I sat up a little. ‘No, no – well, I mean, maybe a little bit? I think her saying it made me properly, um … realise that I wanted to. So … I guess I started thinking about it after that, and … yeah. It just felt like … I guess it just felt right.’
Jason nodded, and I hoped I’d made sense.
I just needed to be honest. Jason was my best friend. I needed to make this work and do it at my own pace.
I loved Jason. I knew I could be honest with him.
‘You know I’ve never done this before,’ I said.
He nodded again. Understanding. ‘I know.’
‘I … want to go slow.’
He went a little red. ‘Yeah. Of course.’
‘I like you,’ I said. At least I thought I did. I might have if I tried, if I encouraged it, if I pretended it was real until it was. ‘I mean, I-I think I could – I want to give this a chance, and I don’t want to regret anything when I’m on my deathbed.’
‘OK.’
‘I just don’t really know what I’m doing. Like. Theoretically, yes, but in practice … no.’
‘OK. That’s OK.’
‘OK.’ I think I was going a bit red too. My cheeks felt hot. Was it because I felt flustered around Jason or because this whole thing was a bit awkward to talk about?
‘I don’t mind going slow,’ said Jason. ‘Like, all my romantic experiences until now have been a bit shit.’
I knew all about Jason’s past romantic experiences. I knew about his first kiss with a girl he thought he really liked, but the kiss was so terrible it actually put him off doing it again. And I knew about the girlfriend he’d had for five months when we were in Year 13 – Aimee, who went to our youth theatre group. Aimee was kind of annoying in a Jason is my property and I don’t like anyone else hanging out with him sort of way, and Pip and I never liked her, but Jason was happy for a little while, so we supported the relationship.
Or, at least, we did until we figured out that Aimee had been making all sorts of comments to Jason about how he wasn’t allowed to hang out with certain people, and he needed to stop talking to other girls – including me and Pip. Jason put up with that for months until he realised that she was, in fact, a shithead.
Jason had sex for the first time with her, and it pissed me off that he’d had that experience with someone like that.
‘This won’t be shit,’ I said, then rephrased. ‘This … won’t be shit, will it?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Definitely not.’
‘We’ll go slow.’
‘Yeah. This is new territory.’
‘Yeah.’
‘And if it doesn’t work out …’ Jason began, then seemed to change his mind about what he was going to say.
I’ll be honest: I still wasn’t even sure that I was into Jason. He was super nice, funny, interesting and attractive, but I didn’t know whether I was feeling anything other than platonic friendship.
But I would never know unless I persisted. Unless I tried.
And if it didn’t work out, Jason would understand.
‘… we’ll still be friends,’ I concluded. ‘No matter what.’
‘Yes.’ Jason leant back in his chair and folded his arms, and God, I was glad that I was doing this with Jason and not some random person who didn’t know me, who didn’t understand, who would expect things from me and would think I was weird when I didn’t want to …
‘There’s one other thing we should probably talk about,’ said Jason.
‘What?’
‘What are we going to tell Pip?’
There was a silence. I honestly hadn’t even thought about how Pip would feel about this.
Something told me she wouldn’t be happy about her two best friends getting together and majorly distorting the dynamics of our friendship group.
‘We should tell her,’ I said. ‘When we find a good time.’
‘Yeah. Agreed.’ Jason looked relieved that I’d said it. That he didn’t have to be the one to suggest it.
‘Best to just be honest about it.’
‘Yeah.’
When we left the ice-cream café, we hugged goodbye, and it felt like a normal hug for us. A normal Jason and Georgia hug, the sort of hug we’d been having for years.
There wasn’t any sort of weird moment when we felt like we should kiss. We hadn’t reached that point yet, I guessed.
That would come later.
And I was fine with that.