Some days, I wake up thinking…so what? I’m a fatty. Get over it. I put on my Big & Tall jeans—impossibly enormous, with an invisible diamond section in the crotch so they don’t split—and stride out with pride, shoulders back, ready to take on the world. Other days, I wake up determined that today will be the day I start my diet, follow the exercise plan Matty typed out for me, get fit, lose weight, turn into Jesse Thomas the beefcake, tall, dark, handsome…
It usually lasts until lunchtime, when I give up in favour of silencing the embarrassing rumble in my belly.
That was the mood I was in this morning, motivated by having not succumbed to the temptation of last night’s dinner. I’d moved on from the misery of my favourite t-shirt not fitting anymore. I couldn’t even blame it on a growth spurt. Or I could—an outward spurt, not an upward one.
I’d even kind of forgotten what the girl in the café had said.
When I made it out of the shower, Mum was already in her coat, about to leave for work. She gave me a hug.
“Are you feeling better, love?”
“Yeah.”
“You home normal time?”
By ‘normal time’, she meant around four-thirty—end-of-school time—which didn’t apply to university, but I was familiar with the conversion.
“Before that, I reckon,” I said.
She stood on tiptoes, and I bent my knees so she could kiss me on the cheek.
“See you later, Mum.”
“There’s bacon keeping warm, OK?”
“OK.”
She left. I went to my room to get dressed, ignoring the treacherous t-shirt I’d cast off in disgust and pulling out a shirt that could’ve fitted Matty and Leigh inside it with room to spare. It was comfy—soft dark-grey cotton—and it was loose on me, which made me feel slimmer, but it was an illusion, of course. I hated it when people made those kinds of observations—you look slimmer in that, stripes suit you—because it was temporary, lasting, at best, until I took off my clothes and faced the flab underneath.
At least I’d finally left my enormous hoodie behind. Leigh was partly responsible for that. Four years, I’d had that hoodie, all through sixth form and the first two years of uni. It had served me well, but it had also been a comfort blanket—heh, it was big enough. Every day, I was tempted to take it out of the storage bag in my wardrobe…zip up, hood up, sleeves down… I was caught between hiding from the world and wanting Leigh to notice me; the hoodie stayed where it was.
I grabbed the bacon on my way out. I could afford to eat it if I walked to uni. Granted, it was only a ten-minute walk—about fifty calories—but it was better than no exercise at all. I arrived at the campus as Noah and Matty’s bus pulled up. The doors opened, and the bus emptied, no sign of Noah and Matty for ages, because they always sat at the back, and it was Noah who stepped off first, giving me a hang-dog expression. A second later, I discovered why. Behind him was Matty and…Leigh.
My poor old heart. Who needed a defibrillator? It happened every time I saw them, that sudden jolt, and off it went, like an express freight train trying to break out of my chest.
Arms linked, Matty and Leigh laughed and chatted, almost skipping along behind Noah. God, my crush was epic, but Leigh was beautiful. Both acknowledged me with a little wave and a smile. I smiled back and realised, when Leigh’s eyelids lowered bashfully, that I was staring.
Adam and Sol—Noah’s brother and brother-in-law—were like foster parents for students with additional needs, things like learning disabilities, behavioural problems and medical conditions. Leigh had only been living there a couple of months, whereas Matty had moved in with them in first year of uni. He said it was because he was a nutcase. I never saw any evidence of it, but his parents had done a number on him, so he probably had his nutty moments.
Leigh’s situation was a bit different. Like Matty, Leigh had been in foster care forever, I guessed because their mum couldn’t cope with their medical condition. I was interested to know more, but Leigh didn’t talk about it, and I didn’t push. We talked about a lot of stuff, mostly music and movies, and we had a good laugh, but we didn’t know each other anywhere near as well as I would have liked. Yet.
I didn’t think that was expecting too much. All through school, people had told me I was a good friend. By ‘people’, I mean ‘girls’, and by ‘good friend’, they meant ‘not boyfriend material’. That was fine by me. The number of my mates who hit on girls just because they could, it made me feel a bit sleazy on their behalf. They liked the girl, sure, and I don’t think—I hope they didn’t—force themselves on anyone, but they’d go too far, too quickly, and without getting to know each other.
I don’t know, maybe spending my teens perpetually ‘in the friend zone’ coloured my perspective, but getting to know someone before you jumped their bones seemed like the way to go to me. However long that took, I’d wait. I had to get through this last tough year of uni, anyway, so I really didn’t mind.
What I did mind, sometimes, was feeling like a spare wheel, although since Leigh had moved in, it had become easier. Noah and Matty could be pretty full-on, and I was sure they forgot I was there at times—not that they ever got up to anything private in my presence, but still. We’d always done a lot of stuff as a threesome, and with Leigh around, I could almost pretend we were double dating. Ah, hopes and dreams…
We reached the English block, where we parted company with Matty and Leigh, who continued to walk ahead for half a minute, oblivious to the fact Noah and I had stopped walking. Matty came dashing back, stretched up to kiss Noah, said, “Laters,” and dashed off again. It all happened in my peripheral vision; my eyes were on Leigh’s back. Dr. Martens boots, black pants with loops and buckles dangling from them, braces, electric-blue sweater…
“Leigh’s dyed their hair,” I observed.
“Dunno,” Noah said, like I’d asked a question.
“Yeah, they have.” It wasn’t as blue as their top, but it was definitely blue. Matty caught up with them, and Leigh turned and glanced back. They made eye contact with me and smiled again. My belly flipped, my face tingled. God, how could a smile stop the world like that? It had to be some kind of sorcery. Hit pause, mute all sound, zoom in, in, in…so close I could see the tiny nose stud, the sparkle in their eyes…and then it reversed, like an enormous spring uncoiling, and Leigh zoomed away, back to reality. Matty reappeared at their side; Noah chuckled at mine.
At the last second, I remembered how to move my limbs and waved back. Leigh’s smile turned into a grin as they and Matty rounded a corner and were gone.
“Come on, you big sook,” Noah said playfully and slung an arm around my shoulders, steering me into the building.
“Am I?” I asked. Noah’s smirk was all the answer I was getting, but I knew it for myself. I couldn’t help it where Leigh was concerned. Every time I saw them, everything around us ceased to exist, leaving only Leigh and my hyper-awareness of Leigh. The sheen of their hair, the pale, smooth creaminess of their skin, the cheeky way they rolled their eyes, the hugeness of their pupils when they were scared or excited, the velvety softness of their lips. OK, I may have added my own details about their lips, but if I’d shut my eyes, I’d have heard, felt…I don’t know…telepathically sensed their presence. Leigh had some kind of power over me beyond anything I’d experienced before. Seriously, if Pink turned up on my doorstep and gave me the ultimatum, ‘It’s me or Leigh’, I wouldn’t even need to think about it.
The morning’s lecture passed in a blur, and it was the first of the year. I really needed to pay attention, but my concentration was shot, and by the end, I’d written next to nothing and learnt even less. Noah stood by, waiting for me to pack up my stuff and checking his phone. I was trying to hurry because everyone else had left already, aaaand…there was my bag, upended on the floor. Yeah.
“Sorry, sorry…” I muttered for Noah’s benefit and crouched, unceremoniously shoving everything back into my bag. Or not, because I was watching Noah and just kind of shifting the heap of stuff from one spot on the floor to another. “I wonder how Ryan’s getting on?”
Noah turned his phone around and showed me Ryan’s status onscreen: Franzen will be the death of me. Why did I choose this module again?
“I knew he’d hate it,” I said, because I’d told him, back in May—when we completed our module choice forms and he decided on Modern American Fiction while Noah and I opted for Post-War British Poetry—that the reading list included all of Franzen’s novels, and that was only the start of it. Meanwhile, Noah and I had one single volume of poetry to get through between now and next May. We’d learnt our lesson in second year, when we’d had American Literature with the same lecturer who ran the Modern American Fiction module. Even the most avid of readers wouldn’t have made it through all those novels, and Ryan was far from avid. I loved reading, but I had three other modules to pass, and my head wasn’t exactly in the game.
I finally got my act together, hoisted my bag onto one shoulder and hurried from the lecture theatre, repeating my apology once we were out in the fresh air and I could breathe again.
“No worries,” Noah said, completely chill. “You’re a bit jittery today.”
“I’m all right.”
“Uh-huh?”
“What? I am all right.”
“You want a copy of my notes?”
“Yeah, if you wouldn’t mind. Mine are…” Non-existent. “A mess.”
“I noticed,” Noah said dryly. I knew he wouldn’t taunt me further. “Is it too early for lunch?”
It was only just past eleven o’clock, and we should’ve had a critical theory lecture, but Brian—our lecturer—was away at a conference. Plus, if we didn’t eat then, we’d hit the lunchtime rush. It was that or leave it until after our seminar, by which point it would be four o’clock. Tuesdays were going to be a killer this year.
“Let’s eat now,” I said. Where d’you wanna go?” The campus café was dead ahead of us, and it didn’t look as mad in there as it had the previous day. Noah gestured the suggestion we go in, and I shrugged my consent.
We had a fair few conversations like that—all nods, shrugs, waves of hands. Four years of friendship had given us that. We’d met in sixth-form college; Noah’s family had moved from London up to Norwich during the summer, so he knew no one, and the only students I knew were those who’d made my life a misery at school. Typical, seeing as I’d intentionally gone to college to avoid them, rather than stay in our school’s sixth form. Net result: my mates all stayed on and Big Jesse was on his own.
Noah and I were like two fish out of water who’d just discovered we weren’t the only ones flapping about on the shoreline, although we were the only ones who were six-foot-plus and, seemingly, interested in passing our A’ Levels. That first English Lit. lesson, we clicked, and we’d never looked back.
I queued behind Noah so I could take my lead from what he ordered. It was a form of portion control for me, because we always had big meals at home, although when I thought about it, they weren’t any bigger than Noah’s brother-in-law served. The difference was Noah stopped eating when he was full, and he went to the gym, whereas I ate until I could hardly move and did very little in the way of exercise. I wasn’t lazy, not really. I looked after my grandma’s enormous garden and greenhouse—Mum was still trying to persuade her to move to somewhere more manageable—and tried to walk to uni at least twice a week.
The trouble was, so many years of failing at sports and having the piss taken out of me in games lessons meant exercise wasn’t part of my routine like it was for Noah. He’d played rugby at high school, and Adam and Sol were both fitness fanatics. Matty spent hours dancing every day. Even Leigh was a runner.
All in all, it made me feel like a lazy slob, and I only had myself to blame. If I could eat just a little bit less and exercise a little bit more, I’d find equilibrium. In my head, if I looked at it rationally, it was easy. In reality, it was impossible. Until I lost some weight, I couldn’t face exercising in front of other people, knowing what they’d be thinking, and I couldn’t lose weight without exercising.
Noah didn’t comment on my lunch selection—a tuna on granary sandwich, banana and a carton of juice—which was exactly the same as he’d picked. I saw him eyeing the chocolate bars but then he walked on by.
“Don’t do without on my account,” I said. I didn’t eat chocolate, or not at uni. I’d made it a rule when we started, because there was a vending machine in our sixth-form college, and I’d scoffed about four bars a day—around a thousand calories in chocolate alone. I was ashamed of myself.
“Nah, I’m all right,” Noah said.
He paid, I paid, and we went outside, to the terrace, where the tables weren’t crammed so closely together and we’d have more leg room, although it was deserted, anyway.
“I’m glad the first years haven’t discovered this place yet,” Noah observed.
“Me, too.” I looked at the empty tables surrounding us and opened my sandwich, glad of the opportunity to eat without feeling self-conscious, and this time, it wasn’t on me. People did stare when they saw me eating. Not all of them, but some. Worse was having someone I barely knew say something like ‘try replacing that with a piece of fruit’ when it might have been the first cake I’d had in a week. They meant well, I’m sure, but whatever made them think it was OK to do that?
“You fancy a study sesh tonight?” Noah asked, and I was grateful for him dragging me out of my thoughts. It wasn’t even happening, and I was getting myself worked up.
“Yep. My place?” I suggested.
“If you like. There’s more room at ours, though.”
“True.” I knew what he was doing. Noah was subtle and he wasn’t pushy, but I was wise to his ploys. “But Matty’ll be there.”
“So will Leigh.”
“Noah…”
“All I meant was Leigh can keep Matty company while we get some work done. What did you think I meant?”
I tried to scowl, but it became a smile. “Lying git.”
Noah shrugged, like he had no idea what I was talking about, and took a bite of his sandwich. He was leaving me to think it over, or pretending to. Seeing as I’d already agreed to studying, he knew I wouldn’t go back on it, although whether I’d get anything done with Leigh in the vicinity was questionable.
* * * * *