Nick and Charlie One Shots

1.7 The First Time

'It's weird that we hang out every single day, it's weird that we'd rather just be with each other all the time. Every day we wonder when we're going to stop feeling like this and get over our teenage relationship. But it never happens. We just keep on going. Because it's good too. God, it's so good.'

~ Nick and Charlie by Alice Oseman

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SUNDAY 7.35PM

Nick

"Mum! Hi!" I say as I head down the stairs rather rapidly, plastering a smile on my face as she looks up at me from the bottom, still piling her bags on top of one another. "Um....you're back early...?"

She rolls her eyes and shakes her head. "Oh, I know. One of the kids has got appendicitis, would you believe it, so I thought it best to come home and get out of their hair. I did phone you, but it went straight to voice mail. I was going to ask you to pick me up from the station, but I got a taxi pretty quickly..."

Oh god. I've been so wrapped up in Charlie all weekend that I've hardly had my phone with me. My face must have fallen because Mum shakes her head once again, then smiles at me as she pushes my fringe out of my eyes and tells me not to worry. But I do, not just because I wasn't there to pick her up but also because of Charlie upstairs. 

"Mum..."

"Mmmm?" She looks up at me expectantly as she's taking her coat off and I really don't know what to say.

"Um, Charlie's here." I can feel myself gnawing on the inside of my mouth a little and know that I need to spit the words out. "And he's been here all weekend..."

She smiles up at me and shrugs one shoulder, "Okay?" 

"And..." I wait, just looking at her, wondering what to say next. 

"Nicky? Is everything alright?" 

"Yeah, um... "

Mum looks at me a little closer, her eyes searching my face, my messy hair, my pink cheeks. And she knows, she just knows. I can see it dawn on her face, slowly, but doesn't say anything, presumably in case she's wrong. But she's not. I know she knows.  

"Yeah..." I look at her, my cheeks heating up even more.

She looks at me, lowering her voice, sort of conspiratorially which is just weird and totally embarrassing. "I don't want to assume...are you talking about sex?"

I nod, screwing my mouth and nose as I do so out of sheer embarrassment. Not embarrassment from what we've been doing, but just the awkwardness of the conversation. 

She cocks her head to one side, looking at me consideringly. "I only want to know one thing. Were you safe?"

"Mum!" I can feel my face almost sweating.

"Nicky, it's important, we've talked about this!"

"Yes. Yes, we were."

"Okay." She nods almost to herself, before looking up at me again to give me a little smile. Very occasionally it's hard to tell what she's thinking. This is one of those times.  "Alright then. Is Charlie staying tonight?" 

"Um, we were hoping so, we'd planned to go to school together tomorrow morning. But if you want him to go home then..."

She interrupts me with a look, "No, that's fine. As long as his parents are okay with it."

I'm not about to tell her that his parents think that she's been in the house with us all weekend otherwise there's no way that they'd have allowed him to stay over because a) I don't want her to look at or treat Charlie any differently to before and b) this conversation is possibly the best it could have gone, and I really don't want to jinx it.