Dating Down Read online

  “No.” I add some vodka to the orange.

  “You never did tell me,” she says, changing the subject.

  “Tell you what?”

  “Why you were hiding in the park too.”

  I take another drag. “It’s a long story.”

  “Well, you’ve got until midnight.”

  I look into her pretty blue eyes, and I know if I tell her, I’ll cross the safety line. “You should go back inside.” Just saying the words, sending her away, it hurts, but it’s got to be done. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

  She touches my hand on her way back into that glitzy ballroom, and I watch her dance and laugh with her friends, the brightest light of them all. Perhaps if Grace hadn’t died, I might risk asking her out, but I can’t chance it.

  Saturday 10:20 p.m.

  Tammy

  “He’s gorgeous,” Sue drools. “Definitely a nine on the CHIL Scale!”

  “CHIL?” I ask.

  “Yes, CHIL,” says Sue. “You’ve never heard of CHIL?”

  I shake my head, heart lurching from the panic that this is another one of their setups to make me look stupid.

  “Relax,” Carrie tells me. “It’s just a bit of fun. C stands for Charisma, because he has to be funny, confident, but not arrogant.”

  “H is for Height,” Jane continues. “Got to be tall.”

  “I for intelligence,” Rachel chips in. “No one wants to date an idiot.”

  “And L is for Looks.” Carrie finishes explaining the acronym. “Liam Hemsworth is a ten.”

  “Why isn’t Gary a ten?” I personally would have rated Gary a ten like Liam, despite preferring Chris.

  “He’s a smoker,” Sue replies. “We always deduct at least one point.”

  She’s got a point. Smoking is a pretty silly thing to do.

  “Where did you find him?” Carrie asks.

  “He’s an artist,” I reply. “I liked some of his pictures, and we got talking…”

  “Cool,” says Jane, looking seriously impressed. “Has he got any cute mates?”

  “I’ve not met his friends yet. We haven’t been going out long.... and, well... you never know how long...” I break off as I’m forced to face the reality of the clock striking midnight, and Gary disappearing from my life forever.

  “What do you mean?” Carrie interrupts. “He’s crazy about you.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “See for yourself,” Carrie tells me, nodding leftwards. “By the bay windows. He hasn’t taken his eyes off you all evening.”

  Trying not to make it too obvious as I dance, I move around so I’m facing the doors. And I can’t help it: when I see him there, leaning against the wall, I forget everything else.

  My heart starts to pound as this jolt shoots through me and we connect, just like we did in the pub, in the back of the car, and in the gardens just now. It’s magical – I can’t think of any other way to describe it. It’s like I’ve been waiting for him forever.

  In the background, the band starts to play my favourite Aerosmith song. I smile and he smiles back, his eyes looking right into me. Everyone starts to pair off. Carrie dances with Simon, Sue and her tennis hunk Paul are smooching in the far corner, and Rachael has her head on Morgan’s shoulder.

  I look at Gary, wait for him to come and ask me to dance, but he stays by the doors, hands buried in his pockets, just looking. It doesn’t feel like make believe the way he looks at me. I close my eyes and count to ten. If he really likes me, if this isn’t make believe, he’ll be standing in front of me when I open my eyes.

  One, two, three...

  I jump as I feel a tap on my shoulder, and my heart flutters with joy. He does like me, he really does. Opening my eyes, I get ready to throw my arms around his neck, but it isn’t Gary standing there.

  “May I?” Callum asks, holding out his hand. “We always do.”

  He’s tall, he’s funny, he’s confident, he’s strong from all that rowing, and he’s got one of those honest faces, but being with him is still make believe, and I want something real.

  “Well?” he asks again.

  Stalling for time, I glance back towards the door. Gary’s gone, and my heart tumbles all the way into my Jimmy Choos. Gary didn’t come. It’s just pretend, and I’m just seeing what I want to see.

  “Tammy?”

  I turn back to Callum and shake my head.

  “No?” He cocks his head to one side, feigning disappointment.

  “Not tonight. Maybe next time.”

  He nods, goes over to Jane, and two seconds later she’s kicked off her shoes and has her arms wrapped around his thick neck. They look right together. I just wish I could find someone who’s right for me, and with a sigh I get out my mobile to pretend I’ve got to make a call when Gary catches my arm.

  “You want to dance?”

  I nod, having lost the power of speech the moment I tumble into his eyes.

  He pulls me to his chest and wraps his arms loosely around my waist. “You look really pretty.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want you to say it unless you mean it.”

  “But I do mean it. You look like a princess.”

  I know if I look into his eyes I’ll see if he’s telling me the truth, but then the magic will burst. It can’t hurt to pretend just a bit longer, can it?

  The song changes, and we give up all pretence of dancing and just sway from side to side. I rest my cheek against his chest and close my eyes, enjoying the heat of his body, the strong pulse of his heart, the way he nuzzles his face into my hair.

  “Tammy?”

  “Hmmm...” Speaking softly, he wakes me from my daydreaming to where we’re together for real.

  “Tammy, look at me.”

  Reluctantly, I remove my cheek from his heart, not wanting the fantasy to end just yet. “Yes?”

  He doesn’t reply. Instead, he presses his forehead to mine so our lips are nearly touching but not quite. My heart quickens. This is real. This is too gentle for pretend, and I close my eyes as his lips brush against mine, but he doesn’t follow through with the kiss.

  Once again we just look at each other as everything and everyone else disappears, and it’s just him and me beneath the rose-coloured lights.

  “I wish I could ask you out for real,” he whispers, refusing to release me from his gaze.

  But I never get the chance to ask why he doesn’t think he can, because in the next breath, his lips are on mine. Lost in the dizzy pleasures of his kiss, I wrap my arms around his neck, clinging to every precious second, because I’ve never experienced anything so mind-blowing in all my life. Once, twice, three times his lips say good-bye to mine before he pulls away, as breathless and confused as I am at how one kiss could have overwhelmed us.

  I reach up to touch his cheek, because I don’t have the words to tell him I feel the same, but he jerks his head away and breaks the spell. The warmth evaporates from his eyes. He removes his hands from my waist and erects that invisible barrier again, only this time it’s so thick that it’s pushing me away with every breath he takes.

  “We shouldn’t have done that,” he says, leaving me broken and reeling.

  “Why not?” I know it was nice for him. I could tell his heart was trying to leap out of his chest to join mine.

  “Because you’re supposed to be breaking up with me!”

  Saturday 10:40 p.m.

  Gary

  I get out of there as fast as I can and sit down on a bench in front of some big pond filled with floating flowers and fat goldfish. Too much is going on. My brain just can’t take it. Jack; fighting with Bill; fighting with them thugs; finding Tammy; kissing her –

  It must have been all the booze, or this place. I mean, you can’t feel that way after one kiss, it’s bloody stupid. If I’d snogged her in my local, it wouldn’t have been anything special; but girls like her don’t drink where I do. Until tonight, I didn’t think girls li
ke her existed.

  I get out my mobile and light up. One text from Bill: They called Social Services. Great, as if things couldn’t get any worse. Social Services, bloody wankers the lot of them.

  I take a long drag and let out all the anger in one continuous breath. But the smokes don’t work, and I still feel like I’m going to explode. I should go back inside and see if she’s okay, she’s all I can think about – her, making sure she’s okay. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s because I saved her, perhaps it’s ’cos she’s nice, but if I don’t watch it, I’m the one who’s going to need saving.

  My phone beeps again, and I flip it open. Another text from Bill: Bring clean clothes 4 me & toys 4 Jack b4 12 2morrow or ELSE! I guess that means Jack’s doing okay if he’s up to playing with toys, and it also means Bill still wants to kill me. If I was him, I’d want to kill me. I’m a waste of space. A waste of space who needs a drink.

  Back inside, head down (taking the long route round the dance floor so I don’t bump into Tammy), I slip into the bar.

  “Vodka – make it a double – and a pint.” I start ripping the beer mat to pieces to stop me ripping pieces out of myself.

  “Eighteen pounds fifty,” says the stuffy barman down his nose at me.

  “Keep the change.” I hand him two of the ten-quid vouchers Tammy gave me, down my vodka, and take my pint out back for another smoke. I hear that lot bitching about her on the other side of the wall.

  “How on earth did Tammy pull someone like him?” I hear the first girl say.

  I should be feeling pretty good that the posh girls think I’m hot, but I don’t.

  “She probably paid him to come with her,” says the second girl, I’ve no idea which one. “When she couldn’t produce a hunk called Ralph!”

  “Don’t be horrible, Rachael!” says the girl who’s Tammy’s friend. “Why wouldn’t he like her? Tammy’s really nice!”

  “I forgot you used to be friends,” says another.

  “If you gave her a chance –” Carrie, I think that’s her name, tries to speak, but the others won’t listen.

  I take another gulp of beer, fuming because I don’t know what to do. If they were blokes, I’d smash their faces in; but they’re a bunch of bitchy schoolgirls, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do to protect Tammy from them.

  “Wonder what the fight was about?” one of them muses.

  “She wouldn’t say,” says Tammy’s friend. “And don’t go asking her again. You really upset her.”

  “Whatever,” another one of them says all dismissive like. “We need to get back. The guys will be wondering where we’ve got to.”

  I finish my drink and do some more thinking as the anger continues to swell in me. The best thing for me is to go. I don’t owe Tammy anything. But the thought of them lot hurting her continues to stab at me, and before I change my mind again, I head back into the dance. I pinch a rose from one of the tables and go off to make things right with her.

  It doesn’t take me long to find her. I knew she’d be hiding in the corner, looking at her mobile.

  “Hi.” I feel like the biggest shit in the world and hold out the rose. It’s the first time I’ve ever given flowers to anyone except Grace.

  She takes it but doesn’t look at me.

  “Tammy, I’m sorry.” No guy relishes being in this position. Girls talk, tell each other bloody everything, and I don’t want to be talked about as a sucker or pathetic jerk by anyone. “Really, forget what I said back then. I didn’t mean it.”

  I can’t tell, behind all the hurt in her pretty face, if she believes me or not.

  “Please?” I cringe as I hear myself begging.

  Still she ignores me.

  “Tammy, do I have to get down on my hands and knees?” Humour, that usually works, but not today.

  “Tammy, just give me five minutes, and if you still want me to go, I will.”

  Silence.

  That’s when I lose my cool. I mean, there’s only so much a guy can take. “I DIDN’T have to come here tonight, DID I?”

  She flinches, and so do I. Now I feel even worse for making her think I’d blab about what really happened, even though she pushed me to it.

  “Tammy, please,” I beg, doing my exaggerated pleading look. “Five minutes.”

  “Five minutes.”

  I take her hand. She’s all stiff and awkward, acting like Jack does when he doesn’t want to go to school. She hates me, hates me so much she can’t look at me, as I take her to the bench by the fat goldfish.

  Sitting down, I pat the space next to me.

  “What do you want, Gary?” Keeping her arms crossed, she sits down, leaving the biggest of all gaps between us. “I’m cold.”

  I take off my jacket and slip it round her shoulders. “There, you’re not cold now.”

  “Thank you,” she mumbles, staring straight ahead.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry you kissed me or sorry you ever laid eyes on me?”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Stupid, am I?” she cries. “Stupid! You’re the stupid one for kissing me like that when you didn’t want to be with me.”

  “It was just a kiss.” I’m lying to myself as much as her. “It was no big deal.”

  “It was for me.”

  I reach forward to touch her, but she’s not having any of it and pushes me away. It hurts, hurts more than my head. I totally screwed things up with Bill and Jack, and now I’ve ruined things with her. I’m bloody cursed!

  “I was okay till you kissed me,” she explains. “But no one ever wants me.”

  “Stop saying that. Any guy would be lucky to have you.”

  “Then why don’t you?”

  Walked straight into that one, didn’t I? “I’m not good enough,” I say after a long pause.

  “Says who?”

  “Says me!” I’m sounding all angry, but I’m not. I’m just trying to stop her from getting any closer, because I don’t want to hurt her the way I do everyone else. “The only reason I’m here is because I put my mate’s brother in hospital!”

  There’s this horrible silence, and I wait for her to leave, but she doesn’t.

  “What happened?” she asks, her voice soothing all the tension that’s burning through my chest.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I tell her, chewing what’s left of my thumbnail.

  “If you didn’t want to talk about it, why tell me?”

  “So you’d realise what a shit bag I am and go away!”

  “A shit bag wouldn’t have risked his life to save me from those thugs,” she says in that nice voice of hers. “Or taken me to some lame dance.”

  I find myself smiling again. I can’t help it around her. “I’m no good.”

  “Stop changing the subject and tell me what happened.”

  I take a deep breath, her hand on my arm giving me strength. “I told you I lived with my mate Bill and his kid brother Jack?”

  She nods.

  “Well, Jack hasn’t been well. I was supposed to be looking after him, but I went out for beer and...” I leave out the bit about why I went out in the first place. “Any way, he was a lot sicker than I thought, and when I got back, he was unconscious.”

  “Oh my god!” she gasps, holding her hand to her mouth. “Is he all right?”

  “He had a busted appendix and needed emergency surgery. I got him to the hospital in time, but it was a close thing.”

  “Shouldn’t you be there now?”

  She’s right, of course. I should be there – Bill would be if it was the other way around. “I don’t want to see Bill get arrested for beating the crap out of me.”

  “He’d really beat you up?” She looks horrified.

  “No.” I forgot she believes everything I say. “He’s a good bloke.”

  “And Jack’s all right?”

  “Yeah, but not for much longer.”

  I hide my face in my hands as it hits me what a mess I’ve made of eve
rything. There’s only so much Tammy can do for me. I’m happy with her, but just like her, I’ve got to face reality, and my reality isn’t shiny and glitzy. It’s crap, and it’s a hundred times worse going back to it when you’ve been in the sunshine.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The hospital called Social Services,” I explain. “Jack will be in care by the end of the week.”

  “Gary, none of this is your fault.”

  “Isn’t it?” Hasn’t she been listening to a word I said? “I left Jack on his own ’cos I wanted to go out and get smashed!”

  She stares at me as if seeing the real me for the first time, and she doesn’t like what she’s seeing.

  “See, told you I was a shit bag!”

  She’s quiet for a long time, so long I think she’s gone back inside. “Sounds like you made a mistake.”

  “Yeah, my life’s one big mistake!”

  “Everyone makes mistakes, Gary. And if Jack’s going to be okay, it sounds like you’ve got a chance to put things right.”

  Once again I find myself smiling, because she can somehow find something good in my life. “Can I put things right with you?”

  “And how are you going to do that?” she asks, looking up at me with those big blue eyes.

  I freeze. This is like being on the highest diving board and stepping off for the first time. You know the rush is going to be awesome if you pull it off, and if you screw it up, you’re going to hurt like crazy.

  “What about if I kiss you and don’t act like a jerk?” I say.

  “That could work.” She smiles.

  My heart’s skipping as I close my eyes and press my lips to hers. I kiss her softly, because she’s special, and even though we’re not doing anything much, just kissing, nothing I’ve ever done with a girl has come close to how she makes me feel right now.

  I pull away, still panting. “Have I put things right?”

  She nods.

  “Want to go out with me for real next time?”

  “Yes, please.”

  I know I’ve got this stupid grin on my face, but I don’t care. “Want to dance?”

  It’s got to be the mushiest song ever, the sort of song if my mates saw me dancing to, they’d have every right to beat me up. And in the middle of the garden I wrap myself around her and we dance, just her and me.