Loveless(100)

‘You’re not having it!’ said Rooney, who had started pushing the pillar to one side of the room.

Pip walked right up to Rooney and poked her on the arm. ‘Too bad! I’m taking it back!’

She went to poke her again, but Rooney ducked round the pillar and said, ‘You’ll have to fight for it, then!’

Pip followed her, increasing the speed of her pokes so that she was basically tickling Rooney. ‘Maybe I will!’

Rooney tried to bat her away, but Pip was too fast, and soon Pip was basically chasing her around the room, both of them shrieking and swatting at each other.

They were smiling and laughing so much that it made me smile.

Even though I still wasn’t sure whether Rooney was really OK.

We hadn’t spoken again about what she’d told me that night we moved the beds. About Beth and her ex-boyfriend and her teenage life.

But we kept the beds together.

We rehearsed our play and we ate in the cafeteria, and Rooney stopped going out at night. We sat together in lectures and walked to and from the library in the cold and we watched Brooklyn Nine-Nine one Saturday morning until noon, buried in the covers. I waited for her to break again. For her to run away from me.

But she didn’t, and, still, we kept the beds together.

She took down the photo of Beth. She didn’t throw it away – she just put it inside one of her notebooks where it could stay safe. We should take more photos, I thought. Then she’d have something else to stick on the wall.

I felt that there was something we weren’t saying. Something we hadn’t addressed. I had figured out who I was, and she had told me who she’d been, but I could feel that there was something more, and I didn’t know whether it was her keeping things inside or whether it was me. Perhaps both. I didn’t even know whether it was something we needed to talk about.

Sometimes I woke up in the night and couldn’t go back to sleep because I started thinking about the future, terrified, having no idea what it would look like for me now. Sometimes Rooney would wake up too, but she wouldn’t say anything. She would just lie there, shuffling a little under the duvet.

It was comforting when she did wake up, though. When she was just there, awake with me.

It all came to a head the night before the play.

Me, Pip and Rooney gathered together for one final rehearsal in Pip’s bedroom. Sunil, who was an expert at speeches, had memorised everything weeks ago, and Jason had always been quick to learn his lines, but the three of us felt like we wanted one last chance to go through everything.

Pip’s bedroom was not any tidier than the last time I’d been here. In fact, it was actually a lot worse. But she had managed to clear a small patch of carpet for her and Rooney to act in and had created a comfy area on the floor near her bed, piled with cushions and snacks for us to chill out on. I sprawled on the cushions while they went over their scenes.

‘You’re saying that line wrong,’ said Rooney to Pip, and it was like we were back in the first week we all met. ‘I say do you not love me and you say why, no, no more than reason, like – like you’re trying to conceal your feelings.’

Pip raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s exactly how I’m saying it.’

‘No, you’re being like ‘no more than reason?’ like it’s a question.’

‘I’m definitely not.’

Rooney gestured at her with her copy of Much Ado About Nothing. ‘You are. Look, just trust me, I know this play –’

‘Excuse me, I also know this play and I’m allowed my own interpretation –’

‘I know, and that’s fine, but like –’

Pip raised her eyebrows. ‘I think you’re just scared of me outshining you on stage.’

There was a pause while Rooney realised that Pip was joking.

‘Why would I be scared of that when I’m clearly the superior actor?’ Rooney shot back, snapping the book shut.

‘Wow. Presumptuous, much.’

‘Just stating the facts, pipsqueak.’

‘Roo,’ said Pip, ‘come on. You know I’m a better actor.’

Rooney opened her mouth to shoot back a retort, but the sudden use of a nickname seemed to take her so off-guard that she couldn’t even think of a comeback. I don’t think I’d ever seen her so genuinely flustered until that moment.

‘How about we take a break?’ I said. ‘We could watch a movie.’

‘Um, yeah,’ said Rooney, not looking at Pip as she joined me on the stack of cushions. ‘OK.’

We put on Easy A because Rooney had never seen it, and – though not quite up there with Moulin Rouge – it was one of my and Pip’s favourite sleepover movies.

I hadn’t seen it for a while. Not since before coming to Durham.

‘I’d forgotten this movie is about a girl who lies about not being a virgin for social clout,’ I said, once we were about half an hour in. I was sitting between Pip and Rooney.

‘AKA, the plot of at least eighty per cent of teen movies,’ said Rooney. ‘So unrealistic.’

Pip snorted. ‘You mean you didn’t lie about sleeping with a guy and then walk around with the letter A embroidered on your corset when you were seventeen?’

‘Didn’t have to lie,’ said Rooney, ‘and I can’t sew.’