Super Awkward (5 page)

“Enough about me. What do you do?”

Gulp. What
do
I do?! I could hardly say that most of my time is spent making gifs of animals sneezing.

“You know. Stuff. . . Life stuff.” I nodded as if this held deep meaning. “And, erm . . . listening to music?” Could I
be
more generic?

“Me too. Obsessed.” His eyes sparkled, real-life dimples peeping through on his cheeks as he smiled. He must love music as much as me, which is a relief as it's kind of a deal-breaker when I'm deciding if a person is excellent or not. Although those dimples could
probably
renegotiate any deal. “What was the last gig you went to?”

Oh no, straight back on to shaky ground. Does being forced into accompanying my mum to an ABBA tribute count as a gig?

“Wow, last gig?” I pretended to be racking my brain through all the totally awesome gigs I'd been to, while blocking out the glimpse of Pearls Allowed attempting to twerk. He
definitely
thinks I'm older than I am. “Think it was All Time Low.” By
think
, I mean,
definitely wasn't
,
but I have watched enough of them on YouTube to probably carry this off.
Same could be said for 1D, but Zac didn't look like a coordinated-canoe-paddle-dance-move kind of a guy.

“Nice. I could
not
get tickets for their last tour. You must have friends in high places!”

“Yeah, it was pretty amazing.” Not technically a lie, as the videos were definitely taken by people in very high places – like one or two rows from the back.

“So, what do you do at college?”

Uh-oh. The college clanger. There was no way I could come clean about still being in school. I didn't want him to add ‘being younger than him' on to the ever-growing list of reasons that he is way out of my league and should not be speaking to me.

“
I, er, do all sorts really. I mean, what
don't
I do?” Could I rhetorical-question my way out of this? Mum and Jo had taught me well.

“I know what you mean. It's crazy busy, isn't it, way too much like hard work for my liking.” He stopped to brush some moss out of his hair. “So what
don't
you do then?”

“Well, I
don't
do French.” This was true. I didn't do French at college. But I also didn't do anything else there, what with me not being at one.

“Wise choice. I kind of had to give up on the whole French thing when I discovered French cows say ‘meuh' not ‘moo' and then my mind was blown.” What?! I really had never thought of this. Do animals say different things in different languages? How has this never come to my attention before?

Uh-oh. Panic. Bella, stop thinking about what dogs say in German. I can't pick anything he's studying in case he asks me about it. Could I gamble on science?

“I take, erm, c. . .”

WHACK. Ouch.

“OOOOOWWWWWW.”

Saved by a massive branch in the face! Result! I'd been so paranoid about making his jacket smell sweaty that I'd kept my arms rigidly by my side and
had
somehow missed a branch the size of a sideways tree dangling at head height. Thank you, forest, for your tree-mendous work.

“Are you OK?!” Zac rushed to my side, brushing my hair back off my forehead looking for any sign of damage. Concerned-Zac face was maybe even more fit than happy-Zac face and teasing-Zac face combined. I must injure myself more often.

“I'm fine. I promise. . . It sounded worse than it was.” I rubbed my head, even though it had already stopped hurting. “I was just a bit slow to twig on to it.”

He laughed. I MADE HIM LAUGH.

“You all right to carry on?”

I nodded and followed after him. He was making an extra effort to make sure there were no hazards dangling in my way, like some kind of sexy safety superhero. We chatted about nothing and everything, although I was glad he dropped the college questions. I found out he was deffo seventeen (fit), lived in Wolverhampton (my new favourite place) and had a guitar called Keith (strangely alluring). Keith was also the name of his dog (a girl dog), but he couldn't pick which Keith was his favourite. He found out that I was almost seventeen (exact details seemed unnecessary), lived in Worcestershire, was obsessed with my camera
(
I like arty things too! Love me!) and had a weird crush on Aslan from
The Chronicles of Narnia
(an unplanned panic blurt out that I would like to take back, please). He clearly won.

Ten minutes later, after squeezing our way through a falling down fence, we came to a stop. We were in the prettiest clearing overlooking a tiny lake. Who knew Black Bay could be so beautiful?!

“What did I tell you? The perfect place to hide from the organised fun.” He stretched out on a rickety bench near the edge of the water. Did he know he was a walking album cover?

Right, me. Let me get this straight. On Tuesday when I'd been stumbling through a Zumba in the Dark class with my mum (where I may or may not have broken Jo's toe), this fittie had been minutes away looking all brooding and moonlighty? Life is so cruel.

I sat down, at what I hoped was an appropriately casual distance away. As he chatted, his face lit up by the moonlight, I took in every detail. He had an insane bottom lip that seemed to pout out, even when he was smiling. Just above his left dimple was a tiny scar that looked like he'd had it added on just to make his face less perfectly symmetrical. And his brown hair looked so good I had to stop myself from sniffing
it.
Now, I'm all for personality over appearance, but oh my gosh. He was
so
fit. Like, uncomfortably fit. He must have never had a normal conversation with a girl, ever. It's scientifically not possible to casually chat to a boy of such hotness. He didn't even seem aware that he shouldn't be wasting his time talking to someone like me. Instead he talked away about when he once messaged his mum about a game of Cluedo, telling her he was going to kick her butt, but it got auto-corrected to ‘lick'. And how the first song Velvet Badger, his band (HE WAS IN A BAND, SWOON x 1 MIL), recorded was ‘V is for Viennetta', an electronic-guitar ode to their love of ice-cream-based desserts. I laughed along, loving every second with him. Despite my severely lacking conversational skills, he made talking/listening feel easy. Even if I did bring it all to a stop by saying, “What's brown and sticky? A stick.”

I'd only known him for under one earth hour, but felt able to talk to him about anything. That's probably why, despite everything in my brain saying ‘no', my mouth ended up pouring out full deets about the message from Tegan. I'm not totally devoid of sense, though – obvs I pretended that the whole scenario was actually about Jo. He didn't need me verbally confirming I was boy-repellent. His man-brain perspective was
useful,
though. He said the same as Jo – I was reading too much into it. But when
he
said it, it felt like he meant it, and wasn't just trying to shut me down.

Zac shifted nearer to me on the bench giving me a full waft of his amazing man-smell. He smelt like how an underwear model holding a puppy looks. I bet all he's thinking about me is why am I shivering so much that I'm like a human phone on vibrate.

I rubbed my hands on my arms to warm myself up, catching an unwanted sight of my watch. How long could I ignore that panicky feeling in my stomach? It was almost midnight and Mum was probably having a very un-zen post-yoga meltdown. But I could hardly admit that to Zac and risk looking like I was either fifteen, or a seventeen-year-old whose mum had attachment issues. Could honesty be the best policy?

“Zac, sorry if this sounds lame, but I should probably be getting back.” Well, half honesty. “I need to get up for dawn yoga with my mum.” One quarter honesty. His eyebrows raised.

“Wow – dedicated. You must be pretty good?”

“Well, some people might say so.” I wasn't sure who those people might be, as I wasn't even flexible enough to tie my shoelaces without sitting on the floor. “You know, downward dog, and pose of a, er, pigeon and all that.”

Zac
nodded like he'd never had a mum that had made him bend in such ways. My mouth continued to speak without sign-off from my brain.

“Every session ends in an argument, as Mum refuses to wear deodorant. She thinks it's a government conspiracy theory. It's mortifying. I die whenever we have to put our arms over our heads. Which is like, all the time.”

Zac laughed.

“Everyone knows what it's like having a crazy family. Especially me.”

“No offence, but I doubt they can be as bonkers as mine.”

“You have
no
idea. You have nothing on me. Seriously.” He shoved his hand in his pocket. “And I will use my last two per cent to prove it!”

He pulled out his phone and scrolled down the screen.

“Here you go.”

THE TIME YOUR MUM COMES TO YOUR

FIRST COLLEGE ART EXHIBIT AND SHOUTS THAT

THE BIGGEST SCULPTURE ‘COULD

HAVE BEEN DONE BY A YEAR 7'.

IT WAS DONE BY MY TUTOR.

What.
I didn't get it. Was this him?

“Wait – is this
your
mum?”

He nodded. “Uh-huh. You want more?”

He swiped across.

THROWBACK THURSDAY:

THAT TIME WE ARRIVED LATE TO THE

CINEMA AND MY MUM SAT ON AN EMPTY

SEAT – THAT TURNED OUT TO HAVE A SMALL

CHILD ON IT. HE CRIED SO MUCH THEY

HAD TO RE-START THE FILM.

I snorted.

“Are these for real?”

“Yup, they're real and they're my life.”

EVER TAKEN A LOVED ONE TO A&E

ONLY TO FIND OUT THE REASON THEY'D

PASSED OUT IS BECAUSE THEIR HOLDING-IN

PANTS ARE TOO TIGHT?

How had he turned out so normal?!

“Enough, enough! I can't believe you put this on the internet!”

Zac grinned. “Nah, it's just a silly app. All anonymous.
My
mum's too funny not to share with the world, especially since Dad left and she's become a wannabe-cougar.” I looked at the screen – ‘
PSSSST'
. I hadn't heard of it.

“I waste loads of time on here, it cracks me up.” I searched the screen for his username just as his screen disappeared. RIP battery. “Anyway, you're right. We should get back before your phone dies too, and I'm stuck alone in a forest with no one to save me from your next shoe rage.”

He clearly couldn't read my mind that getting stuck alone with him, anywhere, was probably the best idea in the world.

I pushed myself up from the bench in a weird sideways style to try and shield him from my bum, which was currently eating my trousers. I'm so prone to buttock wedgies that Jo calls me ‘Hungry Bum', or ‘Bumgry' for short.

“Thanks for the jacket, now I feel a toasty minus 25 degrees, not minus 105.”

“My pleasure. It was the least I could do for . . . for probably giving me some sort of massive face bruise?”

I laughed it off, which felt more reassuring than saying ‘yes, it's officially ginormous'. He really didn't
know
the half of it. Thank goodness there weren't mirrors in woods.

“Hold up, if there was
hypothetically
a tiny, miniscule bruise, it
would
give you the perfect opp to think up a whole new story. Make out it was all part of some insanely brave deed?” Oh crapballs, I said ‘make out'. Had he noticed? Change subject. “Shout if you see any hazards. I'm paro about stepping on a slug in my bare foot.”

“Worry not, I'll protect you . . . or abandon you with slug oozing between your toes. One of the two.”

“Prepare yourself for a full-on freak-out then.”

He raised his eyebrows, as if challenging me. “Sounds interesting.”

I tried to smile back, but his direct eye contact had paralysed my reacting muscles.

He lowered his voice.

“In fact, I think I'd quite like to see a full-on freak out. . .”

He put his hands either side of my arms. Now, I've seen this on
Hollyoaks
. Unless I was very much mistaken, he was either about to try some basic judo moves, or – and it was hard for me to possibly imagine this – or . . . or he was about to try. . . And. Kiss. Me.
An actual kissing situation
. With me. A random boy, a
hot
boy, an older boy, an extremely cool boy, a boy who had a guitar/dog called Keith, a boy who looked like I'd designed him on some kind of BoyfGoals app. A boy who definitely knew how to do kissing very well. And me. Who definitely didn't. Could I run away? If only Rach and Tegan were here for moral support. Although maybe a crowd of four would not make this less awkward. His hands didn't move. His eye contact didn't budge.

My heart was beating so hard he could probably hear it. I am NOT equipped to deal with kissing of boys. If I wrote a kisstory book, it would be one page long. And that's if I used really large font. And it had small pages. Zac CANNOT find out how tragic and inexperienced and not able to kiss, and not seventeen, I am.

Auto-pilot-Bella-panic kicked in. Talking absolute nonsense at double speed. If I talked with wild enthusiasm, it would be harder for his lips to hit a moving target.

“Sorrydidyounothearmeabouttheslug? Nothing's worsethanstandingonaslug.” Breathe. “Becauseit'shard enoughtoknowwhenthey'realivewhenthey'realive, let alonewhenthey'resquishedonyourshoe.” Breathe. “Andlikewhatdoslugs
do
anyway?”

Lucky
boys are not like animals and can't smell fear. And they're not furry and don't have six nipples (I assume). MUST NOT think of Zac's nipples. This will not help anything.

He stepped nearer. What was wrong with him?! Did he find slug chat sexy? What a weirdo. I
knew
he couldn't be normal.

He took another step. His belt buckle pressed into one of the many cereal boxes that was stubbornly still hanging on to my body, making yet another piece of sellotape ping loose. Could I fake death? Or actually die. Anything other than him kissing me and me messing it up and him being embarrassed for me and me being even more embarrassed for me and us never speaking again.