Some Boy (What's Love? #1)

by Jenna Cox

  Brendan came up again and looked at me. His face was sombre.

  I shook my head. “Forget it. You’ll never find it. It’s not a big deal,” I added, though my lip trembled as I said it.

  Then slowly Brendan’s hand emerged from the water, his fingers pinched together and something winking in-between them. He grinned.

  “Oh my God,” I gasped, scrambling to my feet. I reached out and he passed me the tiny piece of jewellery. I closed my hand around it tightly and dropped down to my knees, kissing him on the top of the head. “God bless you, Brendan Holt.”

  He laughed, and I moved out the way as he lifted himself back out of the pool. He grabbed a towel and rubbed at his body, and then towelled his hair as he stood in front of me in all his glorious nakedness. I was slightly overflowing with emotions, and felt like I was going to say something stupid. So all I said was, “Thank you.” And I sank back down onto the lounger. He finally wrapped the towel around his waist and sat on the end, near my feet. “Although it was kind of your fault to start with,” I added.

  “Oh, is that right? I didn’t hear you complaining a few minutes ago,” he said, jerking his thumb in the direction of the end of the pool. I grinned.

  And then I looked down at the two little clusters of gems in my palm and felt my eyes tear up again.

  “Is there something special about those?” Brendan asked, watching me.

  I shrugged. “I didn’t think so. I mean, apart from their cost. I half considered throwing them in the bin with my cardigan in the bathroom, just before.”

  “Who gave them to you?”

  My throat felt tight. “My dad,” I whispered. Then I shook my head and laughed bitterly as my vision blurred with more tears. I grasped the earrings off my palm between two fingers and held them up. “Here’s my father’s love. Diamonds. That’s it. Everything he has to give me is right here, summed up in fucking diamonds.”

  I raised my arm, ready to throw them both back into the water, but Brendan caught me around my forearm before I could.

  “Do it if you want. If that’s what you need to do,” he said. “But be sure, first. I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to find them again.” He smiled briefly, and then released my arm. I brought my hand back in front of my face and considered them.

  “He gave them to me for my fifteenth birthday. Brought them home from Tiffany in America, like Tiffany here wasn’t good enough. But it is the only birthday I remember him being home for — he’s always on business trips.” I stared so hard at the diamonds that they started to blur into prisms of light in my vision. “I’ve hardly ever taken them out since.”

  “What made you take them out today?” Brendan asked, and I glanced at him. I felt a tear trickle down the bridge of my nose, and I wiped it as it got to the end.

  “Because every time I look at them, I think of the jewellery he gave to my mother over the years. Every time he came back, he would give her something. And she always seemed so happy with that. And so I thought that it was love. It must be love. Because it was my parents, and they must love each other. But they don’t. It’s all fake. The diamonds are real, but the love is fake.” I was crying harder again now.

  And then I shook my head and laughed harshly. “Sorry, I must seem like such a spoilt bitch. Complaining about being given expensive fucking jewellery.”

  “It’s okay. I get it,” Brendan said quietly.

  I looked at him. “Your daddy gave you diamonds instead of love too?” I laughed without humour.

  “Yeah, right. I don’t think I ever got a present worth over five quid in my life.” I don’t think he knew how shocked I felt at that casual revelation, but I bit my tongue. “But I get it. I realised a long time ago that just because they’re your parents, and they’re supposed to love you, doesn’t mean they do. Doesn’t mean they have a fucking clue about anything.”

  I watched his expression grow sharp for a moment, then he rubbed his hand over his face and through his hair, and it softened again.

  I took a breath. “I’m sure,” I said. He nodded once.

  I looked at the diamonds one more time. And then lifted my arm and threw them. With two little plinks, they were gone. The water swallowed them with barely a ripple, settling back into its gentle rhythms like nothing had ever happened there.

  seven

  MY PHONE DINGED and I started, knocking my tea cup so that it sloshed some of the now cold drink onto my open textbook. I steadied it and swiped at the pages of the book, trying to wick away the liquid before it stained. I didn’t really care if my marketing textbook had a tea stain, but I was stalling. This whole ruse of studying was stalling.

  I’d been sitting at the kitchen table for two hours rereading the same few pages over and over and doodling on the edge of my notepad, while I stoically refused to look at my phone. Except for when I checked my email, or scrolled Facebook, convincing myself that I really needed to look, that I wasn’t at all just finding excuses to double check that there was still no message.

  There still wasn’t. Or there hadn’t been. But my phone, set facedown so I’d stop looking at it, had just alerted me. My heart was thudding as I picked it up, took a breath, and turned it over. My fluttering hope sank like a stone in my stomach when I saw Izzy’s name there.

  Instead of Brendan’s. I’d left it three days after he’d come to lunch with me and my parents. That disastrous lunch that I refused to think about. But really I hadn’t stopped thinking about it, or about the little excursion to the hotel pool either. But I didn’t want to seem clingy or desperate, so I hadn’t contacted him straight away like I had wanted to.

  Then three days had passed, and Izzy’s assurances that he was probably just giving me space to process my parents’ news didn’t cut it anymore. So I’d caved and messaged him. Aiming for casual and unconcerned—Hey, how was your weekend? No mention of what I really wanted to ask, about why whatever he had done on the weekend hadn’t included seeing me.

  But there’d been no reply to that message. And that had been yesterday. Now it was Tuesday morning and I’d gone to my early lecture and come home again. Still no message. I’d done two hours of ‘studying’ — still nothing. Every nerve in my body had zinged at the message tone, but now I just glared at it balefully, for the way it had raised and crushed my hopes in a second.

  Izzy’s text told me that she and Justin were grabbing lunch in the student union if I wanted to take a break from “studying” —even she had used inverted commas; she knew me too well — and come meet them. My fingers hovered over the screen as I tried to form a refusal that she would accept, but then I stopped myself. What was I doing? Sitting at home by the phone? Never mind that this phone was one I could take with me, so I could sit and stare at it anywhere, but why was I waiting for his message at all? If he really wanted to see me, he would have made it clear. His silence was just as clear.

  And so I shoved my books aside and got up from the table, taking the mug of untasted tea to the sink and tipping it out. Fuck Brendan Holt. I wouldn’t waste my life waiting for someone who disappeared for days on end, and wouldn’t tell me anything about his life, and who ‘borrowed’ cars and stole hotel keycards.

  At the thought of the keycard adventure, I shivered. And then I put my hand reflexively to my earlobe, running my thumb and forefinger over the bareness there, nothing but a little scar tissue and a barely visible hole to remind me of the earrings I had worn every day until just a few days ago. Now those earrings were at the bottom of a hotel pool, or probably sucked away into the filter by now.

  I felt a tight clench of pain in my abdomen and I swallowed against it. I was hungry. That was all it was. I didn’t care about any of the rest of it. A boy I’d only known for two weeks. My divorcing parents who had been on different continents more than they’d been in the same room together their whole marriage anyway. None of it would really have any effect on my life. So why did I feel so weighed down by it all?

  I picked up my phone and my handbag and t
exted Izzy that I was coming to meet them as I was already walking out the door.

  I only realised I’d forgotten to grab my coat when I was halfway across the lawn. I glanced back up at my room, six floors up, and blew air out of my mouth, creating a fog of breath in front of my face. Oh well. It was only a couple of minutes walk to the student union from my on-campus housing, I’d just tough it out. I pulled the flimsy scarf around my neck a bit tighter, though it was purely decorative, and retracted my hands further into my sweater sleeves as I walked.

  By the time I reached the union building, my ears ached from the cold and I knew my nose must have been glowing as red as a certain famous reindeer. I jogged a little up the steps and into the building, and then veered to the right, through a maze of ill-planned corridors, and descended the stairs to the level where the cafe was located. The deeper into the building I went, the warmer it got, but my nose and cheeks still tingled, and I rubbed them as I stood in the entry, searching the crowded cafe for Izzy and Justin.

  I saw Brendan first. Shit. I’d completely forgotten he worked here. I wanted to back right out of the cafe doorway, but there were people approaching behind me, and I finally spotted Izzy, waving at me energetically.

  I attempted a smile and lifted my hand to her, steeling myself and winding my way towards them through the tables. Brendan hadn’t seen me yet, and I was wondering if I’d be able to keep it that way. He was stocking drinks into a fridge over by the register, and my friends were at a corner table on the far edge. It was possible.

  “We’ve ordered,” Izzy told me as I reached them. “We were already lined up when you texted.” She shrugged apologetically. I just blinked at her.

  “You okay, Kat?” Justin said, glancing between his phone and me. Texting Steph probably. That was all he seemed to do lately, if he wasn’t physically with her—which he was a lot. I sat down, my back to the cafe and looked over my shoulder in Brendan’s direction. Then back to my friends at the table. Izzy followed my gaze, and her eyes widened. She slapped Justin on the shoulder.

  “Huh? What?” He looked up, and Izzy tilted her head. He just looked over at the object of our attention calmly. “Oh. Just go say hello.” I glared at him, my face a frozen mask of panic. Izzy slapped him again. “Stop that. What’s the big deal?”

  “He hasn’t even texted me since Friday. If he doesn’t want to see me, I’m not going to make a fool of myself. More than I already have.”

  “What are you talking about? He’s missed all his classes since then too. That’s just Brendan. He comes and goes. You have to get used to that if you want to be his friend.”

  “But she doesn’t want to be his friend, does she,” Izzy said, staring over my head, and raising her eyebrows. I nudged her hand to make her stop looking, though I was desperate to turn again myself. “He’s gone out the back,” she informed me, and relaxed back in her seat.

  “I told him I liked him,” I murmured, and my face flamed. “Like, liked him, liked him. I don’t know what I was thinking.” Justin made a derisive noise without even looking at me. He was still tapping on his phone, getting a dopey little grin on his face every now and then. “What?”

  He glanced up at me. Then he locked his phone and put it in his pocket, his face sobering. “Kat, I think you’re reading too much into this. I know you’re feeling all cut up and sensitive, ‘cause of your parents and all that jazz—”

  “I’m not—”

  “—but don’t bring that into this. If you do actually like him, then don’t play this game.”

  “What game?”

  “The one where you second-guess your way out of something that you actually want, to avoid getting hurt.”

  “You think Brendan will hurt me?”

  “That’s not what I said. You think he will, but only because you think any guy will, so you get out before they can.”

  “But he hasn’t contacted her for four days,” Izzy said. And I flicked my hand in her direction and nodded once.

  “Exactly. And after my parents little announcement, and my freak out about earrings at the pool, I probably scared him off.”

  “Just talk to him, okay. Or don’t. Fuck. It’s none of my business.” Justin rolled his eyes and pulled his phone out of his pocket, returning to tapping at the screen. I glared at him, tensing my jaw. I loved him like a brother, but he pissed me off like one too sometimes. He was the one giving his unsolicited opinion in the first place, and now washing his hands of it to go back to his love notes with Steph. And a mix of frustration and jealousy curled in my gut. Couldn’t he see that he was illustrating my point — Justin was clearly head-over-heels for Steph, and here he was messaging her every minute. And he had been with her all weekend. If Brendan felt for me even a little of what Justin did for his girlfriend — though he still avoided calling her that — then wouldn’t I have spent the weekend with him too? Or got even just one message. One fucking message would be enough.

  Izzy was staring at me, her brow puckered. “He’s back out. And he’s on the register now, so if you want to order food, you’re—”

  “I’m suddenly not hungry. I’m the least hungry I’ve ever been in my life.” My stomach gurgled, betraying me.

  She smiled compassionately. “Want me to go order for you?”

  I pressed my lips together and considered it, chancing a glance over my shoulder towards the register. My stomach lurched when I looked at him, but he still didn’t seem to have seen me. I turned back to Izzy and shook my head.

  “No. It wouldn’t work—seeing you would just make him notice me anyway.”

  “You could just talk to him?” Izzy suggested hesitantly, and Justin harrumphed from his seat without looking up. I glared at him, then sighed.

  “Fuck it. Why should I avoid him? If he doesn’t want me, then his loss,” I said, with more conviction than I felt. I was already rising from the table. My legs felt weak.

  “Kat,” Justin said, and I paused as he looked up at me, waiting for some encouraging words. “Get me another orange juice, would you?” He picked up his almost empty bottle and shook it to illustrate. I made a noise like a growl in the back of my throat and whirled away. “Was that a yes?” I heard him call behind me, and I didn’t need to look at him to know he was grinning.

  I clenched my teeth. Tried to pretend I didn’t care either way if Brendan liked me or not. At first I just told myself it had only ever been about the sex. The hot but ill-advised sex. But then that made me actually think of the sex, and I felt myself flushing as I got nearer the counter where Brendan stood ringing up someone’s order. I didn’t want to be flaming red when I got to him, so I tried to think of anything else, anything at all. All that came to mind was him turning up on my doorstep in his boxer shorts.

  I think my mouth had already started turning up into a smile at the memory, so when Brendan turned his head and I came into his eye-line, I smiled unconsciously. So much for being cool and uncaring. His face flickered in a smile too, just a brief, small tug at the corners of his mouth, before his attention was drawn back to the customer in front of him.

  And I suddenly felt sick. I did care. I couldn’t pretend otherwise. His nonchalance pierced me like a dagger in my stomach, and I turned away, feeling my pulse throbbing in my ears. I left the queue and pushed out of the packed cafe, and almost ran down the corridor to a back door of the union building which opened to the outside. I was pushing out into the frigid air and then tripping up the recessed staircase that led up to ground level, mortified and mortifying tears blurring my vision.

  *-*-*

  I heard the door open and shut behind me a few moments later. I was sitting on the edge of a garden bed, my back to the union building. I’d managed to keep the tears inside my eyes — they probably would have frozen solid the minute they hit my cheeks anyway. I was sitting, trying to breathe slowly, my arms tucked between my legs to keep warm. And I was feeling like an idiot for running away.

  I assumed it was Izzy coming to find me. But then
the heaviness of the foot steps jogging up the stairs made my heart stand still, and I glanced around to confirm. I jumped to my feet and took a step backwards, like I was about to flee.

  “What are you doing out here?” Brendan slowed his ascent for the last two steps, looking me over. I tried to relax my tightly wound body.

  “Ah, you know, getting some fresh air.”

  “Fresh is the word.” Brendan half-laughed, but his eyebrows dipped momentarily. He had crossed his arms over his chest and tucked his hands into his armpits. I was doing similar, except my arms wrapped around my stomach, trying to keep the strange nausea at bay. The skin on my face felt tight and icy. At least any redness from my suppressed tears might just pass as cold.

  “Aren’t you meant to be working?” I said, at the same moment as he said, “Why’d you run out?”

  We laughed awkwardly, doing little, cold shuffles where we stood.

  “Uh, I just took my break. You okay?”

  I pressed my numb lips together and stared at him. I was going to say yes. I was fine. ‘Course. But then I felt angry. Did he not even have an inkling about what I was feeling? No apology for going incommunicado? Or was there no point even getting angry — maybe this just told me everything I needed to know? To him, this was not a relationship, this was just a convenience.

  I let out a heavy breath.

  “It’s nothing. Just — if you don’t want to see a girl, just tell her. Don’t just disappear. But I’ve got the message now. You should go back to work.”

  Brendan moved towards me. “What are you talking about? You think I don’t want to see you?”

  I shrugged, not meeting his eye. “It’s fine, Brendan. The way we started, it’s not like I expected anything anyway.”

  He stopped, still a step away from me. I glanced at his face and felt a twisting in my chest. His jaw was tight.

  “Why do you always go straight to that dismissive shit? Look, if you don’t care either way, then I’ll stop wasting my time too.” He was turning, and I shot my hand out and grabbed his arm, grimacing as I did it. I composed my face in a hurry as he looked down at my hand on his forearm, then up at my face.