Young Writers Society

“Oi, Romain! Over here!”

I stumbled and turned round, and was faced with Max Maderic. He had a backwards baseball cap stuffed down over his bouncy curls of hair and he was grinning at me. I felt like I was about to be initiated into some sort of frat.

“Uh, hi,” I said. My instinct was to call him Max, but he’d called me by my surname. Calling him Maderic felt weird too though.

“We’re first here,” Maderic said. He looked over my shoulder as if he was checking nobody else was coming along behind me.

“I didn’t want to be late,” I said.

Somebody brushed past me as I said this, clipping my shoulder and nearly knocking me off balance. Suddenly I realised that the well-lit city street was crammed full of people. They were rushing about all over the place going in and out of shops and restaurants. We were just off a T-junction and people must not have expected us to be there as they hurried round the corner, straight into my shoulder.

Maderic seemed to notice the obstacle we were providing too and nodded with his head towards the restaurant door. The light streaming out from it was warm and yellow and I could hear laughter and chatter. I was sure the bar would be a lovely place to wait for the rest of the group at.

“Wait!” The call came from behind us as we entered the restaurant and I nearly walked straight into Maderic as he turned round to see who it was.

“Natalie!” His eyes opened wide and he smiled. He slipped past me as I stumbled towards the nearest waiter.

“Table under Tamer,” Maderic said over my shoulder.

The waiter nodded and started leading me to a slightly narrow table that stretched almost the entire length of the back wall. I assumed Maderic and his friend were following behind me but I was too worried I’d trip over a small child or somebody’s foot if I looked behind me to check.

I squeezed into the side of the table nearest the wall and moved up a seat. I assumed one of them would sit next to me, then the other across from them. But no, Natalie sat straight across from me and Maderic just to her left, so that there was a single space next to me that someone would have to climb past Natalie to get to.

I could feel the worry starting to come to my brain. Would it be awkward if I moved down to sit across from Maderic instead? Should we actually have gone to the middle in the first place? But then I caught sight of short dark hair and sallow skin coming through the door. Camillo was here. I could feel my breathing immediately start to slow. Instinctively, I got up, and knew how to fix this situation. I’d go to the toilet, then sit back down wherever seemed most natural. Maybe Camillo sitting down would fix the problem entirely.

It was hardly making new friends, but as I looked around for the toilets, I smiled to myself. Baby steps.

The toilets had been in the opposite direction to where Camillo was coming from so I didn’t get to say hi to him until I got back. I nearly tapped him on the shoulder – Natalie and Maderic had moved round to where I’d been and Camillo was sitting with his back to me – but I chickened out at the last second. My arm just wouldn’t move for fear of… Well, I don’t really know what. My brain is dumb sometimes.

I pulled out the chair next to him and sat down.

“Hey,” he said. He set down the menu he’d been examining and turned to face me. He was smiling a lovely, sparkling smile and I nearly hugged him at the sight of it.

“Hi,” I said, “Thanks for inviting me. Wasn’t really looking forward to a night on my own.”

“Pfft!” Camillo grinned. “I’ve seen you whispering to yourself down the other side of the court. You could keep yourself company for a week!”

That held me for a moment. My adrenaline seemed to halt in my veins and I tried not to gulp. I could hold conversation with myself for more like a month. That was the problem.

“Italian, Camillo?”

I looked up out of my thoughts and saw Natalie grinning at Camillo. She went on, “You homesick?”

Camillo shrugged. “Fancied some carbonara. And don’t worry, they do gluten free pasta.”

Now that my pulse was neither stuttering with tension or racing with adrenaline, I realised that Natalie was a top twenty tennis player herself. Her surname was Bailey and she was Canada’s newest hope on the women’s side. Unfortunately she was currently out with a wrist injury, which you could tell by the bulky support bandage wrapped around it. Her long, red hair and her pale freckled face had been all over the billboards at the Rogers cup in Toronto last year, even though the women’s competition was taking place all the way over in Montréal.

“Alright, fair enough,” Natalie said. Then she turned to me. “So Léo, how did you get stuck in Camillo’s web?”

I giggled. “I, uh, we spoke a fair bit at Montpellier. There was also a whole… deodorant thing… in Australia.”

Camillo snorted juice through his nose.

“I’d forgotten about that,” he managed to get out as he suppressed his laughter.

“I have not.” I shuddered.

Natalie grinned at me. “I’ve seen you play. You’ve got a nice backhand. Shame it’s not a one-hander.”

“What’s so good about one-handers?” Maderic said, looking up from his menu. “You don’t even play one-handed!”

Natalie sighed. “No, but they look so cool. Didn’t feel like channelling Gasquet, Léo?”

I chuckled slightly. “I am nowhere near elegant enough for that. You’ve seen me run, right?”

“You’ve just got long legs,” Natalie said, “Not your fault if they get a bit tangled under you… Even if you do end up looking like a baby giraffe.”

I smiled. “I could live with that.”

Natalie smiled wide at my joke and looked down at her menu. I tried to focus on my own but I kept getting distracted by the fact that I’d just got a laugh out of someone I barely knew. Slightly bigger baby steps.