A suggestion.
Rooney saying, ‘You’ll never know until you try.’
Rooney saying, ‘He’s really cute. Are you sure you don’t like him maybe, like, a little bit? You get along really well.’
Rooney saying, ‘You honestly act like you’re made for each other.’
That was all it took for me to think …
Yeah.
Maybe.
Maybe I could fall in love with Jason.
Durham Student Theatre’s introductory meeting took place four days later – the Tuesday of my second week at university – inside the Assembly Rooms Theatre. Rooney almost had to physically drag me there after I spent the whole weekend in our room, worn out from five days of intense socialising, but I kept reminding myself that I had to do this, I wanted to do this, to put myself out there and have experiences. And Jason and Pip would be there, so it couldn’t be all bad.
The seats were almost completely full already, since a lot of people were interested in being a part of the DST, but me and Rooney spotted Pip sitting alone near the back of the stalls, so we went to join her. I probably should have sat politically in between Rooney and Pip, but Rooney ended up walking into the row of seats ahead of me, leading to a very awkward greeting between them.
Moments later, Jason arrived. He was panting and looked a little bit sweaty.
I wondered whether I should find that attractive in a sort of post-workout way.
‘Is … this seat … taken?’
I shook my head. ‘Nope.’ I paused while he shook his T-shirt away from his chest, and then shrugged off his teddy-bear jacket. ‘Are you OK?’
He nodded. ‘I just ran … all the way from the library … and now I’m dying.’
‘Well, you made it in time.’
‘I know.’ He turned and looked at me properly then, flashing a warm smile. ‘Hello.’
I smiled back. ‘Hi.’
‘So you’re sure about doing this then?’
‘Yep. And even if I wasn’t, I think I’d have been press-ganged into it by these two.’ I pointed towards Rooney and Pip, who were steadfastly ignoring each other.
‘True.’ He crossed one leg over another, then didn’t give me the chance to say anything more before he started rummaging in his rucksack. After a moment, he drew out a family-size open packet of salted popcorn and held it out to me. ‘Popcorn?’
I dug in and scooped up a handful. ‘Salted. You’re a hero.’
‘We must all play our part in this bitch of a world.’
I was about to agree, but then the lights dimmed, as if we were about to watch a real play, and Durham Student Theatre’s first meeting of the year began.
The president’s name was Sadie and she had the brightest, most engaging voice I’d ever heard. She explained the system of DST, which was incredibly complicated, but the fundamental idea was that each society within DST got a certain amount of funding to put on a production of their own, created entirely by the students within that society. Rooney took a lot of notes while Sadie was explaining.
The meeting went on for an hour, and Jason and I sat and shared popcorn the whole time. Was this supposed to mean something? Was this what flirting was? No. No, this was just what friends, did, right? This was just me and Jason being normal.
I thought I got this sort of thing. I understood flirting. But now, when it came to Jason, I had no idea what to think.
When the meeting finally ended, Rooney and Pip went down to join the queue of freshers who had something to ask President Sadie. They walked together but didn’t look at each other.
Jason and I stayed in our seats and we reminisced about some of our funniest youth theatre anecdotes. Hairspray when the music director downloaded a knock-off version of the score and all the songs sounded wrong. Dracula when Pip slipped on some fake blood and tore down the stage curtains. Romeo and Juliet when me and Jason had been painting the set and got stuck on the balcony for two hours because everyone went for dinner and forgot we were there.
Maybe it was the fact that I’d been surrounded by loud theatre people for the past hour.
Maybe it was because I genuinely liked Jason in that way.
Whatever it was, it gave me the confidence to say, ‘Hey, I was thinking … we should … do something.’
He raised his eyebrows, intrigued. ‘Something?’
Oh God. Why was I doing this? How was I doing this? Had I been possessed by the spirit of someone with an actual shred of self-confidence?
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I dunno. Go see a movie, or …’ Wait. What fun things did people do on dates? I racked my brain, but all the fanfic I’d read had suddenly deleted itself from my mind. ‘Eat … food.’