Chapter 11
The first time that I dared to wonder whether my awkward, mixed-up feelings for Jonah might not be completely one-sided was the first Saturday of the Easter holidays, nearly two weeks after it had been agreed that he was staying at least until the court made a decision about his long-term care in the autumn.
We had a family outing to the cinema to watch some bland film that Mum had deemed suitable for traumatised teenagers, stopping off first at a cheapo chain restaurant because some of the kids we looked after had never eaten out before and found fancier places more overwhelming.
My parents pretended not to get antsy when Jonah slouched back in the diner’s bench seat, not even opening the menu. However, when the waiter came, he ordered an obscure burger with no hesitation.
‘Have you been here before?’ Mum asked, once the waiter had left.
‘Sometimes.’ He shrugged. ‘When Warren wasn’t around.’
Warren was his mum’s boyfriend.
‘Ah. I’m sorry.’ She screwed up her nose in apology. ‘I should have checked.’
‘It’s fine. It was another one, near where we lived.’
‘Still. We can always leave. There’s a Nando’s across the road.’
He gave a short, sharp shake of his head and the table descended into uncomfortable silence. Unable to bear the awkwardness, I did an uncharacteristic thing and blurted the first thought that came into my head.
‘I like your hat.’
Everyone turned to look at me. Everyone except for Jonah, who was already sitting opposite and so simply flicked his hooded eyes up to meet mine.
‘Do you really?’ Dad asked, sounding confused. ‘I wouldn’t have thought that was your style.’
No. I really didn’t. Jonah’s hat looked as though he’d found it in a puddle. The brown wool was so matted it looked stiff as cardboard. The logo on the front might have been a wolf, once.
I shrugged, mumbling something about how I liked wolves. Not entirely untrue, since I’d been looking into those amber eyes.
‘It’s a jackal,’ Jonah said, meeting my glance with that blank expression that gave nothing away.
‘Oh, okay! Cool.’ I pulled the pot of sauce sachets towards me and started examining them as if suddenly fascinated by the ingredients of tomato ketchup. ‘I mean, jackals are awesome, too.’
‘Do you remember that book you had about the wolf, Libby?’ Mum said, grabbing the topic with both hands. ‘You were scared stiff of it! We always had to read Winnie the Pooh afterwards or you’d be too afraid to sleep. Then, when that boy in your class – the one who said you were smelly – brought a toy wolf in…’
And off she went with another attempt to make Jonah feel less crap about himself by showing how embarrassingly imperfect we were – or, more to the point, I was.
I looked at the floor, the table, my sister rolling her eyes in sympathy. Every time my gaze darted back to Jonah, his eyes remained unwaveringly on mine.
I somehow ended up sitting next to Jonah in the cinema. He was at the end of the row, and Nicky was on the other side of me, my parents next to her.
That was fine, of course. Yes, he made me nervous and I had no idea what he was thinking – especially when it came to me – but all I had to do was sit and stare at a screen for two hours.
Except that wasn’t all I had to do. There was popcorn to eat – suddenly the noisiest, most undignified snack on the planet. Nicky put her giant slushie in the shared armrest holder on my side, so I had an agonising wait to see which side Jonah used for his and whether or not I’d have to hold my freezing-cold cup. I tried to keep innocuously still, right in the centre of the seat, but pins and needles meant I was forced to wiggle my leg, every movement magnified. Even breathing felt heightened around Jonah.
Then, about forty-five minutes into the film…
Something warm brushed against my arm.
Every nerve alert, body frozen still, I slid my eyes through the darkness to find him slouched low in his chair, his elbow jutting so far across the armrest that it now stuck out onto my seat, hence it bumping into me.
While I held my breath in the darkness, he gave a subtle stretch, his head moving closer until it reached the tiny gap between our seats, a significant portion of his forearm coming to rest against mine.
He’d taken his jacket and sweatshirt off, for quite possibly the first time ever, so the skin now touching mine was bare.
Could he feel every hair on my arm standing up through my thin cardigan?
For the next few minutes of the film, it was all I could do to keep my lungs moving.
Slowly, slowly, his arm relaxed into mine.
Needless to say, not a single muscle in my body was relaxed.
At some point, in a moment of madness, I sat forwards, took off my cardigan and then slid down to Jonah’s level in the seat, trying to feign innocence as I angled my body towards his and carefully positioned my now equally bare arm on the armrest.
Immediately, not even bothering to be subtle, he moved his arm next to it.
Our little fingers were touching.
Our heads were about two inches apart.
It was the most thrilling, intimate moment of my life so far.
I could only pray that no one asked me anything about the film, because I didn’t take in a single second of it from that point on.
When the credits rolled and the lights came up, Jonah sat up, tugged his hoodie on, collected his rubbish and walked out without a second glance. He offered to ride in the back row of the car on the way home – we had three rows of seats for the times we fostered two children at once – and disappeared into his bedroom as soon as we got there.