Young Writers Society

As soon as we left the room he straightened up to full height, far more alive than I’d seen him look all night. Maybe he didn’t want to look weak in front of someone he knew, but felt fine doing so in front of random clubbers. Now, he was turning round to face me as he walked backwards into the crowd and moved perfectly in time with the music. He tipped his head backwards and whooped at the ceiling, grabbing my hands and holding them up in the air.

My nerves jumped up a bit but then I saw the grin on his face. It was so free, so happy. Maybe he could help me feel like that. I gripped tightly onto his hands and smiled properly for the first time since Christina had knocked on my door. Oh God, Christina. She’d be worried sick – or be being sick. I grabbed my phone out the front pocket of my jeans, squeezing my other hand tight around Camillo’s so I didn’t lose him while I looked at the screen.

Text from Christina asking where I was. Of course. I groaned and typed something typo-ridden about being okay and that I’d meet her outside when she was ready. I stared straight at the screen, standing almost completely still, while I waited for a reply.

She said okay.

“Alright, brilliant,” I muttered to myself.

I shoved my phone back in my pocket and joined my other hand back up with Camillo. He grinned, still a little bit scary, then suddenly twirled me round like a ballroom dancer. I laughed all the way from my belly and returned the favour. He whirled round on one foot and landed right up beside me. With a laugh I could hear all the way over the music, he wrapped his arms around me and gave me a big hug, squeezing me tight and swaying back and forth.

When he drew away, our arms still loosely around each other, his eyes were a little moist. I patted his back and continued to sway. We were like that for ages, no matter the music. Just feeling, not thinking. Then about ten minutes later, a slow ballad by a famous pop artist – I’m presuming famous, since everyone knew the words – came on and everyone around us starting doing much the same.

Camillo was mumbling the words to himself and staring at me, quite intensely. I looked round at the other dancers. They had mostly coupled off, but there were a few groups of friends making big circles and holding hands, just standing still and singing. Then the song reached the crescendo of the first chorus and loads of the couples leaned in to kiss each other. I smiled at all the happiness around me.

Then all of a sudden I looked straight ahead and Camillo was coming towards me and we were kissing and oh my god it was amazing and I melted into it. I wanted it so fucking much, God I hadn’t realised quite how much and it was all happening so fast. Dear Christ I hadn’t felt so free since my last tennis match but shit this was ridiculous. He was literally crying about his ex-girlfriend – I had to stop.

But he drew away first. His eyes went wide and I saw the realisation of what he’d just done smack him in the face. He stumbled backwards into the couple behind him, then turned round in the same motion and started barging through the crowd towards the exit.

I stared after him as thoughts flooded back into my brain. My lips were still tingling and my whole body ached to follow him. I was so glad I hadn’t had to try and bring myself to end it. Before I could think much else, my vibrating phone grabbed my attention to the present. There were two texts. I’d missed one from Christina saying she was ready to go home – which presumably meant my hotel room – about five minutes ago. I replied to that one that I was on my way. Then I looked at the other one, my first ever text from Camillo Tamer.

“I AM SO SORRY!!!”

I replied that it was okay – which wasn’t particularly true – then made my own way towards the door. Christina was leaning against the wall chatting to the bouncer when I got outside. Somehow she seemed more sober than at the beginning of the night. Maybe it had been an act after all. I shrugged. Couldn’t change it now. Just had to get home, get to sleep and put this stupid night behind me.

“Hey, Léo!” She smiled and put an arm around my waist. “Where’d you run off to? Find someone to get over that boy with?”

She gave the bouncer a quick salute then dragged me off in the direction of the taxi rank.

“Kiki, wait. What about your friends?” I twisted round to look back towards the club but there was no sign of any of them, although maybe I wouldn’t have been able to pick their faces out anyway. Before I’d gone to the toilet all the faces around me had sort of blurred into a sea of smiles and sweat.

She shrugged. “They’ll get the bus, probably. But seriously, Léo, are you feeling better?”

There really wasn’t much point trying to pretend to her, myself, or even Mum that I didn’t fancy the hell out of Camillo. I sighed and put an arm round her shoulder. “Sort of, yes. Thanks for tonight, Kiki.”

Her body relaxed – I hadn’t even realised it was tense. She yawned and leant her head against by side. Mission accomplished, it seemed. Maybe, if it was an act, I wasn’t even that mad. There was definitely a knot of frustration in my gut though, and a slight unease that I didn’t want to think about. Camillo had a lot to answer for.

I woke up flat on my face with my covers twisted half off the bed. I figured this was what you were meant to look like the morning after you went to a club, even if you didn’t have a hangover. In fact, I felt gross enough as it was – I didn’t want to know what a hangover would feel like.

“Morning,” Christina said.

I groaned and twisted my head round to the right, where she was sitting on my floor packing a sleeping bag.

“What the… When did you get that here?”

She giggled. “Did you seriously not see it when I came in? God, you’re clueless.”

I shrugged my right shoulder, my left being sort of twisted up in the sheets. “You’re not wrong.”

As she finished up packing, I struggled up into a sitting position and took my phone from the bedside table. There were three missed calls and a text, all from Camillo. He must have been feeling awful.

“You okay?” Christina said.

I looked over at her and realised my eyes had gone wide.

“Uh, yeah,” I said, “Just something from last night.”

Christina raised one eyebrow and smirked.

“Oh, shut up.” But I was pursing my lips and trying not to giggle. Her plan really had worked, as far as she knew.

She excused herself to brush her teeth – because somehow I also hadn’t noticed an overnight bag. I looked back at my phone and read the text.

“Reporter sent me this, L. Call me when you wake up.”

Attached was a photo that made me jolt properly upright and cling onto the covers with the hand that wasn’t holding the phone. It was a photo, admittedly low quality, of that brief, fleeting moment when Camillo had pressed his lips to mine and wrapped his arms around my waist. Annoyingly, my honest to God first reaction was to use it as a profile picture.

But a reporter had it. Why did Camillo have it? Why weren’t we seeing this for the first time in the tabloids and shitting ourselves then? Why the warning? Oh God my brain was back in overdrive. I ached for the freedom I’d had the slightest snatch at last night when Camillo and I had danced together.

Christina seemed pretty occupied in the bathroom with her makeup so I called Camillo immediately.

“Dude!” he shouted as soon as he picked up.

“Uh, morning,” I said.

“Dude, oh crap. Oh man I’m so sorry. I promise I’ll deal with this but I needed to warn you just in case.” The words were coming out faster than his backhand down-the-line.

“Fix it? How can you fix it?” I jumped out of bed and started pacing about. “Camillo, w-why do you have that picture?”

All I heard was him breathing for a few moments, then he said, much slower, “The reporter… She needs money. She says if we offer her money she’ll delete it. Dude, obviously I’ll pay you but we need to do this today.”

I leaned over, kept leaning, ended up bending over double and staring at my feet. What the… Well – gah. Of course we needed to do this. Sports players did not come out, and definitely not together. We couldn’t let this happen. It’d be all anyone ever knew about us – there would be cameras everywhere. So many articles. Dear God please no!

The next thing was Camillo saying, “Yeah, exactly.”

Oops, apparently I’d been saying most of this out loud.

I took a deep breath. “So what do we do?”

“I’ll text you the address she sent,” Camillo said, “Meet me there in half an hour and not a minute earlier. She might just be trying to get a picture of us together to go with the story, so be careful. I’ll get there just now as quietly as I can.”

I nodded, then scoffed at myself for forgetting he couldn’t see me and said, “Okay, see you soon. And don’t feel too bad about last night. I know your feelings were all muddled.”

There was a pause, then he said, “Thank you. And sorry again.”

“Yeah,” I said. Then I sighed. “Alright, see you in half an hour.”

“See you,” he said, then hung up.

I wasn’t letting myself think about the nightmare that could be about to unfold, but even outside that, there was something worrying nagging at me. Because of course my brain never fully shut up, normally. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I’d been feeling it since some point the night before. Before I could put any more thought into figuring it out, I heard Christina come back into the bedroom.

“Léo, what’s wrong?”

My shoulders tensed. I had my back directly to her and would really, really have liked to keep it that way. But I groaned and turned round, taking one step at a time in a narrow circle.

“Christina, I might need you to warn my mum about something.”