Baby Blue Eyes

Chapter Nine

With a yawn, I settle down onto my bean bag, tucking my legs up to my chin and rubbing my eyes. I feel completely exhausted all of a sudden; probably something to do with all the dramatic gossip I’ve been faced with over the past two days. Right now, I just need a sit down.

Shifting in my seat, I feel something uncomfortable poking into my back. I sigh. I seriously need to get round to cleaning my room, but at the moment, I just don’t have the motivation. Or the enthusiasm.

Sitting up straight, I feel around under the bean bag, and pull out a notebook, the cause of my discomfort. I go to chuck it on my desk, but something stops me. I know this notebook.

It’s red cover is looking a little worn, and it certainly hasn’t benefited from me having sat on it, but as I open it, the pages are smooth and still have the faint scent of new paper.

It’s my song writing book. I spent so many hours writing in here, sometimes with Levi, sometimes without him. Here on the first page is the first verse of the first song I ever wrote, crossed out and recrossed out as I attempted to get it to rhyme.

I remember being sat in my room with Levi, what seems like an age ago. He had a guitar in his lap, a pencil in one hand as he scribbled the chords down to remember them. I was sat opposite, legs crossed, ink all over my hands from a leaky pen. Every so often, his eyes would meet mine, and we’d smile at each other, smile at how close we were, how very alone we were.

This was before we were dating, of course. Orla found it hilarious that a boy was in my room, and kept peeking through the door to see what we were doing. But we were just writing songs, nothing scandalous.

Al the same, I used to love those sessions. He’d be sat there, a little crease between his eyebrows as he frowned over a tricky line. We’d go through so many different combinations of wording it until finally we got it right that the page would be covered in scribbles, either in Levi’s narrow, even writing or mine.

We used to end up laughing uproariously at each other too, of course. With a boy as witty as Levi, pretty much anything could be turned into something which made me chuckle. And to my surprise, I could make him laugh too. Sometimes the things I came out with made him splutter with laughter, and then do that gorgeous laugh I always found extremely attractive, running one hand through his hair.

They seem like such a long time ago. The first one especially; I remember being so scared- one of the most popular boys in the school was going to be in my room, my room. I remember the mad dash around my room before he arrived, scooping up any of Orla’s cuddly toys she’d left in here, hiding any errant underwear that was lying on the edge of my bed; I certainly didn’t want Levi seeing any of that. I even hid my make up and various sprays and deodorants stuffing them in various places. He probably thought my room was spotless- little did he know that it was entirely thanks to the fact that he would be arriving shortly.

At first, it was extremely awkward. We were stood there stiffly in my room, Levi smiling, me blushing. Then Orla burst in, looked up at Levi and remarked: ‘You’re very tall.’

That was a sufficient ice breaker. Ten minutes later found us sat cross legged on my floor, Levi strumming chords on my guitar, making it sound far more beautiful than I ever did.

All the same, it took a while before I could actually think up lyrics. I was a bit embarrassed to offer up my ideas, but Levi had this relaxing air about him that was enough to tranquilise me into contributing my lyrics later on.

It was at one of our much later song writing sessions that he first hinted that he liked me. Of course, the flirting and long hugs he gave me had made me suspicious, but I was never one to get carried away, and wondered if this was just Levi Behaviour. But as we were sat in my room, one wintry evening in November, writing a rather more romantic song than usual, he suddenly began to pluck away at the guitar, creating a beautiful melody, which he randomly began to sing to.