‘I’m done.’ Jonah closed his book and stood up, disappearing before Mum had finished asking him to put his plate in the dishwasher.
‘Carlos Romero?’
‘What?’ I nearly dropped my glass of water. It was almost midnight, and after yet another night of contemplating whether I was going to implement option one in my journal after all, I’d tiptoed downstairs and snuck outside.
Was I hoping Jonah might be there, smoking his last cigarette of the day?
I added that to my abandoned list of Reasons for Jonah to Keep Living:savouring the last cigarette of the day.
Well. Maybe nothoping. Aware of the possibility? I’d put a cardigan on over my T-shirt, just in case.
After all, it would be another opportunity to convince him that my heart belonged to Carlos.
He was sitting in the garden chair again, the glow of a cigarette moving towards his face for a mesmerising second as he took a long drag.
Stalling for time, I made a show of pulling out another chair from under the table – quietly, so as not to alert my parents sleeping above us – and spent far more time than was necessary getting comfortable in the wooden seat.
‘That…storyat dinner was about Carlos Romero.’
‘Er, yes.’
He leant towards the table, his face all shadows and angles in the moonlight as he stubbed out the cigarette.
‘Funny. A Carlos Romero transferred to my old school from Bigley two years ago.’ He paused, glancing at me with a gleam in his eye. ‘I’m wondering what’s most implausible. That there’d be someone else with the same unusual name at the same school. Or that you would invent such a bizarrely boring story.’
I swallowed so hard he must have heard me.
‘What did you conclude?’ I asked, unable to resist darting a little closer to danger.
Jonah clenched his hands in a double fist and rested them on his knees, still leaning forwards. His hood was down for once, and hair hung over his face as he tipped his head towards his hands.
‘When I was fifteen, my mum came home early from the pub while I was smoking a spliff in my bedroom. I ran downstairs, grabbed a beer from the fridge and sat on the sofa, pretending to look shocked when she stumbled in. She went mad at me for stealing a can, but didn’t bother going in my room. Alcohol was one thing, but she’d sworn that if she ever caught me with drugs, she’d smash my phone up.’
‘I admit it’s a better story than the curry one. But is there a point to it?’
He angled his head slightly upwards to look at me, his face mostly obscured by unkempt fringe.
‘I guess if your parents think you’re flirting with Carlos in the dinner queue, it’s better than them wondering what you’re doing out here with me.’
29
NOW
I collapsed into bed around eleven, determined to keep up with the new system and get some sleep, despite the evening’s events swirling around my head like overexcited butterflies.
Had I imagined it? Or misinterpreted what he said? Because, if my recollection was at all correct, Jonah King had not only told me that he found it hard to think around me, but he had also said that he still felt the same now as he did then. And back then, he had loved me.
Or, at least, he’d thought he did. A broken, mixed-up seventeen-year-old’s version of love, anyway.
But while I’d had no idea where Jonah was after he’d moved out of our house, and no way to find out, he’d known my address and had my number.
I had messaged him a few times, but he hadn’t replied, and I hadn’t had the courage to keep trying, so I’d concluded that I was a convenient distraction while his life was flipped upside down. Back then, I had hoped this revelation would make the situation easier to bear, but it had only made me feel worse about being reckless enough to have messed everything up for something that wasn’t even real.
So what did that mean now?
Was Jonah playing around, flirting with me for fun? Did he blame me for what had happened and was looking to reel me in to break my heart again?
Was he any more capable of true love now than he had been then?
