Read Online Girl Heart Boy: No Such Thing as Forever (Book 1) by Ali Cronin - Free Book Online

back the way we’d come. I put my bag on the floor and clenched my fists tightly, my nails gouging crescent moons in the palms of my hands. I stared at the pavement. It was covered with patches of ancient dried chewing gum.
    ‘Bye then,’ I whispered.
    At the station I bought a magazine and a Coke and sat rigidly on the platform, staring into space. When the train arrived I calmly boarded and walked along until I found an empty carriage, then dropped into a seat, not caring that my bag was blocking the aisle, and howled. I buried my face in my hands. Oh God, the humiliation. And Joe. Oh, Joe. The thought of not seeing him again made me want to die. I hauled my bag on to my knee, grabbed my phone then chucked the bag back on to the floor. I scrolled to Cass in my Favourites. She answered almost immediately.
    ‘Hey, Mrs Joe, how’d it go?’ she purred.
    ‘Cass,’ I hiccuped. ‘I’ve been such a stupid cow.’
    ‘Oh, honey, what happened?’ I heard the sound of a door closing: Cass shutting herself away so she could talk to me in private. I could imagine the exact look of concern on her face.
    I pinched the top of my nose as if that would stop me dissolving. ‘It was amazing. But then it wasn’t. But then it was again. And we had amazing sex. But …’ I burst into tears all over again. ‘He doesn’t want me.’
    Cass gasped. ‘Did he tell you that?’
    I felt a stab of protectiveness. Even after everything, I wasn’t ready to hate Joe. ‘Oh, it’s not his fault really,’ I said, sniffing. ‘I just read way too much into it.’ I started crying again. ‘Why can’t I be more like Ashley and just … 
shag
? Why does it have to mean so much to me?’
    ‘Look, hon, Ash talks the talk but she’s not immune. C’mon, you remember the way she was last Christmas when that Mike guy chucked her.’
    I did. She’d tried to pretend she didn’t care, but Cass had seen her crying in the stationery cupboard.
    I took a wavering breath. ‘I know. But I was way too clingy with Joe.’ I stopped, almost too embarrassed to go on. ‘I thought we were making love,’ I whispered.
    Even over the sound of the train I could hear Cass sighing. ‘Oh, honey.’
    ‘I know,’ I said, sobbing. I lifted my feet up on to the seat and hugged my knees. ‘I drove him away.’
    ‘No you didn’t, hon. He’s just a man. That’s what they’re like.’
    I spent the rest of the journey back to Brighton scrolling through every mournful track on my iPod and going over and over the previous forty-eight hours. Yes, Joe had been distant at the pub, but he’d been so attentive that morning. And so sincere. Was it really just to get me to have sex with him? And the sex had been special, I’d felt it. Why did he look so deeply into my eyes if he was just using me? Was it possible to fake all that? (
Well, duh
, said the voice of reason, making a long overdue appearance.)
    With these riddles on repeat, I dozed off, waking with a jolt every time my phone pinged with a text or call from one of the girls. I put it on Silent and went back to sleep, only waking in Brighton when the people going to London started boarding the train.
    I stumbled home, my mouth dry, my head aching, and a bag of stones in the pit of my stomach. I wanted to forget the last two days had ever happened.
    Next morning found us all in our tutor room waiting for Paul – head of maths and the person lucky enough to be in charge of our pastoral care – to turn up, count us in, then rush off to kick some more number-crunching butt. Paul was OK, if you ignored the fact that he acted more like a hotshot businessman than a teacher and used phrases like ‘think outside the box’. And he was never in the room for more than fiveminutes of our twenty-minute tutor periods, which left a full fifteen minutes (maths!) for us to gently ease ourselves into the day.
    But I didn’t want any gaps in today. I wanted today to be busy, with no time for thinking. Or talking. So while