Love-Struck (2 page)

Not many people know that Wes's real name is actually Winston. Winston Edward Stone, named after a prime minister, then a monarch, then his generations-old name that screams money in this town. The Stone Manor is the other side of town from us, on the richest street in Cathen town. When Mum found out that was where he lived, she laughed in disbelief.

“Wes lives on Millionaire's Row?
Our
Wes?”

It's true; to look at him, you wouldn't think he was loaded. I mean, he doesn't exactly flaunt it like those rich Cali kids on
The O.C.
– just regular jeans, shirts, a messenger bag. But when you get a bit closer you can see the little things: that his cute, square glasses are actually Armani, that he uses some amazing French scent that's really light and clean-smelling, and that his hair, however much he tries to mess it up, is cut by Toni and Guy.
The
Toni and Guy – they take it in turns. Yes, this boy is loaded, but he doesn't act like it. Like, he chose to come to Cathen Comp instead of a posh-lads' school, because he didn't want to “play ‘rugger' all day and come home with a posh accent”, and he dresses from the high street like any other guy our age, even though his mother plies him with designer shirts and chinos every week. And you can hold many a conversation with him and never once will you see that he already has about three times the amount of money that I will ever have in my life. He's just a normal, down to earth, nice guy. Who likes music.

Music is how we met – we chose to carry on music in our third year and just happened to be put next to each other in our class. Just before class started I was sat with my headphones in, listening to my favourite song – “Love in Idleness” by The Faeries – full blast; he happened to catch the beat and started tapping along to it. When it got to the chorus and we started singing simultaneously, each of us knew that the other was a friend for life.

Now, almost two years on, he's still my best friend. I don't know what I would do without him, to be perfectly honest. Which is why I was sat at the shiny bar of Ozzie's heaving parlour, waiting for him to sort me out and help me eat some pretty fantastic ice cream.

“Beautiful Holly, how can Uncle Ozzie help you out today, eh?” Ozzie's Turkish accent hasn't left him, even though he's been living here longer than I've been alive. He's a pretty amazing guy – speaks four languages fluently, a few conversationally, owns his own business, has a lovely wife (who makes the best Turkish food ever!) and also, he looks out for me and Mum. It's like having an uncle just around the corner.

“Ohh, I don't know – what's the new special?” I asked, scanning the various flavours in front of me.

He smiled wickedly. “It's your favourite…”

“Butterscotch and Malteaser?!”

“How big?” he laughed, heading for the cupboard.

“Wes is coming in a minute, so make it a large,” I smiled, watching him take a huge bowl from the cupboard. He started to scoop large spoonfuls out of the vat of ice cream before him, and looked me straight in the eyes.

“Ahh, Mister Stone is coming!” I knew what was coming after this. He says it every time I come here. “So when are you and him finally going to get together, eh?”

I rolled my eyes, but laughed too. “How many times, Ozzie – he's my best friend! It's a no-go!”

He put down his spoon and pointed at the nearest cartoon strip of “H'y Girl and Lameboy”, a particular favourite of mine where the superheroes have a dance-off against the cast of
High School Musical
, who have become quite evil. He stared at the poster, then cast his glance to me. “I don't believe it!” he cried. He shook his head, looking back down at his ice cream, ladling another spoonful into the bowl. “You kids are crazy; you don't even see what is right in front of your eyes! But then
love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind
– so if you say it's a ‘no-go', then I cannot argue, eh?”

He chuckled as he went over to the sprinkle station and covered my serving with thick chocolate fudge sauce and then multicoloured sprinkles. I was so busy drooling rather attractively that I hardly noticed Wes saunter into the parlour. He was wearing his favourite shirt – a blue tee with the legend “Goodfellow is my God” across the back – his dark hair styled “to look messy”. I don't really understand why boys do that. Why can't they just go with the fluffy, rolled-out-of-bed look? Wes says that he doesn't like it, but it looks so soft and cute without product. I'm probably the only person to ever see his hair like that; he never goes out without styling first. He's more of a chick than I am. In his tattered jeans and flip-flops, he sat down in the chair next to me, eyed the bowl of gooey mess that had just been set before me, and then beamed at our dealer.

“Butterscotch and Malteaser – Ozzie, you ledge!” Ozzie laughed as Wes grabbed a spoon and took a bite, then grinned and gave Ozzie two thumbs up and continued to shovel his face full of ice cream. What an attractive boy.

“So,” he declared, with a mouth full of fudge sauce, “what's going on, H?”

Ozzie turned away to serve another customer in the long queue of impatient teens waiting for a fix of his lush frozen ambrosia, and I turned to my friend and pushed aside my fringe.

“Do I have a bruise coming?” I asked, and Wes put down his spoon to have a look.

“No,” he said after a quick inspection. “Not yet. Why?”

I picked up my spoon and tucked in before starting my most current tale of embarrassment and woe.

“Well, I just went to the greengrocers' –”

“– oooh, for the first time since –”

“– the gig, yeah. And so I went in, because I thought everything was clear and that he wasn't working; so I bent down to root around the carrots –”

“–
nice
–”

“And then I heard this voice, all deep and gorgeous, saying, ‘Well, if it isn't Little Miss Hockers' and I nearly died – there I was bending over a pile of old carrots, my big bum waving around in the air –”

“– it's not
that
big –”

“Oh, cheers!” I laughed, and he laughed too, his nose wrinkling as he chuckled. “Well, my rear, however big, was waving around and he scared me so much that I fell flat into the tub of carrots, and then when I tried to stand up and got hit by a face in the shelf – I mean shelf in the face—” By this time Wes was hooting with laughter like a small owl, and I had to give him a small shove on the shoulder, because his giggles were making me giggle, and turning my tragedy into a comedy. “And it was just so embarrassing that I had to get out of there quick as a cat, without any carrots, and then I rang you…”

“Oh dear,” he sighed, shaking his head through subsiding chuckles, then his conker-coloured eyes met mine as he ate the luscious dessert. “Not a good day for Cathen's leading superhero, eh?” I shook my head, carefully touching the point where my head had nearly split in two, and helped myself to some more ice cream. We're so greedy; the bowl was nearly finished.

“No,” I agreed. “Getting publicly humiliated? Bad times. But the hottest guy in school –” Wes uttered a sarcastic, pointed cough. “– asking for my number again after said public humiliation? Good times!”

“He didn't say that he lost your number, did he?” Wes asked sardonically. I didn't say anything and looked at the floor. “Hols, that's the oldest line in the book! I'm telling you, he's not good enough for you; the guy's a sleaze.”

I frowned. “He might have actually lost my number, you know. Don't be so cynical! And don't ruin this for me; you know I've liked him for ages!”

Wes rolled his eyes. “Only because ‘he's just
so
gorgeous!' – and you call me superficial?”

“You're just jealous!” I declared, nicking the last bit of ice cream from the bowl. “Anyway, he said he's going to MSR, so even if he doesn't call I'll see him there!” I pushed the spoon around the bowl, preparing to tell Wes about my plan. “He also said that he didn't have a tent to stay in for the weekend…”

I bit my lip and waited for Wes to respond. After a few seconds he looked up, saw my face, and realized what I was asking. “You've got to be joking! Hols, I can't stand the guy for a double maths, let alone two nights.” I pouted, doing my best wounded-puppy face, but it's kind of lost its effect after two years. He shook his head. “Sorry, Comic Book Kid, but you'll have to woo and win him some other way…”

I carried on pouting. “Fine, be like that. But if it was the other way around I would have said yes!”

“No, you wouldn't. And besides, it would never be the other way around; I prefer the tall, blonde and beautiful type.”

I laughed. “Whatever, Winston. It was worth asking. But if a beautiful girl did walk in here right now, and you totally fell for her, I would ask her myself to share our tent.”

Wes was staring straight over my shoulder towards the door with a glazed expression.

“It makes me feel so loved when you don't listen to a word I say…”

Wes's eyes clicked back up to mine.

“Her.”

“What?” I said, totally baffled.

He nodded to the door, his eyes now fixed back on it. “Her.”

I turned in my seat and did a double take. I could have sworn I'd just seen Barbie. I looked again. Yes, I had seen Barbie. Real Life Barbie. Swishy blonde hair, tiny shorts, four-season tan: Barbie.

Barbie took off her shades and looked around the parlour at all the people inside. She saw the bar and walked straight over to it. Swish, swish with her shiny hair. She was pretty tall, too. Well, anything is tall to my measley 5'3”, but even by normal standards, this chick was tall.

“It's your turn to be joking, mate,” I whispered to Wes, who was still pretty much gaping at The Plastic One as if she were made of gold. “Jeez! Shut your mouth, why don't you? You look like the Channel Tunnel.”

He didn't hear me, his eyes fixed on the girl.

“She's coming this way! Act like you're not my girlfriend.”

I frowned incredulously. “But I'm
not
your girlfriend!”

Barbie, now at the bar just behind Wes, cast me a strange look, then turned back to the ice cream. She was OK-looking up close. Well, actually, she was pretty much ten million times better than OK-looking. Surprise surprise, she had bright blue eyes and really white teeth. She was like a perfect advertisement for Sweden, so I was mildly surprised when a wholly different accent came out of her mouth.

“Hi, do you, like, have any sorbets, or frozen yoghurt?”

I felt like shouting, “It's ‘yog-urt' for one, not ‘youh-guurrt'; and no, this is an
ice cream
parlour, we do ice cream!”, but I kept my mouth shut. I often get angry at people who are prettier than me, but it's not their fault, so I just have to be bitter and hostile inside instead, and come across as a nice, non-shallow person to everyone not inside my head.

Ozzie smiled at her and shook his head. “I am very sorry, we have not any frozen yoghurt, only sorbet in the corner.”

Barbie smiled her (100-watt) smile, thanked Ozzie (who winked at the awestruck Wes, then went back to serving), and wandered over to the far end of the freezer-server to have a look at the flavours. Wes turned around to have another look, then turned back to me with an expression on his face that just said, “Hamana!”: meaning, “Man, that girl is hot; I would!”

As Wes looked like he was so in awe he wouldn't speak for a good few minutes, I thought it best to ask him nod/shake questions.

“You like?”

Nod.

“You want?”

Nod nod.

“You need my help to get?”

Nod nod nod.

I grinned.

“Well, Stoney, it looks like your dormant hormones have actually awakened! Congrats and such. What's the plan, big man?”

His expression of delirious happiness was as frozen as the ice cream surrounding us, but it broke as he squeaked, “A name, please, find out her name.”

I rolled my eyes dramatically and slid off my stool, then wandered over to the American beauty deliberating over which low-fat treat to have. I wondered briefly if she knew that the sorbets may be low fat, but they have more sugar in than I even want to know about, but I pushed it aside, pinned on my best smile and pointed at the Mango Lemon Twist.

“That's probably the best one in here if you're looking for a sorbet; it leaves a really nice aftertaste. It's actually my favourite, second best to the special.”

I gestured to the sign that declared Butterscotch and Malteasers to be the special for the week. The doll-a-like smiled (which nearly blinded me) and nodded.

“I'll try it, thanks!” She placed an order “to go” with Nerin and then turned back to me. “I guess that would be my favourite too, but I'd never know – I'm lactose intolerant.”