Because of Her

by KE Payne

  “I know,” Amy said, pulling her hand slowly from mine and glancing around her.

  “You don’t have to be shy about showing your feelings, Amy,” I said, my hand still outstretched towards her. “This is London. No one gives a fuck about PDAs here.”

  “It just feels weird,” Amy said. “I’m not used to it, that’s all.”

  “But that’s what’s nice about here,” I said. “I don’t really feel like I have to hide who I am as much as I did at home. People are so much more broad-minded in London.” I studied my hands. “Remember I told you I’d come out to Libby and Greg a while ago? That felt fabulous.”

  “That’s nice for you,” Amy said sarcastically. “But I’m still a small-town girl, remember?”

  “Don’t be prickly,” I said, seeing the look on her face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.” I tucked my hands in my lap, well away from her.

  Two arguments already.

  Not good.

  “No, I’m sorry, too,” Amy said. “I didn’t come down here so we could bicker.”

  I thought she might reach out for my hands but she didn’t. Instead she took another sip from her coffee and, grimacing, opened another sugar packet and poured it in.

  “So tell me about school.” She stirred her coffee and smiled across at me. “Other than what you’ve already told me, I mean. It must be all right if you’re happy to be there every day.”

  “Well,” I began, “the school’s posh, but you already know that. But that’s not to say all the students are posh. Okay, some are, but mostly they’re pretty middle of the road like me and you.” I considered for a moment.

  “Middle of the road but with rich parents?”

  “Rich parents who don’t want their kids going to an inner-city school where they might get enticed into joining gangs, yeah.” I laughed.

  “Like your parents?” Amy said.

  I thought I noticed a hint of bitterness in her voice. I chose to ignore it. “The most violent thing our school can offer is the fencing class,” I said. “Did for me, anyway.” I lifted my injured leg.

  A crystal clear image of Eden gatecrashed my head the second I mentioned fencing, swiftly followed by the memory of her touching my knee in the hospital. It was so intense it gave me shivers just to think about it. I looked away, my face warming.

  “I suppose you have debating classes and chess classes and posh things like that, too?” Amy said.

  “I’m sure.” I looked at Amy over the top of my coffee mug, still trying to shake away the image of Eden. “Not for me, though.”

  We talked on for a while after that. Just tittle-tattle: school, Cragthorne, Amy’s dog, my parents. Nothing profound or really meaningful.

  We finished our cappuccinos and left.

  “How about a tour?” I grabbed Amy’s hand and hopped onto the first tourist bus that happened to come past us. It was a beautifully crisp, sunny day, so we sat up on the top deck, giving us the perfect view of all the landmarks as the bus trundled slowly around the roads.

  I glanced at Amy in the seat next to me, the wind blowing her hair around her face as she put her elbows on the barrier around the top of the bus and leant over, straining to see certain things better. The look of excitement on her face as she spotted landmarks that she’d seen a hundred times on the television—Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square—made my heart pull towards her. I’d been so wrapped up in my confusion over Eden that it hadn’t really occurred to me just how much I’d missed Amy. But now, sitting next to her on the bus, I missed her all over again.

  “Lunch,” Amy said firmly as our tour finally finished. “I’m starving.”

  We found a reasonably priced pizza restaurant near to where the bus had dropped us off and managed to bag the last seat outside. We settled ourselves, chose and ordered drinks and pizzas, then sat back to watch the world go by on the busy side street.

  “This is nice,” Amy said, lifting her face to the weakening autumn sun. “I think I could get used to this.”

  “You sure you have to go back home tonight?” I asked. “You could sleep on my floor. I ’spose my parents wouldn’t—”

  “No, I’m sure.” Amy cut me off. “I’ve got things I need to do tomorrow.”

  “You know, if you chose a university down here, we could do this all the time.” I pushed my sunglasses up onto my head and squinted against the sun at her. “If you think you could get used to London life.”

  “I meant the sun,” Amy said. “I’m not sure I could cope with London all the time.”

  “Oh,” I said, disappointed. “But what about everything we’d talked about before I left?”

  “About you doing everything you could to get back up to me?”

  “Mm.”

  “Well, I still want you to.” Amy looked confused. “Of course I do.”

  “And then we’d find a university together?” I prompted.

  “In the North.”

  “We never said the North,” I said. “I said I’d come back to you, but we never talked about settling in the North.”

  “But it’s where we’re from, Tab,” Amy said slowly. “I don’t want to live anywhere else.”

  I pushed my sunglasses back down and stared out across the street, trying to stem my frustration. “But I thought when we spoke about it before, we kinda said we’d both like to go to a large city together,” I said, not looking at her. “I thought you meant somewhere like London.”

  “Maybe I changed my mind.”

  Annoying. Deeply annoying.

  “Hey, who’s to say we’ll even get the grades to go to university anyway?” She looked at me. “Our first goal is just to be together again, isn’t it?”

  “Of course,” I said. “I just assumed…” I leant back as the server brought our drinks out and laid out cutlery and napkins. “Never mind. I guess it doesn’t do to assume.”

  “Don’t look so sad.” Amy glanced at the retreating back of our server, then at the tables around us. She reached over and took my hand.

  “You’re getting brave,” I said, smiling.

  “Very brave,” Amy replied, taking my other hand, too.

  “How long do you suppose for the pizzas?”

  “You’re that hungry?”

  “No, but I need the loo.” I grinned and released her hands. “Be right back.”

  I scraped my chair back and ambled into the restaurant, allowing my eyes to adjust from the sunshine to the gloom inside. Looking around me, I located the door just as a person inside came out. I stepped back when our eyes met in the doorway, my heart thudding in my neck, my stomach doing somersaults.

  Eden.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Tabby!” She looked pleased to see me. I was sure of it.

  “Hey. How are you?” A curious rush of blood pounded inside my ears.

  “Good, yeah.”

  We stood in a small corridor that was visible to the rest of the restaurant.

  “How was your week? I mean, break? Away from school?” I asked, practically swallowing the last few words of that sentence in my nervousness.

  “So-so. You?”

  “Same.” I nodded far more than was necessary.

  “How’s your leg?” Eden asked. “All mended?”

  “Good as new.”

  Eden leant against the wall of the corridor, as relaxed as I was tense. My pleasure at seeing her, however, was tempered by the thought of Amy waiting for me outside.

  As if reading my mind at that precise moment, Eden looked over my shoulder. “You here with friends?” she asked. Her eyes scanned around us.

  “Just the one. You?”

  “My dopey brother.” She pulled a face, but it was still kind. “You with Libby?”

  “No,” I said. I dug my hands into my trouser pockets and stared down at the floor. “Someone else.” I looked back up at her. “You’re not with Gabby and Beth, then?”

  Eden laughed through her nose. “Funnily en
ough, no,” she said. Her face flickered. “I saw them the other day,” she continued airily.

  Her gaze drifted around again. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have said she was searching to see who I was with. I shifted my position slightly, not wanting to leave her, but knowing that I had to get back to Amy.

  “I better go.” I swivelled my feet around, making my shoes squeak on the floor. “My pizza will be coming soon, I guess.” I turned to go.

  “Weren’t you…?” Eden pointed at the loo door.

  “Of course.” My face flushed as I squeezed past her in the corridor and placed a hand on the door.

  “Awesome seeing you, Tab.” Her eyes skimmed mine.

  “You, too.” I practically fell in through the door, my face burning both from my proximity to her and the look on her face as she’d just spoken to me.

  *

  “Everything okay?” Amy leant her head to one side.

  “What? Yeah, fine.” I flopped down in my seat.

  “You were ages.” Amy sipped at her drink. “Who was that you were talking to?”

  A clamminess prickled at my palms.

  Amy had seen us? From outside?

  “Just someone from school.”

  Amy leant closer. “She looked posh.” She winked. “Are you moving in high-class circles at last? Your father will be so pleased.” She collapsed back in her chair, pleased with her joke. I didn’t smile.

  Just as Amy was about to speak, presumably to make another quip, the server came out with our pizzas, a plate in each hand.

  “Pepperoni?” He placed my pizza in front of me when I answered him, then Amy’s in front of her.

  “Black pepper? Parmesan?” he asked, smiling and returning inside when both Amy and I shook our heads.

  Suddenly I didn’t feel as hungry as I had when I’d ordered the pizza. Eden was inside the restaurant. I wanted to be with her. I wanted to be sitting across a table from her, eating pizza with her. I looked across at Amy. I wanted to be with her, too. I was happy to be with Amy, for goodness’ sake! I hadn’t seen her in ages, and yet my mind constantly tugged, like it was on a leash, to be allowed to go back inside and see Eden again.

  I picked up a slice of pizza, the end sagging so much as I brought it to my mouth that I had to scoop it up with my tongue in order to eat it. I wanted to be with them both. How fucked up was that? Two girls I really liked were within feet of one another, and neither knew of the conflict inside me over them.

  The knot in my stomach resisted a second slice.

  “Not hungry?” Amy asked me through a mouthful of her own pizza.

  “Yeah, I…” I shook my head. I was being an idiot. “Yeah, starving. Let’s eat up and then head over to Hyde Park, okay?” I said, beginning to eat the rest of my food.

  Anything to get as far away from Eden as possible.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I’d dropped Amy back off at the train station on the Saturday evening, the tears we’d cried when I’d first left her all those months ago no longer present. Heartbreak and the numerous blind, irrational declarations we’d made that neither of us could ever live without the other had been replaced with a long, loving hug just before the train doors closed.

  That, and a resigned acceptance that this was the way things had to be for now.

  Now it was Monday. And although part of me was dying to see Eden again, the other part was dreading it. Why, though? Was I afraid she’d question me over who I was with at the pizza place? Eden was just a friend to me—okay, a friend that made all rational thought go out of the window the second I saw her—but why would I be shy in telling her who Amy was? Libby and Greg knew, and they were my friends. Why shouldn’t Eden?

  I’d eaten my lunch at school alone, choosing to sit on the wall outside and make the most of the last burst of late-autumn sunshine rather than take up Greg and Libby’s offer to hang out in the canteen. I’d just hopped back off the wall and made my way over to a classroom at the far side of school for my afternoon’s philosophy lesson when I saw Eden. She was alone, too, walking in the same direction as me, but a good few feet ahead. She was walking and texting at the same time, her head bowed in concentration, making her walk so slowly I knew it would be impossible not to catch up to her.

  I hung back, trying to allow her to keep ahead of me, thinking how absurd it was that I was reluctant to talk to her when really everything inside me was yelling at me to go up to her, walk with her, and just be with her. Finally, still texting, she looked behind her, straight at me, then turned away again. My heart plummeted. So she didn’t want to talk to me, either? I shoved my hands deep into my trouser pockets and carried on walking, staring down at the ground as I did so. When I looked up again, she’d stopped walking and was waiting for me.

  “Hey.” A grin spread across her face, instantly lighting it up.

  “Oh, hi!” I did that stupid thing of pretending you haven’t seen someone, then acting all surprised when they speak to you. So dumb.

  “You heading to class?” she asked.

  “Mm-hmm. You?”

  “Yup. Mind if I walk with you?”

  “Of course not,” I said, trying to sound as casual as possible.

  “So how was the pizza?” Eden pressed herself flat against the wall as a swarm of little year sevens came rushing down the corridor, presumably late for a lesson.

  “Not bad,” I said. “Yours?”

  “Same.” She pulled herself from the wall and fell into step with me again. We entered the classroom, and she pointed to a desk by the window. “Can I sit with you?” she asked.

  My insides fizzed. This was a first: Eden wanting to sit with me. “Sure,” I said, looking around. “But what about Gabby and Beth?”

  “They’re skipping class,” Eden said, sitting down. “Well, not exactly. Beth has a rehearsal for the school play and Gabby’s gone with her on the pretence of being a moral support,” she said.

  “When in reality…?” I asked.

  “She’s skipping.” Eden grinned. “So you had a nice time?” she asked, opening her bag and peering inside it.

  “When?” I asked, deliberately being vague.

  “At the pizza place.” Eden pulled two books from her bag and put them on the desk in front of her.

  “Yeah. Good pizza.” I pulled my rucksack open and looked inside, searching for a pen. “I can recommend the pepperoni,” I said. “It was awesome.”

  “I know. Pepperoni’s, like, my most favourite pizza ever,” Eden said, her eyes wide. “It’s the only pizza I ever order.”

  “No kidding?” I looked up from my bag. “Mine, too.”

  Could she be any more perfect?

  “And your friend?” Eden persisted. “Is she from here? I’ve not seen her around before.”

  “Amy?” My voice wobbled. “Nah, she’s from back home. She just came down for the day to visit.”

  So she had seen her, too?

  “Just for the day?” Eden shrugged her jacket off and hung it over the back of her chair. “She been to London before?”

  “Nope,” I said. “First time.”

  “Did she like it?” Eden asked, turning her head as Mrs. Belling, our philosophy teacher, entered the room and closed the door behind her.

  “Yeah,” I said quietly. “She loved it, I think. We did all the touristy things, you know?”

  “Bus? Buck House? The Eye?”

  “Not the Eye. She doesn’t like heights.”

  We’d had an argument about it.

  Another one.

  The classroom quieted as Mrs. Belling entered the room and started talking. I didn’t really take in what she was saying, though. My mind was replaying the conversation I’d just had with Eden about Amy and constantly questioning whether I ought to just tell her everything once the lesson was over.

  Why shouldn’t I tell her? Wouldn’t it be better for her to—

  “Sometimes”—Eden leant over and whispered in my ear, sending my thoughts scampering from my
head—“I think Mrs. Belling likes the sound of her own voice. I thought she was never going to stop talking.”

  The lesson was over? I’d had no idea.

  “I was with her up until Descartes, then I drifted off,” I said, standing up.

  “I thought I noticed your eyes glazing over.” Eden looked up at me from her chair and winked, making me drop my pen on the floor in a fluster. I spun away, reaching down to pick up my pen and my rucksack, and turned my back slightly to her as I stuffed my things into it, hoping that by the time I turned around my face would have returned to its normal colour.

  We exited the room along with the rest of the class and headed back down the corridor to the main exit door, just as we always did after our Monday lesson. This time, though, I hung back, my mind wandering to the subject of Amy. Eden opened the door. She stepped outside and held it open for me, waiting as I joined her and then walked with her down the covered walkway that led to the school gates.

  It was now or never.

  “Eden?” My voice sounded thick. I cleared my throat, embarrassed.

  She lifted her chin and smiled.

  “The girl I was with on Saturday,” I began.

  “Amy, you said?”

  “Amy, yeah.”

  “What about her?” Eden asked, slowing her step.

  I took a deep breath. “She’s, uh, she’s more than just a friend,” I said. “I lied before.” My face burned hot again at my words.

  Eden stopped walking and leant against the wall of the walkway, watching as some other girls came past us. She looked at me for a moment. “So…Amy’s your girlfriend?”

  I nodded shyly.

  “Sweet,” she said. “Have you been together long?”

  “A few years.” I stepped closer to Eden to allow two girls to pass us, then stepped back again.