Girl Heart Boy: No Such Thing as Forever (Book 1) (3 page)

In the end, Rav put me out of my misery. He announced he was starving so he, Ben and Will went off to get food. Joe told them he’d give it a miss. He wanted to stay with me. (He wanted to stay with me! I wanted a T-shirt with those words on it.)

As soon as the boys had sloped off, Joe fell backwards on to the sand and stretched. ‘Thank God for that. I thought they’d never leave.’ He put his hands behind his head and grinned up at me. ‘Thanks for sticking around.’

I smiled, and had just started the process of plucking up enough courage to make the first move when he gently pulled me towards him. As we kissed, he stroked his hand up my leg, under my dress, up my thigh. I could feel my heart beating faster, partly cos it felt good, but a lot because of the scary new territory. I gently pushed his hand away as it found its way under my knicker elastic.

‘Don’t you want to?’ murmured Joe, kissing my earlobe.

I didn’t know how to respond without breaking the mood, so I did a kind of kiss/shake-head/kiss manoeuvre while transferring his hand to my back.

Joe groaned, ‘You’re killing me, you know that?’ and he kissed me hard, his tongue grappling with mine as he let out occasional little moans. It was horny as hell and I could have given up my virginity there and then if we hadn’t been in public and I hadn’t known him precisely twelve hours. I’m not a hopelessly unrealistic romantic, but I wanted more from such a momentous occasion than sand in my bits and a nagging worry that we could have provided
someone walking by the beach with their own private porno. I’d already gone as far as I’d ever gone before.

So we carried on kissing (a lot) and talking (a bit), and that was more than enough for me. For now.

As the sky started to lighten, Joe and I lay on the sand, his arm round my shoulders and my head on his chest. I listened to his heart beating as bubbles of happiness burst inside me.

‘I should get back,’ I said finally, running my hand over the soft, washed-out cotton of his T-shirt and desperately not wanting the night to end.

He kissed the top of my head and said, ‘Shame,’ then reached down and murmured into my ear: ‘I have plans for you, missy.’

Oh God. Lust lust.

‘Yeah, well, you’ll just have to lock them away,’ I replied, clambering to my feet. It wasn’t just my own mixed feelings about losing it that meant I needed to go. Assuming Joe wanted to take me back to wherever he was staying, I really didn’t feel like trying to explain later to panicking parents exactly where I’d been. However, as I wasn’t up for explaining the embarrassing parent factor to Joe either, I just said, ‘Fancy meeting later?’ I tried to sound offhand, in direct contradiction to my actual feelings.

Joe sat up and rested his elbows on his raised
knees. I tried not to stare at the sand caught in the fair hairs on his legs. ‘Definitely.’ He grinned and waggled his eyebrows saucily.

‘At the cafe on the beach?’ I said pointedly.

He gave me a little salute. ‘Yes, of course. Sorry, Sarah Doesn’t-like-beer.’ And he suddenly jumped up and pulled me towards him by my waist. ‘You are gorgeous,’ he said, and went in for another deep kiss.

I managed to extricate myself, laughing as he pretended to grapple for me. ‘Joe! I’ve got to go.’

He gave me a short sharp smack on the bum. ‘Yes, go. And be at the cafe, four p.m., or there’ll be trouble.’

‘Quaking in my boots,’ I mocked, then ran off giggling as he made a lunge for me. Amazing what some proper kissing can do for a girl’s confidence.

I smiled all the way back along the winding shrub-lined path from the beach to our bungalow, breathing in the heady scent of lavender and juniper and feeling invincible. As the sun started to climb over the horizon, I quietly let myself in and locked the door behind me. Fortunately the place was silent save for a low electrical humming and the sound of the crickets outside. My flip-flops made a racket on the tiled floor, so I kicked them off and cautiously stuck my head round Mum and Dad’s bedroom door to let them
know I was back. Thankfully they didn’t wake up enough to notice the daylight beginning to seep through their shutters. I went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. Ham, cheese, tomatoes, bread, chocolate. Perfect. I made a doorstep sandwich and put it on a tray, along with some crisps, a hefty slab of the chocolate and a glass of water and carried it through to the living room. I grabbed the remote and sat on the sofa, curling my legs under me. There were only Spanish TV channels, but I found an episode of
Friends
. Dubbed, of course, but still – it was kind of comforting.

Anyway, I didn’t really want to watch TV. I just wanted to be. To be up as the sky lightened, eating the meal I’d missed because I’d spent hours on the beach kissing a beautiful, funny boy whose eyes made my heart flip.

I’d never even been close to feeling like this before. While I hadn’t exactly been a late starter – I’d first got with a boy on a school trip to France in Year Eight – I’d never gone much further than kissing. That first time was on one of those activity holidays, and me and Cass had spent, like, two hours kissing two boys from another school. It was totally innocent, but I remember feeling really adult cos I was kissing like how grown-ups do it on TV. Sweet, no? But since then there hadn’t been an awful lot of action. It
wasn’t cos I didn’t want to; it was more that I didn’t want to with any of the boys on offer. And so I became Sarah Millar: man-hater. Doesn’t drink, doesn’t flirt, doesn’t put out. End of. The furthest I’d ever gone was being felt-up at a party in Year Eleven. (To be honest, I’d have gone further that time, but my dad arrived to pick me up. Tragic, yes, but it saved me from a potentially scary situation. Sam Massey, the boy in question, had an eighteenth-century-poet thing going on – all brown wavy hair, olive skin and soulful eyes. I’d always fancied him because, as well as being beautiful, he was a bit shy like me, and he talked to me like a human being. But he was also the boy who India Chadwick, the hardest girl in Year Ten, fancied. Stupidly, that was enough for me never to go there again. I spent a week afterwards ducking into doorways whenever I saw India, although amazingly she never found out I’d kissed her crush. Sam left after GCSEs to go to a different school. I don’t know why. I still sometimes wondered what might have happened if India hadn’t been in the way.)

And now there was Joe. Who I did really like.
Really
like. And who, incredibly, seemed to like me back. I sighed with contentment and tucked into my sandwich, while on the TV Ross and Rachel got it on.

My art-history teacher collared me at the end of the lesson to talk coursework so I was late getting to the canteen at lunchtime to meet the others. I looked over the sea of students and spotted Donna instantly. Hard not to, since she was standing on her chair waving like she was directing planes. I grabbed a cheese toastie and a Ribena, paid and hurried over.

‘About time,’ said Ashley, grabbing her bag off the one empty seat. ‘Donna almost got into fisticuffs guarding this for you.’

‘Sorry, sorry, Andrea kept me back,’ I said, squeezing myself into the chair and stashing my bag underneath.

‘Bloody hell, Sarah, in trouble already? The term’s only just begun,’ said Ash, putting her hand to her chest, shock-horror style.

‘Ha ha.’ I looked at my toastie and the greasy globs of orange cheese dripping on to my plate.

‘You going to eat that?’ asked Donna, her mouth full of chips.

I handed it over. ‘No, you have it. I’m full.’

Cass frowned. ‘Full? You haven’t eaten a thing!’

Cass gets suspicious if she thinks one of us is dieting – that’s her domain. She’s got a gorgeous figure, but Adam likes skinny girls. And if that makes him sound like a knob that’ll be because he’s a knob. Anyway, despite the fact that Adam would never fancy one of us and we’d – ugh – never fancy him, for some reason Cass likes to be the thinnest. Go figure.

Ashley smirked into her Müller Light.

‘What’s so funny?’ demanded Cass, her forehead creasing prettily. (Did I mention our Cassie is also super-sensitive about her Adam-based foibles?)

‘Nothing,’ replied Ash, taking spoonfuls of yogurt then turning them over so they dolloped back into the pot. ‘Just Sarah losing her appetite over a boy.’

I gave her a look. ‘Sorry to disappoint, but I had a Ripple, like, half an hour ago.’ (A lie. I’d had no appetite since getting back from holiday. I wasn’t about to admit it, though – it was pathetic to fancy a boy so much you couldn’t even eat.)

‘Anyway,’ said Cass, ‘kissing on the beach …’

‘Yeah,’ said Donna. ‘Did you have dutty sex among the sand dunes?’

I shot lazy eyes in her direction. ‘What do you think?’

Cass reached across the table to put her hand on mine. ‘So go on, Sar. What did happen?’

The girls may as well have been invisible. I was right back there, the hot dusty smell of the holiday home and ‘Sex on Fire’, my not-purposely-ironic soundtrack to getting ready for Joe.

But that was later.

After meeting at the cafe, me and him spent pretty much every waking moment together. We walked around the town, tried out all the bars and cafes, sat on the beach and generally got to know each other. I learned that he’s doing politics at uni in London, that he’s got two sisters, that his parents are divorced but still friends, and that he really wants to work for Aids charities in Africa when he graduates cos his uncle died of Aids in the 1980s. I told him stuff I had only ever told a few people, like how my mum was married to a different man when she met my dad, and how I was bullied at primary school. He was a good listener, and he asked questions as though he really wanted to know the answer.

When we weren’t talking, we kissed. But we didn’t go much further than kissing. Frustratingly, every time we were at his place at least one of his friends was around, and not only was it a tiny holiday chalet, but he and Will shared a room. One time we were kissing on Joe’s bed – dressed, but only just – when Will marched in, saw us, said, ‘Oops, sorry,’ and
marched out again.

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I was mortified. I buried my face in Joe’s neck and groaned. ‘So. Embarrassing.’

He laughed. ‘What’s the big deal?’ He tried to push me off him so he could see me, but I wouldn’t let him. ‘Sarah, c’mon. He doesn’t care, honestly.’ He caressed my bum through my denim shorts then slipped his hand under the waistband. ‘At least we know he’ll leave us alone now …’

I sat up and moved to the edge of the bed. ‘No way!’ I waited a moment for the burning in my face to subside, then offered my hand to pull him up. ‘Come on, we have to go and show him we’re not doing anything.’

Joe looked genuinely confused. ‘But why?’

Obviously I hadn’t told him I was a virgin. Why would I?

‘Because I would die of embarrassment if I thought he thought we were doing … anything in his bedroom!’

‘But it’s my bedroom too,’ said Joe.

I gave him a
that’s not the point
look and wheedled, ‘Pleeeease, Joe. Let’s go for a drink or something … Please?’ I smiled and batted my eyelashes, and he let me pull him off the bed.

Then an opportunity arose. Mum and Dad wanted to take me and Dan out for dinner. I hatched a plan to mope around all afternoon clutching my midriff then cry off at the last minute, pleading period pains.

Joe immediately agreed to come round. I knew what he would think the invitation meant. And I was pretty sure it meant that too. Believe me, I had thought long and hard about it. But my shaved legs, best knickers and condoms from the machine in the cafe toilets spoke for themselves. I was pretty sure tonight was the night. But, still, I planned to wait and see how I felt when Joe arrived.

Two hours later, I was no longer a virgin.

‘SHUDDUP!’ screamed Donna, smacking her hand on the table and sending the condiments flying. ‘You so can’t leave it there!’

‘Yeah, c’mon, hon,’ said Cass, her knees bouncing like pistons. ‘What was it like?’

‘And details please,’ added Ashley, making a most unladylike gesture.

‘All right, ask me anything you like,’ I said, holding out my hands. ‘I am an open book.’

Ash leant forward in her seat. ‘OK. Did he have a big dick?’

‘Dunno,’ I said, looking around to check no one was earwigging. ‘Don’t have anything to compare it to.’ (Although, to be honest, it had seemed alarmingly huge. Let’s just say it was bigger than any tampon.)

Cass shot Ashley a scornful look. ‘You’re obsessed
with willies.’ She turned to me and smiled indulgently. ‘Was it romantic?’

I sighed. ‘Totally. We had a real connection. It felt … inevitable. Like a chain reaction or something. Like, we were kissing, then his hand was up my top, then inside my skirt, then I put my hand on his willy through his shorts …’

Whoops and a round of applause from Donna and Ash at this point. So mature, those two. I rolled my eyes at them, although if I’m honest I was loving having a sex story to tell at last.

‘Anyway. It sort of went from there. We didn’t really talk. I knew I wanted it to happen, so I just went with it and it kind of … happened. Know what I mean?’

‘Totally,’ said the girls in unison.

It really had felt inevitable. As soon as he walked through the door we were kissing, just standing there drinking each other in. I closed my eyes and let him stroke my hair away from my face, then he gently pulled away and smiled at me. I held out my hand and he took it, and I led him in the direction of my bedroom. There was no need to say anything – I know, it’s a cliché, but it was totally like we were on the same wavelength. It took about ten minutes to get to the bedroom, as he kept stopping to kiss me, pushing me
against the wall and running his hands down my arms. By the time we reached my room I couldn’t have held back if you’d paid me. Thank God I’d picked up those condoms, although to be fair Joe produced one too. We could have done it four times, we were that well provided for in the contraceptive department.

But we just did it the once. He left about five minutes afterwards. I guess he was right: my parents could have got back at any time.