The New Boy [boyxboy]

Chapter Twenty

Monday, 31st October, 2011

So we have one glorious week off school beginning today, and while I was happy enough to celebrate it by staying in my pyjamas all day every day watching cartoons and Jeremy Kyle, my friends had different ideas.

                I opened the door this morning to see Dex, Andie, Teegan, Dylan, and Paulie all standing on my doorstep expectantly. My mom had already gone to work and I was standing there, half asleep, my hair all messy and my eyes squinting against the light, wearing just my pyjama bottoms, too tired to even be embarrassed. As soon as I’d appeared through the opaque glass of the door Andie had started talking – something about all the fun things we were going to do this mid-term – but as soon as Dexter saw me his eyes widened and sparkled, he said, ‘Ooh,’ appreciatively, and pushed his way inside, closing the door behind him on the others’ surprised faces.

                His hands landed on the bare skin of my waist and he kissed me good morning while my heart, as usual, started to beat erratically.

                ‘Shouldn’t we...?’ I gestured vaguely to the front door, where I knew the others were still standing perplexedly, but he shook his head happily.

                ‘Nah. They’ll figure it out eventually,’ he said, wandering past me into the sitting room. ‘This triple-dating thing is getting kind of old anyway; it’s weird going on dates with my sister. Let’s just hang out today.’

                I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me all warm and fuzzy every time Dex wants to hang out with me by himself. I guess, no matter what he says, a part of me still can’t believe he’d ever be interested in me. Sometimes when I’m with him I’m waiting to wake up.

                I sat beside him on the couch and let my head loll onto his shoulder; soon I was nodding off again and I felt him turn his head to look down at me. ‘You need coffee,’ he decided, but I clung to his arm and groaned as he tried to get up, really just wanting to fall asleep on his shoulder.

                ‘There’s a certain lack of dignity about watching Jeremy Kyle on one’s own,’ Dexter declared, ‘and I am nothing if not dignified. You need to wake up.’

                He disentangled himself from my grip and made his way to the kitchen; I flopped down on the sofa was dozing off by the time he got back with two steaming mugs of coffee.

                ‘Drink it,’ he said, thrusting one of the mugs at me, and I reluctantly got up and sipped at the coffee, feeling it moving sluggishly through my system to wake me up. I still rested my head on his shoulder as we drank our coffee and watched Jeremy Kyle; it was a particularly harrowing episode about a woman who was engaged to a guy but had sex with his brother, his father, his sister, his dog, a whole bunch of people.

                They cut to an ad break right before “those all-important lie detector results” and I glanced up at Dex with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation.

                ‘...Dex?’ I asked quietly, playing with my mug but not drinking from it anymore.

                ‘Hmm?’

                ‘Can I ask you something?’

                He looked down at me and I knew he was going to say something smart like “you just did” but he must have changed his mind when he saw my expression because he carefully arranged his features to impassive and said, ‘Sure.’