Cheated (Phan)

Chapter 1

I arrived at school smiling, excited to see my friends again, to see him again. I was feeling the same mix of excitement at seeing my friends again, annoyance at school starting again and longing for my bed that every student experiences on the first day back after a holiday. But I hadn't seen my boyfriend in over a week as he'd gone on holiday with his family, and I was having a serious case of excited butterflies in my stomach at the idea of seeing him again. I knew a week wasn't that long really, but it felt like an eternity without him.

I took a deep breath so I wouldn't run at him squealing like a 2 year old and pulled out my headphones, winding them around my phone. I squinted around a bit in the sun until I saw my friends standing in a small group over by the art block in the shade, chatting until the bell went. I could just make out his head sticking out above the others, brown hair straight and flopping in his eye, his hand lifting every half minute or so to flick it out of the way. He needed a haircut, but it would take him absolute ages to bother getting one. I loved him dearly, but one word that could definitely sum up my boyfriend was "procrastinator".

I walked around the long way, trying to sneak up behind him, grinning to myself like a child. When I was close enough I ran with my arms outstretched and collided against him just as he was turning to see who was running towards him making so much noise, flinging my arms around him and squeezing him tight, almost toppling us both over in the process. He gently extracted his arms and wrapped them around me too, chuckling a little.

"I'm guessing you missed me a bit?"

I ducked my head a little and could feel my cheeks heating a little as my friends laughed along. "Maybe..."

"Well I missed you too." He lifted my chin with two fingers and looked down into my eyes, smiling. As always I was mesmerised by the colour of his eyes, the gorgeous light green with darker green flecks around the pupil, framed by dark lashes that made the colour stand out even more.

Jack leaned down to kiss me just as the bell went, so I sneakily stood up a little straighter and stole a kiss from him before he could pull away.

He laughed and linked his hand with mine, gently tugging me behind him to registration.

We had most of our lessons together, luckily, so the first three classes raced by as we chatted through most of them, getting hardly any work done and being told off by the teachers more than once. Before I knew it lunch time had arrived and I eyed the sixth formers who got to leave school to get themselves an actually nice lunch enviously as we headed over to the canteen to collect our not so nice lunch.

*****

About half way through lunch Jack suddenly looked at his watch and stood up hastily, grabbing his tray to dispose of on the way out.

"Sorry I've gotta go, Mr Brown wanted to speak to me."

I looked up, confused. We'd been sitting together during maths, when had Mr Brown said that? He saw my look of confusion and smiled at me fondly, leaning down to peck my cheek before he started walking away.

"I think someone had their head in the clouds again!" he called back over his shoulder, and I felt myself blush a little at his words, unable to help it. Anything he said could have that effect on me.

Emma nudged me slightly with a teasing expression, and I shushed her before continuing our discussion about the pros and cons of each the 10th and the 11th doctor, both of us complaining loudly that the new doctor wasn't as hot. It wasn't needed of course, it was just a nice bonus.

*****

I left a few minutes before the end of lunch with Emma to go to the bathroom to try and extract some of the spinach she had dumped on my head when I had dared say I preferred the 10th doctor to the 11th. I'd finished mine so I'd had to settle for smearing some mashed potato in her face, but thankfully Chris had stepped in and called for a truce before either of us reached for the custard, which would have been a whole lot harder to get rid of.