Page 9 of The Friend Request

‘Yeah,’ I said. The word came out smaller than I wanted it to. ‘It’s all right.’

‘You’re always in here,’ he said.

Heat climbed the back of my neck. ‘So are you.’

He looked at me for a second, and I couldn’t tell if he was surprised or pleased. Then he smiled a lopsided smile that was gone almost as soon as it arrived, and said, ‘Fair enough.’

We didn’t say much more than that. He got up after a few minutes and went to the shelves. I sat there with my face burning, my hands trembling against the pages, and I felt as though something enormous had happened, even though any normal person would say it was nothing. Two teenagers. A table. Three sentences about a book.

But it wasn’t nothing. Not to me.

After that day, he came every time I was there. Not to the shelves, or the computers, or the other end of the room. To my table. He’d sit opposite me and read, or pretend to read, and sometimes we’d talk in low voices about whatever came into our heads – school, teachers, music, the fact that Jake Osborne had been caught smoking behind the bins and everyone thought it was hilarious except Jake, who’d been given a week’s detention and cried in the toilets about it. Ordinary things. Safe things. Conversations you could have in full view of a librarian and not feel exposed.

But underneath it, there was something else. A current. A pull. Every time his foot brushed mine under the table, I felt it in my throat. Every time he leaned forward to see my book, his sleeve touching my arm, I forgot how to breathe. I started dreaming about him. Not big, dramatic dreams – small, vivid ones where he was sitting across from me and reaching for my hand. I’d wake up with my heart banging and my pillow damp with sweat.

I didn’t tell anyone, not even Lisa.

This was mine.

The kiss happened on a Thursday. All morning, I’d been thinking about going to the library at lunch. By then there wasn’t much room in my head for anything that wasn’t Ross Mercer.

The library was empty when I got there. Mrs Penrose, who was supposed to supervise, had left a note on the desk saying she’d gone to a staff meeting and would anyone using the library please behave themselves and not touch the computers without permission. The room was quiet except for the rain against the tall windows and the hum of the radiators, and the light was grey and flat. Everything smelled of warm carpet and old books.

I sat in my usual chair. I opened my book. I read the same paragraph three times.

The door opened.

Ross came in and stopped when he saw the empty desk, the note, the fact that we were alone. He stood there, his bag over one shoulder, his school tie loosened the way all the boys wore theirs, his dark hair damp at the edges from the rain. He looked at me, and I looked at him, and neither of us said anything.

He closed the door behind him.

He crossed the room and sat, not opposite me this time but next to me, moving a chair round so we were side by side with the window behind us, the shelves in front of us, and nobody watching. Nobody at all.

‘Kim,’ he said, and his voice was quieter than I’d ever heard it.

‘Yeah?’

He didn’t answer. He was fixated on my mouth, and I knew what was about to happen the way you know a wave is coming when you’re standing in the sea – you can feel it before you see it, the sand shifting under your feet.

He leaned in, I leaned in, and our mouths met somewhere in the middle. It was clumsy and strange, and his lips were softer than I’d expected. I didn’t know what to do with my hands, so I gripped the edge of my chair. The kiss lasted maybe three seconds before we both drew back and stared at each other with wide, terrified eyes.

My heart was hammering so hard I was sure he could hear it.

‘Sorry,’ he said. But he was smiling.

‘Don’t be,’ I said, smiling, too. I wanted him to do it again more than I’d ever wanted anything.

He kissed me again. Longer this time. His hand came up and touched my jaw, just his fingertips, light and careful. I closed my eyes and felt the whole world shrink to the size of that room – the rain, the warmth, the smell of carpet tiles, damp wool, and something underneath it that was just him. When we eased apart, I was trembling, he was breathing hard, and neither of us spoke for what felt like a very long time.

‘Nobody can know,’ I said, and I didn’t even know why I said it, except that I knew it was true. This thing – whatever it was, whatever it was becoming – belonged to us. Only to us. If I told Lisa, she’d make it into gossip. If I told my parents, they’d make it into something to worry about. If anyone found out, it would stop being the purest, most private thing I’d ever felt and become something ordinary.

I wasn’t ready for it to be ordinary.

‘I know,’ Ross said. And the way he said it told me he understood. He felt it, too. The secrecy wasn’t a game. It was protection.

The bell went. The corridor outside filled with noise – doors banging, voices, shoes on hard floors, someone shouting about football. Ross stood, picked up his bag, and looked at me one more time. The look said everything his mouth hadn’t, and then he left.

I sat there for another minute. Maybe two. My lips felt swollen and strange. The book lay open on the table, face down, its spine cracked, and I couldn’t remember a single word of it.