5

We were dressed and Liam was holding me in his arms. I felt safe and warm as we sat on the mat. I knew that something had changed within me after we put on our clothes. He didn’t feel like the boy that I wanted to avoid anymore. The opposite; he felt like the boy that I couldn’t see myself without.

“Liam, are things going to be different now?”

“Do you want them to be?”

I hated when someone answered a question with a question.

He laughed and then kissed me on the cheek, “I was kidding; sure they’ll be different.”

I was just about to say something when both Dwayne and Chanel came out of wherever they’d disappeared to and it was clear—as Chanel’s skirt seemed to be a thing of the past—that they’d been up to exactly the same thing we had been.

I laughed as I saw Chanel trying to get the leaves out of her hair. I stood up and decided that I would help her, “Have fun did we?”

She hugged me and said, “More importantly did you have fun?”

I kissed her on the cheek and squeezed her so tight. “I did. Thank you.”

She pushed me back and said, “You didn’t?”

I laugh, “We did.”

Then she ran up to Liam and hugged him, well not exactly hugged. More like she jumped on top of him and then he tried to get up and she kept pinning him down.

“You saved her!”

“Not exactly, I was just a virgin. Now…”

I didn’t know how to describe it, but I had a feeling that I would wake up in the morning and things would be different.

“Shit.” Chanel started to scratch furiously.

“Where were you earlier? You weren’t by the stinging nettles were you?”

Dwayne answered the question, “Fuck, I’ve never been to that side. I thought that the nettles were on the other side.”

That was when I realized that Dwayne may be pretty with his blue eyes and blond hair, but as I’d always suspected, he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box.

“I was too busy thinking that at last Adele was going to get over her grief and just live for once.” Chanel was panting and scratching like crazy. First her legs, but then as her hands started to rise up her legs, it was clear the part that she really needed to scratch, and Liam wasn’t going to let her do it while he sat beside her.

“Ever since…”

I knew what she was going to say and I didn’t want to talk about it. Whenever situations like this happened, his name would come up. She had no right to do that, not to me, not now.

“We need to get you home!” I blurted out as I held her hand and started to walk with her back into the woods. Where we came from.

“I’ve got my bike. It’ll be quicker,” Liam offered, and he had a smile on his face. I couldn’t tell if it was a mischievous one or he was thinking about what we’d done lately.

Chanel’s hair made her look like a porcupine and it was clear that she didn’t need to be asked twice as she took Liam’s hand and he started to lead the way.

He winked at me. I knew what that meant, he would contact me soon and I forgot that Dwayne was with me. Until he said, “Great! Now, how the heck am I going to get home?”

I sighed, “On your bike.”

I was thinking about the magical night that I’d just had with Liam and not really paying attention to the places that Dwayne was scratching.

“That’s the thing.”

He kept on scratching and I watched until Liam and Chanel were no longer in sight. I wondered if I should call him tomorrow. Or maybe leave it for another day. I didn’t want to seem too keen; besides, we were both going to college soon. I was being too silly, thinking like a kid that we’d have a chance to be together. The time that we had was over. The only thing that we should be concentrating on was getting ready for college.

“Why are you sitting down scratching like that? You need to get home.”

“That’s the thing.”

“What?”

Dwayne was annoying me. This was the first proper conversation I’d ever had with him and yet I wished that it would abruptly end.

“We only came on one bike and my phone battery’s dead.”

“Shit,” I said as I realized that I didn’t even have my damn phone. It was with Chanel. We thought that it was better for us to bring one bag. No, she’d thought that. Maybe so that I wouldn’t so easily be able to back out of it.

“What the hell are we going to do?”

I sighed as I sat next to Dwayne who was scratching furiously.

“I’ll just lie here and scratch until it stops.”

I turned to look at him and saw that he wouldn’t have any balls left if he thought that way.

“You do that. I would leave you, but I can’t even figure out how to get out of here.”

“Maybe Liam will come back for us?”

“Shit, you’re right. If it was just me out here, then I wouldn’t have thought about that. I bet the moment, he drops Chanel he’ll think about you and come back.”

“Why?”

“Oh, cause he just popped your cherry and he’s finally with the girl that he’s wanted for so long.”

If he hadn’t been scratching, if he hadn’t been touching his balls, I would have kissed him. But for what he said, I took back my nasty thoughts about him. I helped him, as I started to scratch his leg. And it felt like forever, but he was right Liam did come back. But that didn’t make me smile as much as what Dwayne had just said did.