To Keep You

Chapter Eleven: Friendship-

A/N: I hope there aren't any mistakes and that it flows! I was going to give it another read-over but I'm too busy playing ACII tbh and I've been promising this update for the last few days lmaao. 

      A lot happened in October.

      Jaime talked to that girl he liked and finally told her exactly how he felt, while also remaining 'manly' about it apparently. Connor and I hung out a lot more on the weekends but it never led to anything more than holding hands; I was too shy and Connor, I suspected, was afraid of being overly forward, in fear of chasing me away. I guess he did in fact have boundaries.

      Towards the end of the month, Jaime had established a relationship with that girl, which I later discovered was called Anna-Leigh. He wouldn't stop talking about her. About how it felt to kiss her.

      I wondered how it would feel to kiss Connor. How it would feel to have his fingers framing the sides of my face as he leaned in and pressed our foreheads together. I'd thought about our first kiss for a while now, waiting for it to happen. Although, I felt like it never would.

      And I guess I stopped thinking about how it would have felt to kiss Parker. I'd convinced myself that I'd come to terms with the fact that our time had come and gone and as each year I aged, my memories and thoughts of Parker became more and more about friendship.

      During that month, I also had a run-in with a few friends of Connor's. The sixth-formers that had been looking for him on my first day at school, to be more specific.

      I should have known that even being associated with Connor would get me waist-deep in shit, but it didn't click until the tallest guy of the group, who was sporting a split lip and a reddened cheek, glared down at me and said, "You're friends with that little prick, aren't you?"

      I didn't answer but my eyes grew wider and that seemed to give him all the proof he needed. He walked forward with tightened fists which was the only encouragement I needed to turn tail and run in the opposite direction.

      I set off down the first hallway I saw, with absolutely no destination in mind. I'd been late to class after a catch-up meeting with the Assistant Head and had been on my way to my history lesson, but now I was running in the completely wrong direction of the damn history classrooms.

      I could hear their pounding footsteps behind me and shouts of, "Oi, the fuck you think you're going?" as they chased after me down hallways and through double doors, up a set of stairs only to run back down another. I managed to lose them for a quick second as I turned a corner and legged it down a long, open corridor.

      In a sudden jolt of panic, I realised that someone else had come swerving round the corner at the end with his head over his shoulder like he was worried someone was behind him. It didn't take me long to work out who it was.

      There was no time to skid to a halt as our shoulders impacted, sending the two of us spinning to the floor with gasps of surprise and groans of pain as we collided with the hard flooring. The back of my head smacked against the glossy tiles beneath me.

      As the tears sprung to the front of my eyelids, I rubbed at the bruised area at the back of my head with tentative fingers, wincing as they came into contact with it. I blinked up at Connor and said between heaves of air, "What are you doing?"

      "What do you think I'm doing?" He replied, also rubbing at the back of his head. "I'm running from a bloody beating. What are you doing?" He pulled a face at me, as if I was a total twat for even asking. His hands were on his thighs now from where he was kneeling, bent over himself while he tried to catch his breath.