“So, you’re here for Noah, I’m guessing?” Leigh asked.
“Um, kind of?”
“And Matty, of course.”
“Yeah. And also…” I wasn’t sure I could say it, for no reason other than I’d never said it before, and to Leigh. After all, it was them who made me realise I wasn’t ‘just an ally’.
“For Jazz?” Leigh guessed.
“For me.”
“Oh, OK. My bad.” Before I could tell Leigh it wasn’t a mistake on their part, they continued, “So, you know what I was telling you the other night?”
I tried to think.
“About my friend, the singer? Gig tomorrow?”
“Oh, right, yeah.” I’d figured it was something along those lines.
Leigh sighed. “You weren’t listening.”
“No, sorry. I was watching your toes.” I hadn’t intended to tell them that.
“That’s…surprising.” Leigh fought to contain their smile while I did my best beetroot impression. “From the top. My mate who wrote that song I was singing?” Leigh paused and waited for a nod to confirm I was following. I gave it. Leigh rolled their eyes and the grip on my arm became their arm hooked around mine. “She’s got a gig in King’s Lynn tomorrow night. Would you like to come?”
“Yes, please.” I said it as fast as I could, which merged the two words into one, but I was going to speak while I could.
“Cool.” A few people were arriving, and Leigh waved at them, releasing their hold on my arm. “If we don’t see each other before, the gig’s at eight p.m., and Sol’s already said he’ll give me a lift. So, if you come over to us by seven?”
“OK,” I agreed, nodding a lot, and still nodding as I watched Leigh go over to greet their friends.
“Drink, Jess?” I heard Noah ask.
“Please.”
Oh, my word. Were we going on a date?
* * * * *
Chapter Five
Maybe aiming to get to the Ashtons’ by six o’clock had been a bit over-precautious, but the last thing I needed was for the bus to be cancelled and for Leigh to think I’d stood them up.
“Hey, Jesse. I’m almost ready, but you’re a bit early. You’d better wait in there.” Leigh pointed into the living room and then dashed back up the stairs.
“O…” Kay. They were gone, leaving a waft of fresh, citrusy shower smell and half an impression in my mind of stripes. I stayed put, trying to figure out the locations of the other residents. Quiet music downstairs; louder music upstairs; neither sight nor sound of Noah and Matty. Or the dog.
“Evening, Jesse.” Sol peered around the living room door. “It’s not seven already, is it?”
“No. I’m early.”
“Fair enough. I’m ready when you two are. Come and sit down if you like.”
“Thanks, I will.” I followed Sol into the otherwise empty room. “Where is everyone?”
“Pub,” he answered without looking my way. He was fiddling with a pen or pencil or something. “There’s a beer festival on.”
“And you can’t go.” I felt a bit guilty about that. Sol was a Yorkshireman, and I wasn’t stereotyping. He was seriously into his real ale.
“Don’t worry about it. There’ll still be plenty left tomorrow.” He gave me a quick grin and wandered over to his drawing board in the far corner of the room. I sat on the sofa nearest the door to wait for Leigh, although, given I was an hour early, I was probably going to be there a while yet.
“How’s uni going?” Sol asked.
“All right, so far. The work’s starting to pile on, though.”
“Yeah. It’s tough, the last year.”
I nodded and waited for Sol to say more, but he continued with whatever he was doing. He wasn’t a talkative person, which was a bonus, sharing a house with chatterboxes like Matty and Leigh. Adam was also quite talkative. Noah was not, but he had a very expressive face.
For five minutes, I sat in silence, staring at the blank TV screen, before I gave up on politeness and took out my phone. I’d barely typed in the passcode when I heard footsteps on the stairs, followed by a pause and a bang as Leigh did their usual trick of jumping the last few. They came into the living room, shoving stuff into the pockets of their…blue? pants. Whatever colour they were, Leigh’s shirt appeared to be the same shade, over which was a striped waistcoat. Probably not blue and yellow. Baseball boots had replaced the Doc Martens of the past few days.
“Blisters from hell, mate,” Leigh explained.
“Yeah?”
Leigh nodded and opened their mouth to say more, but got cut off by Sol’s exclamation of, “Good God. I’ll go find my sunglasses, shall I?”
Leigh rolled their eyes but then looked doubtful. “It’s not too bright, is it?”
“Not for me,” I said, although I was also curious enough to come clean. “I’m colour blind.”
“Are you?”
“Not completely. I mean, I can tell your pants are blue.”
“Purple,” Leigh and Sol said together.
“OK.” I laughed. “And your shirt’s purple, too?”
“Yep. Have a guess at the waistcoat.” Leigh was clearly enjoying this.
“Well…” I squinted, like that would make any difference. “It looks blue and yellow to me, so I’m gonna go with purple and…green?”
“Almost.” Leigh pointed to the stripes in turn. “Red, green, red, purple, green, pink, green, red, purple.”
“Wow, that’s a lot of colours.”
“I can change if it’s too much.”
“No! It’s not. You look great.” Blue and yellow or all those other colours they’d said, they really did.
“So, you can’t tell what colour my hair is?” Leigh speculated.
“Um…purple, by any chance?”
They grinned. “Got it in one.”
“I’m a quick study,” I said, returning the grin and feeling pretty pleased with myself. This was much more like the banter we’d had in the summer.
“I’m not trying to get rid of you,” Sol said and followed up with a half-wink, “but if you want to go early, that’s fine by me.”
I left the decision to Leigh, who shrugged and said, “Sure.”
We went out to the car, and Leigh got in the back, which left me in something of a dilemma. Normally, I travelled in the front of cars because there wasn’t enough leg room in the back, but Sol and Adam had a four-by-four, seeing as big and tall was the Ashton norm. I wanted to sit in the back with Leigh, but I was worried about being obvious, so I opted for the front seat, chancing a glance behind me as I fastened my seat belt. Leigh had somehow belted up and got their feet up on the seat, where they were doing something fancy with their boot laces.
“Right, that’s the satnav programmed.” Sol squinted at it and shook his head. “If it ever picks up a signal.” He reversed the car, swinging it towards the house before pulling out onto the lane. The satnav beeped and displayed our route, and we were off on the one-hour drive to King’s Lynn.
We didn’t talk much during that hour. Sol had the radio on low, and I didn’t want to disturb him, so I spent the time trying to figure out if there was a way we could get back without him having to come and get us, but there wasn’t. Even if we could have got a bus from King’s Lynn back to Norwich, we had no way of getting from there to the farmhouse, short of spending a fortune on a taxi. I’d definitely have to do something about driving lessons and taking my test if we were going to do more stuff like this.
Was that overly optimistic of me? I didn’t think so. After all, we could go out as friends anytime, like we’d done during the summer, but if I could drive, we could go further afield rather than further through fields. We’d done a lot of that, right from the day after Leigh moved in.
That had to be the best day of my life so far. We’d just walked and talked, and I remember thinking then…why had I been so worried that first night I’d met Leigh in the pizza restaurant? Admittedly, my worries lasted only as long
as it took me to get home and think it through. So Leigh wasn’t a girl. So what? Did that mean I couldn’t find them attractive?
An afternoon of walking and a trip to the cinema was all it took for me to go from ‘what a great new friend’ to ‘how would I introduce them to my family if my dream came true and we ended up as more than that?’
This is Leigh, my girl/boyfriend? Special friend? Ugh, big fat no.
Whichever term was right, it had always sounded a bit too much like claiming ownership to me. Not that I wouldn’t be delighted to hear Leigh introduce me as their boyfriend, but I’d have felt more comfortable saying, ‘this is Leigh; we’re in a relationship’. The chance to try it out for real was something I wanted so desperately it made all my muscles ache, and a few other places besides.
“This is it, isn’t it?” Sol stopped in a taxi rank on what I took to be the high street and looked to the back seat, as did I, for confirmation from Leigh.
“Yep, this is it.” They released their seat belt, shuffled to the door on the other side and jumped out. “Thanks for the lift!”
“No problem. Call me when you’re thinking of leaving, OK?”
“Will do!” Leigh closed the door.
“Thank you,” I said. I’d taken my belt off and gripped the door handle, aware that Sol was eager to move the car, but I needed a few seconds.
“Just enjoy yourself,” he advised.
“I’ll do my best.” I got out and shut the door, using the car as a shield while I tugged my pants up and my shirt down. Leigh had already crossed the road to the bar and was peering through the front window. From where I was standing, it was too dark to see inside. With a toot of the horn, Sol drove away. I took a couple of good, deep breaths, checked I had my phone and my money, and crossed over to join them.
Leigh turned to greet me with a smile, setting my jelly legs wobbling again. “It’s dead,” they said.
“D’you want to go in and have a drink, or go somewhere else, or…?”
The act of thinking about it created a little crinkle across Leigh’s nose, and their mouth tipped up to one side. It was a really cute expression. They shrugged. “I vote we go in and grab a good spot near the stage.”
“OK.” I gestured for them to go first and then, at the last second, dodged around them to open the door. With an amused grin, Leigh stepped inside. I followed, mentally commanding the butterflies to chill out.
The bar was actually as dark inside as it had looked from across the street, which I quite liked, as it offered a bit of camouflage, seeing as I was wearing all black. The shirt fabric was a bit on the flimsy side, which I’d probably be grateful for later when the place was packed, assuming it got busier, because there were all of five people in there, including the bartender, Leigh and me.
“They’ve only just opened,” Leigh informed me as we made our way to the bar. “It’ll be mad in here by nine.”
“Hello, Leigh,” the bartender greeted, which answered what would’ve been my next question: did Leigh come here often? Evidently, they did.
“Hey, Jack. How are you?”
“All right. You?”
“I’m good.” Leigh turned to me. “What do you want?”
“I’ll get them.”
“You can get the next one.”
“OK, then. I’ll have…” I looked along the bar at the different beers, all lagers, and then at the soft drinks tap. “Diet Coke for me, please.”
Leigh ordered that and an ordinary Coke. “What colour are traffic lights for you?” they asked.
“Um…” I frowned, thrown by what seemed a completely random question.
“I was thinking on the way here. If you can’t see the red and green in my waistcoat, how do you know when the lights change?”
“Good point. They all look more or less the same colour—”
“Yellow?”
“Yeah, but they’re always in the same order, aren’t they?”
“Oh, yeah. Hadn’t thought of that. It must be weird, though.”
“It’s normal to me. But it made for some interesting paintings in primary school.”
Leigh laughed. The sound sent awesome little tingles like warm rain racing over my skin.
The bartender put two glasses on the bar. “That’s the Diet.” They—I tried not to assume these days—pointed to the glass closest to me.
“Cheers,” I said. I waited for Leigh to pay and pick up their drink. “Where shall we sit?”
“Over there.” Leigh set off for the tables to the right of the small stage against the back wall. There were bench seats on one side of the tables, but I guessed the stools had been moved out of the way, because there was nothing on the other side, which meant…we had to sit next to each other. Granted, it wasn’t by Leigh’s design, but if they’d been bothered, they’d have chosen one of the tables nearer the bar, which had stools around them.
“You’d better go in first,” Leigh suggested.
It meant sliding along the full length of the table to get to the end of the seat that wasn’t accessible, but I didn’t argue. I knew Leigh needed to use the loo quite a lot. I’d asked Leigh about it once, because the stuff I’d read suggested it was a symptom of their hormone levels not being right, and after the incident with Matty’s dad, I wanted to make sure I knew if Leigh needed medical attention. Leigh assured me everything was fine, and that was enough for me. They might be shy in other ways, but they weren’t when it came to asking for help if they needed it.
Once I was settled in the corner, Leigh slid—more scooted—along the seat, and I got a waft of that citrusy scent again. I switched to breathing through my nose, getting high on the mix of that smell, the dizziness of slightly hyperventilating and Leigh being just a few inches away. They giggled, and I shrugged to ask why.
“I can’t reach the floor.”
I peered under the table as Leigh kicked their legs like a kid on a dining chair. I hadn’t noticed, but the bench was high enough that my knees weren’t bent up the way they usually were.
“Piss poor ergonomics,” Leigh said. “Must’ve been someone your height designed these.”
Now they’d mentioned it, there were a few inches between the tops of my thighs and the bottom of the table, which made a very nice change. I could actually move without getting jammed on anything. Or anything other than Leigh, who, in the process of assessing the bench and table, had definitely edged a little closer to me. I wasn’t complaining.
“Don’t you drink?”
It took a few seconds for me to escape the distraction of Leigh’s proximity and process what they’d asked. “You mean alcohol? Yeah, I do, but beer’s mostly sugar, isn’t it?”
“It’s mostly water,” Leigh argued.
“Yeah, all right. But it’s got a lot of sugar in it. A pint is about five hundred calories.”
“D’you like wine? My Aunty Sheri says it’s low calorie, or lower than other drinks, at least.”
“Hmm…I’m not keen. I don’t mind a glass of wine with a meal, but I wouldn’t choose to drink it on a night out. Vodka and Diet Coke isn’t too bad.”
“Calories or taste?” Leigh asked.
“Both. I like it, but I’d rather drink beer.”
“Then you should.”
I wished it were that easy for me, and I was about to say as much, but I was suddenly caught in the tractor beam of Leigh’s gaze. The words fizzled like sherbet on my tongue and melted away to nothing. We both seemed to be caught in it, and it was dazzling. What was going on? What were we doing? Was I reading this correctly? Noah had said from the beginning that he thought Leigh liked me, but I’d concluded he was just being a good mate and boosting my self-esteem. But this…this was something, wasn’t it?
Our prolonged eye contact reached the point where it got awkward, because I didn’t want to look away, and Leigh didn’t seem to want to either, then it became funny. I’m not sure which of us smiled first, but we were both smiling, and then laughing, and still looking at eac
h other. Eventually, I closed my eyes in a long blink and took a deep breath I hadn’t realised I needed. When I opened my eyes again, Leigh was staring across the pub. I looked, but there was nothing over there.
“You OK?” I asked.
Leigh nodded and turned back to me, their eyes meeting mine, briefly this time, before settling on their drink. “Why are you so worried about your weight, Jesse?”
I was stunned by the candidness of the question, and I didn’t know how to answer, other than with the truth: because I was fat.
Leigh continued, “I remember you saying a couple of times in the summer that you were trying to lose weight and get more exercise and stuff, but it’s more than that, isn’t it? You think about it a lot.”
I nodded. “All the time.” The only release I got was when I was reading a really good book or trying to get my head around something difficult at uni. And those days in the summer with Leigh.
“But why? You’re…” Leigh tilted their chin and peered up at the ceiling. They looked my way again, eyes and nose crinkled, cheeks flushed.
Oh… Even with my limited—well, zero—experience of being chatted up, I was pretty sure I wasn’t misreading this.
“I’m…?” I fished, bolstered by Leigh’s bashful attention.
“Good-looking.”
Wow. OK. I’d expected ‘intelligent’, or ‘such a nice guy’ or the dreaded ‘have such a lovely personality’, although any of those coming from Leigh would’ve made my day. But good-looking?
“D’you think so?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Thanks.” Was that an acceptable response? I thought I should probably return the compliment, but Leigh went on before I could come up with anything shorter than a sonnet.
“I was gonna introduce you to Nora tonight, because, um…she split up with her boyfriend a few months back, and…” Leigh’s words trailed into a smile. “What’re you shaking your head at?”
“Who’s Nora?”
“My friend, the singer.”
“Gotcha.”
“You’ll really like her.”
“I’m sure I will.”
The Making of Us Page 5
