Loveless Read online

  I thought about these questions and replied, ‘No to all.’

  Speaking of Rooney, I glanced over Pip’s shoulder to see how far ahead Rooney had walked, only to find that Rooney had actually stopped at the edge of the graveyard and was looking back. Right at us.

  Pip and Jason turned to look.

  ‘O-oh, she’s there,’ Pip mumbled, and immediately started adjusting her hair. But Rooney was still looking at us, and she smiled and waved, seemingly directly at Pip. Pip awkwardly raised a hand and waved back with a nervous smile.

  I wondered suddenly whether Pip had a chance with Rooney. Rooney seemed pretty straight, judging by how many guys I had seen her flirt with and that she hadn’t tried flirting with any girls, but people could surprise you.

  ‘You getting along with her OK?’ asked Jason.

  ‘She’s really nice, yeah. She’s better than me at, like, everything, which is annoying, but she’s fine.’

  Pip frowned. ‘Better than you at what?’

  ‘Oh, you know. Like, making friends, and, I dunno. Talking to people.’ Flirting. Romance. Falling in love, probably.

  Neither Jason nor Pip seemed impressed by this answer.

  ‘OK,’ said Pip. ‘We’re coming round tonight.’

  ‘You really don’t have to.’

  ‘No, I know a cry for help when I hear it.’

  ‘I’m not crying for help.’

  ‘We need a pizza night, urgently.’

  I saw through her immediately. ‘You just want to have an opportunity to talk to Rooney again, don’t you?’

  Pip gave me a long look.

  ‘Maybe so,’ she said. ‘But I also care about you. And I care about pizza.’

  ‘So she’s just, like, insanely good at getting people to like her?’ said Pip through a mouthful of pizza later that evening.

  ‘That’s pretty much it, yeah,’ I said.

  Jason shook his head. ‘And you want to be like her? Why?’

  The three of us were sprawled on Rooney’s aqua rug, pizza in the middle. We’d had a minor debate about whether to watch our group favourite, Moulin Rouge, or Jason’s favourite, the live action Scooby-Doo movie, but we eventually settled on Scooby-Doo and were playing it on my laptop. Rooney was out for the night at some sort of themed bar night, and had I not already made plans with my friends, I probably would have gone with her. But this was better. Everything was better when Jason and Pip were here.

  I couldn’t admit to them how desperately I wanted to be in a romantic relationship. Because I knew it was pathetic. Trust me. I completely understood that women should want to be strong and independent and you don’t need to find love to have a successful life. And the fact that I so desperately wanted a boyfriend – or a girlfriend, a partner, whoever, someone – was a sign that I was not strong, or independent, or self-sufficient, or happy alone. I was really quite lonely, and I wanted to be loved.

  Was that such a bad thing? To want an intimate connection with another human?

  I didn’t know.

  ‘She just finds it so easy to talk to people,’ I said.

  ‘That’s just what life is like when you’re abnormally attractive, though,’ said Pip.

  Jason and I looked at her.

  ‘Abnormally attractive?’ I said.

  Pip stopped chewing. ‘What? She is! I’m just stating facts! She’s got that sort of “I could step on you and you would enjoy it” energy.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Jason said, raising an eyebrow.

  Pip started to go a bit red. ‘I’m literally just making an observation!’

  ‘… OK.’

  ‘Don’t look at me like that.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You are.’

  Since the events of prom, I’d given some solid thought as to whether I might actually be a lesbian, like Pip. It would make sense. Maybe my lack of interest in boys was because I was, in fact, interested in girls.

  That’d be a fairly sensible solution to my situation.

  According to Pip, the hallmarks of realising you’re a lesbian were: firstly, getting a little intensely obsessed with a girl, mistaking it for admiration, and sometimes thinking about holding their hand, and secondly, having a subconscious fixation on certain female cartoon villains.

  Jokes aside, I’d never had a crush on a girl, so I didn’t really have any evidence to support that particular theory.

  Maybe I was bi or pan, since I didn’t even seem to have a preference at this point.

  The next couple of hours were spent talking, snacking, and occasionally glancing at my laptop screen to watch the movie. Pip rambled at length about how interesting her introductory chemistry lab class had been, while Jason and I both mourned how dull our first lectures had been. We all shared our thoughts about the people we’d met in college – how many posh private-school kids there were, how bad the drinking culture already seemed to be, and how there really should be more cereal options at breakfast. At one point, Pip decided to water Roderick the house plant, because, in her words, ‘He’s looking a bit thirsty.’

  But soon it was eleven o’clock, and Pip decided it was time to make some hot chocolate, which she insisted on doing on the stove rather than using the kettle in my bedroom. We all headed out of the room towards the tiny kitchen on my corridor, which was shared between eight people but had been empty the few times I’d been in there thus far.

  Tonight, it was not empty.

  I knew this from the moment Pip glanced through the door window and made a face like she’d been given a mild electric shock.

  ‘Oh shit,’ she hissed, and as Jason and I joined her, we finally saw what was going on.

  Rooney was in the kitchen.

  She was with a guy.

  She was sitting on the kitchen counter. He was standing between her legs, his tongue in her mouth, and his hand up her shirt.

  To put it lightly: they were both very much enjoying themselves.

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  Jason immediately stepped away from the situation, like any normal person would, but Pip and I just stood there for a moment, watching this go down.

  It became clear to me in that moment that the only way I was going to make any progress in my finding love mission was if I asked Rooney for help.

  I was not going to be able to do it on my own, ever.

  I’d tried. I promise I’d tried. I’d tried to kiss Tommy when he went in for one, but the Kill Bill sirens started going off in my mind and I just couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

  I’d tried to talk to people at the Freshers’ Barbecue, and when we were huddling outside the lecture halls, and at lunch and dinner when I sat with Rooney and all the people she had befriended. I’d tried, and I wasn’t terrible at it, I was polite, and nice, and people didn’t seem to hate me.

  But I would never be like Rooney. Not naturally, anyway. I would never be able to kiss some guy just because it was fun, because it made me feel good, because I could do what I wanted. I would never be able to manufacture that spark that she seemed to have with almost everyone she met.

  Unless she told me how.

  Pip finally tore her eyes away from the window. ‘That’s got to be unhygienic,’ she said, making a disgusted face. ‘That’s where people make their tea, for God’s sake.’

  I murmured my agreement before moving away from the door, our hot chocolate plans abandoned.

  Pip had this look on her face like she’d seen this coming.

  ‘I’m so dumb,’ she muttered.

  I knew almost everything about romance. I knew the theory. I knew when people were flirting, I knew when they wanted to kiss. I knew when people’s boyfriends were being shitty to them, even when they couldn’t tell it themselves. I’d read infinite stories of people meeting and flirting and awkwardly pining, hating before liking, lusting before loving, kissing and sex and love and marriage and partners for life, till death us do part.

  I was a master of the theory. But Rooney was a master of the practic
e.

  Maybe fate had brought her to me. Or maybe that was just romantic thinking.

  In the middle of the night, between Tuesday and Wednesday, I woke up to hear someone having sex in the room above ours.

  It was a sort of rhythmic thumping. Like a headboard hitting a wall. And a creaking, like the bend of an old bedframe.

  I sat up, wondering if I was just imagining it. But I wasn’t. It was real. People were having sex in the room above us. What else would that sound be? There were only bedrooms up there, so unless someone had decided to do some 3 a.m. DIY, there was only one thing that sound could be.

  Rooney was fast asleep, curled up on her side, her dark hair splayed around her on the pillow. Utterly oblivious.

  I knew this sort of thing would happen at university. In fact, I knew this sort of thing happened at school – well, not physically at school, hopefully, but among my schoolfriends and classmates.

  But hearing it happen, in the flesh, not just knowing and imagining, chilled me to the core. Even more than when I saw that person getting fingered at Hattie’s party.

  It was a jarring sort of oh, God, this thing is actually real, it’s not just in fanfics and movies. And I’m supposed to be doing that too.

  ‘College families’ were a new concept to me. At Durham, students in their second and third years paired up to act as a mentor team, or ‘college parents’ for a small group of incoming freshers, who were their ‘college children’.

  I kind of loved it. It made a romance out of something absolutely mundane, which was something that I was incredibly experienced at.

  Rooney and I, plus four other students who I only knew from their Facebook profiles, had arranged to gather with our college parents at Starbucks. This had all been organised in a group chat on Facebook last week in which I’d been too scared to say anything other than ‘Sounds great! I’ll be there .

  But when we got there, only one of our parents was there – Sunil Jha.

  ‘So,’ said Sunil, crossing one leg over the other in his chair. ‘I’m your college parent.’

  Sunil Jha had a warm smile and kind eyes, and although he was only two years older than us he seemed infinitely more mature. He was also dressed incredibly well – slim trousers with Converse, a T-shirt tucked in and a bomber jacket with a subtle grey tartan pattern.

  ‘Please don’t refer to me as your college mother or father,’ he continued, ‘not just because I’m non-binary, but also because that feels like a scary amount of commitment.’

  This earned some chuckles. On his jacket were several enamel pins – a rainbow flag, a tiny old radio, a pin featuring a boyband logo, one that read ‘He/They’, and another pride pin, this one with black, grey, white and purple stripes. I was sure I’d seen that one before, online somewhere, but I couldn’t remember what it meant.

  ‘In a strange turn of events, your college mother decided that university wasn’t for her and dropped out at the end of last term. So we’re going to be a single-parent family this year.’

  There were some more chuckles, but then silence. I wondered when Rooney was going to bust out the questions, but it seemed even she was a little intimidated by Sunil’s third-year confidence.

  ‘Basically,’ said Sunil, ‘I’m here if you have literally any questions or worries about anything while you’re here. Alternatively, you can just do what you want and forget I ever existed.’

  More laughs.

  ‘So. Does anyone have anything you want to chat about while we’re here?’

  After a short moment, Rooney was the first to jump in. ‘I was wondering, like … how the college marriage thing worked? I heard something about college proposals but I don’t really know what that is.’

  Oh, yeah. I was glad she’d asked that.

  Sunil laughed. ‘Oh my God, yes. OK. So. College marriage.’ He linked his fingers together. ‘If you want to form a mentor team with another student, you get college married. One of you proposes to the other and usually it’s a big, dramatic proposal. There’ll be lots happening this term.’

  Rooney was nodding, fascinated. ‘What d’you mean by “big and dramatic”?’

  ‘Well … let me put it this way. My proposal involved me filling her bedroom with glitter-filled balloons, getting forty-odd people to wait in there and surprise her, and then get down on one knee in front of everyone with a plastic ring in the shape of a cat.’

  Oh. God.

  ‘Does everyone … um … does everyone get college married?’ I asked.

  Sunil looked at me. He really did have kind eyes. ‘Most people. Usually friends do it, since it’s just for fun. Sometimes couples do it, though.’

  Friends. Couples.

  Oh no.

  Now I really needed to actually meet people.

  The discussion broadened out into other aspects of university – our studies, the best clubs, good times to use the library, the Bailey Ball at the end of term. But I didn’t say anything else. I just sat there, stressing out about college marriage.

  It didn’t matter if I didn’t do that. Right? That wasn’t what I was here for.

  ‘Now, I’m going to be escorting you to a club this evening, apparently,’ said Sunil, as we were all packing up to leave. ‘So meet in reception at nine p.m., OK? And don’t worry about dressing up too much.’ As he continued he met my eyes and smiled, warm and gentle, ‘And you don’t have to come if you don’t want to, all right? It’s not mandatory.’

  As Rooney and I walked back to college, I messaged Pip and Jason about ‘college marriage’. Their responses were pretty much what I expected from them:

  Felipa Quintana

  OMG WE HAVE THAT TOO

  Literally cannot wait till someone proposes to me

  Or I propose to someone

  It’s gonna be dramatic af

  I hope someone showers me with confetti then recites a poem to me on a boat in front of a hundred onlookers before releasing a pair of doves into the sky

  Jason Farley-Shaw

  I think the concept seems kind of archaic, idk

  Rooney, however, didn’t have anything to say about college marriage, because she was much too focused on going out to a club.

  ‘I’m so excited for tonight,’ she said.

  ‘Really?’

  She smiled. ‘I’m ready for my uni experience, you know?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, and I meant it. I was ready for my uni experience too. Sure, the idea of going to clubs was horrifying, and I still couldn’t quite imagine the scenario in which I would fall for someone, but I was going to make it happen, and I was going to enjoy it. ‘Me too.’

  ‘So,’ she said, and looked at me with her big dark eyes. She was objectively very pretty. Maybe she’d be my endgame. Roommate romance like in a fanfiction. This was university, for God’s sake. Anything could happen. ‘D’you like going out?’

  By ‘going out’, she meant clubbing, and honestly, I didn’t know. I’d never been to a club. There weren’t many nice ones in rural Kent, and neither Pip nor Jason were into that sort of thing.

  Clubbing. College marriage. Sex. Romance.

  I knew all this stuff was optional.

  But I wanted to have a completely normal university experience, just like everyone else.

  ‘Oh my God!’ said Rooney, once I’d finished straightening my hair. ‘You look so nice!’

  ‘Ah, thanks!’ I said awkwardly. I’m terrible at taking compliments.

  Mum and I had gone clothes shopping a couple of weeks ago so I would have things to wear for club nights, and I’d picked out a couple of dresses and a pair of chunky shoes. I put one of the dresses on with black tights and honestly didn’t think I looked too bad, but next to Rooney, I just felt like a child. She was wearing a velvet red jumpsuit – a deep V at the front and flared legs – with heeled boots and huge hooped earrings. She’d piled half her hair up in a messy bun on top of her head, the rest flowing down her back. She looked really fucking cool. I … didn’t.

  Th
en I felt bad because Mum and I had chosen this dress together. I felt a million miles away from Mum and our local shopping centre.

  ‘Did you go out much back in Kent?’ Rooney asked from where she was sitting on her bed, applying some final touches to her make-up in front of her pedestal mirror.

  I wanted to lie and say I was super experienced at clubbing, but there was really no use. Rooney was already becoming acutely aware that I was a shy person and much, much worse at socialising than she was.

  ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘I … I dunno. I didn’t really think it was my sort of thing.’

  ‘You don’t have to go out if you don’t want to!’ She patted highlighter over her cheekbones before shooting me a smile. ‘It’s not everyone’s scene.’

  ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘I mean … I want to at least try it.’

  She smiled some more. ‘Good! Don’t worry. I’ll look after you.’

  ‘Have you been out clubbing lots, then?’

  ‘Oh, God, yeah.’ She laughed, going back to her make-up.

  OK. She sounded confident. Was she a party girl, like so many people I knew back at home? Was she the sort of person who would go out to clubs all the time and hook up with random people?

  ‘Have you got Find My Friends on your phone?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, um, I think so.’

  I got my phone out and, sure enough, I did have the app downloaded. The only people I had on there were Pip and Jason.

  Rooney held out her hand. ‘Let me add myself. Then if we lose each other, you can find me again.’

  She did so, and soon there was a little dot with Rooney’s face on the map of Durham.

  She suggested we took a selfie together in our bedroom mirror. She knew exactly how to pose, chin hidden behind a raised shoulder, eyes looking up enticingly beneath her lashes. I put one hand on my hip and hoped for the best.

  If I was fully honest with myself, I just wanted to be Rooney Bach.

  Sunil met us in the reception area, and it looked like most, if not all of the John’s freshers had shown up to get their first taste of university nightlife. Despite the fact that he’d told us we didn’t have to get dressed up, Sunil was wearing a tight-fit shirt in a bright paisley pattern with skinny trousers. I did notice, however, that he was wearing shoes that looked like they’d been trampled on and dragged through a muddy field, which probably should have prepared me for what I was about to face at the club.