Chapter 22
Emma
When I reach my room, the whole corridor is still quiet. A few minutes later, I hear noises next door, so Tori must be back too. A moment later, my door is opened. I pretend to sleep as Ms. Barnett looks in, and only dare to breathe again when the door closes.
My phone lights up. It’s a message from Tori.
T: Where are you??? Ms. Barnett’s checking rooms
I roll onto my side and start to type.
E: I know, I’m here
T: Oh, OK. Phew!
E: Did you get caught?
T: I think everyone ran in time. Henry warned us. He went to look for you
I type back.
E: I know. He found me
Tori sends an emoji of a moon with a knowing grin, but I don’t reply because I hear a sound at my door. I immediately jump up and open it. Henry slips into my room. I hold back until he’s shut the door, then wrap my arms around him and kiss him.
“Everything OK?” he murmurs into my lips.
I nod.
He kisses me again. “God, that was close.”
Stop talking . . .
I press my body against his, and it works.
Henry puts a hand on my head. He’s got the wall against his back, and as he pulls me to him, a floorboard creaks under our feet.
He leans forward slightly, wraps himself around my thighs, and I wrap my legs around his hips as he lifts me up.
As he carries me through the darkened room, we kiss more slowly because he has to watch where he’s putting his feet.
He lays me on the bed and lingers over me. I know we won’t go any further tonight when a tiny smile twitches his lips and he presses a kiss on my nose.
“We kissed,” I say as he pulls off his shoes and I slide under the duvet.
“Yes, I think we did.”
I raise the covers slightly so that he can come to me. It feels so familiar and yet so new as we lie on our sides next to each other, looking at each other. It’s still a squeeze—our knees bump into one another. Henry lifts his leg so that I can wrap mine around it.
“And you split up,” I repeat. Because of me. So now I’m the arsehole who stole Grace’s way-too-perfect school-captain boyfriend.
“Things hadn’t been good between us for ages, Emma,” says Henry, as if he could read my mind.
“So why didn’t you split up ages ago, then?”
“Because there was no reason to.”
“But now there suddenly was?”
Silence.
“I don’t want to be the reason,” I whisper.
“I know. But there are two separate things. The breakup, which is between me and Grace, and this . . . This is only between us.”
“Are you sure you’ll still see it the same way by daylight tomorrow?” I wonder. “When you’re sober again and everyone’s talking?”
“I don’t give a shit if the others talk.”
Henry’s choice of words surprises me a little, but I kind of like it too. So he isn’t always polite and correct. This evening is the living proof that he can also kiss me furiously and press me, full of desire, up against some random wall. I need more of this Henry.
“Did he ever text you?” he asks, out of the blue.
“Who?” I reply, but then I realize he must mean my dad. “No. He hasn’t got my number. I’ve only got his.”
Henry says nothing, and somehow it still works: I keep talking. His presence is still like some kind of truth spray that I breathe in, then want to tell him everything.
“It was horrible, Henry. He only talked about himself, the whole time.” My throat tightens in that grim way, like any time you might cry. But I’m not going to shed any more tears over Jacob Wiley.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, “that it didn’t go well and that I wasn’t there after that.”
“You were.”
He shakes his head ever so slightly. “You know what I mean.”
I keep quiet, but then I raise my chin a little. It’s enough, Henry understands. I recognize the question in his eyes and put an answer into mine. He holds my cheeks and kisses me. It’s different this time. So damn gentle that the tears sting in my eyes.
This must be a dream. Henry in my bed. Henry’s lips on my mouth, his thumbs running over my temples.
He puts his hand on my back, between my shoulder blades, and pulls me to him until my head is on his chest and I can’t look at him anymore.
Maybe that’s intentional, because he gets that it’s easier for me to talk that way.
For a while, I just lie there. Breathe in his scent and feel his fingers, which are drawing little patterns on my back.
“He just dumped on everything,” I whisper into Henry’s T-shirt. “Bad-mouthed the school, Mum. And I didn’t say anything.”
“I think that says more about him than about you.”
I feel the slight buzz of his chest as he speaks. I love it. I have to shut my eyes as he presses his fingers into the back of my neck.
“He really isn’t the way I thought, Henry.”
“And he really had no answer as to why he left back then?”
“He said Mum suffocated him. He couldn’t stand things in Germany with us.
And he said he’d do it again. He’d leave again.
” Henry looks at me as I raise my head and budge back a little way.
“I think I understand now what Mum always meant. Why she was so cautious and wanted to keep me from getting my hopes up. He’d leave and come back as it suited him.
He promised me things and just forgot them.
I bet it was the same for her. And she had me and her job.
I thought she was bitter and broken and trying to make up for it all through work.
But I was wrong. She’s way stronger than him. ”
Henry doesn’t take his eyes off me.
“She wasn’t building a career for anybody else but herself. Because the only life you can control is your own.”
I swallow. It’s strange the way everything suddenly makes sense the moment I’ve said it aloud.
How could I seriously have thought that Mum was the one in that broken relationship who needed pity?
Why did I have to see how lost my dad is before I could understand that he doesn’t live some exciting rock-star life but is trapped in a dream that will never come true?
Why did I think Mum was forcing her values on me when all she wanted was to offer me opportunities?
Suddenly I understand it. That she didn’t want me to learn and grow for her sake. That it was all for mine.
I only notice how deep I am in thought when Henry tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. His very-dark-green eyes are warm as I look at him.
“What are you thinking?” he asks quietly. “I want to know.”
“What is this between us?” I ask without a second’s thought.
And Henry answers without hesitation. “I think it’s serious.”
“Yes.” I swallow. “I think it is too.”
“Even if you’re leaving in a year.”
“Maybe I won’t leave,” I say. Henry raises his eyebrows and I keep talking. “Maybe I’ll finish my A levels at Dunbridge Academy.”
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything as cute as Henry trying to suppress a smile.
“You could apply to Oxford or Cambridge if you were here . . .”
“Or St. Andrews,” I add.
“Or St. Andrews,” he repeats. “If you wanted. They do sports science now—I saw that the other day.” Henry rests his head in the crook of his arm. “It kind of made me think of you.”
My stomach hops slightly.
“There’s an open day at St. Andrews after half-term. You could come and look around. Maeve is one of the student guides, doing tours of the uni and answering questions.”
“Then I could meet her too,” I say, and Henry looks so happy.
“Tori and Sinclair are coming,” he says.
I laugh. “Why don’t any of you want to go to Oxford?”
Henry shrugs his shoulders. “No idea. Maybe we’re all weird.”
“Then I must be too.”
“I knew from the start you’d fit in.”
I find myself smiling. “It feels nice having friends who are always there. I think I like this whole boarding-school thing in general.”
“That’s nice.”
I lean forward slightly. My lips brush Henry’s. I can feel that he’s smiling.
“We’re kissing, Emma,” he says, as if he can’t quite believe it.
“We’re kissing, Henry,” I repeat, and I don’t want us ever to stop. These are different kisses from back then in the drizzle, up against that wall. Slower kisses. Still very perfect kisses.
Henry’s eyes are tired when he eventually lets go of me and looks at me.
“You ought to go back, oughtn’t you?”
“Maybe,” he murmurs. “Should I go back?”
“You should sleep here,” I whisper, and the crazy thing is that it doesn’t feel weak to ask him not to leave me on my own. It feels right. “Little spoon?”
Henry smiles, first in surprise and then in real happiness. My belly feels warm as he kisses me again, then rolls cautiously onto his other side. He reaches for my hand as I slide up behind him and interlace his fingers with mine.
“You have to tell me everything,” he says as he runs his thumb over my wrist.
“I will,” I whisper, because I sense he’s about to fall asleep anyway. It’s unfair, I wish I could do that too, but it’s also kind of nice to lie next to Henry as his breathing evens and my thoughts slow.
We kissed for the first time; it was a really intense moment. I don’t know what it means. I only know that I’ve arrived at Dunbridge Academy.