How to Convince a Boy to Kiss You

by Tara Eglington

  ‘He had to!’ Sara said. ‘If he didn’t lay it on thick, Alex would have suspected something. Anyways, Johannes convinced Alex to be his wingman tonight — he said the crutches would probably land him more chicks due to the sympathy factor. He wouldn’t even let Alex go home first in case he did something with the picture. They went to a bar where Alex’s friend is the manager and had a few drinks. Johannes pretended to be a bit drunk and he stumbled on his crutches and grabbed on to Alex from behind. At the same time, he took Alex’s phone from his back pants pocket. Alex didn’t notice for a while, but when he did he assumed it’d been stolen. He made a complaint to the bar staff, but he didn’t want them to call the police because he’s underage. Anyways, he was so angry he stormed off to get a cab, and meanwhile Johannes ran to the bathroom to check the phone. He told me there’s no record of any sent messages, or an image sent to Alex’s email accounts or uploaded from the phone. He’s dead certain. He’s a bit of a tech whizz,’ Sara said proudly. ‘Alex will probably keep bluffing to you that he’s backed the photo up, but don’t say anything to him or it’ll be traced back to Johannes. You’re in the clear now.’

  Jelena leapt up and threw her arms around Sara, Cass and me. ‘He’s a freakin’ hero! You guys are too.’

  ‘That’s what best friends do,’ I said. ‘When something like this happens to one of us, it pretty much feels like it’s happened to all of us. You can count on us to bring the bad guy down.’

  ‘Just don’t go losing your top again. We might not be so lucky next time,’ Sara joked.

  Jelena hit her on the shoulder good-naturedly.

  Even though the other girls fell asleep quickly after Johannes’s phone call, I was still uneasy. For the second time in a week, someone had used passion to deceive one of my friends and manipulate her into a position of vulnerability. Three times, if you counted Chloe. Who were these people who played with emotions to gain control over others, and for no greater purpose than their own self-satisfaction? I felt like Keats, bruised by the world and shocked by the darkness lurking inside people.

  If we couldn’t see through the façades of these would-be Casanovas, how could we protect the people we cared about? How could we stop these liars and cheats from doing it again and again, leaving a chain of broken hearts behind them? How could we stop the hearts of their victims from turning to stone after they’d been broken?

  This was obviously what had happened to Hunter. He’d loved once and he’d been hurt, and then his heart had become something impenetrable.

  I barely slept. The next day after brunch, when I walked down Jelena’s driveway, I felt like everything was different. Something had changed inside me. Hayden had said my heart was innocent — but it didn’t feel that way any more.

  Cass and Sara had woken up with big smiles, thrilled that Jelena was in the clear. Try as I might, I couldn’t see it the way they did — as a problem solved. Yes, we’d managed to save Jelena, but the events of yesterday could have had a very different outcome. Next time something like this happened, we might not be as fortunate. Look at Lindsay and Chloe. The idea of having to be on constant alert against possible betrayals and broken hearts was frightening.

  I shivered. Above me, the sky was of the cleanest, sharpest blue I could ever remember seeing. And yet I felt like night had fallen on everything. All that I looked at was marred by sinister shadows.

  Suddenly I didn’t want to grow up. I didn’t want to start viewing everyone around me with suspicion in case they were potential Hunters or Alexes. I’d always thought of love as a fairytale — a Disney-like confabulation of colours and fireworks and everlasting love. Now I realised that the charming prince could be a wolf waiting to consume you instead of kissing your hand.

  Like a child who’d stumbled upon the wrong storybook and was frightened by what they found in its pages, I wanted my mother. Instead of turning left at the end of Jelena’s drive, I went right, towards the bus stop that would take me into the city and to Mum’s apartment. Hopefully she wouldn’t mind if I arrived a bit early for dinner.

  CHAPTER 31

  I raced up the stairs to the entrance of Mum’s building. Removalists were carrying furniture down the courtyard stairs. I dashed past them and took the elevator up to Mum’s floor. As I exited the lift and approached her apartment, I saw that the doors were open.

  ‘Mum?’ I called out as I walked in.

  Two men looked up at me while in the process of lifting the black and white couch that Mum and I had sat on last weekend while drinking tea. With them was a neatly dressed woman.

  Mum was moving? She’d mentioned that she and Carlos were intending to buy a house and give up this rental apartment, but I hadn’t known that they’d actually started looking for a new property.

  ‘Mum?’ I called again. She was probably somewhere in the apartment with Carlos, directing the removalist team. ‘Carlos?’

  The woman came up to me. ‘You’re looking for the couple who were residing here?’

  ‘They’re moving out?’

  ‘Yes, it’s all rather abrupt.’ She didn’t look pleased. ‘Some sudden need to relocate. They’ve paid out the remainder of their lease plus a bonus settlement so I suppose I shouldn’t be complaining, but it’s a bit much to expect an estate agent to supervise the removal of hired furniture.’

  Mum and Carlos must have gone ahead to their new place to start setting up. I couldn’t wait to see it. ‘Are they taking it to their next property?’

  ‘Goodness, no.’ The woman laughed. ‘It’d cost a fortune to ship all of this off to Ibiza.’

  The message was on my phone, of course, when I got home. It had been left at about eleven, while the girls and I had been having brunch with Jelena and her parents. It was short and to the point: there was an emergency with Carlos’s commercial properties group in Ibiza, which would take months for him to sort out in person. Mum was going back with him for support, and ‘besides, little old Jefferson can’t really compare with the European lifestyle!’ Her little bell laugh rang in my ear like a siren. She said she’d call once they touched down in Spain.

  I wasn’t going to wait; I called her. A crazy part of me wanted to jump in a taxi and go to the airport. At least then I’d have some control over the details of the goodbye.

  ‘Aurora — our plane’s about to board.’

  I could hear them announcing the details in the background.

  ‘You didn’t say goodbye.’

  I would have expected something like this when she’d initially come back into my life, but not now, not when I’d grown to see her differently. Not after coming so much closer to a real relationship.

  ‘There wasn’t time, Aurora.’ Mum sounded stressed. ‘We only learnt of the difficulties back home late last night and all of this morning I was frantically packing. By the time we got into the car, I knew we wouldn’t make the flight if we stopped off at your father’s.’

  How could she sound so practical? Suddenly switch off, as if I’d never existed? I’d wondered this countless times after she’d first left, and here I was asking the question all over again.

  ‘Now don’t be sad,’ Mum continued. ‘We’ll be flying you out for the wedding. We’re thinking August. Magnificent weather and truly glamorous surrounds. You’ll love it!’

  ‘You aren’t coming back?’

  I hadn’t even considered that. Wasn’t Carlos launching a major development here?

  ‘No immediate plans, but you never know. The developers that Carlos put in charge here are more than capable, but they might need a quick visit from him every so often.’

  ‘But I thought you came back for me, because you wanted to re-establish a relationship with me? Because you loved me —’

  ‘Of course I love you,’ Mum replied. ‘Have I told you how proud I am about how self-sufficient you are?’

  ‘Self-sufficient?’ I hated the word. Basically it meant she felt she had a guilt-free ticket to exit whenever she pleased.

  Mum si
ghed. ‘I can’t make my life all about you, Aurora. And yours shouldn’t be all about me either. We get on so well when you don’t need me for all those mothering things.’

  ‘But I do need you. I know I’m self-sufficient, and I know you like that, but I do want a mother, or something like one.’

  I started crying softly and was immediately furious with myself. Breaking down was no way to prove to her that I wasn’t needy, even if I felt that way at the moment.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Aurora. You’re sixteen, not a baby, so stop blubbering like one. I have to run for my flight. Ciao, darling.’

  And then there was silence. I sat on my bed, stunned. Once that plane took off, I was out of sight, out of mind for her, I knew it. She’d said she’d call, but I knew that without my physical presence as a reminder, the calls would only come around every six weeks or more. What killed me was that each time she called, the exact amount of time that had gone by would be tattooed inside my heart, whereas she wouldn’t have registered the loss of time and connection.

  I’d actually believed that things could be different this time. That now I was becoming an adult, we’d form some kind of lasting friendship and she wouldn’t be able to put me aside so easily.

  Well, I wasn’t going to fool myself again.

  I got out my laptop and sat down at my window seat. I’d start an assignment. After all, I really did need to be self-sufficient now. What was my alternative? To lie sobbing on the floor? She was gone regardless.

  I almost didn’t hear Hayden’s voice when he came into my room. ‘Aurora? You’re sitting here in the dark, you silly thing.’

  He flipped the light switch and crossed over to the window seat where I was sitting. ‘Your dad said you were up here working on your assignment.’

  I hadn’t dared to go downstairs. Sitting in my room, I could hold myself together, but I hadn’t put on enough armour yet to tell the NAD and Ms DeForest the news that would confirm what they’d believed about my mother. Even having the light on was confronting.

  ‘Mum left,’ I told Hayden as he sat down next to me. I wanted to say it before he said anything.

  He looked confused.

  ‘As in, left the country,’ I said. ‘Back to Ibiza. Like you guys told me she would.’

  Hayden’s face dawned with understanding and he immediately reached for me. I pulled back so I was almost pressed against the window pane. It was cold against my skin.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  I wanted to say, ‘Don’t touch me — I’ll dissolve,’ but I couldn’t. Anything beyond the matter-of-fact I didn’t trust myself to pull off.

  ‘Of course you’re not fine.’ Hayden looked upset.

  He reached for me again and this time I couldn’t move away. Before I knew it, we were both sitting on the window seat, his arms around me like a cloak. The light outside the window was dark blue.

  ‘You don’t have to pretend with me,’ he said. ‘This is what a boyfriend is for — helping you face the truly crappy moments in life.’

  He stroked my hair. I wasn’t aware that I was struggling to breathe until I realised that the gasping sound in the room was me.

  ‘I can tell you’re trying not to cry,’ Hayden whispered into my ear. ‘But you can — you’re safe with me. I’m not scared of tears and you shouldn’t be either.’

  ‘I don’t want to cry.’

  I didn’t. I wasn’t going to, even if my body seemed to be betraying me.

  ‘You don’t have to be brave all the time,’ Hayden said. ‘You are so strong, Aurora, incredibly strong, but some moments of vulnerability aren’t going to make me love you any less.’

  I felt like my heart had flatlined. He’d just made what I had to do even harder.

  ‘Don’t say that, please,’ I cried, moving out of his arms and standing up. I stared at the window pane, trying to compose myself. ‘In fact, let’s pretend you never did, okay? I don’t want you walking away and knowing it was all for nothing.’

  ‘All for nothing?’ Hayden stood up. ‘Aurora, you don’t have to say anything back. I know it’s totally intense what I just said — it came out by accident. I didn’t intend to lay that kind of thing on the line for months — and you shouldn’t feel pressured to either.’

  ‘You shouldn’t say it to me because I’m not worthy of it.’

  Hayden laughed. ‘Are you crazy?’

  ‘I’m not worthy of it,’ I repeated slowly, ‘because I have to break up with you.’

  ‘Okay, now I know you’re not yourself,’ he said seriously. ‘This has been a huge day — you need to sleep. There’s absolutely no reason why we should break up.’

  ‘You have the most wonderful heart, Hayden, but mine’s broken. I always thought a heart could only be broken by romantic love, but that’s not true. Nobody ever warns you that your parent can break your heart too.’

  I leant against the doorframe, clutching at my side. It wasn’t just my heart that hurt, it was my whole body. To say someone broke your heart was only the tip of the iceberg — they broke all of you.

  ‘She left, Hayden. She didn’t go involuntarily because she was dying, like the way it happens in fairytales. Sure, she went away once to find herself — perhaps that’s forgivable. I know I’ve tried to forgive it many times. But this time she had every opportunity to stay with me. And she didn’t. She chose to go. She chose to leave me.’

  Hayden moved towards me, as if he was going to hold me up. ‘Aurora, you’re not the reason she keeps leaving. It’s something in her —’

  ‘Her, me, it’s the same outcome.’ I put my arm up to keep him at a distance. I was still leaning against the doorframe. I needed its support to do something that a huge part of me couldn’t bear the idea of. ‘At some point she decided to leave me. And it might sound dramatic, but it’s the honest truth that if someone else did the same … I feel like it would kill me. I’d just shut down completely.’

  ‘You wouldn’t.’ Hayden grasped my hand. ‘The girl I know is standing right here, intact, in a situation that most people wouldn’t be able to handle. You’re scared now, but that won’t last. Like I said, you’re so strong.’

  ‘Hayden, I’m not. Every time you drop me home or we say goodbye after a date, I walk around for hours with a ghost trailing after me. It’s sadness, this illogical paranoia that I’m never going to see you again. You don’t know how hard it is for me not to jump to the conclusion that you’re going to want out of my life. I assumed it before you gave me the necklace; I assumed it after you gave me the necklace. It’s ridiculous. One day it’s going to drive you crazy, or push us to the point of break-up. How can it not? No-one wants to be with a person who’s constantly waiting for love to be snatched away from them. You deserve better than that.’

  ‘Not everyone leaves. Let me prove that to you. All I need from you is a little faith —’

  ‘I have faith in you. I don’t have faith in me.’ It made me feel sick to voice my doubt out loud. ‘And that’s why I need you to walk away from me.’

  ‘No. I’m not going to let you do this.’ Hayden stared at me with fiery determination. ‘You’re someone who feels things. Do you know that part of the reason I fell for you so hard is how much you care — the way that you look out for your friends, your dad, the people you’re trying to matchmake? You’re always stretching yourself to the end of the earth for everyone, wanting them to feel loved and happy. You’re a feeling person, Aurora — you can’t cut yourself off from that.’

  ‘I can. I love you …’ my voice shook as I said the words that should have been full of joy, but were now made bittersweet, ‘… but I —’

  ‘Don’t say that right now,’ Hayden choked, echoing my earlier words.

  ‘I’m sorry … I … I can’t be with you any longer.’

  I’d held it together so far, but Hayden’s red eyes and the rapid rise and fall of his chest were tearing at my composure. If I got upset, he wouldn’t do as I asked. I forced my face into its most emotionless ex
pression.

  Hayden stared at me, searching my face for feeling. ‘If you love me, how can you not be upset at losing me?’

  The words nearly broke me. They were what I wanted to say to my mother.

  ‘Because I don’t love you as much as I love my mother,’ I said. ‘Yet. You might see that as a bad thing, but for me it’s huge to know that I could care about you just as much. I never thought that anything could hurt me as much as losing Mum, but I know that losing you once we’ve got even closer certainly would. And that’s why I’m cutting it off now.’ I turned my back on him, hating myself. ‘Please … leave.’

  I heard Hayden trying to control his breathing for a minute or two, then, like any good knight, he fulfilled my request.

  I cried after he left, of course. Not sobs, but tears that flowed like a continuous stream, as if there were no end to them, as if they ran from some eternal source of sadness. Hayden might think that I wasn’t hurting as much as he was, but that wasn’t true.

  By the time the NAD and Ms DeForest came upstairs (Hayden must have filled them in), I couldn’t even form words. I barely heard what they said to me as they put me to bed, then sat with me until I drifted away.

  CHAPTER 32

  I slept as if I was in a trance, my body too heavy to lift from the mattress. I slept so long that I barely made it out the door in time for school. I dashed into assembly just as they were about to shut the auditorium doors. I could see my friends in the third row, anxiously looking around for me.

  ‘Where were you?’ Sara asked when I slipped in beside her. ‘Jelena’s backstage. It’s election day, remember!’

  I felt like hitting myself on the forehead for forgetting. Today was the day Jelena and I had been working towards for weeks.

  ‘She’s still running?’ I asked. ‘With Alex?’ She couldn’t be. Not after everything that had happened.

  ‘Shh.’ Sara put a finger to her lips. ‘We don’t want him cluing in that anything’s up.’ She nodded her head towards Alex, who was sitting a row over. ‘Jelena needs you backstage with her. I’m meant to be there too, but I’ve been trying to find you! Have you checked your phone?’