Waiting For Ships

9 - Billie

I crouched in Joe's wardrobe, hiding beneath the shirts and endless Levi's that hung above my head and wondered how I'd got here. Surreal, like a dream. And yet it was real. More real than anything I'd felt before. I inhaled the musky scent of wood mixed with denim and cologne and tried to memorise it.

Save this for later...

I listened to Joe move around the house looking for me, laughing as he called out my name. The floorboards in the hallway creaked as he searched downstairs, pulling open the dining room door. Two days ago, we'd met on the stairs, him rushing past in dripping wet shorts, me still processing the party invitation. Now we were killing time before the inevitable. We knew it was coming. These games only gave us a chance to calm our nerves before we met it head-on.

I peered through the crack between the wardrobe doors, looking out at Joe's faded magnolia walls and wooden floors, the school ties slung over his bed stand, his shoes kicked around the room. I looked at the posters; Liverpool F. C, Foo Fighters, The 1975, Taylor Swift, plastered across the walls between photos of him and Logan. A picture of him and Grace as children sat on his bedside table, balanced on top of a stack of books and music sheets. A guitar pic lay beside half-empty glasses of water and beer bottles, the sunlight turning their contents to gold.

Little pieces of him, laid out for me to see.

My eyes rested on his bed where a pair of checked pyjama bottoms lay on top of plain blue covers. The same bed he'd been in with Ingrid only forty-eight hours ago. They'd been between those sheets, together. And how many times before that? How many times had she looked around the same room, taking in the pieces of him? It would all be familiar to her. She would know it with her eyes shut.

But she wasn't here anymore...

Hope mixed up with hurt. I wanted to know what she knew. I wanted to feel those sheets beneath me, walk into the bathroom without asking, turn on the shower. Tidy up the floor and make the bed. Listen to Joe on his guitar, notice when he pulled the wrong string.

Could it be different with us? Could I be everything she wasn't, just by being me?

I heard Joe's footsteps in the corridor and froze, holding my breath. He was in the room.

I was suddenly embarrassed, my cheeks turning hot as I realised he was going to find me here, crouching in the wardrobe like a child. Should I have waited on the bed for him? Laid out relaxing, laughing when he came in. 'You caught me. I was never taking this seriously at all.' Should I have hidden under the covers, making it obvious where I was so we could finish playing and get to the part where we solidified this? Where we became something?

It was too late. All I could do was wait. Let him see me like this and hope he didn't reject me for it.

After searching under the bed and his bathroom, he turned and strode over to the wardrobe, opening the doors on me in triumph.

"Got you."

He offered me his hand and pulled me up. I smiled, brushing my body of dust I imagined was on me. I couldn't bare to look.

"Got me."

We looked at each other for a moment, brown eyes searching blue, me looking for a shift in him. The realisation that I wasn't what he thought. Not cool and sophisticated. Not always one step ahead. Getting it wrong. Being silly.

His eyes didn't change. They looked at me in the same way they had when I first arrived, full of a nervous sort of fondness, their colour reminding me of summertime rain.

I was painfully aware that we were alone in his bedroom, standing in silence. Waiting.

Without warning, he took my head in his hands and kissed me. Gentle, a brush of the lips. He pulled away, rubbing my cheeks with his thumbs, my hair tangled up in his fingers. That look...It was like my face was the first he'd ever seen. Like he was amazed by the details. Touched by them. Moved. Here is another like me...

"So," I said, my voice a whisper. "What now?"

He smiled in a bittersweet kind of way.

"My turn," he said softly, his hands still on me. "And don't worry. I won't make it as easy as you."

He kissed me on the forehead and stepped away, looking back at me before he left the room.

I counted to 100 in my head.

I knew by instinct that he wasn't in the house. I couldn't feel him there. I walked to his window and looked out into the garden, catching the sight of a figure rushing through the bushes and out of the secret gate.

I smiled. I knew where he was going.

I went downstairs and into the kitchen, opening the fridge and grabbing two ice-cold bottles of water.

Make him wait. Pretend for another minute that you are in control.

He was winning. Drawing me in. Making me forget my doubts. Making me believe him.

I knew all of this. I could feel it happening. I still had a chance to stop it. A chance to talk myself out of it and walk away unscathed. I could protect myself. Leave with the satisfaction that I had denied him. I had turned him down, not the other way around. Then he could never hurt me. Then no one could ever hurt me again.

If I didn't back away now, it would be too late. He'd have me. My happiness would be in his hands, waiting to be crushed or discarded.

I could feel the danger. Could feel the crash growing bigger and bigger the higher I got. The higher he made me feel.

The scariest part was that I didn't care.

I walked out of the kitchen door, the cold bottles under my warm arms, and went to find him in the place I knew would soon be ours.