by Neha Yazmin
Chapter 3: Christian
Deep down, I was well aware that my mother would come looking for me the moment her husband let go of her, or when he fell asleep that night. My mum, be content with me staying over at a friend’s in the state I was in? Hell would freeze over before she let that happen.
Unfortunately, she’d have her way too, because, apart from my friends, I didn’t have anywhere to go, and their parents were friends with mum and they’d all gang up on me and force me to come home.
Fleetingly, I wondered if that was why mummy dearest made such an effort to get to know my friends and their families. Had she foreseen this reaction of mine to the biggest revelation of my life?
Or was it because she just bloody loved to interfere?
And keep me on a tight leash.
Growing up, she’d always had her eyes on me. Watching my every move.
I could feel her eyes on me.
Shaking my head in annoyance, I strode forward, my heavy rucksack weighing me down. I can’t believe it, I kept thinking as I walked in the obsolete light of the streetlights. It was May and though it was past 9pm, the sky was a beautiful jade, luminous and almost artificial-looking. I’d always loved walking outside at night, especially summer nights, maybe because I rarely got a chance to do it.
Mum never let me go out after 6.
Nowadays, with my improved eyesight, I can see all the colours of the night. Tones that the trees and grass and buildings bathe in after sunset are so rich and alluring. Deep. Like seeing it all from behind blue-tinted glasses. It looks so different and new. Unfamiliar.
How could this be? My whole life was a lie. I was a lie. I was a mistake, not just for two people – the two people who bred me; one who ran from me, the other that got lumbered with me – but also for the man who took on the responsibility of marrying my mother, looking after her illegitimate child. Giving me his name. No wonder the guy didn’t love me, and stopped pretending to, shortly after his own daughter was born. Did he still love my mother? Does she actually love him at all? Do they resent each other? Resent me for ruining their lives?
At least they got to ruin mine in return!
Just as I made it to the corner of Lucy’s street, her house at the very end of a long line of terraced houses, I heard someone say, “Enjoying your walk, Ellie?”
I came to a stop immediately. My heart jumped into my throat and my stomach seemed to melt. I think I even stopped breathing for a few seconds.
He was right next to me, as though we’d been walking together all along. “Haha,” he said, amused by the shock on my face.
“How d-do you do that?” I stuttered.
He always did that. Appeared out of nowhere and acted like he’d been part of the scene from the beginning. Completely oblivious as to how weird it is to the rest of us. Having already asked this question on the previous occasion we’d met – which was the second occasion we actually met – I guessed he’d respond with the same words.
And he did. “Do what, Elisia?” I don’t know why he used my full name rather than the shortened version I’m generally known by.
“Oh, I’m not in the mood for this.”
“Not in the mood for what?” he asked smoothly, smiling. I shook my head and tried not to look at him as I started walking again.
He was very good-looking. Tall and slim, strong and firm-looking. His sleek black hair was short and had a few spikes pointing in random directions, making his light skin even chalkier.
His eyes were a strange dark purple.
When I first saw him, I remember thinking that he must be at least 23 or 24, just because he seemed so much cooler and smarter and more mature than the boys from my classes. But he said he was 20.
“So why are you hanging outside a sixth form?” I’d asked him that first day, about a week ago. “Shouldn’t you be chasing Uni girls?”
“Do you think I’m chasing you?” he asked charmingly, raising one eyebrow.
He’d just joined me and a group of my friends as we were saying goodbye outside the college gates. Apparently, he was hoping to see Selma from my English class but he kept talking to me, even after I told him she wasn’t around. Lucky thing, she’d won this amazing scholarship to America and had flown to the States last week to check out her future residences. She’d be back in time for the exams though.
He seemed disappointed for not being able to catch up with her, but a little pleased about something else. I didn’t understand that part. Anyway, the others started their own conversations and the two of us got left alone. I asked if he was wearing purple-coloured contacts over his eyes and he said yes. Then, once I queried his age, I asked why he was outside our college.
“No,” I said shyly, “I don’t think you’re chasing me.”
“What if I was to chase you?” he asked curiously. “Would you run or let me catch you?” This was flirting and I knew I shouldn’t flirt back.
I didn’t know how to flirt anyway.
“I have to go home,” I said and made a run for it. I didn’t know if I would’ve flirted with him if I knew how. I didn’t know if I fancied him. Yes, I thought he was attractive, but did I like him? I didn’t know.
I still don’t know.
A few days later, there he was again, just making himself at home amongst my group of girlfriends during our lunch break. It was one of those days when we had a free period before the lunch hour so we took our time with our food in a nearby coffee shop. The mysterious stranger was suddenly sitting at the empty table next to ours and acting as though he was the extended part of our lunch crew.
When Carrie, my closest friend, got up to go to the toilet, he took her seat, which was opposite me, and we started chatting again. Before I knew it, my friends had sort of left us alone again, and it was just me and him.
“So you didn’t tell me the other day, Ellie,” he said, leaning closer over the table. “If I chased you, what would you do?”
“I’d run,” I said immediately. I’d prepared my answer. Was I so confident that we’d meet again, or that he’d remember and ask about the chasing thing? When had I become so presumptuous about me and boys?
“I don’t think you could outrun me,” he told me. I don’t doubt that for a second.
Back then though, I thought he was being presumptuous and arrogant. But instead of saying something witty and clever to show him up, I just got up saying, “I’ve lost my appetite,” and walked out of the café.
And I was running from him again on our third encounter. Well, I was running towards Lucy’s. Hopefully, mum would’ve already called all my close friends and given them the low-down, and as annoying as it would be to have them all know my business, it was better than me talking about it.
I wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.
“Slumber party, Elle?” the charming stranger enquired beside me. This time he was calling me Elle, something my friends called me only sporadically, just to mix it up. “Am I invited?” he asked when I didn’t respond. I did slow my walk though. Why? To prolong my time with him?
“You most certainly are not invited!” I told him sternly.
He chuckled. “Worth a try,” he shrugged. I frowned. “Dear, dear Elisia,” he said indulgently. “How obvious must I be to make you see how much I crave your company? Do you honestly not like me, even a little bit?”
I’d slowed down a lot by the time he finished speaking, to the point of actually not walking anymore. “I don’t know,” I answered very truthfully. “I think I could like you.” I wish I’d stopped with the honesty before I said that and did my usual running thing. “But I’m not ready for… for anything. My life’s pretty messed up right now.”
“I clean up as well as, and as fast as, I run,” he teased. “Maybe a night out with me is exactly what you need right now.”
Yeah right, I thought sarcastically. Out drinking and clubbing and hanging out with a total stranger – whose name, by the way, I still didn’t know because I hadn’t aske
d and he hadn’t said – was the last thing I needed.
Mum would go berserk for a start.
Then I realised that’s exactly what I wanted – to make her go absolutely, stark-raving mental. She’d just turned my whole life inside out and upside down, this is the least she deserves. One night of me doing the one thing she didn’t want me to do, was going to be payback. For all the lies and truths. The interference. The control-freak-ness. The always-being-in-my-business-ness.
For everything going on in my crazy head that night.
Everything that made me say, “I don’t want a night out with you.”
“How about a night in, then?” he said half-joking, half-expecting me to turn and start running, really, literally, running.
Well, it didn’t look like he expected me to say, “I thought you’d never ask.”
He smiled in triumph and it was very beautiful. For a split second, I thought I saw his eyes change colour and felt a cool, cool breeze brush past my face. It must have been the reflection of some car’s headlights, I reasoned. His eyes couldn’t have looked deep scarlet for the tiniest moment and then dark purple again.
Shaking away the thought, I started walking again, this time in the opposite direction, following him. He said his flat was in the other side of town – I didn’t bother asking what he was doing all the way over here – and that his motorbike was parked a few minutes away. He claimed that the bike wasn’t as fast as him. I don’t doubt that for a second but while we made our way to said transportation, I thought he was just being his charmingly smug self.
Before I sat down on the seat behind him, my heart thumping nervously and excitedly at the thought of being on a bike for the first time in my 17 years, I realised what I was about to do. I was about to go to this stranger’s flat, and I hadn’t asked his name yet.
“Don’t call me anything other than Ellie,” I told him.
“Okay,” he chuckled. “I shall only call you Ellie for the rest of your life.” There was a promise in his tone. Strange, I’d thought.
“And what shall I call you?” I asked.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
“Well?” I demanded.
“Call me by my name,” he said, pulling me onto his lap. Then he adjusted my legs so I was facing him. I should’ve been sitting like that, only behind him and facing the opposite direction.
He revved the engine.
“I can’t sit like this,” I complained. It was no use, we were already speeding off.
It was fun, exhilarating, and scary at the same time, and I hugged myself to him. Somehow, no one seemed to notice us. Were we moving that fast? Or was there just something about the two of us together that made people look the other way?
After a few minutes, I was enjoying myself.
Then I remembered. “Call me by my name,” I repeated what he’d said earlier. “I would, if you told me.”
Then he told me his name.
Christian.