The Pieces of You and Me. Rachel Burton

don’t let it be one of the girls from school. Please don’t let it be Camilla.

       You touched my chin then, turning my head gently towards you. You’d stopped smiling.

       ‘She’s you,’ you said so quietly I could hardly hear you. ‘She’s you, I hope.’

       It took me too long to realise what you meant. We sat there, on that bench, by that familiar stretch of river where we’d swum as children, by the stretch of Common where my dad taught us to fly a kite. I didn’t say anything. I knew it was my turn to speak but I felt as if the memories were falling in on me, weighing me down. I wanted to be a kid again. I wasn’t sure that I liked growing up after all.

       ‘I love you, Jessie,’ you said. ‘I can’t stop thinking about you. You’re my best friend, you always have been, but now we’re older it just feels different.’

       ‘You want me to be your girlfriend?’ I asked. It sounded such a childishly simple explanation for the complex emotions I was feeling at that moment. It felt like the time you asked me to marry you in the playground.

       ‘Yes,’ you said. ‘I want you to be my girlfriend. I’ve wanted nothing else for months. I was just waiting.’

       ‘Waiting for what?’

       ‘Until we were both sixteen,’ you said, blushing slightly. I suddenly realised how serious you were.

       I felt as though I was at a crossroads. I didn’t feel ready to be anybody’s girlfriend yet. I was scared that this would change everything forever, and we would never get back what we used to have. But I also knew that we’d already outgrown what we used to have and that if I said ‘no’ now it would hurt you so much you’d walk away, and I’d never see you again. Looking back on that moment I never really felt as though I had a choice. That moment had been fated since we were born.

       ‘Jessie?’ you said, your face a question, and I nodded. I wanted to say yes, that it had always been yes, but all I could do was nod.

       And then you kissed me. It was clumsy and awkward; there was too much tongue and you tasted of toothpaste and cigarettes, and something else that was almost animal. But it felt like the best thing that had ever happened. A wave of warmth washed over my body as you pulled away from me, smiling.

       ‘I think we need more practice,’ you said. You looked so happy and relaxed suddenly and I realised that I couldn’t remember the last time I saw you relax. I thought it was the pressure your parents put you under to achieve so highly, but suddenly I wondered if it was something else causing you so much distress. How long had you been holding all of this in? How long had you been waiting for me?

       I don’t know how long we stayed there on that bench that evening practising kissing, finding the ways that we worked together. It didn’t take long to get the hang of it – we always knew how well we fitted, like jigsaw pieces clicking into place. We both lost track of time, and the next thing we knew was the thump of a pair of hands landing on our shoulders, the sound of your mates whistling at us.

       ‘So this is where you are,’ John said, grinning at us. ‘We’ve been waiting for you in the pub for ages.’ Nobody said anything about the kiss then. I knew though, that they’d wait until later, until I wasn’t there, to rib you about it. Everyone started to walk away from us except John.

       ‘Are you coming to this party then?’ he asked. I didn’t know anything about a party. I was always the last to find out anything. I suspected, since you hadn’t mentioned it, that you had no intention of going anyway. You hated parties.

       You’d known John almost as long as you’d known me, and I saw a look pass between you, one of understanding, the conclusion to a conversation that I wasn’t party to. I had the feeling that you and he had already spoken about this, that finding us kissing hadn’t come as much of a surprise to him.

       ‘Maybe we’ll catch you up,’ you said. John, not usually so easily dissuaded, nodded and walked away, everybody else following.

       You draped one arm around my shoulders then, and pulled me towards you. With your other hand you got your cigarettes out of your pocket, knocking two out of the packet and lighting them, handing one to me. I rested my head on your chest as I had done a million times before but again it was different. I could hear your heart beat, feel your breathing and the warmth of your body, and it all felt so different to the last time we sat here smoking at Easter. How could three months change so much?

       ‘Do you want to go to this party?’ you asked after a while.

       ‘Whose party is it?’

       ‘You know,’ you replied, dropping your cigarette on the floor and scrubbing it out underneath your boot, ‘I have no idea.’ We giggled together, both knowing full well we weren’t going to the party.

       ‘Shall we go back to mine?’ you asked instead. ‘There’s beer and Mum and Dad are still in France.’

       I looked up at you. ‘If we go back to yours can we keep practising kissing?’

       ‘Do you think we need more practice?’ you asked.

      ‘Lots,’ I replied …