Chris walked past me, accidentally brushing my arm. Accident it may have been, but it was enough to make me go weak at the knees.
“I don’t know who I like best,” I sighed, “him or Robbie Williams.” As an afterthought I added, “Not that he ever notices me.”
“Who, Chris or Robbie?” Sophie asked, pushing me off the pavement and into the gutter.
“You know who I mean,” I replied.
“Then make him notice you,” she said. “It is the 2nd millennium, women are allowed to make the first move.”
“You mean just walk up to him and tell him I fancy him? I couldn’t.”
How could I? When just the sight of him made me tongue-tied.
“Tell you what,” Sophie said, “if you get him to take you to the party on Saturday, I’ll give you all my Robbie photo’s.”
“Oh yeah, and if I don’t?” I asked suspiciously.
“I’ll have yours.”
The thought of all those pictures was just too much to resist.
For the next three days I followed Chris around college, still not daring to speak to him, but hoping against hope that he’d ask me out. Then on Thursday I wrote him a letter and tried in vain to get Sophie to deliver it.
“Oh, no,” she said, “acting as postman wasn’t part of the deal. You’ll just have pluck up the courage to do your own dirty work. You’re bound to see him in the Refectory at lunchtime.”
As usual, the place was crowded and being too nervous to eat I bought a coke from the machine and clutching it tightly, tried to negotiate my way round all the bodies to the chair Sophie had saved for me. A chair that just happened to be next to Chris’s. I almost made it, too, until I caught my foot and stumbled, spilling the contents of the opened can over the one person I didn’t want to.
The tirade of abuse he hurled at me went almost unheard in the melee, as did my apology, but the icy glare told me everything I needed to know. On the way back to class, I said.
“Well, you might as well come and collect the photo’s tonight, he’s never going to want to go out with me now, is he?”
“Don’t be so defeatist,” she said, “you’ve still got two more days it’s not over yet.”
Yes it is, I thought.
Saturday arrived and so did the party, but I was so down in spirit that I almost cried off.
“Oh, come on,” Sophie cajoled, “I don’t want to go on my own, and anyway, it’ll make you feel better.”
So I put on my glitter top and makeup and went. Chris went too, with another girl. The sight of him sitting next to her consumed me with jealousy. I’d seen them together before. Could they really be an item? I wondered, and worse, was she the reason I was about to lose all my Robbie Williams photos?
That was when I decided I was going to get my own back on her. I didn’t know when or how, but as soon as the opportunity arose I was going to take it.
It came sooner than I anticipated, as a result of dancing on the edge of a crowd where everyone on the dance floor couldn’t avoid bumping into those that had chosen to stay seated, among them, Chris and his girlfriend.
The drink in his hand wouldn’t take much of a nudge and would probably spill all over my adversary’s new white mini-skirt. With any luck, they wouldn’t even know who’d done it. Needless to say, they didn’t stay long after that.
On Sunday I slept late, then finished taking down the pictures from my bedroom wall. I was just pulling the blue tac off the back and mourning their imminent loss when my mobile rang. I thought it was going to be Sophia asking when I was going to deliver them, so when I heard Chris’s voice I almost dropped it.
“How did you get my number?” I asked.
“Does it matter,” he replied. “I just wanted to thank you for pouring that drink all over my sister last night. She likes to go everywhere with me and my folks come down really hard if I don’t indulge her.”
“Your sister? But I thought…”
“She was my girlfriend? So does everyone else, it really cramps my style. Anyway, after we got home she decided that she doesn’t want to go anywhere with me, ever again. So you did me a really big favour.”
“Good,” I replied, half-heartedly.
“The only thing is, that I now have a spare ticket for the Empire tonight and no-one to go with. I wondered if you’d like to come?”
Would I? Sophie and I had been trying for weeks to get hold of tickets, but the Robbie Williams concert was a sell out.
“I’d love to.” I replied.
I hurriedly finished the job I’d started. I couldn’t wait to get to Sophie’s and give her the good news.
OK, so I still had to part with my photo collection, but it was worth it. I had, after all got my date with Chris and in funny sort of way with Robbie too, and I still don’t know which of them I like best.
by Joyce Walker
Joyce has previously had work published in Aayo Magazine (Hear No Evil, Clown Face and Change of Heart). She also had her work accepted by the now defunct Affairs of the Heart, New Fiction, Writers Cauldron and Voyage and some success in competitions, including taking 1st prize in the Writers Brew Short Story Competition in 2002, 2nd prize in the storyfeedback.com competition in October 2009 and more recently taking 2nd Prize in an EWG competition.
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