Falling Fast (12 page)

He let out a long, heavy sigh.

I twisted my arms up round his neck. His eyes were so beautiful – all soulful in the dimming light. ‘Actually, I hardly spent any money last night.’ I grinned. ‘Boys kept
buying me drinks.’

Flynn stared at me.

‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’ he grunted. But a small smile started to creep across his mouth. He looked into my eyes, this deep, sexy look. ‘So you didn’t
buy any drinks back?’ He smoothed his hands over my waist.

I shivered, then stood on tiptoe, reaching up for him. ‘No, I saved all my money so I could buy
you
a drink tonight.’ I kissed him quickly before he could say anything, then
drew back. ‘Please let me, Flynn. Please don’t make this a big deal. Why can’t you see it’s only money – and if I happen to have a few quid more than you, why
can’t we just share it?’

He looked down at me, his eyes like golden flints. ‘It doesn’t work that way,’ he said.

‘But it could,’ I smiled. ‘We can make it work however we want. It’s not like you’d be sponging off me. I mean, you earn loads of money. Well, some, anyway. And you
give all that to your mum, don’t you?’

He nodded.

‘So all I’m doing is giving some of it back to you.’

‘That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,’ he laughed, kissing me gently. Then he nuzzled at my ear. ‘You’re a bold piece,’ he murmured,
running his hands down my bum. ‘A—’

Without warning, Mum opened the door.

Flynn and I both jumped. I sprang back, away from him.

Mum looked Flynn up and down, then she turned to me. I could feel my face burning.

‘Finished learning your lines, then?’ she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

‘Why didn’t you knock?’ I snapped.

Mum ignored me. She turned to Flynn expectantly.

He said nothing.

Mum strode across my bedroom carpet, her arm outstretched. ‘I’m assuming you’re Flynn?’

He shook her hand. I noticed, with some admiration, that he did so without either blushing or flinching.

And Mum looked pretty terrifying. She was wearing an expensive-looking suit and loads of make-up. In her heels she was nearly as tall as Flynn.

She stood back, still staring at him. ‘I heard shouting,’ she said.

Oh God
.

‘It was just the play, Mum,’ I said quickly. ‘We were going over our lines.’

Mum raised an eyebrow. ‘I don’t remember a scene in
Romeo and Juliet
where Romeo starts shouting at the Nurse?’

Flynn folded his arms. His face took on the same sullen expression I’d seen him give Mr Nichols a thousand times.

‘It wasn’t the play,’ he said. ‘River and I were arguing.’

‘Oh?’ Mum raised her eyebrows. ‘What about?’

‘
Mu-um
.’ My heart was in my mouth. The tension between Mum and Flynn was practically touchable.

Flynn stared at her stonily.

‘Well?’ Mum drew herself up. ‘I think I have a right to know why you were shouting at my daughter in my own house.’

‘Actually you don’t,’ Flynn said, now looking bored. ‘It’s none of your business.’

‘Flynn.’ I gaped at him. Okay, so Mum was being impossible, but couldn’t he hear how rude he sounded?

Mum blinked. ‘I’d like you to leave, Flynn,’ she said.

What? No
. How was this happening?

‘Wait,’ I said.

But Flynn was already walking to the door. ‘Bye, River,’ he said without looking round.

I heard his feet on the stairs. I ran to the door.

‘River,’ Mum snapped. ‘You’re not going after him.’

I spun round. ‘Why did you have to be like that?’ I shouted. Then I turned and ran downstairs.

Flynn was almost at the end of the road when I caught up with him. I grabbed his hand and we walked along in silence for a minute. I didn’t know where I was going. Just that I
couldn’t bear to leave him with all that anger still swirling around between us.

I kept thinking about the way he had glared at Mum. Why had he done that? Why had he not at least tried to be nice?

Flynn glanced down at me. ‘Well, that went well,’ he grinned.

‘Flynn, it’s not funny,’ I said. ‘Why did you have to wind her up like that?’

He made a face. ‘She was rude to me first,’ he said.

I rolled my eyes, ‘Can you hear how childish you sound?’ I said.

Flynn shook my hand out of his. He stopped walking and looked at me, his face all thundery and closed up. ‘Fine. Run back to Mummy, then.’

I exploded.

‘Jeez, Flynn. Going out with you is like being with a frigging bomb.’

I stopped. I hadn’t meant to say ‘going out’. The truth was that although we’d spent a huge amount of time together this week, neither of us had talked about whether we
were official or not.

Flynn frowned at me. ‘What?’

‘You know,’ I went on, ignoring the ‘going out’ part of what I’d said. ‘Say the wrong thing and you’re liable to blow up. No warning. No prisoners. No
grey areas. Just a big Pow.’

Flynn’s eyes lightened into the shadow of a smile. ‘A big
Pow?’
he said slowly.

I stared at him, my anger draining away. I couldn’t stay mad. He was just too . . . too
right.
I loved everything about his face – the way the nose sloped and the lips curled.
It was the most subtle, expressive face I’d ever seen in my life.

I shivered. I’d run out of the house in just a T-shirt, and it was getting dark outside and the air was cold. Flynn put his hands on my arms, just like he had that night when I’d
been sick. His face relaxed into a beautiful grin.

‘So we are officially going out, then?’ he said, pulling me towards him.

My breath caught in my throat.

‘I guess,’ I grunted, sliding my arms round his back, wanting him so badly I could die. ‘So long as you can keep your big Pows under control.’

I shivered again. He rubbed my back. ‘If I had a jacket, I’d let you wear it, you know,’ he murmured.

‘Yeah.’ I mimicked the harsh, deep way he’d spoken earlier. ‘But you’re too poor to have a frigging jacket.’

For a second I wondered if he’d get all offended again, but he didn’t.

‘Actually I do have a jacket,’ he laughed, ‘but it’s so hideous I can’t bring myself to wear it. My mum bought it when I wasn’t there. Two pounds in some
second-hand shop. A frigging fortune for her. She was so pleased with herself. But it’s horrible. Like something my da would . . .’ He stopped, suddenly, and buried his face in my hair.
‘Hey River,’ he said – and his voice sounded muffled. ‘D’you still want to go for a drink?’

I nodded.

He started kissing my neck, holding me tight. I held my breath, knowing something between us had shifted. That we were closer, somehow. That he was starting to let me in.

‘I reckon I’ve got enough money to buy you one drink,’ he murmured. ‘And I can drink tap water. Then you can buy me an orange juice. Then I’ll just carry on
drinking water.’

‘Hey, Flynn.’ I gently pushed his face away from me. The look in his eyes was achingly tender. I wanted to tell him that I was falling in love with him. But it wasn’t the right
time.

Not now. Not yet. Not quite.

Three weeks passed. Flynn and I met up as often as we could. After rehearsals and at the weekends. Most of the time we were on our own, though sometimes we hung out with Grace
and James.

Flynn never joined in the rounds of drinks that were bought. He occasionally let me or James buy him an orange juice – but he was always careful to buy drinks back for us afterwards.

I lost count of the number of times I watched him, hunched and brooding, counting out his coins in the palm of his hand before he went to the bar or agonising over whether he could afford a
packet of crisps or a last cup of coffee.

I’d never spent time with somebody who watched every single penny like that. I mean, don’t get me wrong – none of us were loaded. Except Emmi, of course. Everyone else had to
be really careful about what they spent. But with Flynn it went deeper. Like he was wrestling with his conscience every time he bought something. As more time went by, I began to understand why he
hated not having money so much.

It dominated his whole life. Everything he did. Everything he planned to do in the future.

We talked more about his ambition to become a lawyer. I felt deeply uncomfortable that he didn’t seem to be in the slightest bit interested in law. Just in the money he would be able to
make. The respect he would be able to buy.

It kind of went against everything I’d been brought up with. I tried to say this to Flynn, but he got angry, accusing me of not understanding him. Again.

I half wanted to talk to Dad about it, but I hadn’t seen him since the potato-digging day. I’d refused to go up to the commune the last few weeks. Stone and I usually went on Sundays
– but now Sundays were the days I spent time with Flynn.

Mum hated me seeing him. When I got home that first Sunday, hours after she’d thrown him out of the house, we’d had a long talk about our relationship – Flynn’s and mine.
She kept going on about how intense he’d seemed, how angry.

‘I’ve seen boys like that before,’ she said. ‘Pushing against authority all the time. He’s trouble, River.’

‘God, Mum, stop being such a Nazi,’ I snarled at her. But I knew she was partly right. Flynn did push against authority all the time. He was always slagging off the adults where he
worked. And how often had I seen him be breathtakingly rude to Mr Nichols?

I half expected Mum to forbid me to see Flynn. But I think she knew coming down hard on us would only make me more determined to be with him. So she kept quiet, hoping we’d lose interest
in each other, and contented herself with quoting teenage pregnancy statistics at me and muttering dark warnings about Not Getting Carried Away.

Flynn refused to come round to the house again. I could tell Mum was relieved about that. To be honest, I think Flynn scared her a little. I think he scared most people. The scruffy school
uniform he wore, the brilliant way he acted in the play, his lack of money and, above all, his whole not-drinking thing – all of these things set him apart. But, despite being different, he
wasn’t ridiculed or ignored like most people would have been.

Instead, he was admired and feared. Not liked particularly. I had to admit it. He was too much of a loner for that. And I could see that though most people thought he could sometimes be a laugh,
only James actually considered him a friend. I liked seeing them together – there was something about James’s bumbling, kindly manner that seemed to rub away Flynn’s hard edges.
They spent a lot of time discussing boxing and football – neither of which I was remotely interested in.

I occasionally saw Flynn’s older sister, Siobhan, when I went with him to pick her up from her hairdressing job. What I’d initially taken to be hostility turned out to be crippling
shyness. Siobhan often threw me a quick, nervous smile – but she hardly spoke when I was around and never looked me properly in the eye.

I wondered if her chronic shyness had something to do with why Flynn was so protective of her, but I’d long stopped attempting to ask him about that.

It was the middle of November. Rehearsals for
Romeo and Juliet
were both more fun and more hard work than they had been before. We were using the proper stage now, at
the back of the school’s large assembly hall. Mr Nichols had appointed Maz – a friend of Alex’s – as stage manager. Everyone liked him, but his assistant, Liam, wasn’t
so popular. Flynn, in particular, hated the way Liam so evidently enjoyed ordering us around, demanding that we signed our props in and out of the little cupboard in the wings.

The art teacher was roped in to supervise both scenery and costumes. Mr Nichols was going for a modern-day setting, so they got hold of plain black suits for Flynn and James and the other main
male characters. Emmi was wearing this silky blue evening dress with tiny straps. It was pretty tatty close up, but from a distance, on stage, it looked beautiful.

I had to wear a nanny’s uniform – a black top and skirt with a starchy white apron. Flynn said it was sexy. I knew it was entirely hideous.

I’d hardly spoken to Emmi for days. She and Alex were still at it like maniacs – even managing to do it up against the props cupboard one evening while everyone else listened to Mr
Nichols’ notes. But it didn’t stop Emmi from flirting with the other guys at rehearsals and doing that hair-flicking thing Flynn had so brilliantly mimicked.

I felt anxious whenever I thought about her and Flynn kissing in the play. But it hadn’t happened yet and I tried not to dwell on it.

Then one week at the end of November, when the performances were only two weeks away, she insisted Flynn and I come out after rehearsal with her and Alex. I didn’t really want to go, but
Emmi can be pretty persuasive. She made a big show of wanting to buy everyone drinks – and I convinced Flynn it would be all right and that she would definitely not be expecting either of us
to buy any back. So the four of us – plus Grace and James – set off for this local pub that turns a blind eye to dodgy ID.

The guys went up to the bar with Emmi’s money and bought us all drinks. Emmi had asked for a revolting-looking bright pink alcopop with an extra shot of vodka. She knocked it back in about
two minutes, and then told Alex to get her some more.

I could see he wasn’t pleased about this, but he did it.

Ten minutes later Emmi was on her fourth round and starting to lose her few remaining inhibitions.

‘Hey, Flynn,’ she slurred. ‘When d’you think we’ll have to kiss? On stage.’

My heart thudded. Next to Emmi, Alex stiffened.

Flynn gazed at Emmi coolly. ‘When Mr Nichols tells us to,’ he said, his voice dripping with irritation.

Emmi leaned over. ‘Yeah.’ She grinned drunkenly. ‘I’m not looking forward to it either.’

There was a tense pause.

‘Emmi.’ I stared at her. ‘That’s enough.’

She sat back, smiling. ‘Oh, calm down, River,’ she giggled. ‘I’m just trying to make everyone feel okay about it. I mean, let’s face it, it’s going to be
awkward enou—’