Chapter 1

Summer had been hard; hard to forget her, hard to move on. But the first week of uni completely helped change that. I was over her. I had forgotten her. Now, at uni, surrounded by new normal people, I could look at all the new normal attractive girls. I was saved.

My phone buzzed. She’d sent me a text:

_“Wanna talk? Tomorrow 9pm ok with you? Z”_

Z was Zoe. You wouldn’t believe the crap you get as a girl online, so Zoe went by the sexless handle ‘Z’. I’d teased her about Zed the gay biker in the movie Pulp Fiction a few times but she stuck with ‘Z’. And going to uni was supposed to be my escape from Zoe.

Christ, I’m making her sound like a monster, an abusive monster. Well it isn’t anything like that; nothing like that at all! Zoe is an angel. A very weird different angel, but an angel nonetheless.

A bit of back-story: Zoe and I were in sixth form together; sixth form is what we call the two years at school between high-school and uni in England. She was the frumpy quiet shy tiny girl hiding in the corner who never approached anybody, never talked, never got noticed. And if anyone tried to approach her she would have been rude and cold and uninterested. People were so not her thing.

Back when we were put together for our first team assignment she surprised everyone by approaching the teacher at the front and asking if she could work alone! There was a hush as she approached and asked, the whole class listening intently to see how it panned out. This couldn’t be personal since she didn’t even know me; it wasn’t me, it was her who had the problem. When the teacher gave us all a stern loud lecture on the importance of teamwork and communication I almost felt sorry for her.

It took at least half of that first assignment before she began to thaw. She was like Hermione Granger, which is a reference she’d appreciate because Zoe loves her fantasy books and Harry Potter is one of her favourites. We became friendly.

We never really _talked_, but we _chatted_ online. After the first term it became _all_ the time. We’d be sitting across a desk from each other, laptops open, chatting away without talking. Being computer science students, Zoe had developed her own chat web app called Zit. Actually, normal computer students don’t do that kind of thing: Zoe was an over-achiever. I think us two were the only users.

Online, Zoe was talkative; boy could she talk! She’d even make boring conversations interesting by play word games such as going the whole morning where every chat message was based on lines from a Beatles lyric or something.

_“I can’t believe its happened to me. I can’t conceive of any more misery. Netflix was down”_

I mean, how can you not fall in love with a girl like that?

Houston, we have a problem: boys and girls can’t ‘just’ be friends. One or the other always wants more. I wanted more. Beneath those frumpy clothes was actually a petite little pixie that enchanted me. She had a pretty little face hidden behind that boring boyish bowl-cut dirty-blonde hair. I fantasised about the rest of her, hidden beneath the frumpy baggy jumpers and jeans and sensible boots.

I lived for those moments when she would stretch. Every time our chat conversation petered out she would lean back in her chair, close her eyes and push her arms straight up behind her head, tugging on one wrist with the other hand to straighten her body out even more. And every time she did this I would get a glimpse at the hint of two tiny mounds in her woolie jumper, a reminder that there under all that unsexy garb was a girl, a real girl. Sometimes, despite the guilt, I’d deliberately engineer me sitting diagonally across from her and engineer extra many stretch pauses.

I was truly deeply in love with Zoe. Not just lusting after her body, but loving her mind, her conversation, her self. But I never ever did anything about it. Zoe oozed asexuality. She seemed completely utterly uninterested in both boys and girls, uninterested in relationships, uninterested in me in that way. She seemed to treat me only as a friend. We were, right under our classmates noses, secret best friends. I was her true friend. How could I betray that, risk losing that, by showing my feelings?

We never discussed it but I think she is somewhat autistic, or at least very definitely somewhere on the scale in that direction. Very high-functioning, though. She has a cracking sense of humour, can laugh _at_ and point out very perceptive things about _other_ people’s actions and motivations, and even blush. Its just that she’s completely lacking the social friendship warmth side that makes humans, well, human? How can you fall in love with someone whose mind works like a cross of Freud and Data from Star Trek? You can: I know because I did.

She never confirmed it but I think I was her _only_ friend. Not that, as I’ve explained, she seemed to need any friends; sometimes I got really depressed at the thought she didn’t even need me. I had been sure that when we went our separate ways she’d hardly even remember me. Was she really feeling any kind of connection to me like I felt for her?

And now, after a summer of abstinence, she’d sent me a text. Reaching out to me. Bursting the bubble of distance I had put between us. I had actually chosen _this_ particular uni _because_ she’d already told me which uni she was going to and I wanted to get away from her. That sounds mean but its a self-defense thing. I needed to meet and fall in love with a normal girl and have a normal relationship.

I wasn’t sure if I should answer. Perhaps I should just quietly never reply? I had just started uni, was staying in the uni halls of residence with the other freshers, surrounded by healthy normally-functioning girls with normal bodies with healthy dispositions to display them, and I was loving it. Admittedly loving it from afar – I hadn’t yet really made many friends, more just acquaintances in my hall, but it was early days and there were distinct possibilities…

Who was I kidding? I was still madly deeply in love with Zoe, the feelings welling up in me just from getting a single simple message, and tomorrow couldn’t come fast enough.

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Tomorrow came, 9 pm came. It came slowly. The waiting took forever. I sat in my room with my laptop open and my phone ready, not sure how Zoe would reach out to me. I opened the Zit webpage: it was still running, it seemed. Zoe had given it a makeover.

At 9pm sharp Zit dinged. Did I want to accept an incoming video call from Z? This was new. She’d obviously added video calls to Zit now. Damn I hadn’t expected that, and my room was a mess. My room was worse than a mess: it was a pigsty. Worse, _I_ was a mess. I was an scruffy unshaven mess. Oh well, not much to do. I sat on my bed with my laptop on my knees, determined to sit still and not show her any glimpses of discarded dirty laundry or used dishes and glasses. Glad she couldn’t smell the stink.

There was some fuzzy static animation and matrix knock-off special effect and then padlocks sliding across the screen and then it cleared to show Zoe sitting at her desk. Behind her you could see a normal student room just like any other. A tidy bed, a large pin-board covered in tidy organised notes and a cheesy poster of Ed Sheeran. The Ed Sheeran poster surprised me- I didn’t know she listened to any music made after we were born. If it had been a The Who or Abba poster I wouldn’t have been surprised at all. It just goes to show how you can think you know someone but, after two years of chatting online across rooms at school, you realise how little you know when you see the window into their mind that is their bedroom.

Except, was it really Zoe? How could this be Zoe? Her hair was longer, shoulder-length now and off her face, tucked back behind her ears. And her hair was … bright pink! And she was wearing a low pink tank top with string straps, showing her pale delicate perfect shoulders, half-hiding her brilliant white bra straps, showing her chest and the hint of cleavage. She was smiling nervously.

“What do you think?” she asked, bobbing her hair with her hands. Then she laughed “cat got your tongue? you like?”. Even the way she talked seemed different- more slang and trendy than her text conversations. And she was smiling. She was looking sexy. She was looking drop dead gorgeous. There wasn’t a hint of frump.

“Eh, yeah, wow! You look great! Really great, and, eh, different…” I stammered. My brain wasn’t moving fast enough to take it all in. She was wearing vivid pink lipstick too. I was captivated by the shallow corrugations on her neck. She had so much neck, such a slender long. I had never seen her show so much of skin. My heart was in danger of stopping.

“Going to a manga convention?” I asked incredulously; she didn’t like manga, but the look really put me in mind of those naughty furry porn you find online. If she’d had cat ears and a bushy tail it could have been very, how show we say, naughty?

“Hah, me at a manga convention? Yeah right”. It was weird to speak to Zoe, to have a normal conversation. We’d spent two years typing text messages when sitting opposite each other; we’d hardly ever spoken out loud before. And never a video call; in fact, never any kind of contact outside school hours before either.

I tried to steer away from manga, wanting to steer well clear of mentioning anything about furry porn. So somehow we got chatting about other conventions and discussing what we’d dress as for a Discworld convention. I suggested she dress up as Angua, the foxy werewolf. Oh dear, subconciously was I able to get her new sexy look out of my mind? Luckily her eyes twinkled. I was baiting her. We were edging towards one of her favourite topics, namely how ridiculous the girls armour is in fantasy books films and games. Zoe had always joked about starting a petition against Game of Thrones called ‘Jerkins not merkins’.

She was interested to put me on the spot and find out what I’d go as. This wasn’t fair on two counts- firstly, usually she did most of the talking in our conversations, and, secondly, its far easier to be witty when you have time to think about it before typing a reply. Luckily inspiration struct and I told her I’d need her help because I was going in a two-person costume like a pantomime horse, except as The Luggage. I don’t know where it came from but the thought of being behind her in a confined box, just our legs sticking out the bottom, was intoxicating. The new sexy Zoe was having that kind of effect on me, making all my thoughts circle back to her body.

There was a pause in the conversation and she stretched back, one hand tugging on the other to extend her body, and I saw a tantalizing flash of midriff at the bottom of the screen which caught my eye and made me miss her breasts.

Zoe then launched into a long monologue on her course and the first assignments and it was really Zoe, the same old Zoe, again. She asked me about my course and we fell back into our old routine of chatting about everything and saying nothing, and I almost forgot her hair was pink.

And then it happened: she got up to get something to show me. I forget what it was she was going to show me. All I remember is that when she got up I saw the rest of her body for the first time ever. Her tank top barely covered her tiny little breasts. It was more an over-bra than a top. I saw her chest in profile as she got up and turned. There was a hint of nipples fighting the fabric and winning. Her flat little tummy was a bit visible in the small gap between the bottom of her top and the top of her bottoms. She was just wearing soft white hello-kitty knickers and nothing else! There was a hello-kitty logo right on the front of her skimpy white cotton knickers. They were tight and yet baggy at the same time. It drew my attention like a moth to a lamp. There might even have been the hint of a camel toe. I might have exaggerated on that point as I recollected again and again later.

Her hips were small and her legs so skinny and toned and pale that they looked long. She was everything I had ever dreamed she might be, only better and more petite. That was what had always been under those boring clothes all this time and now I had glimpsed it and I couldn’t un-see it.

She sat back down, waving whatever she’d fetched at the camera quickly and started chatting again. I wasn’t listening. She paused, confused, frowning. Then a broad dawning smile spread across that tiny little pink lipstick pucker mouth and she berated me “my face is up here!”. To add emphasis she brought her hands up and overtly rearranged her top, pressing her breasts together slightly, making a slight shadowy hint of valley between them. And as quickly as the playful display had started it was over and the monologue was back and I tried to pay attention.

It was getting late, really late. We’d been talking for hours but we hadn’t said anything important.

There was a pause when some meaningless thread of discussion evaporated and she looked a bit pensive. She didn’t stretch; instead, she bowed her shoulders forward, inwards, hunched. “Are you making any friends?” she asked meekly.

That was a big change of subject. We hadn’t talked about our social lives at all. So I told her all about my flat and all the people in it. It was my turn to talk until there was nothing left to describe. Finally, done, I asked back “You? You making friends too?”.

She looked sad. This was proof of just how crap my own social skills were. Who was I to imagine she had some slight diagnosis? Where was I on the social spectrum myself? I hadn’t really thought through about why she might call me before. I hadn’t thought of the old Zoe as having social needs. It was obvious now: Zoe was lonely. It was written all over her face.

She told me it wasn’t as easy as she’d imagined it was going to be, that she was only being invited out with her new uni flat mates as an afterthought, that she really didn’t enjoy the bustle and crowdedness of the Student Union bar, and that she was quiet and invisible and it was all too overwhelming.

I had to stifle a laugh and ask how anyone with pink hair could possibly be invisible!? She giggled and cheered up a bit and explained that it was just a rinse and she’d wash it out before bed. Anyway, it was time for bed. We both had lectures in the morning and she had to go wash her hair. She ended by thanking me for the chat and saying it made her feel better, and that she really missed me.

Wait a sec, _Zoe missed me_!? There was a pause, neither of us wanting to hang up. And just at the moment we were inevitably about to part Zoe’s face suddenly lit up, as though it was a fresh idea: “Say, you wouldn’t like to come visit would you?”. Crikey. How about that? I agreed in a flash and she looked truly deeply happy for the first time that evening.

That night I had trouble sleeping. It wasn’t that I lay awake worrying that I couldn’t sleep, but rather it was morning before I noticed that I hadn’t slept, instead lustfully reliving Zoe’s sexy casual cartoonish appearance. Her petite build. That, for the first time ever, I’d seen her skin, her body, her real shape. Was her neck sensitive to kisses and, more importantly, did she have a birthmark on the inside of her thigh right up close to her groin or was I just imagining it? My fantasy became an engrossing day-dream being behind her like a pantomime horse in a tight little box, my hands exploring and caressing every inch of her, every crevice. My thoughts were all sexual and not really reflecting on the changed Zoe, the hint of social Zoe, that I had seen for the first time ever last night. It was morning and my day was wrecked.

When I got up I saw Zit was full of a long ream of text messages that Zoe had sent all through the night. I obviously wasn’t the only one not sleeping, although Zoe’s time had been more productive: she’d sent me a long list of urls to National Express bus timetables and suggested dates and times. It seems Zoe was all set on me arriving next Friday evening and stay until Sunday. I rushed off to lectures, dazed and tired.

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Chapter 2

Next Friday! Zoe planned for me to come next Friday. That was a long time to wait. The wait was killing me, but it was also a chance to sort things out mentally and to plan and prepare.

I started by doing some basic research online. Eh, that’s a coded way of saying I searched porn sites for girls that looked like the new-look Zoe. From my investigation, I think Zoe’s new look was what they call ‘emo’, but even after googling that I can’t quite work out what that involves exactly. It certainly only tangentially related to Ed Sheeran, whom she had a poster of on her bedroom wall. The old Zoe had only ever quoted Beetles and ABBA lyrics and stuff older than us, so I really didn’t know much about that side of her. Eventually I found a girl who looked approximately like Zoe, but in the end felt dirty touching myself when I was going to go visit the real Zoe. I didn’t think Zoe would like the idea of me masturbating over a look-alike, or surely not like the idea of me masturbating at all, and I somehow felt guilty cheating on Zoe because in my mind we were already going out with each other. We were serious. At least, in my head, _I_ was serious.

My porn addiction evaporated. It just felt so dirty every time my urge twitched. Like all lonely boys, I had always drifted online every quiet alone chance I got. Now instead I spent every minute of every day analyzing the new Zoe. Mostly, actually, I tried to make sense of how the new confident sexy fun social Zoe fitted with the aloof clever frumpy Zoe I’d known at sixth form. Was she this way with everyone now? Did she dress like this to lectures, to go out? Would she attract attention, suitors, competitors? I was insecure, unsure. I was scared. I’m ashamed to admit it but I felt much safer with the frumpy old Zoe that no other boy would ever even notice. The old Zoe that I had had to myself, to my own dreams. At sixth form I had been safe knowing no-one else would take her from me, even if I had never had the guts to take her myself.

That’s wrong. I’m not a prick. I would never ‘take her myself’. I’d ask her permission. Perhaps the reason that I never asked her out or met her outside school was because I’m such a useless passive unassertive man? It was so much safer to fantasize, to pretend, than to face reality and do something about it. But now the time for doing something about it was approaching fast.

Z sent me a few messages on Zit but they were all practical and unemotional, making sure she’d wait for the right bus and stuff like that. We didn’t really _chat_, not like we used to.

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Friday came. After lectures I rushed to my room, threw some clothes and a tooth-brush into a rucksack and ran for the bus station. I should have packed in advance, prepared, but I’m naturally disorganized and so I hadn’t. Zoe would have packed in advance – she was a planner, as attested by the tidy pinboard I’d seen when we video called and and the bus timetable planning she’d bombarded me with.

It was raining, a light drizzle. Its usually raining a light drizzle in England in the autumn. And the rest of the year too, for that matter. The rain ran in diagonal streaky torrents over the dirty bus windows, fuzzing the view out over the other motorway traffic as we sped towards Zoe. I was glad I wasn’t driving. I’ve passed my test, but haven’t got a car yet. Nobody has cars at uni: there just isn’t anywhere safe to park them. They’d be vandalized and broken into in no time if you tried to keep a car at uni. At least, that was the fear.

It took two hours total to get to Zoe’s town, with one change in between in our home-town. I had picked my uni precisely because it was on the other side of home from Zoe’s. What a dumb prick I’d been. Now I was sitting on the bus feeling really dumb.

There are two kinds of university in England, and you can tell the type from the name. If its called ‘Townname University’ then its probably an old established uni, like Oxford or Cambridge. If its called ‘University of Townname’ then its almost certainly a new pseudo-uni like the one I go to. These unis used to be called ‘polytechnics’ and rushed to change their names to ‘University of Townname’ when the rules changed in the 1990s or so. Zoe went to a proper Townname University uni.

The difference was startling. Whereas I studied in a grim tower-block with whitewashed cinterblock interiors the students nicknamed ‘Stalingrad’ on the outskirts of a grim industrial town, Zoe studied in a vibrant historic old uni in a historic old town. The uni had buildings scattered all around the town centre and they were old, grand, beautiful and _established_. When I got off the coach when it stopped in the town square there were bicycles and students everywhere. Zoe’s new look fitted right in.

Except Zoe didn’t fit right in. Zoe was waiting for me with her natural dirty-blonde hair, wearing a sensible shapeless long coat that almost touched the ground, sensible boots jutting at the bottom, under a small plain black umbrella. The long coat could have been hippy-like or grunge-like or anything else some-style-like. Except it wasn’t. The coat, the whole look, screamed ‘frump’. She didn’t look like a student, she looked like one of the other boring middle-aged people who had jobs cleaning uni buildings for minimum wage and who actually inhabited the town whilst the students flowed around them, ignoring them. It was the old Zoe. I was almost relieved, safe.

She smiled and nodded as I got of the bus. One hand was thrust firmly into a pocket and the other held up the umbrella. The relief at seeing the old Zoe kind of ebbed away as I got closer and closer. Instead, I got nervous. Was I supposed to embrace her? Kiss her? Or just hold her? What would I say?

Zoe solved my dilemma as I got really close. She didn’t say anything but turned and started to walk of as I fell into step beside her. She was glancing sideways at me, smiling, close, but not touching.

“You must be tired and hungry. What kind of food do you like? That Indian over there looks nice. Do you like Indian?”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to. Zoe was already walking us determinedly towards the restaurant and I was following, trying to lean closer to share a bit of protection from her umbrella.

The Indian restaurant was nice. It was Friday evening, and although we were quite early it wasn’t completely empty. The waiter looked at us a bit reluctantly- this wasn’t really a scruffy pauper kinda place. “A table for two?” he asked formally, his sneer betraying his professionalism. We shed our coats and the brolly but I clung to my rucksack nervously. No way was I leaving my bag by the door. The waiter took two menus and led us to a small table off to the side out the way anyway. On the table there was a small tea candle and a red rose. The waiter fumbled in his pocket. Zoe shrank back as he leaned across and lit the candle. He disappeared, leaving us with the menus to silently contemplate this new weird uncomfortable intimacy.

I looked around. There was a small red rose on a jar on every table. Looking closely, I saw it was plastic. But it was quite a realistic red rose. You could tell which tables were occupied by the lit candles twinkling wanly. But it was quite dark and the candles made it so you couldn’t really see much of the other diners. It was dead romantic. I wondered if Zoe had planned this.

Zoe looked different in the candlelight. All girls look beautiful in candlelight, but Zoe really glowed. Her hair, her natural dirty blond, came down to her shoulders and started to curve outwards at the bottom like a bell shape, dry and tidy and shiny. Her eyes sparkled and her face wore a small grin. I took a moment to check out what else she was wearing. She was wearing a woolie burgundy roll-neck jumper but it was noticeably tighter than she used to wear. It was tight enough to show that she had breasts. Small breasts but she was a small girl and she looked cute. She looked feminine. I looked up. She had been looking at me staring at her all the time. I blushed. We hadn’t said anything to each other for ages.

She picked up the menu and started leafing through it. I did the same as a bluff, not focusing on the pages as I wondered what Zoe was thinking of me. I was wearing scruffy student t-shirt and jeans. I wasn’t dressed up. I hadn’t made any effort. I felt really small.

The prices weren’t actually that scarey, not for a special occasion, although I wasn’t sure if rice and things were included. I hadn’t been to many restaurants before, and never had to settle the bill. I just ignored the prices, knowing I was prepared to bump against my overdraft if necessary if that was the price of getting Zoe into a romantic atmosphere.

Zoe asked me what I planned on ordering and I blurted out the safe usual chicken curry, too nervous to be adventurous and order anything I hadn’t tried before. Zoe started making suggestions and I accepted her guidance and asked her to order for me. She started a little gentle interrogation such as asking if I was used to spicy food and if I’d ever tasted ‘vindaloo’ or ‘phall-extra-hot’. I confessed that I hadn’t had much experience and she rattled off some more suggestions based on this new information. I looked over the top of my menu, looking at her face as she read her menu, admiring how sensible and serious she looked as she turned the pages back and forth, her eyes scanning up and down and her brow knit in concentration.

The waiter came back and took our order. Zoe confidently ordered for us both. It was a long complicated order and I began to wonder what exactly I had got into. And I noticed she flinched again when the waiter lent across to take her menu. It was dawning on me that Zoe didn’t like people too physically close. I’d spent two years with Zoe in sixth form and never ever seen any situation where anyone had ever lent in over her. She had always sat a bit apart from everyone. It kind of made sense. I was beginning to see and think of Zoe as much more of a delicate vulnerable person than I ever had before. I used to think of her as cold and hard and strong and distant. But now I realised how little I had paid attention to her, apart from trying to steal glimpses of boobs when she stretched.

“You look well” I said to break the silence. What I wanted to say was that Zoe looked beautiful, but I didn’t dare say that. I wouldn’t have been able to say that. I’d have just croaked something incomprehensible, the words getting stuck in my throat and not coming up properly.

She smiled and thanked me but she didn’t pay the compliment back. I guess the scruffy student look that I had deliberately chosen to be compatible with ‘emo’ had missed the mark by a mile. Oh well. But the ice was broken a little and, feeling braver, I asked her why her hair wasn’t pink. She giggled and I relaxed, the happiness and relief flooding over us. We were friendly again.

We talked about inconsequential things, such as had she ever been to this restaurant before. She hadn’t, and she pointed out it wasn’t fun to eat at restaurants alone. But she didn’t seem down as she said that, she just stated it as bland flat fact and moved the conversation on.

I noticed her right hand was on the on the table top, toying with the cutlery laid before her. I reached out tentatively to touch it. As I made contact she flinched, noticing my hand for the first time, and pulled her hand and her whole body back. My heart cried out in pain. I apologised, feeling stricken. I was going to get up, get my things and go but Zoe quickly lent back towards the table again, closer together again, and said it was her fault and that she was sorry. It didn’t make me feel much better and she didn’t put her hands back on the table, but our conversation resumed and swung back to inconsequential things again.

Rather than being served on the plate, the food was served in lots of small bowls placed all over the table wherever there was space, kept warm by a little fancy holders with tea candles underneath. The food was fantastic. There was a lot of it and we ate in silence, talking only to compliment the food and discuss the tastes. Only one dish was particularly spicy- Zoe had restrained herself but she’d ordered one thing especially for herself. We shared everything else. Zoe was trying to teach me the names of all the dishes and none of the pronunciations seemed to match any of the spellings I could remember from the menu. We ate slowly and we ate more than we should have and still there was some over. Zoe asked them to put the left-overs in cartons for us to take home.

As we got up to leave the restaurant I noticed Zoe was wearing a short pleated black mini-skirt and woolie black leggings. I watched her hips sway slightly, seductively, as I followed her to the door. But soon her sexy clothes were hidden under her shapeless dull frumpy long coat again and we headed out. It was dusk out, still too early on a Friday evening to be boisterous on the streets. It’d stopped raining and Zoe carried the closed umbrella on her far side away from me, but the hand nearest me was dug firmly into her coat pocket again. I walked as close beside her as I dared, keeping the smelly little carrier bag of left-overs as far away from our clothes as I could as she led me through the meandering backstreets towards her dorm.

Zoe’s hall of residence was a big old grand red-brick building not too far from the town centre. You could tell it was student accommodation because, apart from the overflowing bicycle parking out front, it was plastered in bold posters for various activities and arts groups and exhibitions. The door needed a pass card to get through but someone had wedged it open so we marched through unhindered. No need to sign me in or anything like that. It was noisy and full of life. As we trudged up the broad spiral staircase towards Zoe’s floor there was a constant stream of students coming down to head out for a night on the town. Nobody looked at us. First we went to the kitchenette on her floor to deposit the food, which was going to smell the kitchen out and give everyone the munchies when they got home after the pub. Then Zoe led me down a long corridor, zag zagging between all the open doors with eyes firmly forward, not looking into all the open student rooms. People and music and noise and chatter was everywhere. I was beginning to suspect this was a little version of hell for Zoe. Nobody paid us any attention.

Zoe’s room was almost at the end. Her’s was almost the only closed door. None of her neighbours looked up. We were invisible. Zoe opened her door and ushered me in. She turned and closed the door quickly behind us, shutting out the noise and bustle. She almost sank back into the door, her eyes almost closed. She was panting.

She caught her breath and looked at me. “What do you think?” she asked with a nervous edge to her voice. She was taking her coat off, but I don’t think she was meaning me to compliment her appearance: I think she wanted to know what I thought of her room. I didn’t dare joke, so I looked around. It was a tiny student room like all the others. It was very neat and tidy. There was a study desk and a bed and a wardrobe and a small sink with a mirror and a window with the bland brown curtains firmly drawn. It was narrow. There was no rubbish, no discarded clothes, no books on the desk, no ornaments. There was little on the wall apart from a pinboard and the Ed Sheeran portrait. Honestly, the room didn’t make me think nice thoughts at all – it was a cell.

I put down my rucksack and took a pace forward into the room. English people don’t take shoes off indoors, even if there’s carpet. I’d see my guilty wet footprints when I turned around, but right now I was focusing on the Sheeran poster. It wasn’t a poster: it was a proper painting.

“I didn’t know you liked Ed Sheeran!” I exclaimed a bit too excitedly. Honestly, I wasn’t a fan myself and I was just saying it to get Zoe talking and to find out what else she liked and how much else I’d never known. So her answer surprised me; she said firmly “I don’t.”

She was silent in thought, thinking pros and cons of whether to tell me the back story or not. You could see her thinking, her eyes alternating darting between top left and top right as though conferring with angels sitting on each shoulder.

“My final school Art project theme was ‘contemporary celebrity’. And I knew Sarah Mills was going to paint a copy that exact photo of Ed Sheeran- she had a fucking big mouth, that bitch did, you see. Everyone knew what she going to paint. Ever had a nemesis? My nemesis was Sarah Mills and she made my whole high-school a living fucking hell for me. So I secretly painted the exact same picture of Ed Sheeran, knowing I’d do it _so_ much better. How could any examiner give her an A when they also examined _my_ picture and gave _me_ an A, see? I screwed her grades right up and she never knew until the exhibition at the end. Revenge served cold.”

There was a real bitter determinedness in Zoe’s voice. Every swearword, so uncharacteristic of Zoe, so foreign to hear her say, had been said with extra emphasis.

I didn’t know what to say. We just stared at each other. To fill the silence she said quietly, waveringly, under her breath “So now you know I’m a cruel vindictive bitch.” She looked crushed. Her watery eyes were staring into mine, trying to read my face, read my reaction. Suddenly she lunged forward, weaving around me and clambered over her bed, keeping her boots off the covers as she wrenched and wrestled the big painting off the wall. She backed it out past me, turned, opened the door and heaved it into the corridor. It cartwheeled and a frame corner struck the wall opposite. The frame shuddered and the painting made a loud bang like a struck drum that echoed down the corridor. There was a deafening silence as everyone in the hall hushed to see what the fight was about. Even people playing music stopped playing it. Deafening silence. I couldn’t see into the hall but I could tell everyone was still. All I could see was a distraught Zoe holding the door open, her chest rising and falling as she tried to bring her hyperventilation under control.

After a few seconds a girl gingerly put her head around our still-open door. “Everything ok?” she asked nervously. There was hustling behind her as others shuffled along the corridor towards us. I could her whispered words like “mad” and “physco” and “bitch”.

Zoe didn’t answer. My voice didn’t work either. I couldn’t think of anything to say nor anything to do. We just stood there, both staring at the painting.

“Oh, cool, Ed Sheeran! Don’t you want it? Only I _love_ Ed Sheeran!” another girl was righting the painting, which seemed miraculously undamaged. I don’t know if she was completely tone-deaf or if this was an extremely clever way to defuse the tension. “Oooh, its a reeeaaall painting! Its _soooo_ cool! Are you really throwing this away? He’s _sooooo_ lush!” and she picked the painting up and held it up so everyone in the corridor could see it. There was a general murmur of approval.

“Please, keep it if you want. I don’t want it any more”. Zoe shut the door firmly again. A part of me wanted to rush out and rescue it, recover it, knowing that it was slipping away and Zoe would never ever get it back if I didn’t rush out and get it immediately. But I couldn’t move.

Zoe kicked off her boots by the door and walked around me and sat down on the bed. I realised I hadn’t taken my trainers off, and noticed the wet footprints I’d left on the carpet. Suddenly I felt guilty about that, almost forgetting the painting. I took my shoes off too and sat down next to Zoe, who was staring dead ahead, lost. Our hips touched. Zoe shuffled slightly away from me, giving me room. I raised my arm to put it around her, to comfort her, and she shrunk away from me like she had in the restaurant. I didn’t force it. I just sat next to her, feeling relieved that we were close even if we weren’t touching. I wanted to support her, comfort her, but I didn’t actually know what to do and Zoe was clearly not wanting any physical contact with anyone.

Suddenly I said “It was very well done. You are really good at art. Did you get an A?”. Zoe half laughed and half choked and seemed a bit happier. I ducked down to bring our heads level, our eyes level. See seemed to be smiling slightly, like she was putting on a brave face. “You should do another painting. I’d like one of your paintings. There, that’s my Christmas present sorted” I added. She quarter choked and three quarters laughed and her shoulders galloped a bit. I almost put my arm around her again.

After a few moments of comfortable non-contact closeness Zoe sniffed back her tears. Then she sniffed again. Then she sniffed in my direction. “Long journey? You’ll feel fresher if you take a quick shower. And I have to do my hair!”. Zoe was suddenly in organisating-everything mode and thrusting a clean towel into my hand she directed me to the toilets and shower rooms along her corridor.

I showered alone. I showered quickly but I showered thoroughly. I wanted to be really clean. At least I’d taken my wash-kit and a clean pair of underpants from my rucksack. I kicked myself for not shaving before as there were no mirror over the sink in the shower room. I was just glad it was a lockable room with a single shower – I was beginning to suspect this was an all-girls floor or hall and communal ablutions would have been dead awkward.

Poking my head out the door I saw the corridor was all-clear and I made a dash for Zoe’s room. I heard some wolf-whistles and general excited shrieking from the open doors that I passed- I was dressed but I was carrying a bath towel so my mission was obvious. I neither saw nor heard any signs of any other boys. This really could be an all-girls hall. Were boys allowed to visit? At least Zoe hadn’t locked her door and I slipped safely back in.

At first I didn’t see Zoe. She was crouching down on the floor at the foot of the wardrobe with my rucksack. She was still wearing the black pleated mini-skirt and black woolly tights. She had taken off her tight maroon turtle-neck sweater, revealing a bright blue tank top. It wasn’t as skimpy as she’d had on when we’d video-called but it was still a scanty tank top. And her hair was a matching blue! She must have just dyed it while I was in the shower! It wasn’t a thorough job, more like blue highlights, and her hair was quite straggly and wet, but it was beautiful!

“I’ve made space for your clothes here in the bottom draw” she explained without pausing. She was emptying my rucksack. Wait, she _had_ emptied my rucksack. She was feeling around in the bottom to pick up anything she’d missed.

Suddenly she stopped dead. Very slowly, the rucksack fell from her grip, crumpling and falling away from the arm inside it leaving that arm exposed, the hand gripping something. Oh my god. Zoe was holding something. It was what I thought it was. My heart sank. Fuck goddammit fuck!

“What is this?” Zoe’s voice was sharp as a knife. She sounded angry. She looked up at me. “What the _fuck_ is this? Why did you bring condoms? Is that what you think this is? You think you’re going to poke me?”

Fuck. How the hell was I going to back-pedal this?

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Chapter 3

Zoe breathed out, frustrated. “Jesus, boys are so fucking predictable” she mumbled.

She held them up, poised between thumb and forefinger, examining them critically from all angles. With a slight flick she dropped one end of the roll and it unwound becoming a string of them. She giggled.

“Are these _all_ for me?” the anger in her voice ebbing and bemusement entering as absurdity of the situation started to dawn.

All strength was gone. “There’s never been anyone else” I said quietly. I sat back softly on the bed, my eyes looking down at my hands. I heard her get up, the soft pad of her feet on the carpet and the flicker of her shadow crossing and then the gentle sinking of the bed beside me registering as she came sat beside me.

“We need to talk” she said quietly. There was no anger in her voice. “Look at me” there was a pleading in her voice now.

I looked up and around at her. Zoe was sitting cross legged on the bed facing me. She looked more concerned than worried. She looked serious. I knew I was going to lay everything bare for her, no hiding, no excuses, no more avoiding things.

“I’m sorry about the condoms” I croaked.

She waved her hand away dismissively.

“So, there’s never been anyone else?” she encouraged.

“I love you!” I blurted out despondently. Zoe’s eyes flared wide in shock. There was a pause, the silence so deafening I began to focus on the banal sounds of others in rooms and corridors.

“Love is a strong word” Zoe whispered meekly; “Are you sure you mean ‘love’?”

I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. I looked down into my hands again to hide it. It was like the whole illusion was falling away, and now I had exposed my bare heart to Zoe I was resigned to the pending rejection.

“Its okay” she said quietly, comfortingly. I looked up at her again, my vision blurred by the suppressed tears. “I like you too” she whispered. There were tears in her eyes too now. We stared at each other. Smiles were creeping into our faces, curling the corners of our mouths. I leaned in to kiss her.

She shrunk back. “This isn’t going to work!” she wailed, distraught. I had forgotten her reaction to be touched. She looked trapped, crouching in the furthest corner of the bed with me between her and the door.

I moved away from her so we were as apart as could be and still sitting on the same bed. “Sorry” I apologised; “We _can_ make this work”.

She relaxed. “I don’t think so” she said resignedly, staring down into nothingness. “I have … problems. This isn’t going to work”.

“We can work this out. What kind of problems?” I was getting into problem solving mode now, seeing things from the third-person abstract, which is a kind of defensive mechanism I have when there are too much emotions floating around.

“I … don’t like people touching me” she said. Right, I’d noticed that. Finally, after two years of friendship, I’d noticed that.

“Any other problems?” my mind was full analysis-mode now.

“No, but that’s a pretty big problem!” Zoe was getting animated a bit now.

“Is _anyone_ allowed to touch you, Zoe?” the problem part of my brain treating this like it was a programming exercise.

“Eh, my parents, and, eh, my sister…” Zoe trailed off. I filed the fact that she had parents and a sister away for future reference.

“That’s a pretty short list” I said and whistled. “So what does it take to get on this list?”

“Well, loving me is a good start!” Zoe was almost bouncy again. We smiled weakly at each other again.

I took a deep breath. “Zoe, can we be boyfriend girlfriend?”. She nodded enthusiastically, her smile widening and her eyes twinkling.

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Just then there was a knock on our door. Outside in the corridor the noise was rising. It was Friday night and people were off to the night clubs. Zoe called out “come in!”.

The door opened a bit and the girl who had checked on Zoe before during the Painting Throwing Incident looked in. “Zoe, eh,…” she looked from Zoe to me, unsure “I’m sorry, we haven’t been introduced!”

I wasn’t looking at Zoe but I knew she was rolling her eyes. “Gemma, this is Twain.” Gemma and I were looking at Zoe now. Zoe pointed at Gemma “neighbour” and then at me “boyfriend”.

“Twain? That’s an interesting name” Gemma beamed. Now she’d recovered from the strange introductions she returned to her mission “Zoe and Twain, would you like to join us down the student union? Lots of us are going”. I think it was a genuine invitation. There was a cheerful meaning-well kind of feeling about Gemma.

Zoe shrunk even further into the corner of the bed, if that were possible. As Gemma had asked I’d been interested and hopeful, but one glance at Zoe confirmed my suspicions. Zoe couldn’t stand crowds. Friday night at the student union club was going to be torture for her. “Thanks, but I think we’ll stay in tonight. Another time, perhaps?”

Gemma looked from me back to Zoe and then her eyes settled on the floor in front of her. Her eyes dilated in shock. She giggled embarrassed “yes, I can see you two have _a lot_ of catching up to do!” and she blushed heavily. Then she gently closed the door and we could her uncontrolled giggling fit from the corridor immediately beyond the door.

Zoe looked stunned and hurt. “What’s so funny?” she demanded. “Why is everyone always laughing at me?”

“Sssh sssh sssh” I was laughing too. “Look!” I said, pointing at the floor where Gemma had stared just moments before. There was a long string of condoms. “Gemma thinks we have a _lot_ of catching up to do!”. It was so funny Zoe ended up rolling around on the bed grabbing her sides. We laughed for ages.

“So where do I sleep?” I bravely asked.

“On my camp bed” Zoe replied and hopped off the bed and started pulling stuff out from underneath. Mostly it was carefully labelled plastic tubs and boxes with lids. She carefully took out a large keyboard and laid it gently on the bed. Then bending back to her work, she continued excavating. Soon she had extricated a small folding camp bed, the kind with a taunt cover so no mattress is required. She deftly assembled it with just a few shakes and clicks. Then she started putting all the boxes back.

“I didn’t know you played” I said impressed. I used to play, and even had a cheap little keyboard at home but I hadn’t touched it in years. I could see this was an expensive model, mostly by its simple clean lines and lack of buttons. It was full piano size.

“For being my boyfriend, you sure don’t know much!” she giggled. She went to put it back but I couldn’t resist. I leaned towards her and, careful not to touch her, gently tugged the keyboard back onto the bed. A quiet tug-of-war ensued and Zoe quickly relented.

“Will you play for me?” I couldn’t resist asking.

Zoe looked unsure, but also excited. She wanted to play. “I don’t normally play for others” she explained.

“But I _am_ your boyfriend” I pleaded.

And she didn’t take much convincing. She carried the keyboard over to the desk and plonked it down and fiddled around plugging it in. Then she sat, poised, ready to play. “Any requests?” she asked sweetly.

“Lay all your love on me?” was the first silly thing to come to mind. I know she loves Abba.

Zoe broke down in giggles again. “Too easy!”. And then she played.

Boy could she play. And sing too. She didn’t have any notes or anything in front of her. She just played and sung. It was really really good. Her voice was so perfect; slightly deep and husky and very very sexy and perfect for belting out power ballads and giving me goose bumps all over.

She then moved on to a string of motown classics. I recognised them all, even if I couldn’t name them. When she played and sung Stevie Wonder songs she made them her own. It was magical. She has a gift.

It was getting late. Zoe got up and stretched. I instinctively stared at her boobs in her little blue tank top. “Do you play?” she gestured towards the keyboard.

“Eh no, not any more” I said nervously, scared she’d try and get me to play. She didn’t push it. I had only ever plunked around, whereas Zoe had mastered it. Zoe could have been professional.

We went brushed our teeth and stuff together. It was, as I suspected, a girls floor. We saw nobody; presumably everybody really had gone down the student union. It was getting late so we prepared my camp bed for the night. Zoe had some fresh sheets and a blanket for me too.

I could see Zoe was conflicted about where to place the camp bed. Initially she put it against the far wall so we could walk between it and her bed. Then she moved it to be beside her bed. Then she moved it back apart. Finally she moved it back partway towards her bed so there was just enough space to get between them if you could walk like an Egyptian. It seemed an impractical compromise but I was glad it was as close as it was. I knew we weren’t going to be sharing a bed.

Zoe picked up the string of condoms and put them on the desk. “We won’t be needing these! No poking on the first date! I’m not that kind of girl” and she giggled.

Zoe organised it so we turned the lights out before we changed for bed and I had to advert my eyes too. With the lights off there was still a bright glow peeping around the curtains from the street lights immediately outside the window. We laid beside each other on our separate beds. Despite the separation I felt we were really close.

“No point asking for a good night kiss?” I asked hopefully.

“Nice try!” Zoe snorted. I heard her shuffling around on the bed and then saw her small round angelic face peeping over the edge. Then, in a quieter less certain voice “Twain, I’m scared this won’t work”.

“I love you. We’ll make this work” I felt strong and certain about it. “I’ve waited two years, I’m not giving up now!”

Zoe smiled. I could see just enough in the dim light from the street-lamp outside to see her smiling wanly. She was putting a brave face on things.

————————

I awoke quiet early. A lot to think about. I sat up on the camping bed and looked across at Zoe, who was sleeping peacefully on the bed beside mine. Her face was so perfect. Her faintly-blue tinged hair was tucked back behind her ear. I don’t know how long I studied her. Eventually, perhaps feeling my stare, she gently opened her eyes. Then she smiled. I grinned back.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to stare like a perv” I said apologetically.

“That is why I’m wearing a bra to bed” she replied cryptically. Did she think I was hoping she’d exposed herself? Actually, had been hoping for a glimpse of something, anything really. Yeah I was a bit of a perv. But she was my girlfriend, so that makes it all right, right?

Zoe sat upright in bed, her torso twisted to face me. Her duvet fell from her, baring her chest and bra. She closed her eyes and stretched. I couldn’t believe the sight. “Oops” she said quietly, seductively. My eyes snapped up to her face. She was looking right at me, a mischievous grin on her face. “This is for being a good boy all night” she giggled. Then she slipped out of bed and wriggled between our beds to reach the desk chair where she’d deposited her clothes. I couldn’t help but stare at her, drinking in the delicate legs and tight little bottom as she bent over. I searched in vain for the mole on her inner thigh.

Zoe wriggled into her tights pulled down her tank top and pulled up her skirt. She looked back at me “come on, time to get up! Aren’t you hungry?”.

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It was later than I’d thought. Now Zoe had mentioned it, yes I was hungry. Out in the hall lots of doors were open again and people were milling around, having recovered from their night clubbing rather better and sooner than we had recovered from our night in.

We took turns going to the toilets; Zoe thought it best she stand guard while I was in there, in case scared another girl going in there in only partially dressed. Then it was Zoe’s turn.

I was alone in the corridor now. Gemma sauntered over. “Sleep well?” she asked.

“Yeah” I said sheepishly.

“I didn’t know Zoe had a boyfriend” she said playfully. I could tell she was intrigued. “You’re not supposed to stay the night, you know…” she was almost flirting. She laughed at my discomfort. “Its okay, nobody will say anything.”

Just then Zoe came out of the toilets. She was beaming. She wasn’t really registering that I was being interrogated. Then she noticed that Gemma was standing there rather than passing through.

“Wow Zoe, nice to see you happy!” Gemma said like she meant it. “And wow I like the new look!”. Gemma looked her up and down appraisingly. “So this is what you’ve been hiding eh girl?” she finished with a big smile. She started to reach a hand out towards Zoe’s hair, as though to inspect it, but pulled back. She must have learned the no-touching rule already. I could tell that Gemma was trying to be a good neighbour and include everybody.

“Morning Gemma, good party last night?” Zoe asked conversationally.

Gemma warmed to the change of subject “just the usual student union, you know. Not many new faces. I think there’s a couple of boys I might like…” and so it went on and I tuned it out. I glanced up and down the corridor. There were lots of girls around. Pretty girls. And strangely I didn’t really have any urges to look at any of them. Finally, at long last, I had the girl I wanted and she was right here beside me.

After a while Zoe made our excuses and we headed off. We skipped down the spiral staircase to the street and went in search of a little cafe. The refectory in the halls of residence weren’t open to non-students and weren’t much good anyway, Zoe explained. She seemed to know her way around. She led me to a small cafe, the kind you’ve seen in the Monty Python Spam sketch; what we call a ‘greasy spoon’. The cooked breakfast was great. We sat across from one-another on a small side table.

“No rose” I pointed to the condiments in the centre of the table. Zoe smiled warmly, reminiscing our romantic dinner.

“Gemma likes you” I said, changing the conversation.

“You think so?” Zoe seemed surprised. Surprised by my sudden change in direction, perhaps, but also surprised by my opinion. “I think its just her goody-two-shoes mother instinct. She thinks I’m a charity case”. Well, that was that; I was acutely aware of how perceptive Zoe usually was. Although, thinking about it, she’d never picked up that I love her right? Perhaps Zoe missed a lot and I just believed she was always right?

Zoe must have seen my distant stare as my mind worked; she must have wondered what I was thinking about. “She likes you though” Zoe added, a smirk on her face. “‘Twain is such an interesting name’” she said in a very accurate impersonation of Gemma’s high-pitched voice. And back in her own voice “You’re not going to dump me already, are you? Stay tonight in _her_ room?”.

I blushed. Zoe stifled a laugh. “Gotcha!” she chortled. I blushed more.

————————

After breakfast we strolled around town a bit. The weather was okay – not that warm, but sun breaking through the clouds sometimes; quite okay by English standards – and we wandered aimlessly around the park, doing several laps.

Of course our main subject was _us_. We were a new couple. People witnessing us walking would probably guess we were a couple even though we didn’t hold hands. Zoe was really concerned that her Touching Problem, as she called it, was going to scare me off. I wanted to know all about how her parents and sister could touch her. We decided that we’d have to build up slowly and gently. She pointed out that if I just grabbed her and held her she couldn’t exactly get away, but I didn’t want to hurt her. That seemed to be confronting fears a bit too directly.

And then we started talking about family. I had no idea she had a sister! I had no idea she had parents, for that matter, but most people do. But apparently Zoe’s sister Becky is just a year older and is Zoe’s best friend. Becky doesn’t study at uni, but works in an office back in our home town. She visits most weekends, sometimes staying. In fact, Becky was planning to come this weekend but Zoe had cancelled her on my account. Becky was going to be excited to hear all about me, but Zoe was nervous to announce it at home because what would her parents think when they found out I’d slept in her room? And so on. I started to get a mental model of the kind of person Becky was.

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We went to another cafe for lunch, this one a bit more clean, tidy and sandwich-bar -like. The menu was nice but the portions small. It was fun watching Zoe demolish a baguette, fitting almost the whole girth into her mouth. I swear there was a knowing twinkle in her eye. Hey, its enchanting watching the girl you love eat!

Then it darkened outside. Zoe peered out and sighed. “Looks like we’re stuck here a while”. She shrugged.

“Its just a bit of drizzle” I said, ready to brave it and run back to the halls. Zoe rolled her eyes and twiddled her hair. Ah, yes. That was the kind of hair colouring that only lasts until the next rinse…

We went back to the counter and ordered some coffee and cookies.

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It was mid-afternoon by the time we got back to Zoe’s room. We were in a good mood, but quite tired. Zoe zonked down on the bed. “A nap?” she asked hopefully. I was relieved. The last twenty four hours had been really emotionally intensive and my brain was just about to melt. I collapsed on the camp bed.

Zoe rolled over to the edge again. Because of the height difference between the beds I could only see her if she peeked over the edge.

She looked pensive. “Ready?” she asked. Ready for what? I asked her. “Ready to start touching” she said quietly.

Slowly, very slowly, she reached out her hand. I reached out towards her too. We looked like she was going to flinch but she didn’t, holding out a quivering hand. I very slowly just touched the tips of her fingers with the tips of mine, like Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam.

After a few seconds she dropped her hand. But she looked elated. “Thanks” she mouthed quietly. Then she rolled back onto her bed, disappearing, and left me to my thoughts. Quickly we fell asleep.

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That evening we went and ate the leftovers in the kitchen. The whole kitchenette smelled invitingly of curry. People were sniffing and looking around. They hadn’t traced the smell back to Zoe’s cupboard yet. Zoe was a bit irritated that she hadn’t thought to put the cartons in the fridge after they’d cooled enough last night. We figured the best way to dispose of the evidence was to eat it anyway. There was really quite a lot, enough for two. We had really over-ordered the night before. We warmed it all in the microwave and demolished it.

Gemma caught us. She was with the girl who had taken the Ed Sheeran painting. That girl was called Rachel. I began to suspect that Rachel’s bomb defusing last night was social smarts and not obliviousness. Rachel and Gemma sat down beside us on the small dining table in the kitchen and started eating their own meals – Gemma an impressively healthy salad she’d prepared and Rachel a cup-a-soup. Zoe excused herself to go powder her nose. Gemma got up and went after her. It was like girls going to the toilet together at pubs.

Rachel looked across at me. “I’ve hung the painting on my wall for safe keeping. She can have it back any time. But I really like it. I’m guessing she painted it herself, didn’t she?” it was a conspiratorial whisper.

“Thanks. I was a bit worried about that. Good that you like it. Yeah, Zoe painted it” I replied quietly. Rachel beamed.

That evening we stayed in too. Gemma did knock and invite us ‘two love birds’ out, but wasn’t surprised when we declined. Her eye scanned the room, probably looking for the condoms. Perhaps when she couldn’t find them she imagined we’d already used them all? She was perhaps a bit puzzled by the camp bed arrangement though.

Zoe turned her computer around on her desk so we could sit side by side at the foot of her bed. She asked me what we wanted to watch, and after some negotiation she searched youtube for the BBC dramatisation of Pride and Prejudice. Its the best one, apparently. Zoe delighted in telling me that I’d love the view of ‘BBC corset drama’ and that I could learn a lot about relationships that were verbal and no-touching-allowed!

We actually sat quite close. Almost touching. We had a big bag of chips open in front of us. It was movie night.

One thing the BBC dramatisations are is _long_. After three episodes we weren’t half way in and it was bedtime. It was strange; I’d never watched much romcom before but watching it with Zoe beside me was a whole new experience.

We showered before bed. Luckily everyone else seemed to be out down the student union again. Getting into bed was a repeat of the night before although Zoe didn’t ask me look away. I kind of avoided staring too overtly though. On the one hand our relationship was going slowly, and on the other it felt like it was going almost too fast. And then I caught Zoe staring intently as I changed. “Turnabout is fair play” she giggled. I turned about on the spot and asked her if the view was fair. She threw a pillow at me.

That night we touched hands briefly again to say goodnight.

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Chapter 4

Zoe pushed herself up off my chest, her sweaty exhausted body quivering with exertion. Her torso arched away from me and she threw her head back, running her hands through her pink hair, her knuckles swept along like turbulence in a raging river. She stared down at into my face again, lust filling her tired eyes as her brow knotted and her mouth panted ‘oh oh oh’ in rhythm with her bucking hips. Her large perfectly round breasts bounced and her chest heaved and her sweat glistened on her lithe bronzed body. Her hands caressed down her own shoulders to her big pert nipples and started playing with them, tweaking and pulling and twisting. Other hands ran gently over my face, tracing the contour of my cheek and jaw. My nose itched. I needed to scratch my nose. I was on top of Zoe, pumping into her, feeling the heat rise from her chest, watching her blonde hair blow in the breeze. My hand reached up and scratched my nose. The sun was in my eyes. Slowly I began to wake.

Zoe’s face was poking over the edge, grinning at me from her bed beside and above me. Her eye lashes fluttered, her big doe eyes greeting me warmly. Her blonde hair had a hint of blue in it. “Good morning, Twain” she said quietly, wide awake “Have you slept well?”

My mind was full of panic; had I said anything out loud, was I panting, bucking, sweating, ejaculating? Did she see my erection? I patted down my covers, trying to check everything was discrete and in order. I could feel the heat in my cheeks. My body was sweaty. Nothing but my face and arms seemed to be exposed. I was scared, but had no immediate proof I’d been rumbled. Until:

“You look pleased to see me” Zoe’s eyes looked at me playfully, then glanced back down at my groin. I looked up. It was very obvious. I was already as red as could be and I couldn’t get any redder, but I could feel the embarrassment notch up to maximum inside my head. Zoe giggled. Did she know boys got that way most mornings? Did she suspect that this morning it was mostly caused by a healthy dose of vivid Zoe dreaming? “Eh, Twain, in that dream of yours, do we have _any_ condoms left?”

Leaving me flustered, Zoe rolled over out of sight. Then just her arm reappeared, gracefully unfolding over the side of the bed like the neck of a swan and beckoning me with a rolling index finger “come up here for a bit Twain”

I sat up gingerly, embarrassment still flooding my mind. Zoe had moved right over, clearing a space for me on her narrow little bed. I carefully hopped from my bed to hers, keeping my legs bent in the sitting position so as not to stand up and expose the extent of my erection. I quickly got under her duvet with her. She was pressed against the wall on the far side of her bed, occupying as tiny a sliver of space as its possible to occupy, and we weren’t touching. All I could see was her face, poking out of the top of the duvet, smiling mischievously at me. There was a few seconds of silence, our eyes scanning each other, trying to gauge each other’s intent.

“How do you want to lay?” I asked.

“Stay still and I’ll come to you” she instructed. Then she gently lent over towards me and, without any part of her torso touching mine, reached out her hand towards me. She slowly traced down the side of my face, from my eyes down my jaw to my chin. It was a familiar sensation. It was just like in my dream! Had Zoe been caressing me when I slept? Her eyes were smouldering.

“I want to kiss you” I said weakly.

kiss you” I said weakly.

“I want to kiss you too Twain” she had the softest kindest voice. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for years”

eyes tracing every feature, every millimetre of the surface, probing deep into the reflections in her eyes. She is so beautiful. I was lost.

She caressed me gently. I just laid still, beside her, my head turned to gaze longingly lovingly at her, my eyes tracing the inquisitive arch of her eyebrows, the high cheekbones, the dainty pointy jaw, the patterns joining the dots of her freckles across her nose. Her eyes returned the warmth and intimacy.

This felt unreal. How could this be happening? The old Zoe seemed so two-dimensional, all cold calculating distance; the new Zoe so full of warmth and talents and artistic tendencies and romantic needs.

“About this kiss you’ve been wanting for years…” I reminded her.

“Yes, we have to graduate to kissing,” she replied sultrily, tracing the outline of my lips, “and then escalate to cuddling,” she was running her finger tip down my chin towards my adam’s apple. I swallowed instinctively.

Her hand carried on south, ducking under the duvet “and full steam ahead to full genital-on-genital contact!”. Her finger trailed off as it reached the top of my tensed tummy and she started convulsing with giggles. “Your face!” she teased, “You should see your face!”. Her playfulness was infectious and I cracked a grin and relaxed slightly.

“Now, where were we?” she tried to compose herself.

“My turn” I took advantage of the lull to assert myself, feeling a new confidence in our intimacy. Zoe rolled over onto her back and stared carefully at the ceiling. Impatient, she glanced sideways at me “come on, hurry up!”

I wasn’t sure how far she was daring me to go. I gently reached over and stroked her chin and cheek with a quick swipe. She was braced, expecting it, and kept still. But I could see her brow furrow and that her teeth were clenched. She really was fighting to keep still.

I hunched up on my elbow to look at her. Her eyes quickly flicked towards me and the corners of her mouth twisted upwards slightly in a suppressed grin, and then she resumed the staring-dead-ahead position again.

Instinctively I lent over her and hovered with my mouth over hers, just a fraction of a millimetre air-gap between our lips. Our faces were so close that, as my eyes were closed, I could sense her nearness, feel it almost, feel the warm breath on me. Then I felt it. She was gently raising herself to meet me. Our lips touched. Instantly there was an electric shock making us jump apart.

Romantic fiction is bound to be full of ‘sparks’ and ‘fireworks’ on the first kiss. I think actually this was real genuine static electricity though. We actually had a genuine spark arcing between us.

“Wow!” Zoe breathed out, gaping in a lungful of air. “Shocking” she giggled. She glanced sideways at me as I lay back down on my back. “That was a very quick first kiss…”

We inched tentatively towards one another. We were going to meet, lips to lips, in the middle. Was that lust in her eyes? Smouldering lust? Or excitement? Or fear? Or a nervous concoction of all of those? We almost reached each other.

And then it happened. From the room directly above came the sudden intruding loud bed-moving banging noises of another couple. Zoe collapsed back down onto her back, sighing and giggling. The romantic mood was killed. The second kiss hadn’t happened. Zoe jumped up out of bed, so quick she was a blur. She must have leapt over me. Suddenly she was standing up by the desk, reaching for a t-shirt draped over the back of the chair. I tried to study the sight of her stiff jutting-out deep navy beige plain satin bra before it disappeared under the tank top.

“Come on, Twain! We’ll be late for church!”

My heart stopped. My mind reeled. Surely hyper-intelligent Zoe wasn’t actually religious?

“Gotcha!” she squealed and burst into a shaking sobbing fit of giggles. Slowly my mind caught up, relieved.

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Sunday morning in the kitchen was quiet. Zoe had enough cereal and milk for us, and we put the kettle on. Rachel and then eventually Gemma drifted past and returned to join us, both looking tired and still dressed in something that could pass as nightwear. Zoe was in high spirits – radiant, even – and soon the conversation livened up. Gemma was gently quizzing us – how long had we known each other, how long had we been going out – and Zoe was artfully dodging all the questions, often complaining that it was none of their business while encouraging further probing, and leaving no real answers but giving the impression that we were long time lovers! I wisely kept my mouth shut. In my mind we had been celibately betrothed for two years and I began to suspect that Zoe had thought the same way too.

Things started to touch on Zoe’s Touching Problem. Gemma must have confided in Rachel about her spying our mega supply of condoms, and the assumption was that I was poking Zoe like a randy billy goat. Zoe was feeding off the conversation, becoming bolder and opener and excited the more detailed and embarrassing the questions she could refuse to answer became. And then Rachel asked “How does it work? You know…” and she held up one hand out in front over the table, index finger and thumb tips touching like an ‘O’, and ran through it, sawing, with the index finger from the other hand. The universal mime for penetrative sex. Zoe curled up beside me giggling in embarrassment and gripped my biceps tightly. “Oh my god! You’re touching!” Gemma shouted as she stood up suddenly, shocked and elated and pointing at us. Rachel jerked up, eyes refocusing confused on Zoe, her mouth open. We had taken their breath away. Of course, how had they imagined sex might work without contact?

Zoe came to her senses and released me, turning to look up at me with a victorious glint in her eye. In a time of need she had clung to me. We had broken the touch barrier.

Zoe slipped off the end of the bench tugged on my arm to follow her, explaining that we had to use our time before my bus home wisely. We threaded past a still shocked standing Gemma. They must have imagined Zoe wanted another ride or two. In everyone’s eyes, Zoe and I were serious lovers. Zoe was revelling in the awed attention.

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We went to the toilet on the way back to the room, and brushed our teeth and things. Stories always seem to omit the normal bodily functions. If we were going to actually rut I thought we really needed a good shower first.

In her room Zoe tugged off her tank top, giving me false hope that the rutting might actually be about to happen. But Zoe went and leaned right over the sink and started running her hair under the tap.

I stood paralysed, watching, for a few moments. It was an incredibly intimate trusting scene. Zoe’s little shoulders hunched forward and her shoulder blades jostled with her bra strap. Her skin was so pale and clear and perfect.

“How is it looking?” her question jerked me back to reality. I stepped forward to inspect.

“Its still a bit blue here” I pointed. I could see Zoe’s eyes looking up at my reflection in the mirror trying to judge where I was pointing. I gently brought the tip of the finger to her hair, touching her. She braced herself but didn’t flinch. “Here let me help” I said quietly, suddenly intent on helping. And so I gently massaged Zoe’s scalp, washing and rinsing out the dye and touching her more intimately than I’d ever touched anyone before. Zoe had her eyes closed and seemed to be serenely happy. And then it was time for me to pack and head home.

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I sat on the bus, staring absently out of the window, reliving the weekend. Reliving the kiss, the shampooing, the sudden kiss on the lips as we said the last goodbye by the open bus door.

A lot had happened. The elegant romantic Zoe was so unlike the studious distant cold Zoe I had known at sixth-form. I couldn’t even remember the old Zoe. All I could think about was the new Zoe. We felt so very close. So intimate. So complete together. My phone bleeped, bringing me back to the present. I looked down at the text from ‘Z’: “You touched my heart. Miss you already” and a long stream of heart emoji. We were young, in love, and getting soppy fast. I smiled and started texting longingly back. We hadn’t arranged how soon we could be together again yet. Could I come back already next weekend? How soon could I hold Zoe in my arms and feel her melt into me? Now we were touching, Zoe seemed hungry to touch me and be touched everywhere. And I needed her just as much. The first weekend of newly discovered first love is the sweetest moment on earth?

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