By Any Other Name by Laura Jarratt

months and months and this feels so good.
    Freedom. In every cell.
    What stops me in the end is when someone changes the playlist and puts some dumb-ass boy band track on. I head towards the open French doors for air. Fraser follows and we meet on the terrace.
He’s holding a bottle of wine and swigging from it. When he passes it to me, I take a drink. It tastes vile, but I drink more anyway just because.
    He’s saying something, but my ears are still blocked from the music and I can’t hear him. It doesn’t matter. I can tell from his face that he wants us to go down the steps into
the garden. I nod and walk off, leaving him to follow and taking another swig of the wine, which now tastes of ‘to hell with everything sensible’. That’s a good taste, whatever
the wine is like.
    When we get to the bottom of the steps, he grabs me and pulls me close to him. I stare up into his face, part challenge and part encouragement.
    What do I feel now? Not sure . . .
    He bends his head. I focus on how good-looking he is. His lips touch mine.
    I feel . . . nothing.
    Nothing?
How come?
    Maybe it’s the wine.
    His fingertips are stroking up and down my arms. But they could be anybody’s. Not the hottest boy in the year’s. Nothing special. No electric charge across my skin.
    Maybe the punch was too lethal.
    But I can walk straight. I don’t feel drunk. Just distant from this, from him. What’s wrong? He’s gorgeous, isn’t he?
    He kisses me properly and I go through the motions puppet-like. I doubt he can tell. I think I fake it well enough.
    This is too, too weird. It wasn’t this way with Dan or any other boy I’ve kissed. How can I be left cold by a guy this good-looking? It doesn’t make sense. Maybe I’m in a
funny mood, maybe it’s the punch. But I’m not messing this up in case I change my mind later. With luck he thinks I’m just holding him off a little so he doesn’t get carried
away. When he pulls back to look at my face, he doesn’t have a clue that I was less into it than him.
    ‘You’re beautiful,’ he says and kisses me again. But his words do more to me than his mouth does.
    Now, with manufactured pop belching out of the speakers and his lips moving over mine, I know I’ll be glad when the evening is over and we go home. I need to figure out what’s going
on because I don’t get it at all.
    I make excuses to get him back inside – I need more punch, I’m thirsty. I drag him over to talk to his mates, then I run off with Gemma for a while and let her drone on about some
guy she fancies in the year above. I fake excitement and squeal along with her. Fraser follows and his hands are all over me, but my skin is still numb to his touch. So weird. I let him all but
grope me for a while, just so I can get a handle on how strange it is.
    There’s a vase in an alcove opposite us high up in the wall. It has a Chinese pattern and looks expensive, and it
is
beautiful. But it’s of no use. A decoration with no
substance. That’s what it feels like with Fraser. He’s pretty, but . . . there’s nothing more . . .
    I wish I could talk to Tasha right now. Maybe she could help me understand it. Hot is hot, right? Except now it seems like it’s not.
    When he takes me home later and kisses me goodnight, I’m glad to wave goodbye to him and close the door behind me so I can stop pretending.

S o it seems Fraser and I are an item. How did that happen? A week ago I might have wanted it. Now? I’d have to say not really.
    Maybe it’ll get better. Maybe I’ll feel different next time he touches me. Maybe I’m simply weirded out from all the freakiness of the past months.
    Maybe not.
    He texts me on Sunday, not loads but enough to show he’s definitely interested. On Monday at school, he makes for me on the way to registration and slips his arm round me in the corridor.
And suddenly everyone knows about us. Everyone is speaking like we’re together.
    So I guess we are together. It could be worse.