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The room is heaving with bodies, some Imogen knows, some she doesn’t -- there are Truham boys who look her up and down with mildly leering eyes, staring at her the way all grammar school boys seem to do in dark rooms with loud music and limited oxygen. She’s not even sure who’s party she’s supposed to be at, tagging along with a group of girls from her form group in the hope of drinking a vodka red bull and stealing a kiss from a handsome sixth former who won’t call her in the morning.
Parties just… don’t really do much for her, anymore. The main reason she used to go to them was in the hope that Nick Nelson would finally notice her in, like, more than a brother-sister way. More than the gap-toothed eleven-year-old kind of way, freckles and summer dresses and sharing a bag of pick-and-mix from the newsagents kind of way.
It had been a tsunami of cold water to the face when she found out that would never happen. She’s mostly over it, of course she is -- it would be pathetic to fawn over someone who, for multiple reasons, will never be interested like that -- but it still hurts, kind of. It still hurts to walk into a crowded room and not even have the hope that Nick would be looking for her, longing to close the distance between their bodies with the same fervour and longing as she does. Because it was nice, for a while, to lie in bed and map out the dreamy possibilities, the off-chance that their relationship could be more than a creative writing exercise.
“That guy over there is looking at you,” Maya says, nudging her with her shoulder. She presses a plastic cup of something into Imogen’s hands. “I think he might be in year twelve.”
Imogen peers over the heads in front of her to see a blonde-haired boy in a Led Zeppelin t shirt and jeans, smile crooked and handsome and bashfully looking away when they catch eyes.
But -- like a reflex, she finds herself comparing him to Nick. Nick’s hair is more auburn than blonde, his shoulders wider, his mouth kinder.
“I don’t think so,” Imogen yells over a Bombay Bicycle Club song, “He’s not really my type.”
Maya dramatically rolls her eyes. “You need to get over it .”
Imogen blinks back at her friend in faux innocence.
“Christ, Imo,” Maya huffs, taking a sip of her drink. “Nick Nelson is literally gay .”
“Bisexual,” Imogen hastily corrects. Maya misinterprets this as I still have a chance rather than please don’t erase his identity, shaking her head irritably. “Anyway. I know, okay? He just really isn’t my type.”
Maya shrugs. “It’s just you look really hot tonight, and you’re busy mooning over a boy who has a boyfriend. It’s so fucking frustrating! You could have literally anyone here, if you wanted to.”
The point is. The point is, is that she doesn’t want just anyone, never has. She finishes the rest of her drink and passes the empty cup back to Maya, dizzy with sudden nausea. “I’m going to find the toilet.”
She staggers through crowds of anonymous faces, heart heaving, ready to fucking leave. The thump of feet jumping on the lino floor mirrors the thrumming her chest -- she longs for something familiar and safe, Nick’s arm curling round her shoulders and saying everything is going to be okay.
She’s almost at the fire exit when she spots them.
She’s picked up things, the times she’s seen them together. Nick and Charlie. How Nick wears a lot of light colours, whites and greys and baby blues, contrasting with Charlie’s dark hair and jumpers. How they often speak in touch and glances, their own language carved in knowing looks and interweaving fingers. How they seem to exist almost exclusively for each other, like the Earth was built up around them, the Colosseum and the pyramids and London Bridge designed to be observed by them and them alone.
It’s hard not to be pulled into their orbit because they’re magnetic, they are, the poles switching and focusing inwards. It’s like Imogen can see the world fading into grey whilst the two of them are captured in glorious technicolour, a polaroid of heady teenage love. The music thumps mercilessly off the walls but they might as well be standing in a vacuum, the way the two of them are looking at each other with no awareness of anyone else. Like the whole fucking universe could burn to a wasteland and they’d just stand in the afterglow, ashes swirling and gathering at their feet.
Her lips part, her voice caught in her throat, as Nick whispers something in Charlie’s ear. Drunken bodies are jumping around them but they don’t care, never have, never would -- their faces inch closer, closer and closer and closer until there is barely a millimetre between their lips, swathed in electric purple light from the lamps hanging above.
When they kiss, Imogen feels like a side character in their movie.
She observes every tiny detail, Nick’s hands cupping Charlie’s face, Charlie standing on the very edge of his toes. The way everything seems to…slow, to half time, like some cosmic alignment is granting them more moments together to compensate for the pain and the pining and the yearning that got them there. They deserve it, some deity is probably saying somewhere, give them all the time in the world.
When they let go, they’re both grinning, giddy and wild and in love.
Imogen exhales a breath she didn’t realise she was holding, suddenly content. She gets it, now. She understands. Nick Nelson is not her soulmate. He already has one of those, and it’s not her, and that’s okay. She deserves someone who is not in love with someone else.
(It’s exciting, actually, that her person is still waiting for her. There is someone there who will clutch her face whilst she stands on her toes and all other people fade to black behind them, a muted backdrop against their epic romance).
She feels a hand on her shoulder and she sees a girl with bright red hair that she doesn’t recognise, eyes emerald green and smile contagious. She smiles back, as natural as the ebbing and flowing of the tide.
“Hey!” the girl shouts over the music, “Sorry -- I saw you standing and I just… I wondered if you wanted to dance?”
Imogen blinks, her ribcage bursting. “Yeah! Okay!”
The girl tugs her by the wrist, pulling her into the crowd.
When she looks back, Nick and Charlie are gone, like they were a mirage from the start.