by Holly Bourne
It was louder than it had been for anyone else. I blinked and my mouth fell open and my astonishment spurred everyone to clap harder. I stumbled off the stage, almost crying again at the response, where Alistair greeted me with a grin carved through his freckles. “You’re not supposed to come offstage yet,” he told me. “You’ve not even waited for your score!”
“Oh…whoops.”
I whipped back to the judges just as they revealed their cards. Two nines and two tens. I was winning! I’d just publicly burst into tears, but somehow that had put me in the lead. I wasn’t sure the winning was worth the humiliation of crying, but still. Alistair clapped me on the back, ecstatic. “I’ve got my eye on you, Miss Talented. She’s in my form, everyone. MINE!” he called out to no one. I was almost too embarrassed to return to the crowd. I rubbed my eyes, glad I wasn’t wearing any make-up to smudge, handed back my guitar and tried to find my friends. People congratulated me on the way back to them. Darla ran up and gave me a giant hug like we were besties.
“That was amazing,” she screeched. “Wow, it’s always the quiet ones, isn’t it?”
“Thank you,” I muttered, desperately searching for the security of Jack and Hannah and Liv. I found them at the back and they all greeted me like I was a war hero – piling onto me for a hug.
“Oh my god,” Hannah kept saying. “I’m just in shock. You’re so…timid usually. Oh my god. You were amazing.”
“I cried!” I replied – still wishing the universe would delete me. “I’m so embarrassed. I literally just cried in public.”
“That’s what made it so good,” she reassured me, pulling me in for another hug. “It was so moving. Sorry you’re so homesick, Amelie. I can’t imagine how hard it’s been.”
The next half-hour was a bit of a blur, to be honest. The last act – some gymnasts – finished, and, when their scores were revealed, everyone worked out pretty quickly that I’d won. My name got called and everyone cheered, and I wanted to die but also savour every moment because I won I won I won! I think people expected me to do a speech but I could hardly even walk. I took the little metal trophy and went to leave the stage as fast as I could. I stopped as I spotted him at the bottom of the stairs with his band, waiting to pick up his award for second place.
“Here, let me help you,” he said, holding out his hand to help me down. I met his eyes and I swear to god something very strange and powerful happened. The rest of the refectory turned to smudge. I became aware of every pinprick of my skin. I took his hand and the surge of chemistry was so potent that I couldn’t even say thank you. I just sort of let him gently pull me down. He didn’t break eye contact and we just stared at one another in a weird, shared chemical wonder. My body felt like it had released a thousand opera singers shooting into my blood.
“You’re amazing,” Reese Davies whispered into my plaited hair, before dropping my hand and beckoning the rest of his band onstage.
And I was left standing there, breathless, wondering what the hell had just happened.
You’ve not made eye contact once since I’ve been sat here – your eyes are only for her. The jealousy is like nothing I’ve ever known before. I feel like I could actually vomit with envy and it would come out cartoon-green. Why don’t you look at me like that any more? You used to stare at my face like it was the only thing in your life you trusted to give you the answers. And now, nothing. Like none of it happened, or mattered. I’m sat only metres from where you first touched my hand to help me offstage, and it wasn’t long after you whispered to me, “That was the moment I knew you were the one, Amelie.”
Were you lying? I mean, you can’t have more than one “one”, so what the hell was I?
This is just one of the many, many questions I don’t think I’ll ever have the answer to.
There was much more blur after Reese helped me offstage. Some of it was the vodka catching up on me, some of it was the overwhelmingness of everyone trying to talk to me. Most of it was down to him. I was trying to figure out where he’d gone, because even though I had no idea who he really was, I suddenly felt like every face that wasn’t his was a waste. I lost Hannah and Jack in the crush of congratulations. Everyone patted my back and called “Go, Amelie!” and I had no one to absorb the attention. My chest started to tighten and so I muttered my excuses about looking for them and backed out of the refectory.
My new college glowed orange against the blue of the falling night. I walked around a corner and leaned against the wall, feeling the coldness of the brick seep through my cardigan. I closed my eyes to recharge – on full introvert burnout by this point. I decided to pick up my guitar and maturely run away home and hope no one noticed. I took a few deep breaths and pictured collapsing in the brilliant emptiness of my bedroom. I smiled at the simple pleasure of the thought, and opened my eyes, expecting to find nothing but the start of my route home. But when they flickered open, I jumped in shock. Reese was standing right in front of me.
“What are you doing all on your own out here?” he asked, tilting his hat-bedecked head.
We locked eyes again and breath deserted my body. It seemed to run out of his too. The pull to this stranger was instantaneous, the chemistry fizzing.
“Just…um…getting some air,” I said. “I need to get my guitar.”
“I’m heading to the music block too. Will you walk me?”
My need to be alone vanished right away. You hear about romantic moments like this, where two people are tugged together, like God is aggressively knitting your wool into the same jumper. Walking with him to the music block was the most exciting journey I could ever imagine. J. R. R. Tolkien couldn’t even dream up a quest more enticing than going to the music block with Reese Davies. I unpeeled myself from the wall and we fell into step naturally, already weirdly attuned.
“I like your hat.” The words tumbled out and I shook my head as I said them, blushing.
“Cheers, it’s one of my favourites. I call him Old Faithful.” He flicked the brim with his finger and we laughed together. I kept sneaking glances at him as we walked over, taking tiny gulps of him in. I liked everything about the way Reese dressed – like an old-fashioned British dandy. His hat matched his waistcoat, which finished just on the top of tight black trousers. He looked like he’d walked out of a different period of history. Everything about it should have been wrong, but it was so very right somehow.
“Were you hiding?” he asked. “Sick of people telling you how absolutely incredible you are already?”
“I wasn’t hiding. I was just…” I blushed again. “…hiding.”
He really laughed at that. “Shouldn’t you be lapping up all the glory, rather than running from it?”
“I’m shy,” I admitted. “Attention is my hell.”
“You wouldn’t be able to tell from that set. You are incredible though.” He laughed again as he watched me struggling to accept the compliment. “I’m Reese,” he added. “I’ve seen you around. I’ve always wanted to say hello. So, hello.” He waved almost goofily.
“Oh, okay. Hello.” I was so freaked out by the charged atmosphere between us that it was impressive I managed even that.
He grinned. “Hello yourself! It’s Amelie, right?”
I nodded, dumbfounded. How did he know my name? How had he seen me around? I hadn’t noticed him. Surely I would’ve clocked the hat?
We reached the music block and stood there, just staring at each other under the orange light. I kept giggling to punctuate the loaded silence, though Reese seemed more comfortable with it than me. “Where’s your band?” I asked. “I liked your set, by the way.”
“Thank you, and god knows. I saw you leave and I followed you out here.” He scratched his neck, which had a hint of a blush creeping up it. “Sorry…” he stammered. “I sound like a stalker now. This is going well, isn’t it?”
“What’s going well?” I asked.
“Trying to get to know you.”
A wave of overwhelm crashed into me and I was suddenly unabl
e to handle what he’d just said. “We should probably get our stuff.”
Reese ignored what I’d said. “What are you doing now?”
“Umm, going home?”
“Carrying that guitar all by yourself?”
“I’ve been doing it for years.”
“Yes, but you’re probably exhausted from being worshipped all evening. You should let me walk you home.” He grinned in a way that said he knew I wasn’t going to say anything other than yes. Which I wasn’t. He held open the music-block door like a gentleman, and I giggled for about the trillionth time as I walked in. Mrs Clarke was surrounded by piles of instruments and dumped bags, trying to sort them into proper piles. She looked wrung out, but perked up when she saw us step through the door.
“Amelie! Congratulations, you were amazing. Just amazing,” she said. “I watched from the back and it blew me away.” Then she spotted him behind me. “And you too, Reese. Was that a new song you opened on?”
“It was,” he confirmed. “The others didn’t think it was ready, but I overruled.”
She raised both eyebrows. “Well, I’m a very proud music teacher tonight, that’s for sure. You two come for your stuff?”
I picked my way through to my guitar, keen to give myself something to do that wasn’t getting static shocks from the sparks flying between us. I picked up my case with an oomph. Alfie’s bumper sticker was still plastered across the top:
I’M NOT SHY, I’M JUST HOLDING BACK MY AWESOMENESS SO I DON’T INTIMIDATE YOU.
The room faded out as I stroked the edge of the sticker and touched my heart. Then I remembered the total lack of a message from him on my phone, stood up, and hoicked my case over my shoulder.
“You all set?” Reese asked, nodding at me like we knew each other really well already.
“You not taking your guitar?”
“I’m leaving mine here. I’ve got music first thing on Monday, and it frees me up to help you with yours.”
I wrinkled my nose for a second, thinking I don’t need help, but also simultaneously thinking Please help me so we can continue standing near each other.
“Bye, Mrs Clarke.” I waved goodbye to my teacher and scuttled after him.
“Bye, Amelie. Congratulations again. Make sure she gets home okay, Reese.”
He saluted.
“Where do you live?” he asked once we were outside again.
“Umm. Cherry Hill Gardens.” The words still sounded foreign on my tongue. That wasn’t where I lived. I lived at number twenty-six Turners Hill, Sheffield. Well, I used to…
“Yep. I know it. This town is so tiny it’s pretty easy to navigate.” He took my guitar off me without even asking, swinging it over his shoulder, then guided us out of college and towards my house.
It should’ve felt weirder than it did – walking home with a complete stranger in a waistcoat and hat. And yet there was something about him that made it feel weirdly right. Oddly normal, like Fate had drawn a line along the ground and I knew I had to follow it.
“So, you’re not from around here, are you?” Reese asked, as we left the aftermath of the talent show behind.
“Is my accent really that strong?”
He laughed. “Yes. It is. But also everyone knows everyone here. I can probably tell you at what age every single person in college got chickenpox.” I watched him roll his eyes. “Where are you from?”
“Sheffield.”
“That explains your musical talent then,” he said. “Home of the Arctic Monkeys, Pulp, The Long Blondes. And now you, Amelie.”
I smiled and shook my head, impressed. Most people didn’t know where Sheffield was on the map, let alone our home-grown music talent. I told him as much.
“If there’s one thing I know, it’s music,” he said. “Who are you into?”
“Oh my GOD, that’s always the hardest question ever!”
His grin was lit up as he walked under a streetlight. “Okay, I’ll narrow it down. Songwriter you most wish you could be.”
“Laura Marling.” The answer came out instinctively. How else would I have developed a full-blown obsession with cardigans?
“I knew you were going to say her,” Reese said. “You’re so like her! I was thinking that throughout your set.”
As compliments go, it doesn’t get much better than that. I shook my head and denied it almost automatically.
“It’s true. I’m not a liar. I wouldn’t lie about something like that.”
“Do you like her?” I asked.
“Like her? I’m obsessed with her! In fact, I judge anyone who isn’t. It’s a very good way of measuring a person.” And we lost half a mile comparing favourite songs and albums and lyrics and bridges of her music, my mouth wide in astonishment that I’d met someone who could match my Marling knowledge. “Right, next question,” Reese continued as we plunged into the darkness of the alleyway. He took out his phone to use as a torch. “Favourite musician that not enough people know about.”
Again, my answer came instantly. “Aldous Harding.”
“No way. You know her?”
“YOU know her?”
Reese shook his head in equal disbelief. “This is weird. This is too weird.”
It got weirder. As we talked about music, it was like I’d met my musical soulmate.
“Yes, Taylor Swift isn’t taken as seriously as she should be,” he agreed. Reese fired questions at me and practically every answer was “Me too, me too”, and we’d grin at one another like loons. “So, when did you start writing songs?” he asked. “What grade are you up to on the guitar? Where do you get your inspiration? What’s your writing process? Seriously? Yeah, me too. Me too.”
We walked through the dark and I talked about myself more than I’d ever done before. Whenever I answered a question, he threw me a new one. That never usually happens with boys. So often boys just talk at you, wanting a pretty nodding dog to mirror their supposedly brilliant opinions. Even Alfie could get self-absorbed sometimes, especially if he went off on one about GM foods or noble gases or something. But not Reese. And he seemed so bewitched by my every reply, genuinely interested in what I had to say, that it felt oddly intoxicating. I let my guard down without even realizing, gesticulating and laughing at myself as we walked through blodges of orange streetlight.
“I’ve always written songs…since I was tiny… I was that clichéd kid who demanded a musical instrument before I could even talk… That song was about being homesick… I mean, it’s not terrible here, but I hardly know anyone. I had to leave so many people behind… My favourite colour? Green.
Why? What’s yours? You too? Seriously? You’re not just saying that? Yeah, my parents are still together…just. It’s been tough, what with Dad losing his job and all… Yes, that’s why we moved down here.” We stepped out onto the railway bridge and, self-conscious that I’d been talking about myself too much, I tried to fire some questions back.
“So, how long have you lived here?” I asked him.
He sighed. “My entire goddamned life.”
“And your band, how long have you been together?”
He rolled his eyes again. “My entire life. We’ve been friends since primary school.”
“You guys were good. Really tight.”
“Thank you.” He didn’t dodge the compliment, just accepted it. “We’ve been playing together since Year Seven. It’s brilliant, but I don’t know…” He trailed off and we stopped right in the middle of the bridge.
“What is it?”
It was hard to make out his face in the dark but I could catch glimpses when the moonlight hit. He had a really strong jaw and way more stubble than most boys at college. Way more than Alfie, who was always insecure about his distinct lack of beard. “I just… I don’t know… Sometimes I feel like I want to go solo, you know?” he said. “Being in a band is great but it can also hold you back. I mean, look at you tonight. It was all you. You won because you didn’t have to compromise what song to sing and in what orde
r. That’s why it came across so beautifully. Whereas we were arguing beforehand about our set list… Sorry.” He turned to me and smiled, shrugging off his monologue. “I shouldn’t be grumpy when I’m trying really hard to impress you.”
I blinked several times to digest what he’d just said. He’d just come right out and said it. He was trying to impress me. Me! I felt drunk on the giddiness of it…
…because I’m a fucking moron.
Let’s unpack this now, though, shall we?
Right here, in this stuffy canteen, with you in the corner ignoring me. With my brain rewired so it constantly misfires between hating you and wanting you back, and then hating myself for wanting you back.
What did I miss? That night on the bridge?
I only won because I was a solo artist and you were in a band.
That’s right, isn’t it, Reese? That’s what you meant. Between the compliments and the direct eye contact and you carrying my guitar and walking me home. Which was all part of the plan too, I reckon. Undermine me while telling me I’m beautiful. Which is precisely what you did next.
“You’re amazing, you know that, right?” he said, totally out of nowhere.
I laughed. “You don’t even know me.”
“I really want to get to know you.”
He stared at me then in a way that made it impossible not to believe him. And I stared right back, not understanding what was happening but knowing something most certainly was happening. The whole night was too much. I was drunk, and flooded with post-performance hormones, and ecstatic that I’d won, but also homesick and overwhelmed by all the attention.
For a second, I thought he was about to kiss me. We were looking at one another in the way that two people who are about to kiss do. The whole thing was totally nuts. I’d forgotten he was a stranger, that I was in love with Alfie, that things like this don’t happen in real life.
“How do you know you want to get to know me if you don’t even know me?” I asked, to try and break the tension again.
“I know you feel it too.” He leaned in, his eyes so intense. We moved closer and closer in the darkness, searching each other’s faces for god-knows-what. Our lips were on the brink of meeting…and then…WHOOSH! A train careered under us, whipping my dress up. It honked its horn, like it knew, and I jumped a mile in the air while he just pissed himself laughing, holding onto his hat to stop it falling off.
