It quickly dawned on me that I’d lost her. Either way, whether things continued between Maddy and Robert or not, there’d be no chance for us. Maddy, the girl who glittered beautifully, who carried an indescribable magic in her very being, would never be in my grasp. I was heartbroken.
When we got to the hotel I scampered off to our room with great speed, but not before I painfully caught a glimpse of Robert and Maddy kissing once more as they said goodnight.
I got to our room, stripped off and got straight into bed, trying to hide myself in the hope that Robert wouldn’t want to talk when he came in. I was wrong, of course. Even though I was feigning sleep he sauntered in and started talking loudly as soon as he walked through the door.
‘There you are,’ he said, standing in the middle of the room with the biggest grin on his face. ‘What a night that was.’
‘Yeah,’ I muttered, pretending to be half asleep.
‘I tell you what, I wasn’t expecting that to happen when we went out tonight. I mean, it’s Maddy! Maddy!’ he practically squealed, puffing air from his cheeks as he mulled it over. ‘Maddy and me! Who’d have thought.’
Not me, that’s for sure. Well, I had, but I’d been talked out of thinking such paranoid thoughts. How ironic.
‘Why did you say you didn’t like her in that way?’
I was annoyed with myself as soon as I’d said it. Not only had I dropped the whole tired guise, I’d also asked him a question, prompting him to talk about the whole thing further. I’d given him the encouragement he’d needed to cheerily talk his head off about it.
‘Mate, I wasn’t sure how I felt. Until I could understand it myself, I thought I’d best stay quiet about the whole thing,’ he exclaimed, coming over and sitting on the edge of my bed, happiness irritatingly radiating all around him. ‘I don’t even know what happened tonight – we were just dancing stupidly, you were there, you saw that. And then, that song came on and it got really … I dunno, heated. Seriously, it was weird. I had this urge. Well, actually, I’ve had that urge for a while, but tonight – I couldn’t stop myself,’ he shrugged in amazement as bewilderment flickered across his face.
I wondered whether he was already replaying the little moments between them – the gazes, the feel of her lips on his, her taste. The very thought crushed me.
‘I know she’s our best friend and all that, but, my God, Ben! I mean, it was electric. She is electric. How on earth have we not noticed that before?’
His face had become dopey, full of surprise and wonder at the night’s events. I’d never seen him like that. The more I looked at him, the sadder I felt. It seemed I wasn’t the only one who’d fallen for Maddy’s charms.
I’d had years to make some sort of sense of my overwhelming feelings so that I could tell her exactly how I felt, but I hadn’t. I’d hesitated and allowed life to get in the way – because of that I knew I had no right to be angry with either of them. They didn’t know that she was my world. That I’d loved her since the day she walked into class with her manic bob and cute red nose. I was a coward for keeping those feelings to myself and foolish for not realizing that I had to act on them sooner. I was gutted for myself that Robert’s confidence had led him where I desperately wanted to be – with Maddy.
I didn’t sleep that night. Instead, I repeated their embrace in my mind again and again, as though it was some kind of mystery that needed to be solved. When I left them they were busting their stupidest dance moves to a bloody Hanson track and then, one pee stop later and that had changed into a lovers’ clinch. It didn’t make sense to me.
Confusion whizzed around in my brain as I tried to process how it had all happened and what would happen next. I dreaded them becoming an official item, I wasn’t sure how I’d cope seeing what I saw that night all day, every day. It was like I was trapped in some sort of nightmare. I wanted it to stop. I longed to wake up.
My only flutter of relief came when it dawned on me that if Robert was what Maddy was after, then I’d have had no chance anyway. In fact, the timing had done me a favour and saved me from a bitterly embarrassing situation. Like I said, it was only a ‘flutter’ of relief. It didn’t make it hurt any less.
Maddy
Sixteen years old …
I was deliriously giddy and couldn’t remove the smirk from my face as I kissed Robert goodnight. I hadn’t wanted to leave him, I could have easily stood in the hotel lobby and kissed him all night long, but Miss James wouldn’t have allowed it. Instead she sent us off in separate directions to our rooms, much to our dismay.