Indira [Completed]

four ; the day i would kiss a girl

It was Finn Thompson.

Here and on the very day I thought I would never be seeing him again now that exams and school had finally ended. Oh, how wrong I had been. No change there, then.

My breath caught in my throat as I struggled to move, only to find my feet had pretty much attached themselves to the floor as the numbing paralysis took over the rest of my body. I looked up at that all too familiar face, his chiselled jawline, his impeccable bone structure and then finally reaching the newest addition to Finn's arm. Where there should have been a new watch or a bracelet, there was now a rather tall blonde girl who looked up him, gazing, like I had done only a month ago, like there was no way he could be of this world. He leaned down and whispered something in her ear and she snickered, reaching up to drop a kiss on his lips and went to join the rest of his friends in the corner. I recognised James and Lewis, who were chugging beer as though they were in some kind of a contest, pitting each other against themselves.

Suddenly, my mind raced back to the first and only time Finn Thompson had kind-of, sort-of asked me out. It was back in December and we had been sitting in a dreary Maths lesson, learning about differentiation. It was enough to bore anyone to sleep but I was on a table with Finn and another girl, so I had been able to keep myself entertained.

The thing about this lesson that made it so different and the one I looked forward to the most, despite it being in the subject I hated just as much, was that Finn used to sit right beside me. I could literally rub elbows with him, but I didn't, because that would just be odd.

The girl we used to share the table with had gone up to get some more paper, Finn had been harping on about some concert he was going to that night, and kept spouting names like Massive Attack and Giraffage, names I had never even begun to hear of before. I had simply nodded, donning an all-knowing smile and carried on with my Maths work.

"So, yeah, there are five of us going tonight," Finn had continued as I scribbled down more equations and tried to work through them, giving him an encouraging 'mm-hm', "Should be great. It's in London, like in Brixton in the Hootenanny." Then, out of nowhere, he had added, "Do you want to come, Indira?"

I had stayed mute in my seat, simply looking up from the work as I found the right words to say. This was a good six months before I was willing to outright admit my slight – okay, pretty damn huge – crush on Finn Thompson. Six months before I realised I was hopelessly in fond with him. Six months before I made the move myself.

"Come?" I had repeated, feeling a little too lost in this conversation for my liking.

Even though he had made himself vulnerable by asking me to join him and his friends, it had somehow worked out that I was like the fish out of water, struggling to get my bearings and to even breathe for a moment or two.

"Yeah, tonight," Finn went on, "At the Brixton. Do you want to come with me?"

There were a million thoughts racing in my mind at that very moment. I was hopeless with things to say and to actually give him a definitive answer. I had been waiting for such sweet words to leave his mouth for so bloody long and now that they were finally being said, they did the opposite of filling me with confidence.

"Will you come, Indira?"

They terrified me.

"Have fun," was all I said, and I could have killed myself right then and there. It wasn't as flat as a dull 'no' but it was as crushing as one. The weight of my words was heavy and dignified, and anyone could tell what that meant. It was a way of avoiding the question as well as answering it in one. It was a kind of emphasised substitute for 'thank you, but no'.