‘Enjoy! See you tmrw then if I don’t catch up with you beforehand. Can’t wait. x.’
I tossed my phone down beside me and stared at the ceiling, exhausted and out of breath.
It was no good, I just had to tell somebody, so I clambered off my bed and ran down the stairs. Nobody but Mum and Dad even knew about Jake’s offer, anyway, and I wasn’t ready to tell anybody else yet, just in case it proved to be a total disaster—a one-off, even—so there was definitely no point upsetting Gemma yet. And I was pretty sure she would be upset when she found out.
Despite my constant babble and getting Mum and Dad to test my knowledge of the Highway Code, the usual Sunday routine rolled on, including Mum’s roast. I got the rest of my homework finished with enough time left over to have a bubble bath and read some more of Wuthering Heights. I was debating switching my lamp off when another text came in. I’d automatically assumed it was Gemma, home from her day with Ben and wanting to talk about it, so my stomach fell through the mattress when I saw it was actually from Jake.
‘Hangover from hell gone. Finally. Get a good night’s sleep and I’ll see you tmrw, J x.’
I squealed traced my finger over the words like some crazed stalker, lingering on the ‘x’. Jeez, call a doctor, I needed help.
‘Great minds, I’m just going to bed now. Goodnight Jake x.’
My phone buzzed less than thirty seconds later: ‘G’night Tink. Sweet dreams x’
I sighed—something else to add to my list of random symptoms—then put my phone on silent and set it on my bedside unit before switching off the lamp.
Sweet dreams indeed!
Chapter Eleven
DRIVING
College was a typical Monday, including the chicken salad, except that Flick shunned us at lunch to sit with Sean. They seemed to be spending a fair bit of time together, including Saturday night, it turned out, and they were getting on very well judging by the handholding. Things only got awkward when Flick asked me in front of the other girls what I was up to later.
Stupid me! I hadn’t considered I might be asked my plans, so I mumbled something about having a driving lesson, which was kind of the truth, and tried to make it sound dead boring and keep the huge incriminating grin off my face. Once I’d got home, I’d been too antsy to get on with my homework, so my books lay abandoned on my bed and I took up position at the window instead.
Jake showed up five minutes early, and somehow Dad got to the door before I did. Surely we weren’t going to get another surge of testosterone? Judging from Jake’s wet hair and the scent of citrusy shower gel, he’d finished work, gone home for a quick shower and then come straight over. When he asked to see my provisional licence and my car-insurance policy before we left, I couldn’t believe it. If he hadn’t accompanied it with the secret wink, I would have taken offence.
He knew what he was doing, though. He now had Dad singing his praises and happy to hand over his little girl into Jake’s care. I just had to keep my mouth shut, listen to the rules and nod in the right places. Then, finally, we were on our way. And, naturally, I stalled the car trying to reverse off the drive. Twice. Then I kangarooed down the road until I got used to the biting point in my own car as opposed to my instructor’s car. Jake remained calm and kept his expression neutral, and my nerves began to fade.
After five minutes, I got confident enough to tear my eyes off the road to take a peek at Jake. He looked huge sitting in the passenger seat of my little car, and he’d had to slide the seat right back to fit his legs in. Aside from giving me directions, he didn’t really talk, maybe not wanting to distract me, but the lack of conversation was actually pretty distracting. I wasn’t used to it.
‘Is it OK if we chat?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, of course.’ Jake said. ‘I wasn’t sure if you needed silence to concentrate.’
‘Nah, it makes me more nervous if anything.’
‘Fair dos. So what do you want to chat about?’ Jake pointed to the right, and I flicked the indicator on.
Mirror … signal … manoeuvre …
‘Um …’ Good question. ‘How about why you decided against going to college?’
‘Ah, that’s easy.’ Jake relaxed his arms by his side. ‘Ever since I was old enough to hold a paintbrush, I used to ask Dad if I could go to work with him. The answer always no, but then one day, when I was fifteen, he said yes and I did my first job. Pull up over there,’ he said, switching back into instructor mode and pointing to a gap on the left. ‘Behind the red car. Yep. Perfect. You might as well show me your three-point turn.’
‘Prepare to be amazed,’ I said, feeling pretty cocky. It was my favourite manoeuvre and one I could do in my sleep. With no nerves left to affect me, I changed the direction of the car in a perfect, textbook move.
Jake smiled, his voice full of approval. ‘Nice one, Tink. Now head for the dual carriageway. Let’s see what this little car of yours can do.’ I pulled away like a pro, no more kangaroos in sight. ‘So, anyway, I was only labouring on a building site, dragging a wheelbarrow full of the rubble to a skip and emptying it, then taking it back again to be refilled, but I earned fifty quid that day,’ Jake continued. ‘Fifty quid. Just like that.’
‘Wow!’
‘Exactly. The next morning, Dad asked me if I wanted to go again. Well, I was already booted up, ready to go. I went back every day for the rest of the school holidays. It was bloody hard work but it had instant results and, by the end of the fortnight, I had a suntan, muscles I didn’t know I had, and I had four hundred quid in my back pocket. That was it. I was hooked.’
‘Cool, so that’s why you were never around in the holidays? I never put the two together for some reason. You were never covered in paint spots in those days,’ I said, changing down through the gears to make the next turn. ‘Did you start full-time straight from school, then?’
‘Yeah, before that, actually. As soon as study leave started, I was working back on the site, just taking time off to sit my actual exams. It’s all I ever wanted to do. What about you?’
Mirror … signal … manoeuvre …
It became my new mantra, repeating in my head to keep my concentration on the road, when what I really wanted to do was look at Jake, or simply pull over and spend our time together chatting. Instead, I checked my wing mirror, made a point of checking the blind spot over my shoulder, flicked on my indicator, then put my foot down and joined the dual carriageway.
‘Me?’ I shrugged, which I discovered wasn’t all that easy to do when driving, but I managed not to swerve. ‘I still haven’t got a clue what I want to do. It sucks.’ My knuckles turned white from my grip on the steering wheel, so I forced myself to relax. ‘Mum and Dad want me to follow them into law, but it doesn’t appeal in the slightest. They were a bit upset when I didn’t choose it as an A-level but they seem OK with it now.’
‘What did you choose then?’ Jake asked. I risked a glance and saw him watching the road.
‘English literature, that’s my favourite. And English langu—’
‘You see where this slip road joins us?’ He pointed ahead. ‘If there were cars coming down it, I’d move into the outside lane to give them chance to merge in. It’s not a rule or anything, just a courtesy thing.’
‘Oh, right, OK, thanks.’ I spotted the steady stream of cars, so checked my mirrors, signalled, then moved over a lane to let them out.
‘So you’re doing English lit and lang. Any others?’
‘Yeah, I’m doing French as well,’ I said, repeating the same manoeuvre to move back into the inside lane.
‘Really? That’s cool. I really sucked at languages. Couldn’t wait to drop Spanish when I left school. I didn’t even attempt French. So how would I say, “Take the next left” in French?’
‘“Prenez la prochaine gauche“,’ I said automatically. ‘Or you could say, “Prenez la prochaine route à gauche“, which means take the next road to the left.’
‘Now you’re just showing off,’ Jake
said, sounding impressed. ‘You didn’t even have to think about it.’ I happily accepted his praise rather than tell him it was basic Year 7 stuff rather than Year 12. ‘So, er … hang on, then … let me have a go.’ He did a cough thing to clear his throat, then tried to repeat the sentence back to me.
‘Well done,’ I said, biting back a laugh. ‘I’ll have you speaking French in no time, although you might want to work on your accent.’
He laughed. ‘Go on, then, smarty-pants, say something else in French. Introduce yourself or something.’
‘OK …’ I darted my gaze to him and saw I had his full attention now. The road he wanted me to take was coming up, though, so I did the mirror-signal-manoeuvre thing and made the turn. ‘Hadn’t you better tell me where we’re going first, though?’
‘Just carry on to the end of the road, then go round the mini-roundabout and get back us on to the dual carriageway but going the other way,’ he said. ‘Now go on, this I’ve got to hear.’
‘Fine,’ I said, shooting him a smile, then looking back at the road. ‘Bonjour, je m’appelle Valentina Bell, j’ai dix-sept ans, et je suis étudiante. Ça va?’
‘Whoa!’ Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jake run his hand through his hair. ‘I got your name, but the rest of it? Not a clue. It’s kind of sexy, though.’
My left leg jerked and made me press my foot down on the clutch. Unfortunately, I still had my right foot on the accelerator so the engine screamed from under the bonnet, the sound deafening.
‘Shit!’ I cursed.
‘Oops, sorry,’ he said, unable to hold back his laugh. ‘And mind your language.’
‘Ha! Yeah, yeah, good one.’ I turned the fans up to blow more cold air onto my flaming face.
‘Huh? Oh!’ Realising his own apparently inadvertent joke, he laughed even louder, the sound filling the car. ‘Mind your language, I get it.’
Jake’s laugh was too contagious. I couldn’t help joining in, all the while trying to carry out his instructions and get us home again safely. Driving lessons had never been so much fun.
‘Stop it,’ I said, between laughs. ‘I need to concentrate.’
Jake held a hand up. ‘Yeah, sorry, my bad.’ He took a couple of deep breaths.’ You’re so good, though, Tink, I forgot I was supposed to be actually supervising you. I have no idea how you failed your test: you drive better than a lot of people I know.’
The flutter that took up in my belly when Jake said ‘Tink’ whooshed into a tornado when he followed it with his high praise. ‘Thanks, Jake,’ I gushed. If I turned the blowers up any more, I wouldn’t be able to hear him over the loud whirring noise, which meant my cheeks would just have to glow instead.
We rode along in companionable silence until Jake said, ‘You and Nathan seemed pretty close the other night. I take it you know him.’
I nearly demonstrated my emergency stop right there and then. I’d never been so relieved to see a traffic light change to red as I approached. It gave me time to rebuild my composure, and gave me an excuse to pretend I was concentrating too hard to reply straightaway.
‘We’re friends from work,’ I said, playing it cool. ‘Although Nathan works upstairs in menswear.’
‘Right. I didn’t realise,’ Jake said, staring pointedly ahead. ‘I knew he had a weekend job as well, but didn’t know where.’
‘I didn’t realise you knew Nathan, either. He said you were kind of his boss during the holidays.’
‘Something like that,’ Jake said. He flicked a glance at me, complete with quirked eyebrow, and then turned his head to look out of the passenger window.
‘What does that mean?’
‘I just look out for him, that’s all,’ Jake said.
‘Why on earth would you need to?’ The lights had turned green without my noticing, too busy staring at Jake, and the driver behind honked his car horn at me.
‘A building site can be a hard place to work, and some guys are just looking to stir up trouble.’
‘But Nathan would never do that,’ I said, outraged on his behalf.
‘I know,’ Jake said coolly. ‘But, like it or not, trouble always finds him.’
‘What—’
‘Look, it’s not my place to say, Tink. I don’t even know for certain, it’s just a suspicion, a feeling. Please don’t ask me any more.’
Well that’s me told.
I closed my mouth and fell silent. First Nathan sending ominous messages and now Jake saying odd things. There had to be some joke in there somewhere, but nobody could be bothered to tell me the punchline. What was I missing? Jake didn’t say much more, either, speaking only to relay instructions and leaving me to my thoughts.
Another three-point turn, a parallel parking and three roundabouts later, we were headed back to mine when a purple Corsa drove towards us from the opposite direction. A very familiar purple Corsa with two pink fluffy dice hanging from the rear-view mirror. My heart rattled and bounced around my ribcage, and my knuckles turned white, still holding the steering wheel in the ten-to-two position. I slunk lower in my seat but it was too late. Gemma’s wide eyes glared at us. She twisted her head to follow us all the way past.
‘Shit!’ Jake cursed. ‘I think we’ve just been busted.’ He echoed my thoughts exactly but hearing it still made me wince.
‘Yep, I’d say so.’
Gemma’s text message arrived before we’d made it back to my place. Both my and Jake’s phones went off together, so Jake read the message out loud, considering that I was still driving. It consisted of just three words—’what the hell’—but there was a whole lot more punctuation. By the time I pulled up at the next set of traffic lights, Jake had counted the question marks and exclamation marks and it turned out Gemma had used more of them than actual letters.
Jake shook his head. ‘What is her problem?’ he said, his tone gruff and his body tensed, but then he sighed. A long, deep sigh. He ran his fingers through his hair for good measure, then turned his head towards me. ‘Do you want to reply, or should I?’
‘I will. I don’t need the guilt of starting World War Three, and I don’t have to live with her.’
‘Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to, either,’ Jake mumbled. ‘But it’s not for much longer.’
For some reason, I shuddered. ‘Why’s that?’ I asked, pretending somebody hadn’t just walked over my grave.
‘Oh, er … nothing.’ He found something very interesting to look at in the glove box.
‘No! Spill!’ I met his gaze just for a second, so had to put everything into my super-glare. ‘Are you moving out?’
‘No! Well, not yet, anyway.’ Jake smacked the heel of his hand against his forehead. ‘Damn it, Tink, why do you have to be so easy to talk to?’
‘You say that like it’s a bad thing,’ I said, hoping I didn’t sound anywhere near as cocky as I felt all of a sudden. ‘A girl could take offence, you know.’
‘Yeah, sorry.’
‘So? Have you found a place to rent or something?’
‘Or something?’ He fell silent again.
‘Do I have to pull over and beat it out of you?’
A smile lit his face instantly. ‘You could try. Hey, it might even be fun.’
I smacked his thigh and was met with pure muscle. ‘Ow! OK, maybe not.’ My fingers were still stinging when I moved my hand back to the wheel, rubbing it over the cool leather. ‘You know you can talk to me, though, right?’
‘Yeah, I think I do.’ Jake’s silence stretched over the course of several heartbeats. His gaze scorched the side of my face but I kept my focus on the road ahead and refused to be the next to speak. ‘There’s a house coming on the market soon, one that needs a lot of work doing.’
‘And?’ I prompted when Jake didn’t say any more.
‘I know the owner,’ he said. ‘And he’s giving me first refusal.’
‘What? To buy?’ I dragged the steering back to the left after I almost swerved into the oncoming traffic. ‘Can you do that? Buy a h
ouse, I mean?’
‘Yeah, I reckon so. I mean, I’ve been saving ever since I started work and I’ve built up a pretty decent deposit. I’m on a good wage too, and Dad’s making me a director now I’m twenty-one, so the mortgage shouldn’t be a problem.’
I choked. I couldn’t help it, but it got so bad I had to pull over to the side of the road. Thankfully, we were off the main road and back in Sleepyville, so dropping my mirror-signal-manoeuvre mantra wouldn’t get anyone killed. My eyes watered and stung as I stared at Jake’s amused expression.
‘A mortgage? At twenty-one?’ I spluttered. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be going out drinking and partying all weekend?’
‘Nope, I’ve never been into that crap. Besides, this could be great for my career.’ He recognised my confused look and took pity on me. ‘My plan is to do it up in my spare time, then sell it on again, hopefully for a pretty decent profit. I can then use the proceeds from the sale to buy the next one.’
‘What, like those property-development programmes my mum loves?’
‘Yeah, exactly like that.’
‘Wow!’
Jake hit me with a smile and I knew in that instant he would succeed. In fact, the longer I looked at him, the more I saw a guy with a plan, a clear vision for the future, and he had the drive and determination to achieve it. He had it all worked out. Older, wiser, more mature than I, Jake wasn’t just a guy any more: he was a man. And here I was, nothing more than a glorified schoolgirl; I had no big plan, and absolutely naff-all clue about what to do after college, let alone with my life. Jeez, I hadn’t even had sex yet, whereas he’d probably been with loads of girls.
Why on earth would Jake ever look twice at me?
Reality sucked. Our stark differences put Jake so far out of my league it was untrue. No way did I want to become the girl who held him back—assuming he even noticed me—or be the pitiful cling-on who followed him around with huge doe eyes. The crush had to go. Dejection threatened to set in, but I ignored the knot building in my stomach, and the way it churned and lurched all at once. So what if I couldn’t be his girlfriend? I could at least be a good friend, as he had been for me.
Popping the Cherry Page 13