Tessa in Love (9 page)

I had gone
waaaay
too far.

Matty was silent for a bit longer.

‘It’s time I went home,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry, please don’t,’ I said. I bit my lip and we looked at each other. ‘I didn’t mean that at all. Really, I didn’t. I just don’t know why you’re getting at me today.’

‘I’m just worried about you,’ Matty said.

‘Oh my God, but why?’

‘I just worry that he’s changing you, and you’re losing some of the person you used to be.’

‘But Matt, I’ve never been happier, you know that? I’m in love and I have someone who understands me, and I know how to snog without practising on peaches ...’

‘Did you really
do
that?’ Matty said.

‘You told me it worked.’

Matty collapsed into giggles and, after a while, so did I. Soon, we were crying with laughter.

‘And now?’ she said. ‘Do you still think it works?’

‘Well, I...’

‘If he’s snogging you the same way a peach does,’ Matty said, ‘I think there might be something wrong.’ We laughed harder, and Matty lay down on the carpet, and I thought the bad moment had passed. She stayed there for a while, quietly staring at the ceiling.

‘It could be me,’ she said. ‘I could be worrying about myself and trying out my questions on you.’

‘You
haven’t changed,’ I said. ‘You’re still you and you’re still my best friend and you always will be. Lee hasn’t done anything to change you.’

‘Maybe that’s my problem,’ Matty said. ‘I look at you, and you’ve turned yourself into Wolfie’s dream girl...’

‘Really, I haven’t,’ I said. ‘It’s just that I seem to have more in common with him than I realised at first, and I love the way he makes me think about things. I like being good enough for him, because I respect him.’

‘That’s what I mean,’ Matty said. ‘I don’t think I’ve tried hard enough with Lee, and I think he’s got so many options, so many girls who’d do anything for him, that I...’

‘He’d do anything for
you,’
I said. ‘And he’s lucky to get the chance to.’

‘Please, Tessa,’ Matty said weakly. ‘I know Wolfie and you are really like
super cool,
but don’t try and tell me that girls don’t have to work a bit to keep boys,
especially
when you
so are.’

Holy crap, Matty thought we were super cool? Wait a minute, Matty thought I was so
working
to keep Wolfie?

‘It’s really not like that,’ I said. My head was spinning, trying to keep a hold of everything. I wanted to tell Matty she had the wrong idea about me and Wolfie, and the way we were together. I wanted to tell her she had the wrong idea about Lee, if she thought he could do better than her. At the same time, who was
I
, with my brand new first ever boyfriend, to tell
her
anything – she probably knew a lot more than me. Still, I just
knew
I was right about this, because there was no way Matty should have been with someone who made her feel insecure. And there was no way I’d feel the same way about Wolfie if he didn’t seem to love and respect me the way he did.

We ended up compromising with a ham pizza and watched a spoofy movie that neither of us found very funny.

‘Do you think we should do something together?’ I said.

‘What are you talking about?’ Matty said.

‘You and me and Lee and Wolfie.’

Matty sighed. ‘They’re not really the same kind of guy,’ Matty said.

‘Yeah, I know,’ I said.

‘To be honest, I don’t think they get on all that well,’ Matty said. ‘And they’ve known each other, or sort of known each other, for quite a while now.’

I wondered if Lee had said something nasty about Wolfie, because Matty seemed more certain that it would be a bad idea than me. I’d been around when Lee was making fun of him in the coffee shop, but maybe he hadn’t stopped there.

‘But if we were all together, you and me having a laugh, they might end up having a good time,’ I said.

‘Well . . .’ Matty didn’t sound convinced. ‘Oh, you know what? Instead of making it some big deal, how about we all just hang out at Becca’s party? Lee’s coming, you’re coming, so bring Wolfie.’

I thought this sounded like a brilliant idea. Matty and I really needed to feel closer again, and the thing, I thought, that might have been pushing us further apart was the fact that we were both spending more time with our boyfriends and less with each other. And there was no reason we couldn’t combine the two things.

‘Fantastic,’ I said. ‘It’s going to be so cool’

But I couldn’t really interest Matty in making any all-new Lee-and-Wolfie plans. She said she and I would still have to go to the party together, because Becca’s house was a car ride away, and Matty’s parents were pretty strict about her going to parties: they thought they were drink and drug and sex and ritual sacrifice extravaganzas, and that they would lead to Matty being featured on
Crimewatch.
So it would probably be the tried and tested formula of her mum dropping us off and mine picking us up – the other way around, Matty’s mum always came early and rang the doorbell, which Matty thought was social death – so we’d have to meet the boys there. Matty decided we’d have to get there first, too, because neither of the boys knew Becca all that well. I was much more excited than Matty: I could see a time in the near future where we got to hang out as two couples. I knew Wolfie wasn’t that keen on Lee and, if I was being honest, I had a problem with him, too, but I trusted Matty, and Matty loved him.

‘Listen, though,’ Matty said, out of the blue, near the end of the film, ‘let’s not make this a concrete plan. Lee’s been a bit funny about stuff, recently. Just ask Wolfie if he’ll come with you. Don’t make it about the four of us.’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Is everything OK, though?’

‘Yeah–yeah, everything’s fine,’ Matty said.

I paused the DVD and went to get the ice cream. I knew there was probably something up, but, if Matty wasn’t ready to talk about it, I knew from experience that I couldn’t force her, and I didn’t want to go back into our weird argument from earlier about whether I was changing too much to be like Wolfie. If I could influence the direction of the evening, my best bet was to make it all about ice cream.

It was Cookie Dough. It was good. The evening was saved.

T
hen things got better. I was writing some course-work at home on the dining table straight after school. My mum wasn’t home yet, my brother was on the other side of the room watching the telly, and my dad was tootling around in the kitchen making himself a sandwich before dinner. We heard a
commotion
outside the house, and my dad asked my brother to turn down the telly. Before he had, the doorbell rang and we could hear singing outside, and I realised it was Jane and Lara and Chunk and Wolfie. I ran to let them in.

‘The Wood is safe!’ Jane shouted.

They all started talking at once, and Wolfie came in first and grabbed me round the waist and picked me up.

‘What?’ I said. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Come on, you,’ Jane said. ‘We’re all going to run around in the Wood to celebrate.’

‘The supermarket failed to get planning permission at the last meeting. All because of our brilliant . . .’ Chunk said, until Lara interrupted him.

‘Well, we don’t
know
that it was our . . .’

‘It can’t have hurt,’ Chunk said.

‘Is it really true?’ I said. ‘Is it definitely safe?’

‘Yes it’s true!’ Jane sang.

‘OK, no time to waste,’ Lara said. ‘Come on, Tessa.’

‘Can you come, Tess?’ Wolfie whispered in my ear.

‘Dad, is it OK? I’ll be back for dinner,’ I said.

‘Sure,’ my dad said, through a mouthful of cheese sandwich. ‘Go on.’

We all tumbled out the door and ran to the woods. Wolfie and I walked a little behind the others. Once, Lara turned round to look at us, and she looked a little sad, and I felt bad, because it seemed so obvious that she had been wishing he’d ask her out, and instead he’d chosen me. I wanted Lara to like me. I was still very in awe of her, because she was so clever and talented and pretty.

‘I can’t believe it’s really safe,’ I said.

‘It had to be your fabulous essay,’ Wolfie said.

‘Or your fabulous picture,’ I said.

‘Well, they chose the most boring one,’ Wolfie said.

‘They were all beautiful.’

‘Well, the
most
beautiful one was ...’

‘Keep up, you two,’ Chunk said, beckoning us on without turning round to look at us.

The woods were absolutely beautiful that evening because they were suddenly really ours; we’d saved them .Well, us and all the older people who’d held the meeting and talked to councillors and mailed petitions and gone to the planning permission appeal. But we’d made a difference. There were lots of other people there, and everyone was saying hello to everyone else and asking if they’d heard, and nodding and saying that was why they were there. People had brought out their children and were walking with them through the trees, explaining that they’d been saved from bulldozers. Jane started talking to a little white-haired old man: she told him what we’d done and he’d seen our page in the local paper, and he said it was ‘splendid, really splendid’ and added, ‘I know as an old git I’m duty bound to say that everything is changing too fast, but I’ve been walking by these trees my whole life, and it really didn’t need to be swapped for another new place to buy one hundred different types of toilet roll.’

He shook hands with all of us before he left, and Jane gave him a little hug. I thought about how brilliant my new friends were, and then felt a little guilty that Matty wasn’t sharing in this lovely moment when she was my best friend. I knew I’d have to tell her about it, and would probably downplay how exciting it was. I didn’t want to gush, because it was the part of my life that most excluded her, and that made me feel bad.

***

When I got back, after a very quick snog with Wolfie in the garden, I went in to find my mum in a bad mood.

‘Did you finish your work?’ she asked me. She knew I hadn’t.

I’ll do it now!’ I said.

‘Have you eaten?’ Mum said.

I paused. I was starving. ‘No,’ I admitted.

‘Your dinner’s in the oven,’ she said, ‘although it’s probably dried out now. It’s nearly nine, you know? Eat first, and then see how much you can get done, but I
don’t
want you going to bed late again tonight.’

‘OK, I just have to . . .’ I stopped.

‘Just have to what?’

‘I was just going to e-mail Matty to let her know the good news.’

‘No,’ Mum said. ‘You’ll start instant messaging each other, and you won’t be done for another hour. I bet Matty has already done her coursework.’ I shrugged. ‘Tessa, I know it’s the most amazing thing ever to happen ever.. .’

‘But mum, I know you’re not being serious, but it is seriously important and good and ...’

‘I know. But your GCSEs are really close, and everything you do now counts. Today is special, but in the near future, we’re going to have to sit down and plan how many times a week you can see Wolfie, and how much time you can spend with Matty. You don’t have that much spare time, you know?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s just a question of making a schedule and sticking to it, Tessa,’ Mum said. By now she was being quite nice, although I didn’t want to admit that her advice was sensible and everything she said was true.

The next day, as a
sort
of compromise, I asked if I could bring Wolfie home for dinner. Mum agreed, because she wanted to show that she wasn’t being a monster and that she was willing to negotiate, as long as I had a sense of my obligations. Wolfie cooked, having the food ready just as Mum got back home. It was a really delicious olivey-potatoey-tomatoey stew, although Jack moaned that it needed bacon. My mum was totally charming and even a bit flirty with Wolfie, and she agreed to let him stick around to ‘help’ me with my homework for a couple of hours. The fact was, we had to be together that night, because it was our two-month anniversary.

‘Sit down,’ I told him in my bedroom. ‘I made you something.’

He sat on my chair and I sat on his lap, and brought it from behind my back. While I was making such a big deal of it, I also worried for a moment that it might just be really lame. It was a mixed CD I’d burned for him, and all the songs were wolf-related. Well . . . some of them were pretty obscure, and some of them were a bit weird, because I’d sort of started to run out of wolves halfway through, so I just put on some of my favourite songs to fill it up. But before I had, there was ‘Hungry Like the Wolf, ‘Werewolves of London’, ‘A Wolf at the Door’, ‘A Man Ain’t A-Nothing But a Wolf, ‘Cry Wolf, and, urn, ‘After the Fox’, which was this mad, funny movie soundtrack song my dad always used to play.

Wolfie kissed me softly and sweetly.

‘You’re adorable,’ he said. ‘Stay right there.’

He pulled a little book out of his bag. I opened it up: it was made of thick card, lightly bound together and tied with a bow, and folded in baby-blue tissue paper. Wolfie had made a photo album of the pictures he took in Bridlington the day we went to the seaside. There was the Beside the Seaside museum with the creepy dummies, the Sixties Coffee Bar where we’d eaten, and loads of streaky-lens, moody, beautiful seascapes. But the pictures were so amazing, completely professional, black and white and really arty, with some soft-focus edging framing the details – an old lady laughing at a dummy that was virtually identical to her, a tiny little girl hypnotised by the Punch and Judy, and – oh dear – me with sopping wet hair laughing so hard you could almost hear me through the picture.