had already decided to change his tone from aggressive, to something resembling an overly sensitive boyfriend.

  He never expected the tears, though.

  Sitting down in Sean’s chair by the window, Laura at first didn’t understand what he had meant by:

  “I don’t think this is going to work.”

  It was only when she realized that he had stopped speaking and was waiting to hear what she thought on the matter, that it started to hit home.

  “Why? I don’t understand. We have fun don’t we?”

  “Sure, we had fun to begin with,” he agreed, pacing around his bed as he spoke, “it’s just that I really can’t see this going anywhere.”

  Laura scoffed at this,

  “That is such a guy thing to say. It’s not going anywhere, where do you want it to go?”

  “Somewhere with potential,” Sean shrugged.

  That was what did it, in the end and Sean could only look in horror, as the realization of what he had said started to manifest itself on Laura’s face, starting with a slight chin-wobble, before evolving into a couple of sniffs, finished off with some mild tears and a tremble in her voice as she tried to fight against the ache that began to swell in her throat.

  “You don’t think we have potential?”

  “Call it a sixth sense, but I really don’t see the two of us being around each other much.

  Especially when you go off to university.”

  “It’s not my fault that you want to take a year out.”

  “I know that.”

  Laura sat silently for a moment, looking for any way to get the upper hand in the situation. In the end, she settled on an old tried and tested means of interrogation.

  “Is it someone else?”

  Sean shook his head, but almost on instinct, his eyes were drawn to Jodie’s window, just beyond Laura’s shoulder, before he blinked and brought his gaze back to hers.

  Thankfully, she hadn’t noticed.

  “No, you’re great fun, but...”

  Laura immediately stopped him mid-sentence,

  “Please don’t say ‘it’s not you it’s me’”

  “Oh, trust me; I’m not going to say that...” Sean then stopped pacing and after a pregnant pause, added, “I know it’s you.”

  He’d meant it as a joke, an attempt to lighten the air a little, but it was miss-judged at best, Laura’s jaw dropping a little in melodramatic shock.

  “Where did this cruel streak come from?”

  Realizing that he wasn’t going to be able to lighten her mood, Sean took a few steps back and sat on the end of his bed. This was going to require more tact than perhaps he had first thought. The problem was, he was so fed up with her by this point, and he had no tact to hand.

  “I guess you just bring it out of me, one of your many gifts.”

  Laura gave a large sniff and wiped away a tear.

  “Listen, Laura,” he continued, kneeling down to take her hands, trying as much as possible to be caring, in the face of the girl that had just spent the past six weeks steadily getting more and more annoying, the closer they got, “you’re a fun girl to be around, and we had some good times together over the last few weeks, right?”

  “Right,” agreed Laura, whose eyes started to light up a little at the prospect of a compliment.

  “But let’s be grown up about this. We’re two very different people when all’s said and done.”

  Laura shook her head,

  “That’s just a kind way of saying you’re better than me, isn’t it?”

  “I’d never say that,” replied Sean, actually a little hurt that she didn’t know him better by now.

  “That’s what I mean, you’d never say that, but you’re thinking it.”

  “I’m not that guy!”

  Sean stood up and went back to his bed. Laura watched him sit back down and the two then sat in silence for what must have been a good twenty seconds, their eyes occasionally catching each other’s gaze. Finally, Laura shrugged.

  “So, that’s it? It’s over, huh?”

  “I guess,” Sean nodded, “I don’t really know what else to say to you.”

  Laura sighed to herself, before standing up.

  Sean prepared himself for the slew of f-words that were sure to be fired his way. But then, after six weeks with Laura, he was pretty used to it.

  Instead, she stormed out of his room, down the stairs and out the front door, without saying a word. Sean stayed perched on the end of his bed and shook his head, thinking to himself

  ‘ If only she’d been that surprising over the last few weeks.’

  Laura walked off her anger over the course of the next hour, smoking three cigarettes as she went. By the time she had calmed down, she found herself walking along the River Dee, surrounded by dog walkers and couples who had decided to brave the cold weather.

  She found a bench, wiped some of the snow off of it and took a seat, breathing in and out, slowly. She needed time to think; time to collect her thoughts about what had just happened.

  Her anger, it would seem, had once again gotten the better of her and blurred her reasoning. She knew she had handled things pretty badly and that if she was completely honest with herself, Sean had nothing to do with why things had just ended. If Laura had a saving grace (to anyone that didn’t know her, that was) it was that she recognized her flaws. She knew she wasn’t the smartest girl in Brushwood, or the prettiest. But what she did have was a wicked sense of humor, a razor shar
p bullshit detector and enough confidence to sink a battleship.

  And yet, she knew also that she wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea. She was too loud and sassy for the quieter, more academically minded boys and not sassy enough for the jocks and class-skippers. Her biggest challenge with Sean had been that he fit somewhere in between these two cliques and she had badly misjudged his tolerance of her unique brand of behavior.

  There was something else too, something deeper, that made Laura that little more tragic in many respects.

  She was a virgin and any of her sexual conquests, Sean included, had been made up, in order to grant her access to most centers of school society. She didn’t have a reputation of being slutty, just a reputation that she was open to such things. A free spirit, if you will. It meant that most of the boys would talk to her at least, maybe even go steady with her.

  The problems would only arise when things became more serious. First and second base were no problem. Maybe even third, if she really liked the guy. But going all the way?

  That was out of the question. She knew how badly such things could go. Christ, she only had to look at Katy to realize that your options became limited once you had one in the oven. And then there was the more personal justification that she simply wasn’t that kind of girl, the disintegration of her parents’ divorce being a large factor in such thinking. For Laura, sex led to far too many complications at any age, a barrier that meant that at least when she finally did do the deed, it would be with the right person, for the right reasons.

  Say what you liked about her, and most people did, Laura at least knew herself better than anyone else. Deep down, she thought, every girl just wants to be noticed. She’d just chosen the wrong way to do it and now there was no going back. At least College would give her an opportunity to reinvent herself. To be the best of whom she knew she could be. Sadly, for her and Sean, it had all proved too late.

  Laura felt sick. She leaned forward on the bench and took a few deep breaths. This sort of thinking was too heavy for the holidays. She rummaged in her coat pocket for another cigarette, but, alas, the packet was empty.

  This was just how her day was going.

  FORTY

  Following New Year, Rob began to stay over at the house a lot more frequently. Jodie had tried to weigh up the pros and cons of her new situation. On the plus side, she saw him every day, often in the kitchen and usually in his casuals as opposed to shirt and tie.

  She found him to be a completely different person in her home than in the classroom. He was far more relaxed for a start, and his appearance was far more laid back, the shirt and tie being discarded in favor of t-shirts and combats. To complement this, she made the effort to lay about in any top that emphasized her boobs, as well as shorts that showed off just the right amount of leg. These tactics appeared to be wasted on him, as Rob tended to keep his eyes fixed on her mother.

  This brought Jodie onto the cons. Firstly, she had an almost twenty-four seven reminder that the man of her dreams was becoming increasingly unattainable, not to mention undeniable proof that her mother, a woman literally twice her age, had a more active sex life than she did; and being next door to their antics didn’t help either.

  To be fair to Katy and Rob, they always played down their relationship around Jodie and always went to great lengths to make sure they couldn’t be overheard one wall away. But that wasn’t really the problem.

  Jodie felt she could have dealt with that, but it was the conversation after that killed her.

  At night she would lie with her head against the wall, listening to indecipherable mumbles coming from the next room and it drove her crazy. Not just that she wasn’t a part of it, but that she desperately wanted to be in her mother’s situation, able to share her day, her life even, with the person she most wanted to share it with.

  Then there were the times when Jodie was left alone with Rob, usually while her mother was in the shower, or out picking up milk. To begin with, there were awkward silences Rob in particular was aware of them; feeling incredibly uncomfortable, but wanting to appear to be cool with anything Katy threw at him.

  He felt that, if he could show himself to handle these sorts of pressures, then surely Katy would assume he could handle anything, coming across as ultra-modern and impressive.

  It couldn’t have hurt that he knew Katy would give him extra brownie points for maturity, potentially in bed, which was always a plus. He had to fight these sorts of feelings, however, as they showed him up, revealing the twenty-something beneath the mature visage.

  It wasn’t always awkward, of course. After a few weeks, things started to feel remarkably normal for all three of them. Katy found herself becoming far more relaxed with the idea of Rob living with her on a more permanent basis. She never said as much to Rob in conversation. She displayed a great deal of caution when it came to subjects such as that, more than happy to maintain a fun, light atmosphere when they were together. This was a defense mechanism of sorts; her past relationships having been sabotaged by her own enthusiasm too many times. So they would often lie in bed together and discuss weekends away, or when they might hang out together in the summer, but they never discussed moving in together, or even how they felt about one and other, not in any serious sense anyway, even if Rob occasionally tried to do so.

  “So, what are you thinking about?” he would ask, usually post-sexual encounter.

  “What do you mean?” she would reply, knowing full well what he was getting at.

  They would look at each other for a moment or two, before one or the other would then change the subject, usually Rob, who felt duty bound, since the awkwardness was his making to begin with. He found this slightly frustrating. However, they hadn’t even been seeing each other six months before Rob had started to suspect that he might be falling for her pretty hard and he was hoping that they would be able to address the subject before the dreaded doubt of young men began to sink in. But then he knew Katy was more experienced in these matters and he felt confident that he could trust her to sense when he was starting to feel uncomfortable. Had he known that she had similar worries about this, perhaps the two would have talked sooner.

  Then there was the night Rob had a particularly strange dream.

  The dream began normally enough. Rob found himself back in Edinburgh, in the house he grew up in, in the bedroom that he spent many of his formative years. He was fifteen again, sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at the posters on his walls, the posters of all the bands he used to be into, all the girls he used to fantasize about, all the films he loved.

  It all seemed so familiar, so comfortable. It made him feel good to be back here and,

  ‘though he was aware that he was in fact dreaming at this point, it all felt real to him, there in the moment.

  There was a knock at his door, followed by the squeak of the door handle turning. A bearded, middle aged face peered around the door and looked in.

  It was his father, George. He smiled at him, warmly.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Sure, Dad,” Rob replied, smiling back at his father as he entered the room and sat down on the edge of the bed, next to his son, a look of pride on his face.

  “You’re not busy, are you?”

  Rob shook his head, not quite sure what his father could have wanted.

  “No, I’m just...y’know, hanging out.”

  George nodded before standing up and casually pacing around Rob’s room, looking up at the posters on his wall as he moved.

  “I know, I know, it’s good to have time to yourself sometimes, isn’t it?”

  Rob was suddenly panicked, worried that perhaps his father thought he had been up here interfering with himself or something. He immediately tried to stutter out some sort of reassurance.

  “Oh, I wasn’t doing anything in here.”

  George, however, hadn’t noticed the potential euphemism in the air, turning with a confused look on his face, towards his son and asking,

 
“What are you talking about?”

  Rob sighed, thankful that both shoes were still on the right feet.

  “Oh, nothing. I don’t know.”

  George shook his head and turned his attention back to the poster filled wall.

  “Ah, Rob,” he sighed, before repeating, quietly, “Rob, Rob, Rob, Rob, Rob.”

  Rob was pretty sure by this point that something may be up.

  “Everything okay Dad?”

  His father turned and smiled, before taking his seat beside his son once more.

  “Fine, fine. Your mother told me about this new girl you’ve started seeing.”

  “Katy.”

  “That’s her name?”

  “Katy McPhee.”

  George put his arm gently around his son’s shoulder.

  “Good, good. I just thought, maybe you needed someone to talk to about it.”

  Rob shook his head, genuinely surprised that his dad would be so concerned. After all, he had had girlfriends in the past and his parents had never felt the need to intervene.

  “Not really. We’ve been going out for a while now, Dad. I think I have things under control.”

  His father nodded.

  “Oh, I know it might seem like that now, son, but let me tell you, this thing you’re feeling for her, right now. It won’t last.”

  Rob felt his nose start to crinkle up, a little out of surprise, a little out of disgust.

  “Why would you tell me that?”

  George, however, ignored his son’s obvious offense.

  “I just want you to be aware that these sort of romances, first loves, whatever, they aren’t forever. These things fizzle out.”

  Rob slowly took his father’s arm from around his shoulder and stood up, stepping towards his poster filled wall and leaning against it in defiance.

  “Well, thanks for the vote of confidence, Dad, but this is different. I mean, look at you and mum.”

  “What about us?” George shrugged.

  “You met in school, right?”

  “Fifth year.”

  “And now look. Thirty years later, you’re still together.”

  His father shook his head,