in time // h.s.

vii. harry

Fifteen years old...

Matty's new-found single status meant that he was back with me and Janet once more. I was psyched to have him with us again, obviously, but it meant I wasn't getting as much alone time with Janet as I had since the start of the autumn term, and I can't hide the fact that I'd been enjoying it. I'll even admit that I felt deflated somehow at having to 'share' her again. It was the first time I'd become what can only be described as possessive over her.

Being a three again led me to feel a bit paranoid, and that irritating feeling had started to creep in even before Matt got dumped. The day he fell and broke his leg, I'd left a shaken Janet and pain-stricken Matty beneath that tree to go and get help. I thought I was being heroic... taking control and being the leader for once. But when I got back, I was taken aback to find them wrapped up in each other looking like they hadn't a care in the world, laughing and taking pleasure in each other's silliness. I felt like I was intruding on something, and that was an unfamiliar and uncomfortable sensation.

If it weren't for the bone visibly protruding from his leg, I'd have thought I'd dreamed Matty falling and needing my help.

It irked me, so much that I ended up getting a weekend job at the local bakery in the High Street to have an excuse to be away from the two for a while. Even though I told myself it was nothing, reasoned with myself that Matty was with Denise and didn't see Janet in the same way that I did, I couldn't shake the anger away.

I was being a hypersensitive douchebag!

Still, it took a while for those feelings to simmer down and disappear and for me to feel like everything was normal between the three of us... between the two of them.

That summer changed my outlook on my own feelings, and not just because of the way I'd found them underneath the Big Green. I'd been to see Pearl Harbor at a cinema that played classic hit movies (I'd taken my mum out as a treat with my first paycheck), and was left feeling as though my heart had been ripped out. It might sound pathetic, but the message was clear, seize the day, love like there's no tomorrow and declare your feelings before it's too late. That's how I'd come to realize that I could no longer bottle things inside. What, I wondered, was I trying to prove by living in the torturous barricade of my own heart? I'd let myself be tormented by what I hadn't said, rather than what I had. Paranoid about what others might be feeling, rather than just asking outright. Yes, I'd decided to take control, to put my feelings out there to be reciprocated or rebuffed. Either way, something was better than nothing.

With a trip planned in year eleven to the most romantic city in the world, I decided to bite my tongue a little longer. It was only a few months, I told myself, and I wanted the moment I finally decided to lift my silence and speak up to be memorable. And so, for months I thought of nothing but Paris. Vivid images filled my mind of us together at the top of the Eiffel Tower, surrounded by the romantic view, and the look of adoration on Janet's face as I opened my mouth to utter my love confession. It fuelled my sleepless nights that summer and gave me a giddy feeling of excitement in my gut.

It felt as though Paris had become, in many ways, the pinnacle of my very existence. Nights were spent ploughing through information on the web to formulate my plan, hours were spent with a pen and paper writing out what I was going to say when the moment of truth finally came. It was as though years of wonder and desire had led me to that point and to that precise spot I needed to reach at the top of the Eiffel Tower. I wanted, more than anything, for it to go right. It had to be perfect.