Nick and Charlie. Alice Oseman
the field, the end of Wednesday period five biscuit hour in the common room.
No more hanging out with Charlie at school.
I guess there are a few things I’m a bit nervous about. Coming out as bisexual again is probably the main one – it was painful enough the first fifty times. There always seems to be someone who hasn’t heard yet or doesn’t understand what you’re talking about or doesn’t believe you until you’ve repeated yourself. Leaving home’s gonna be scary too. I’m a bit worried about my mum being at home by herself all the time.
And, again, there’s leaving Charlie behind.
Still, there are loads of good things about leaving school – God, I’m ready for university, for doing my own thing whenever I want, for actually learning stuff I’m interested in. Finally getting out of this dingy town, having my own place, buying my own food, choosing how to spend my time. It’s gonna be ace.
“Harry wants to know whether we’ll be at his leavers’ party tomorrow,” Charlie says from the passenger seat of my car, scrolling through something on his phone. People we know usually message Charlie these days when they want to talk to either of us because I’m horrific at replying to messages. He’s way more organised than me.
“Well, I’m still up for it if you are,” I say, turning the car out of the school car park.
“Yeah, we should probably go, since prom’s going to be crap.”
“Fair.”
We sit in comfortable silence as I drive us to my house. Charlie picks up his sunglasses from the door compartment and puts them on, then turns the radio on and continues scrolling through his phone, probably through Tumblr, his knees bent and his feet on the seat. Honestly, it’s a beautiful day. Blue skies all round, reflecting off town windows and cars. I roll my window down and turn up the radio, and then I take my disposable camera out of my pocket and quickly take a picture of Charlie, his face all sunlit, his dark hair being blown about by the wind, his body curled up on the passenger seat.
He looks at me instantly, but he’s smiling. “Nick!”
I grin and look back at the road. “Don’t mind me.”
“At least give me some warning.”
“That’s not as fun.”
This is normal for us, going to one of our houses after school. We spend more time at my house, generally. As my mum’s usually at work and my brother’s got his own place now, we have the house to ourselves. Over the past few months, our parents have been letting us stay over each other’s houses sometimes, even on school nights. My mum never minds, but Charlie’s parents are stricter and Charlie thinks that if he asked more than a couple of times a week, they’d start saying no.
We get that this isn’t, like, normal normal. We think our parents see it’s not normal as well. I mean, don’t get me wrong, they’re fine with it, but… normal teenage couples don’t sleep round each other’s houses on school nights, do they? They don’t spend every single day with each other, right? I don’t know.
We don’t care.
Things me and Charlie do together at our houses include:
Play video games. Watch TV and films. Watch YouTube videos. Homework. Coursework. Revision. Nap. Make out. Have sex. Sit in the same room on different laptops in silence. Play board games. Make food. Make drinks. Get drunk. Plan trips to concerts. Plan holidays. Build pillow forts. Have sex in a pillow fort (okay, it was only once, but it did happen, I swear). Play with my dog, Henry. Help Charlie’s brother, Oliver, with various Lego projects. Talk. Argue. Shout. Cry. Laugh. Cuddle. Sleep. Text each other from different rooms. Charlie practises his drums, makes playlists, reads books. I take photos on my phone, draw on Charlie when he’s not looking, make exotic meals neither of us has tried before.
We’re pretty chill. Maybe kind of boring. But, in all honesty, that’s fine with both of us.
Today’s nothing different. We get in, we get drinks, I change into some jogging bottoms and a sweatshirt. Charlie changes into some jeans and a T-shirt he left here yesterday, and then collapses on to my bed, stretches out on his stomach and opens my laptop.
“D’you want any food?” I ask as I’m about to go downstairs.
I always ask him this after school. Charlie had anorexia pretty badly the year we started going out. He had to go to a psychiatric hospital for a couple of months and it really helped, but I guess he still sort of has it. Stuff like that doesn’t go away very quickly. But he’s nowhere near as bad as he used to be and he’s better in lots of other ways too. He’s usually fine with main meals now, even if he doesn’t eat snacks, like, ever.
“Nah, I’m good,” he says, as usual.
I always make sure to ask though. I think he might say yes one day, if I just keep asking.
Once I’ve made my way through two slices of toast and a glass of lemonade, I come back upstairs to find Charlie frowning at the laptop screen.
I fall on to my bed next to him. “What’s up?”
He glances at me and then back at the laptop before clicking on something. “Nothing. Just reading something on Tumblr.”
I don’t have Tumblr, despite Charlie trying to make me use it many times. I don’t really think it’s my sort of thing.
Charlie rolls on to his back to make room for me and takes out his phone. I lie down next to him and pull the laptop towards me. He’s already exited Tumblr, so it probably wasn’t anything I would have been interested in.
On another tab is the page I started reading this morning about the University of Leeds’ rugby team, which I’m gonna try and join when I get there, if I’m good enough.
That’s where I’m going in September – the University of Leeds. It’s pretty far away; like, two hundred miles or something, and me and Charlie have obviously talked about the fact that we’ll be long distance. While it’s not ideal and no way near as great as the way we hang out every day at the moment, we’re both completely fine with it. Charlie has a Saturday job at Topman now and they pay pretty well, so he reckons he can get the train to see me every few weeks, and I can get the train back every few weeks, and that means we’ll definitely see each other at least every two weeks, if not more. And we’ll text and call and Skype all the time anyway.
I start telling Charlie all the facts about Leeds’ rugby team – how many tiers there are at the university and whether I think I’ll be able to get in (I honestly do, I mean, I’m pretty good at rugby, in my opinion), how much their gym membership is and whether I’ll be able to get a job somewhere when I get there, whether it’s worth trying to get a sports scholarship, whether I’ll be really crap compared to everyone else, and how nice their uniform is (green and white).
Charlie stays still on his back and listens and asks a few questions, but after I’ve been rambling on for a while I can tell he’s getting bored because his voice quietens and he starts fiddling with my sweatshirt sleeve, and then, as I’m in the middle of a sentence, he rolls on to his side and pulls me down by the back of my neck for a kiss, which sort of takes me by surprise because we’re long past the stage of needing to make out every time we’re alone.
After a few seconds I go to move backwards, but he just pulls me further down. I laugh against his lips and I feel him smile too, but neither of us stop and after a minute or so I feel my hand subconsciously reach to run through his hair. This is a bit of an odd time of day for us to be doing this, but it’s difficult to care, especially when he surges forward so he’s lying on top of me.
“Did you want to talk about something else?” I murmur, wondering where this has come from. I push his hair back from his forehead. I probably have a thing for Charlie’s hair.
He meets my eyes. Then he sits up, leans back and switches on the radio. The Vaccines are playing. He moves back down, tilts his head and says, “Not really,”