Loveless(8)

‘I don’t feel like a real teenager,’ I said. ‘I think I failed at it.’ And Jason clearly didn’t know what to say to that, because he said nothing.

Sitting in my car on the drive of my family home, the ghost of a boy’s hand on my thigh, I made a plan.

I was going to university soon. A chance to reinvent myself and become someone who could fall in love, someone who would fit in with my family, with people my age, with the world. I’d make a load of new friends. I’d join societies. I’d get a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend, even. A partner. I’d have my first kiss, and I’d have sex. I was just a late bloomer. I wasn’t going to die alone.

I was going to try harder.

I wanted forever love.

I didn’t want to be loveless.





The drive to Durham University was six hours long, and I spent most of it replying to Pip’s barrage of Facebook messages. Jason had already travelled up there a couple of days earlier, and Pip and I had hoped to go together, but it turned out that my bags and boxes had taken up the whole of my dad’s car boot and most of the back seats. We settled for messaging and trying to spot each other on the motorway.

Felipa Quintana

New game!!!!!

If we spot each other on the motorway we get 10 points Georgia Warr

what do we get if we have the most points Felipa Quintana

Eternal glory

Georgia Warr

love me a sweet cup of eternal glory Felipa Quintana

DUDE I JUST SAW YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!

I waved but you didn’t see me

Rejection

A modern tragedy by Felipa Quintana Georgia Warr

you’ll get over it

Felipa Quintana

I’ll need intense therapy

You’re paying

Georgia Warr

i’m not paying for your therapy Felipa Quintana

Rude

I thought you were my friend Georgia Warr

use your 10 points to pay for therapy Felipa Quintana

MAYBE I WILL

The drive was hideously long, actually, even with Pip’s messages for company. Dad was asleep for most of it. Mum insisted she got to choose the radio station since she was driving, and it was all motorway, flashes of grey and green, with only one stop at a service station. Mum bought me a packet of crisps, but I was too nervous about the day ahead to eat them, so they just sat in my lap, unopened.

‘You never know,’ Mum had said, in an attempt to cheer me up, ‘you might find a lovely young man on your course!’

‘Maybe,’ I said. Or a lovely young woman. God, anybody. Please. I’m desperate.

‘Lots of people meet their life partner at university. Like me and Dad.’

Mum regularly pointed out boys she thought I would find attractive, as if I could just go up to someone and ask them out. I never thought any of her choices were attractive anyway. But she was hopeful. Mostly out of curiosity, I think. She wanted to know what sort of person I would choose, like when you’re watching a movie and waiting for the love interest to appear.

‘Yeah, maybe,’ I said, not wanting to tell her that her attempt at cheering me up was just making me feel worse. ‘That’d be nice.’

I was starting to feel a bit like I was going to be sick.

But everyone probably felt this way about starting university.

Durham is a little old city with lots of hills and cobbled streets, and I loved it because I felt like I was in The Secret History or some other deep and mysterious university drama where there’s lots of sex and murder.

Not that I was particularly on track to experience either of those.

We had to drive into a huge field, queue up in the car, and wait to be summoned, because Durham University’s colleges are all tiny and they don’t have car parks of their own. Lots of students and their parents were getting out of their cars to talk to each other while we all waited. I knew I should get out and start socialising too.

My running theory was that my shyness and introversion were linked to my whole ‘never fancying anyone’ situation – maybe I just didn’t talk to enough people, or maybe people just stressed me out in general, and that was why I’d never wanted to kiss anyone. If I just improved my confidence, tried to be a bit more open and sociable, I’d be able to do and feel those things, like most people.

Starting university was a good time to try something like that.

Felipa Quintana

Hey are you in the queue

I’ve befriended my car next door neighbour She brought a whole-ass fern with her

It’s like five feet tall

Update: the fern’s name is Roderick I was about to reply, or maybe even get out of the car and meet Pip’s acquaintance and Roderick, but it was then that Mum turned the engine on.

‘They’re calling us,’ she said, pointing up ahead at where someone in a high-vis vest was waving.

Dad turned round to smile at me. ‘You ready?’

It’d be hard, sure, and it’d be scary and probably embarrassing, but I would become someone who could experience the magic of romance.

I knew I had my whole life ahead of me, and it’d happen one day, but I felt like if I couldn’t change and make it happen at university, it’d never happen at all.

‘Yeah,’ I replied.

Also, I didn’t want to wait. I wanted it now.