In many ways, I was right.
Maddy
Sixteen years old …
It was our last night in Paris and, as a treat, Miss James and the other chaperones decided to take us out to a little French restaurant for dinner. While we were getting ready and putting on our make-up, my roommate, Kelly Sinclair (one of the cooler kids from our year who always looked perfect with her dark smouldering eye make-up and long tousled brown hair) turned to me – her head leaning to one side as she squinted her eyes at me suspiciously.
‘You and Robert were looking close on the way back today.’
Her comment was nothing new, I was used to being quizzed in such a manner when it came to me and the boys. Sometimes it was Ben and I cuddling that got people talking, other times it was the playful banter between Rob and I that caught their attention. I could usually brush it off, insisting that I didn’t believe in the assumption that girls and boys could never be just friends, but on that trip I’d become even more aware of things shifting. Everything between us felt more charged, like we were both just waiting for something to happen. Like the chat on the bus about him waiting for the right girl – was that a hint? And was he questioning me about other guys in our class to suss out my reaction?
I was more than embarrassed when he lay there and mocked my supposed inability to keep my hands off him – I wondered if he could sense what was going on in my head. And if he could, well, that was just humiliating. He apologized for that, actually. The morning after the hands-off incident he’d gone out of his way to pull me to one side and say sorry, but not in a macho can’t-believe-I’m-doing-this way. It contained real concern as he placed his hands on the tops of my arms and held my gaze while he made sure he hadn’t upset me. It did nothing to ease the growing feeling inside – instead it put it on high alert. If I were to be quizzed on Robert’s whereabouts at any point on the whole of that trip, I’d have been able to answer straight away. I was in a permanent state of awareness. Although, funnily enough, there was one moment at the Rodin Museum when I was lost in thought sketching the great bronze statue of The Thinker. I must have been sitting on the bench, hidden in the museum’s gardens, concentrating for quite some time (it was the only piece of work I’d almost managed to complete). Being the main attraction of the museum, many people came, saw, replicated for a photo and left – there was a constant buzz around the piece. Once I was nearly finished I looked to the person on my right (they’d been sat there for a while) and found Robert staring at me.
‘Did you know you bite your lip when you’re concentrating?’ he asked with a frown.
‘Do I?’
‘You’ve been doing it for the last half an hour.’
‘You’ve been sat there that long?’
He nodded keenly.
‘Just staring at me like a nutter?’
‘Oh no, I drew you too.’
‘What?’
Before I had a chance to be amazed by his revelation, he turned his sketchbook round to face me. He’d opted for the ‘stick man’ approach. The only part of me that he’d gone into any detail with was my hair – for which he’d used the colour red to draw an aggressive-looking bird’s nest on top of my head. The windy air was clearly doing me no favours.
‘Nice,’ I muttered, raising my hand to smooth down my wild hair.
‘Don’t,’ he insisted as he took my hand and placed it back on my lap. ‘It’s cute.’
I raised an eyebrow at him, questioning his comment.
‘I think I’ve captured you perfectly,’ he smiled proudly down at his work. ‘I’ve called it My Red-headed Thinker.’
The use of the word my did not go unnoticed by my hammering heart.
The day Kelly chose to question me there had definitely been another moment between us as we made our way back from the Louvre.
This time I’d started it.
As we walked side by side to the hotel a silence had fallen between us. It wasn’t an uncomfortable one, but nonetheless, I felt the need to fill it with something to stop my wandering thoughts. So I playfully pinched his thick blue scarf and wrapped it around my own neck. I hadn’t expected it to escalate into him grappling me to the ground in the middle of the sanded pathway in the Jardin des Tuileries and me being tickled into hysteria until I handed it back.
It was more than just the two of us mucking around as normal – this time it was physical. It was feisty and intense. However, Kelly pointing it out made me feel protective over the whole thing. I didn’t want to be asked about it. I wanted her to butt out.
I shook my head and rolled my eyes as I pinched in my cheeks and swept on some pink Rimmel blusher.