by Alice Oseman
Maybe it’s kind of a weird picture to take, but I can understand why Nick took it. I’d take a picture of him if he looked like that in my bed. God, that sounds creepy, doesn’t it? I don’t care.
As I flick through the rest of the photos, I start to realise that they’re all sort of like that, all tinged purple and blue and orange, muted colours, a little blurry, like polaroids at an art-school exhibition.
Me stretched out on his bed on his laptop. Me lying on the lounge floor with my arms around his dog, Henry. Me attempting to give Henry a piggyback. Me several steps ahead in the field behind his house from when we took Henry for a walk. Me standing at the top of a hill, holding out my arms – I remember him taking that one. Me giving him side-eye as I caught him trying to take a picture of me against the view, the sunlit horizon and the fields and the river. A selfie of us together. A selfie of us with me holding Henry up so he could be in it too. A selfie of us making stupid faces. Back at his house, a blurred close-up of me laughing from when he’d thrust the camera at my face. The light gets darker, bluer, a photo of me curled up on the lounge sofa, the TV screen illuminating the tips of my hair. Me cross-legged on his bed in just my T-shirt and boxers, pointing at the camera, smiling. And then the one of me asleep.
There are so many of just me.
Me.
Nick just took a ton of photos of me.
Nick’s not a hugely creative person, he’s never been interested in photography or art or anything like that.
I think he just took them because he wanted to remember what this was like. What our life is like now. Chilling round each other’s houses, going on walks, eating together, sleeping together.
It sounds boring but it’s so wonderful.
It is. I feel myself tear up just looking at our life together.
I love this. I love us. I love our weird, boring life.
I take my phone out of my pocket and take a picture of our stupid-face selfie in the field. I send it to Nick.
NICK
My mate Sai has come round to stage an intervention. He’s going to Cambridge Uni in the autumn so I’m not entirely surprised that he’s smart enough to pick up on the fact that I am approximately seventy miles away from okay, but he hasn’t said anything useful so far and now we’re playing Mario Kart and eating Percy Pigs.
After we’ve been gaming for around half an hour and chatting casually about A Level revision and summer and how utterly shit Harry’s party was yesterday, Sai finally says, “So what exactly are you both having an argy-bargy about?” He puts the Wii remote down, swivels round on the sofa and folds his arms. “Because it sounds like nothing, to be honest.”
I sigh and pause the game. “Charlie broke up with me, mate.”
“Oh, come on. Why the bloody hell would he do that?”
“I have no idea.”
“Are you sure that’s what he was trying to do?”
“Honestly, I’m not even sure. He was so drunk. He just kept telling me I should break up with him. And I just lost it at him.”
Sai adjusts his glasses and runs a hand through his hair. “Sounds like you need to have a chat with him, dude.”
“I don’t know what to say.” I put down my Wii remote down and look at him. “Help me.”
“Why am I the relationship expert? I’ve never even been in a relationship.”
“You’re smart. You’re doing English Lit at uni.”
“English Lit is utterly useless in the real world, Nicholas. Utterly useless. Trust me. Chaucer and John Donne aren’t going to help you with this.”
This makes me laugh. “I don’t even know who they are.”
“Exactly.”
I lean my head back on the sofa. “I think he… just… thought it was a good time to end our relationship. Like, teenage relationships never last. It’s a bit weird that we’ve made it this far anyway. And we’re so fucking dull as well; like, we hardly do anything interesting. We’re the most basic teenage relationship.”
“Basic teenage relationship?” Sai splutters. “Have you seen yourselves? You hang around with each other every single day and somehow haven’t wanted to kill each other yet. You’ve started sleeping round each other’s houses regularly on school nights! You can communicate by just looking at each other! Trust me, I’ve played board games with you two.” He shakes his head. “A basic teenage relationship is daring to hold hands outside the school gate and going on cinema-and-Nando’s dates on Saturday afternoons.”
I stare at him.
“If you want to break up,” he says, pointing a finger at me, “go right ahead. If you’re bored and want it to be over, fine. But just because you’re not going on fucking amazing dates every weekend doesn’t mean you’re boring and definitely doesn’t mean you need to break up. And just because Elle and Tao aren’t, like, passionately in love any more, doesn’t mean that you and Charlie aren’t.”
He slaps his hands on his legs and leans back.
“Shit,” I say.
When I pick up my phone a couple of hours later, I have a message.
The name on the screen reads Charlie Spring.
FIVE
CHARLIE
I send him another picture two hours later. The one of us kissing that I took on my phone.
Two hours after that, I send him a third picture. The selfie we took in school on his last day.
The next morning, an old selfie of us I find on my Tumblr.
Half an hour later, one of our first selfies, back when we started going out.
And I carry on like that until Monday. Picture after picture until I’ve sent every single selfie of us I have saved on my phone.
The little ‘Read’ tick appears on all of them until around Sunday afternoon. Then he stops reading them.
And he says nothing. He doesn’t reply.
As soon as Victoria gets home from her exam on Monday, I tell her all about it.
“He’s not replying,” I say. It’s actually embarrassing how panicked I sound. “What does that mean?”
She stands at the door, not even taking her shoes off.
“You got those photos?” she says.
“In my room.”
“Go get them.”
“Why?”
“We’re posting them through his letterbox.”
“Why will that help?”
“Because texts are dumb.” She shrugs. “And a gesture is needed.”
I laugh. “Who are you?”
“A born-again woman. Willing to put aside my apathy for the sake of romance.” She blinks and puts her hand on her heart. “Jesus, I gave myself indigestion saying that out loud.”
Victoria’s friend Becky drives us. Becky keeps looking at me in the rear-view mirror. I’ve never been truly sure whether Becky likes me or not, but right now, I don’t think it matters.
It only takes a minute to drive there, but Victoria says we have to drive because a quick getaway will be vital to the success of the ‘gesture’. Sitting in the back seat, I flick through the photos again. Should I post all of them through the letterbox? Just a few? Just one?
I make the decision and take a pen out of my pocket.
NICK
I get home from my Monday afternoon exam, dump my bag on the floor in the hallway and fall on to the living room sofa. It didn’t go too badly today. Only two more to go, and then that’s it. Summer.
Summer. What am I going to do with all of that time?
I almost don’t want my exams to end now.
Charlie started sending me blank texts on Saturday while Sai was round. I don’t really know what they’re supposed to mean. My phone’s quite old and I dropped it down the stairs a couple of months ago so I assume it’s a glitch. I haven’t turned it on since yesterday afternoon. Seeing Charlie’s name keep popping up was making my stomach lurch every single time.
“Nicky? Is that you, love?” My mum calls from the kitchen.
“Yeah,” I shout.
“You’ve got post.”
It’s in Charlie’s handwriting.
And my stomach lurches harder than it has done all weekend.
“Oh my God,” I say.
“What’s up?” Mum brings two mugs of tea over to the table and sits down, looking at me expectantly.
“It’s from Charlie.”
Mum gapes. We both stare at the envelope for a long moment.
“Well, open it then!”
And I do.
Inside the envelope is a photograph – the sort you get developed from disposable cameras. And I know immediately that I took this one. I remember the exact moment I decided to take it, walking into my room after getting a glass of water to find Charlie curled up so beautifully in my bed, the orange street-lamp light shining on his skin, and I felt like if I was going to die, this would be what I wanted to see last.
I turn the photo over and there’s Charlie’s handwriting.
Hey. You take a lot of pictures of me. D’you have a crush on me or something? How embarrassing. If you wanna talk, I’ll be at the Truham Primary School Summer Fete tomorrow (Tuesday) at 3 o’clock... wow this isn’t a rom-com lol. I’m sorry for how sappy this is. Btw I love you. Ok bye xxxx
CHARLIE
I haven’t felt this nervous since I had to do my bloody Head Boy campaign speech in front of the entire school.
What if Nick didn’t even see the photo? What if it, like, slipped underneath the doormat? Or his mum threw it away by accident? What if he saw the photo, tore it up, and didn’t even notice the note on the back?
What if he read it and still doesn’t turn up?
I arrive at Truham Primary School’s Summer Fete, which takes place every year on their school field, with Victoria and our dad at around two o’clock. We spend most of the following hour wandering round with our younger brother, Oliver, who’s in Year 4 at the school. Dad gives him money to do the tombola and play on the bouncy castle and the coconut shy, Victoria plays against him on the table football they’ve got set up in the middle of the field, and I mainly stand there, repeatedly checking my phone and searching around for my boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend? No. Not ex. Not yet.
I’m not giving up yet.
At quarter to three I go and wait near the entrance to the field, just inside the tennis court. It reminds me too much of the Truham tennis court, the day when all this had started, all these stupid, pointless feelings.
Charlie Spring
(14:54) i’m in the tennis court!! if ur coming
He doesn’t text me back. It doesn’t even say he’s read the message. I feel myself start to sweat a little. Is this it? Am I going to give up after this? Am I going to be able to give up?
What am I going to say to him? Am I just going to beg him not to break up with me?
What if he turns up and still says he wants to break up?
I take a deep breath.
This is it, I guess.
I look up and watch as Nick walks through the tennis-court gate.
Having not seen him for over two weeks, just the sight of him makes me want to run up to him and kiss him and hold him and not let go of him for at least twenty minutes. I clench my fists and stay very still as he walks up to me. God, everything about him is so perfect.
“Hi,” I say, as he stops and leans against the tennis court fence in front of me. I try to think of something else to say, but nothing comes to mind except ‘you are beautiful’ and ‘I love you’.
“Hi,” he says, with a nervous smile.
There’s a pause.
“I got the photo,” he says, and then shakes his head. “Well, duh. Here I am.”
I huff out a laugh. “Genuinely the most embarrassing thing I have ever done.”
“And you call me embarrassing.”
“That photo was pretty embarrassing, though.”
“True. We’re actually both pathetic.” He grins and I feel a pang of hope.
“You didn’t text me back, bitch,” I say, because that’s what we always say when one of us doesn’t text the other back.
But instead of his usual funny retort, Nick just blinks and says, “You were just sending me blank texts. I thought it was a glitch or something.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket and shows me his messages. There’s the one I sent him five minutes ago, and then there’s just blank message after blank message.
Oh.
Right.
“Why, what did they say?” Nick looks at me curiously.
“Oh… I was, erm… sending you all the pictures, like, one-by-one…” I run a hand through my hair. “That’s so awkward. Wow. Sorry.”
“Pictures of us, you mean?”
“Haha… yeah…”
“I don’t think this phone can get picture messages anymore.”
I stare at him. “Can’t it?”
“Don’t think so. You know I dropped down the stairs it a couple of months ago? It’s been doing some weird things since then.”
I shake my head, amazed. “I knew you’d dropped it but I didn’t know about the photo thing.”
He shrugs. “Neither did I.”
“Oh.”
“Can I see them now?”
He’s not laughing at me. He’s serious. He doesn’t think this was stupid.
“Yeah.” I take my phone out of my pocket and we scroll through the pictures one-by-one, laughing at the stupid ones and pausing on the cute ones. Occasionally we get to one that reminds us of an old day out and we stop and talk about it and remember, remember the silly dates we’ve been on and the terrible ones and the great ones, the repetitive days we spend indoors and outdoors, at school and at home. By the end, we’re both sitting on the asphalt with our backs against the fence, the sun shining off the brilliant green court and the white of our shoes.
We sit in silence for a minute, and then he says, his voice so quiet I only just catch it over the buzz of the crowd behind us, “I don’t want to break up with you.”
And I could honestly cry right there. I could just cry with relief.
“Me neither,” I say. “Sorry if I sounded like I did. I really didn’t.”
“Same.” He chuckles. “I have no idea what we were arguing about.”
“Me neither.”
“Sorry I shouted at you. And didn’t drive you home.”
“Sorry I got drunk and made out with you in front of everyone. And cried.”
“Sorry I called you a dick.”
“Sorry I told you to leave.”
“Sorry for talking about uni all the time.”
“Sorry for getting pissed off with you talking about uni all the time.”
He laughs, an amazing, boyish, Nick laugh. He rolls his head on to my shoulder. “Can we stop now?”
I find his hand and take it in mine. I lean against him and he still smells like him, like home. “Yeah.”
“I don’t want to break up with you, ever,” he says.
“Same.”
“Maybe that’s stupid.”
“I don’t care,” I say.
“Me neither,” he says.
He tilts his head up again and kisses me and I haven’t felt this happy for weeks, months, maybe ever, and something is different too, something I can’t quite place. He brings a hand up to my cheek and I don’t think things have gone back to normal – instead, we’ve entered an entirely new era, one where we’re better, surer, stronger together.
Wow. I really am embarrassing.
“Also, I bought you chocolate,” I say, when we break apart after a while. I take the Oreo Dairy Milk bar out of my pocket, hoping it hasn’t melted too much in the heat.
“Oh man.” He grabs it and tears it open. “That’s it. You’ve sealed the deal now. We’re practically married.” He pops a chunk into his mouth and then holds it out to me. “Want some?”
I stare at the chocolate and feel th
at jolt of fear that I always get, but something, for some reason in that moment, makes me say, “Yeah, okay.”
NICK
We decide to ditch the fete. Oliver will be fine with Tori and their Dad, and there isn’t really much for us two to do there anyway. We decide the beach is a much better idea.
It’s about an hour’s drive to the beach we always go to, so Charlie connects my iPod to the car radio and plays some Everything Everything, then Alt-J, then The Maccabees. There are closer beaches, but they’re always busy and disgusting, packed with loud teenagers and toddlers and people fighting for a spot to lay their towel.
Our beach is a lot smaller. It has a thin pier you can walk down, with a bench at the end, and a massive arcade just across the road that stays open until 10pm. There never seems to be many people on the beach itself, apart from a few dog-walkers and elderly folk, and it’s no different today. It’s just open space and flat blue sea and a beautiful horizon, as if the whole world has been made just for us.
We walk up and down the beach, talking, and we walk up the pier and sit on the bench at the end and talk and kiss, and then we get the rug I keep in my car and find a spot on the beach to sit down and then lie down and just be silent for a while.
We walk to the fish and chip shop we always go to and sit on the brick wall outside and eat and talk, and then we decide taking off our shoes and socks and rolling up our jeans and paddling in the sea is a good idea but quickly learn, once our jeans get wet, that it probably wasn’t a very good idea after all.
We take a bunch of photos on Charlie’s phone after talking about how he doesn’t take enough. We go to the arcade for an hour and play on all our favourites: air hockey, the jungle car game, the skiing game, the basketball game, the coin machines. We get enough tickets for a bouncy ball.
We sit at the end of the pier again and watch the sunset, because that’s what you’ve got to do on days like this. The clouds turn pink and purple, the sky orange, and then everything is dark blue.
On the drive back, Charlie falls asleep in my car. I turn the radio on and thank the universe that my life is like this.