“Gia… you have no idea do you? Your Dad and your brothers would kill me, they’d fucking kill me and I respect them all too much to start something with you before you’re ready but don’t think for a minute that I don’t want you. I know it sounds wrong but right from that very first day when I saw your pink knickers, there’s been something.”
I want to cry, I’m sick of waiting, all my friends have boyfriends and all I have is a lie, just to keep every other boy away from me. It’s so fucking unfair! Sean reaches out and touches my hand. I want to pull away, but I don’t, his touch does something to me and it pisses me off no end.
“You told everyone that day in the dining hall that you were my boyfriend and everyone still thinks it’s true. Either tell everyone that we’ve broken up or be my boyfriend Sean. I’m fed up with waiting.”
I can’t believe I’ve actually said it, I should drink wine more often, the only thing now is, he looks really pissed off. What if he says no, what if he doesn’t want me, I will die, I will simply lie down and die.
“Do you want someone else to be your boyfriend G?”
“No.”
“Then why can’t you just wait for me?”
“Why, I don’t get what I have to wait for, I’m almost fourteen, my Mum and Dad have been together since she was thirteen, why do I have to wait?”
He takes a deep breath in through his teeth, and then puffs his cheeks while he lets it out through his lips, his perfect, perfect lips.
“I was just trying to do the right thing G, by you and your brothers and your Mum and Dad; everyone’s been so good to me. I don’t want to fuck things up.”
He drags his hand through his brown curls with his free hand. “Let me talk to Marley, see how the land lies, perhaps if I talk to your Dad nicely, he might let me be your boyfriend. If you want?”
I sit down on the sun lounger next to him; he still has hold of my hand. I nod my head.
“I do want.”
“Jesus you two, get on with it. I’ve watched the pair of you dance around for the past few years and it’s getting boring.” Marley calls out from where he has Jimmie wrapped around him in the pool.
“See, he’s fine.”
Sean’s shaking his head again. “All this fucking time I’ve waited and he don’t even care.”
“Just remember Maca, she’s not fourteen yet and she’s my little sister, you do anything more than kiss her and I will kill you, then my brothers and my Dad will kill you again.”
Sean shoulder bumps me with an even bigger grin on his face. “Just kissing. Dya think you can manage that Gia?”
I shoulder bump him back. “If you really want me to I will, but I was just about to show you my tits.”
“Fuck… really?”
I shrug, I’m embarrassed now. I’ve never even been kissed and I’m threatening to show him my tits?
“I told ya Gia, you’re a flirt.”
He looks over my face as he talks to me, “Can I kiss ya G, please?”
I nod, maintaining eye contact with him all the while. We turn and face each other, my knees go between his open legs so we can get closer, his hand comes up and cups the side of my face, his thumb rubs over my lips, like his testing them, trying them out with his thumb before he goes in with his lips, my heart feels like it’s about to pound out of my chest and go crashing into his; he leans in until his lips meet mine, they are so much softer than I ever could have imagined, soft and minty, he must of just cleaned his teeth, he smells delicious, minty, clean and fresh, I can feel stubble around the edges of his mouth but his lips are so, so soft. He deepens the kiss and without even thinking about it, my hand goes to his dark brown curls and I grab a handful, he lets a little growling noise escape from the back of his throat, which in turn makes me let out my own little sigh.
“Fuck Gia,” he says into my mouth.
Sparks go off behind my now closed eyes, it’s like a cartoon, when fireworks go off in an enclosed space and they bounce off every surface. That’s exactly what it feels like is going on inside me.
“So long… I’ve waited so long to do that G, you have no fucking idea.”
That year, that holiday, it’s still one of my best ever. My lips and the skin around them felt permanently bruised and sore from all the kissing we did; Sean never did speak to my Dad, he didn’t have to, the fact that we held each other’s hand every second we were together made it perfectly clear what was going on between us. It did though prompt my Mum and Dad to sit the pair of us down and give us the ‘We trust you and hope that you will be respectful of each other and your bodies… and aside from all that, it’s actually illegal for you to be having sex and you could go to jail’ talk. We sat there mortified, Sean squeezing my hand so tight I thought it was going to break. Then he did the most amazingly beautiful thing, he let my Mum finish her speech about me being a good girl, bought up the right way and knowing right from wrong and waiting until I was older before taking things too far. I seriously wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole. Why did we have to have this conversation now, in front of Sean? Sean took my hand that he was holding and kissed the back of it. He cleared his throat before saying.
“Frank, Bernie… I know we’re young but I need you to know, that from the first moment I laid eyes on your daughter, I’ve been a little bit in love with her, I’ve wanted to tell her for a while now but I wanted to be respectful of you and the boys. You’ve all been so good to me, you treat me better than my own parents so I wanted to do this right, I wanted to wait until Gia was old enough and until you were comfortable with us having a relationship but I can’t wait anymore, I love her and I want to be able to hold her hand and kiss her.”
Shit. Don’t say anymore in front of them.
“We are too young to be thinking about anything more than that, but, I… we, we just want to be together and for you all to be happy about it.”
Fucking hell, I’ve never died so many times during one afternoon. Where are my brothers and Jimmie when you need rescuing, I bet my parents told them to stay out the way, does that mean everyone is going to know about this little chat? Fucking hell.
“Well… Sean… as long as you respect my daughter, I don’t think that we’ll have a problem. Would you like a beer son, you must need one after that little speech?”
My parents treated me differently for the rest of that holiday, almost like a grown up. They allowed Jimmie and I to drink wine at dinner, my Mum asked my opinion on her outfits and told me to try my hair in different styles, she spoke to me like I was her friend, not just her daughter. My Dad took on a more fatherly demeanour around Sean and spoke to him about his plans after he finished his fifth year, legally he could leave school if he wanted but our school went right up to sixth form and Sean and Marley were both staying on. I don’t think either of them really wanted to study anymore but if they left the education system they would be expected to get full time jobs and this would leave them no time for their music. They had been lucky so far, the money they made with the band meant that they hadn’t even had to get a part time job and as their popularity grew they were getting bookings for Friday and Saturday nights and now had a regular Sunday lunch time spot at a pub not too far from where we lived. So as wages for a group of students went, they were doing okay.
CHAPTER 3
Returning to school that September, I was the happiest I’d ever been in my life, after we’d gotten back from Portugal, Sean and I were inseparable. Luckily he was always at our house anyway, all that was different was that now when the band practised, I got a kiss every ten minutes between rehearsals, when Sean came and sat next to me after practise, he would hold my hand, he never stopped paying me attention and I never stopped enjoying it. We were very rarely alone together though, my parents must have drummed it into my brother’s heads that under no circumstances were we to be left by ourselves and it was comical at times, the lengths they’d go to. Even if Marley was going to the toilet, he would send Sean to fetch something, just so we weren’t left alone, even if it was only going to be for five minutes. What could we possibly get up to in five minutes? Well lots it turned out, Sean was a typical sixteen year old boy and he had needs and despite only being fourteen, he stirred something in me that I have to admit, at times, terrified me. I wanted sex, I really wanted to have sex with him, I have no idea if it was raging hormones caused by my age or if it was just him, Sean, what he did to me, what he caused me to feel but I was totally convinced that the feelings I had, meant that I must surely be a whore, a slut but I didn’t care, I just wanted him.