Read Online Independent Jenny by Sarah Louise Smith - Free Book Online Page A

Paris. I was always by her side, ready to assist, while at the same time trying to keep my head down and get through school as quickly and quietly as possible.
    We had different opinions on nearly everything. We liked different music, different films, different TV shows. I liked to sit at home on a Friday night and read a book. Hayley liked to go out with Guy and smoke weed in the underpass between her house and his, then snog his face off until the sun came up. I liked boys a lot, but I wasn’t confident enough to get a boyfriend. If a cute boy so much as smiled at me, my face flushed red as a tomato and he was sure to pass me by before I had a chance to speak. But it didn’t bother me. I’d seen enough of my mother’s failed relationships and was never desperate for love.
    I did, however lose my virginity at Hayley’s sixteenth birthday party. Her parents were pretty liberal and very trusting, so they’d gone to stay at a hotel for the night. She invited a bunch of friends over and we drank cider, ate pizza and talked about what we’d do when we left school. We were always talking about the future, wishing our lives away.
    Guy was there, of course, and he bought a bunch of his friends, including his older brother, Will. They looked nothing alike. Guy had wild scruffy hair that came down past his jaw, and wore faded jeans and band t-shirts, while Will was more clean-cut and dorky. Way cuter, too, in my opinion.
    It was past one in the morning when I went out to sit on the swing in Hayley’s garden. Most of my friends were canoodling with most of Guy’s friends and I’d just been sitting in the corner, feeling awkward, so I went outside to get some air. The cider had gone to my head and I felt a bit queasy. Until Will came and sat next to me.
    We’d always known each other, in an ‘acknowledge one another in the hall’ sort of way, and we’d had a few conversations now and then, but I’d never really thought of him much until he leant against the swing post and smiled. He looked nervous, which somehow made him even cuter.
    “Hi Jenny,” he said.
    “Hi Will.”
    “A bit much in there, isn’t it?”
    “Yeah, not my scene really.”
    “Me neither. I only came to get out of spending the evening with my parents and their friends.”
    I laughed. “Me too.”
    “Don’t you want to be here? I thought Hayley was your best friend?”
    “Yeah, but she’s much more outgoing than me.”
    “I know.”
    I looked up at him and he smiled at me, causing my pulse to quicken just a little. A breeze blew through the garden and I shivered.
    “Cold?”
    “A bit,” I admitted, although I made no move to go inside the house.
    “Come over here,” he said, getting up and walking to a wooden bench. I went and sat next to him and he wrapped himself around me and rubbed my arms.
    “Better?”
    “Yes, thank you,” I just about managed to utter.
    I turned to look at him, just about making out the lust in his eyes in the darkness and then he leaned in and kissed me. From nowhere, I somehow found the confidence I’d never had before and led him to Hayley’s parents’ spare bedroom. We fumbled around a bit, and then our clothes were off and we were having sex. Just as I was starting to think I understood what the big deal was, it was over.
    We were boyfriend and girlfriend for a year after that. I was quite impressed with myself, having a boyfriend who was in the year above us at school. We didn’t declare our love over and over like Hayley and Guy, in fact we never even said ‘I love you’ at all. There was plenty of chemistry, and we fooled around a lot, but sometimes I felt we were very close friends who enjoyed being naked together rather than we were soul mates. We spent most of our time together talking, sometimes about superficial stuff but mostly trying to decide what the meaning of life was and what the future held. The heavy stuff that teenagers contemplate seemed lighter when I was with Will, who was much