“Why has it taken me until Year Eleven to discover you?” he asks. Something about his use of the worddiscoverinstead ofmeetdelights me. He’s helped himself to one of the gel pens I use to take notes, and he’s twirling it between his fingers. I know I’m going to isolate that pen later and keep it as a souvenir of this occasion.
“I’ve been here all along, flying under your radar, obviously,” I reply, even though it’s more that I’ve been totally out of the loop. “Where haveyoubeen?”
He puts the pen down and leans forward, looking at me through black-rimmed reading glasses as if I fascinate him. I’ve never fascinated anyone, except maybe my parents.
“I think I’ve been waiting for you,” he admits.
It’s a romantic idea. In reality, I very much doubt that it’s true, what with the parade of girls featured in his Instagram feed, but I hang on to the notion anyway.
Friday night, he impulsively suggests we go to a movie. Our thighs touch theentire timeand I can’t focus on a single scene because I’m so busy trying to stop myself from trembling. It’s electric. Then afterward, in the lobby, we run into a group of St. Dom’s boys, and while he talks to them, his hand goes to the small of my back and stays there until they’re gone. Itthrills me.
By Saturday morning, the falling-in-love process is pretty much complete. I can’t think or talk about anything else and Bree is bearing the brunt of it. And that’s when her doorbell sounds. It’s a courier with a box, addressed to me. I open it, and inside are several forensic linguistics textbooks from my onlinebookstore wish list. I’d shared my login details with Oliver at the library, because he thinks someone’s purchase history is a window to their soul.
“Textbooks?” Bree asks. “How romantic, Evie.”
“Itisromantic. Textbooks are expensive,” I argue. Getting ahead on this reading is all part of the plan to win a university scholarship. “I’d rather have these books than roses. He understands me.”
“Also, you shared your login details—and my address—with a boy you barely know?” Bree asks, evidently less enamored by the delivery than I am. “Did we learn nothing from my website nightmare? This is … a lot.”
“Your address was already in the bookstore account from last time,” I explain. “And Oliver’s the one whosavedyou from the website nightmare.”
“If it’s really gone,” she says, under her breath. “How do I know my photos aren’t saved on some hard drive somewhere?”
Why is Bree being so unsupportive? I’ve been there for every crush she’s ever had for years, and this is the first time for me. She of all people should understand my current mindset.
I’m getting out my wide-angle camera lens for the astrophotography night with Drew and his mum—a social event that comes with Bree’s wholehearted approval—when I get a message from Oliver. We were going to meet up for an afternoon walk.
“I can’t come, Evie. I’ve got a migraine.”
Immediately, I want to make him feel better. It’s inevitable that I will go to his place even if I have to move mountains to get back in time to meet Drew.
“I’m on my way.”
Oliver and I sit on a cane sofa on his giant Lane Cove terrace. I’ve got a huge thing for cane furniture and giant terraces. Something about the old-world charm of sprawling Southern mansions, which the Roche’s twenty-first-century Sydney residence rivals.
“You didn’t have to come,” he says, in the muted tone of a person with a throbbing head who did, in fact, keenly want you to come. “This happens every so often,” he tells me. “It’s usually stress.”
I can’t think what he could be stressed about. He gets straight A’s at school, and with all his bonus leadership stuff, an early-entry offer to university is practically guaranteed. He lives in a colossal house and his parents don’t have to scrape money together for uniforms or field trips like mine do, even though I’m on scholarship. He’s been voted incoming school captain in a massive landslide, because literally everyoneadoreshim.
“Can I get you a sandwich or something?” he asks, even though he’s the patient.
“Do you want one?”
He shakes his head, then grasps it, as if to settle the pain, and I make him lie down and rest his head in my lap, looking up at me. I don’t want to have to work out how to eat in front of him, anyway. Things get stuck in your teeth. You can drop mustard on your top. You could choke! I don’t think we’re ready for that level of chaos.
“Is this okay?” he asks, gesturing at his head on my legs. I’m the one who directed his head into this position, so the unnecessary request for consent only skyrockets my crush. First hetakes down my best friend’s nightmare website. Now he’s navigating physical touch as if my boundaries actually matter.
The fact is, I want to run my fingers through his blond hair, and then, well …everywhere. But I don’t. We’re not up to that yet. Are we? I’ve never done this before. I do risk a quick brush of his forehead with the back of my hand, under the guise of checking his temperature, like I’m a nurse from World War I and he’s a hero dragged in on a stretcher, wounded on the Somme.
It seems normal. His temperature, that is, not my historical fantasies.
The French door onto the balcony opens, and an enormous man in a suit steps through it, frowning. I get the impression that his frown is not wholly about having found us here like this, but more habitual.
“Hello,” he says, not really looking at me, his voice abrupt.
Despite his headache, Oliver bolts upright and shifts along the bench a little way. I feel exposed, suddenly. And very definitely not enough.
“This is Evie,” Oliver explains, standing now, as if the man’s presence is a cure for his migraine. “Evie, this is my father.”
