That was what I wanted.
I thought.
Yeah.
When Rooney returned to our room that night, she wanted to hear every detail of my date with Jason. I would have been fine with this, were it not 4.38 a.m.
‘So it went well, then?’ she asked after I’d finished giving her the rundown from where I was wrapped up like a burrito in my duvet.
‘Yeah?’ I said.
‘Are you sure?’ she asked. She was sitting on her bed, cup of tea in one hand and make-up wipe in the other.
I frowned. ‘Why?’
‘You just …’ She shrugged. ‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I mean … I guess I just …’
‘What?’
‘I’m not sure if I really like him like that yet. I dunno.’
Rooney paused. ‘Well, if the spark’s not there, the spark’s not there.’
‘No, I mean, we get along really well. Like, I love him as a person.’
‘Yeah, but is the spark there?’
How was I supposed to know that? What the fuck was the spark? What did the spark even feel like?
I thought I’d understood what all these romantic things would feel like – butterflies and the spark and just knowing when you liked someone. I’d read about these feelings hundreds of times in books and fanfic. I’d watched way more romcoms than was probably normal for an eighteen-year-old.
But now I was starting to wonder whether these things were just made up.
‘… Maybe?’ I said.
‘Well, you might as well just wait and see how it goes, then. When you know, you know.’
That sort of made me want to scream. I didn’t know how to know.
Honestly, if I’d had any sort of feelings for girls, I would have wondered whether I wasn’t straight. Maybe boys in general were the problem.
‘What does it feel like when you get the spark?’ I asked. ‘Like … tonight. You – I assume you were with a guy?’
Her expression dropped instantly. ‘That’s different.’
‘Wait – how? Why?’
She stood up from her bed and turned round, grabbing her pyjamas. ‘That’s just different. That’s nothing like this situation.’
‘I’m just asking –’
‘Me having sex with some random guy is not similar to you dating your best friend. Completely different scenarios.’
I blinked. She was probably right about that.
‘So why do you have sex with random guys?’ I asked. As soon as I said it, I realised what a blunt and invasive question it was. But I did want to know. It wasn’t like I was judging her – honestly, I wished I had her confidence. But I didn’t understand how she did it, really. Why she wanted to do it. Why would someone go to a stranger’s house and take their clothes off when you could just stay home and have a safe, comfortable wank? Surely the end result was exactly the same.
Rooney turned back round. She gave me a long, unreadable look.
‘Honestly?’ she asked.
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘I just enjoy having sex,’ she said. ‘I’m single and I like sex, so I have sex. It’s fun because it feels good. I don’t feel a “spark” because it’s not about romance. It’s a casual physical thing.’
I got the sense that she was telling the truth. That really was all there was to it.
‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘we’ve got much more important things to think about right now.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like the Shakespeare Society.’ Rooney finished changing into her pyjamas, grabbed her washbag, and headed towards our bedroom door. ‘Go to sleep.’
‘OK.’ And I did. But not before I spent a while thinking about the spark. It sounded magical. Like something out of a fairy tale. But I couldn’t imagine what it felt like. Was it a physical feeling? Was it just intuition?
Why had I never felt it? Ever?
On the Sunday of that second week, Rooney and I were chilling in our bedroom when someone knocked on the door. When Rooney opened it, at least thirty of her acquaintances entered, carrying balloons and party poppers and streamers, and then a guy got down on one knee in front of everyone and asked Rooney to be his college wife.
Rooney screamed and jumped on him, smothering him in a tight hug, agreeing to be his college wife. And that was that. I watched the whole thing go down from my bed, actually entertained. It was kind of lovely.
Once everyone had cleared out, I helped Rooney clean up the remains of the party poppers and streamers. It took a whole hour.