Her eyes dug into mine. “Why are you being so utterly defeatist? You told the guy you love him! He saw your dirty pictures! Shit, Helen, he took you for a cosy ride to his special spot and now he’s watching you spill your quirky little guts over webcam! If that’s not interested, I don’t know what is.” She tutted at me. “You should be happy. This is progress beyond epic progress.”
I turned away, staring at the stragglers in the distance making their way through the school gates. “I’m scared.”
“Scared? Of what?”
“Scared of everything. Of getting carried away, of getting my hopes up. Scared of making an idiot of myself and watching every dream I’ve had in this place fall away from me.” I shrugged. “Scared of thinking this could ever be more and being shot down. I couldn’t stand it, Lizzie. I’d rather never know.”
“So, what? You just do nothing? Defeated?”
“No!” I shook my head at her. “I’m doing everything! You can’t say I haven’t been brave. I told the man I loved him. I actually said it.” My cheeks burned at the memory.
She swung an arm around my waist as we walked on. “You are brave, and cool, and cute, and smart, and quirky as hell. And you have super-dirty pics in your sketchbook. What’s not to love? Believe me, Helen Palmer, you can totally siren the guy in. Trust me, I’m one hundred million percent sure about that.”
I smiled. “I wish I was so sure.”
“You should be.” We passed through the gates, officially on school turf, and my stomach lurched at the sight of his car in the corner of the car park. “I’ll help you,” she grinned. “I know this stuff, I used it on Scottie.”
“What stuff?”
“The art of seduction,” she whispered. “I have secret ways.”
I laughed aloud. “Now this I have to see.”
“Mock all you like,” she smirked. “It’s in my Romany bloodline.” We separated at the entrance to the English block and she blew me a kiss goodbye. “Trust me, Hels, the man is all yours.”
Tingles ran through me at her words.
***
I finally found my voice, but it came out more mousy than I’d intended. A pathetic little squeak, hardly a siren calling.
“I’m not keeping you, am I? I can go…”
Mr Roberts looked up from the paperwork he was reading, and then he took his glasses off. I liked his glasses, he didn’t wear them very often, but when he did they made me a bit giddy. They suited him, made him look like an art professor, geeky and creative and, well, hot.
“No, you’re not keeping me. I have plenty to be getting on with.”
I looked at the clock above his head. Thirty minutes since the end bell had sounded, and I’d dawdled, hovering around my painting even longer than usual. I’d already sent Lizzie a message saying I’d give walking home with her a miss. In truth I didn’t know quite what I was waiting for. The picture in front of me was all but finished, I was tweaking tweaks I’d already made, adding scratchy little lines of nothing. The river was already perfect, its grey-brown water babbling and playing across the canvas, reflecting the rainclouds overhead.
Mr Roberts dropped his paperwork and got to his feet. My hands started shaking.
He propped himself against the art bench beside me, and his palm landed on the corner of my sketchpad. My secret sketchpad. I tore my eyes away and loaded my brush up with paint. I could smell him, the woody fragrance of his aftershave, only he hadn’t shaved. His jaw was dark with the shadow of stubble, working with the dark curls of his hair to make him appear more mysterious than usual. Deeper. Darker. Sexier.
“I’m glad you stayed late. I wanted to talk to you. I meant to add more comments last night, before we were disconnected.”
My pulse sped up. “It was my mum… they never wait, they just knock and come in. It’s not even a proper knock, it’s like a tap and boom, they’re in there. It’s not privacy, it’s more like a cursory announcement.” I gripped the brush to still my shaking hand then painted over the brown of the soil with the exact same brown. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off, I just…”
“It’s ok, Helen. It’s fine.”
I daren’t meet his eyes. I was too afraid of seeing something bad, something dismissive, or apologetic, or patronising. He smoothed his tie. It was his green one, dark, like a forest.
“It’s hard, being different, being creative. Finding your feet in a world of normality, feeling the pressure of people around you. You’re right, I do get it.”
Self-consciousness battered me, made me shy. “I was just, talking, I was… I felt… alone. I felt alone then. But I’m fine now.” I smiled a fake happy smile. “I’m totally fine, I don’t always feel like that. I’m good, I mean.”
“You didn’t sound fine.” I could feel his eyes on me.
“I’m fine now. It’s just… family, life, stuff. Sometimes it feels hard.”
“Sometimes it is hard.”
His tone. So strong, so… safe.