I'll Tell You What I Want, What I Really Really Want

On Monday I cycled to university instead of walking with Bob, as I had football training that evening. It was going to be the first one since that match last week. Now that all the adrenaline had worn off, I was really embarrassed about the scene that I'd caused with my goalkeeper coach Bruce. It wasn't his fault that Ryan had asked Hayley to play too, and that's the way that sports work - the best ones get into the team, it's a naturally competitive environment. Just because I was upset that someone better had come along didn't give me any right to cause problems. I just hoped that the rest of the team hadn't really noticed and no one said anything about it tonight.

I reached the classroom early and managed to grab one of the seats next to the wall. I always preferred having something to lean against, especially for first thing in the morning, and leaning against a wall was a tad less conspicuous than resting your head on the desk. The rest of the group slowly filtered in and started good-naturedly teasing Nate, who was sporting a magnificent hickey from the weekend. Luckily, none of them seemed to have noticed me and Gary that night, but I stayed very, very quiet just in case! I had thought that Bob had seen us kissing, but he hadn't said anything over facebook messenger when we'd been chatting on Sunday, so I was hoping I might have escaped the mandatory group teasing that something like this would normally entail.

Bob sauntered in and grabbed the seat at the end of the row, just in time to hear Nate groan loudly and tell us all to shut up.

"Are we sharing all the excitement of the weekend, then?" Bob chimed in, giving me a knowing look over Ray's head. Damn, he definitely had seen us! I widened my eyes at him, shaking my head slightly, but to no avail.

"So... I'm guessing Jane's told you all about her and Gary then?" I glared over at Bob as the group burst into noise at his news.

"Whaaat?" yelled Renae, turning to stare at me. "You can't keep gossip like that from me! When, what happened, how far, spill it! Spill it all!"

"Ooh, look at how red she's gone, it must be bad!" Ray laughed at my embarrassment, whilst Nate joined in a bit too enthusiastically, clearly relieved to share the gossip load.

"Nothing really happened..." I mumbled, not wanting to share. I wasn't at all used to being the centre of attention about this kind of thing - after all, I'd been faithfully with Lee for two years until relatively recently and had never kissed anyone before that. I just wanted the attention to end - or at least for the lecturer to arrive early and put me out of my misery temporarily!

"Well, I wouldn't say nothing..." said Bob, shaking his head at me disapprovingly. As the group started exclaiming again, imaginations running wild, I figured telling was the only way to get this over with.

"Fine! So, you guys all disappeared on Saturday night, and it was just me and Gary, and he pulled me into the middle of the dance floor and kissed me. We, um, we stayed there for a while, and then we headed back to our street..."

"And then you totally took him upstairs and showed him how true that 'lady in the street, devil in the sheets' stuff is, right?!" Ray interrupted. I gave him a look and continued.

"Haha, well, actually no. We stopped outside my flat, he kissed me again... and then I told him I hoped this wouldn't make watching Glee awkward, said bye and ran up to my flat."

Ethan snorted and started laughing, whilst Ray looked at me with mock disappointment. "Jane! If you're going to start providing us with gossip, dear, it might as well be juicy gossip!"

"Just because my love life doesn't match up to your Grindr antics!" I shot back with a smile. It was true - the things that Ray had got up to could make a stripper blush, and I'd reluctantly heard all about them in excruciating detail. He winced a little as I said it though and stayed silent, and I immediately felt bad - had something gone wrong? He normally took any chance he could to tell us about his adventures. He shrugged it off immediately, so I made a note to ask him about it later instead.

Luckily at that point our lecturer finally arrived, and the Jane/Gary Inquisition had to halt. After the class ended, I caught up with Bob as we headed over to the library. "So... how did you know?"

He looked at me like I was crazy. "... because Gary told me?"

"What?! He told you?"

"Uh, yeah, pretty much as soon as he got back. I must have only been a few minutes ahead of you two, I was still drinking water in the kitchen. You know, he was a bit bummed out by that Glee comment."

I looked down at my feet. "Ah. It wasn't meant to be mean... I guess I just panicked a bit." He looked over at me as we walked, but didn't say anything. The silence was making me uncomfortable, so I decided just to ask what had been on my mind.

"So, seeing as you two apparently talk about everything... was that a drunken thing or does he actually have feelings for me?" It had been preying on me since Saturday night, and I didn't honestly know where I stood on it. Gary was a lovely guy, but I didn't know him that well, and the fact that he was Bob's flatmate just made everything so much more complicated. And if he did have feelings for me, I didn't want to hurt him if what I felt was more curiosity than actual feelings - but if it was just a drunken thing, I didn't want to make a fool of myself by making it out to be bigger than it was. I was so inexperienced with guys, I figured I'd rather just ask the blunt questions and know than play the dance.

"OK, I can answer some things, but I'm not touching that one! Go ask him yourself!" With that, Bob veered off to grab a coffee, saying he'd catch up with us in our usual room. Climbing the stairs, I mulled over what he had said. He was right - if I could ask Bob bluntly about it, I could ask Gary himself and try and sort this all out.

Opening the door to our usual library haunt, I wandered over and sat next to Ray. He had his laptop out and had some online game up on one half of the screen whilst his group project outline filled the other. Leaning over his shoulder, I took a nosy at what his group would be working on for the rest of the year. We didn't have our first group meeting until later that afternoon when we'd find out, so I was curious to see what kind of thing we were expected to do. We'd been warned that they'd 'revamped' the group project this year to make it more 'technically challenging' due to it taking up such a large percentage of our mark this year - which essentially meant no past examples to help. So kind of them to do that in the nightmare year!

Speed reading through the page, it looked like a fairly standard process involving liquefied natural gas. In fact, it sounded very similar to a process I knew existed at a chemicals plant nearby in Scotland. It wouldn't be my first choice of something to do (ideally I wanted something to do with the oil and gas exploration sector, or renewables), but it didn't look too awful either.

Glancing around to make sure everyone else was engrossed in their work (or in Ethan and Renae's case, absorbed in the evilly difficult online geography game they were addicted to), I collapsed into the seat next to Ray and poked his shoulder.

"Soooo..."

"Soooo... what?" He parodied back at me, poking me in the side. I squeaked loudly, then quickly mouthed apologies at the student behind me who turned to glare.

"So, what's up? No grindr stories for us today? Suddenly found your modesty?"

He blushed a little and lowered his voice. "Um... actually... no. If I tell you something, promise to keep it secret?"

Intrigued, I leaned in and nodded. He took a breath and continued.

"Well... I kind of have... a boyfriend." He shook his head at me as I clapped my hands together excitedly.

"Ray, that's great! I'm so happy for you!" I genuinely was, Ray was, in his own words, a bit of a manslut and as long as I had known him I had never seen him with a steady boyfriend that he really cared about. I wasn't sure why it had to be a secret though.

"Jane - that's not all." Ah, here it came. "I've known him for about two years now, but we met on the internet."

I still wasn't really getting it. People met through all sorts of ways now and as long as he wasn't a crazy axe-wielding murderer, internet meets didn't have the same stigma any more.

"We just immediately clicked, I've never talked for so long about so many things with anyone before, and we still talk as much as we do now as we did at the start. And... the other day, we were talking, and he admitted he had feelings for me. Real, deep feelings - and I realised I felt the same way too."

I smiled over at him, it sounded like this guy was lovely. "Ray, that's amazing. But the real question is, when can I meet him?"

Ray looked away awkwardly. "Well, this is why I don't want people to know. He's from LA."

"As in... originally from LA and now in Edinburgh?" I said slowly, my brain not really picking it up.

"No. As in, he's currently living in LA."

"Ah." I didn't really know what to say. I'm not a fan of long-distance relationships at all, mainly because I hate who it turns me into, but there is long distance and there is halfway across the world.

"Look, I know. I can see exactly what you're thinking in that face." I had the good grace to blush a little there, I knew I was too sceptical about 'love being greater than all obstacles' etc. "And that's why I want to keep it a secret. I don't need people telling me it won't work and all that. I have enough worries of my own without everyone else adding their opinion!"

"Well... that seems fair enough. But Ray - are you ever actually going to go and see him? Internet chemistry and real life chemistry are two very different things." I smiled at him, but inside I was really worried for him. It just all seemed a bit impossible - long distance is for when you know you will eventually live your lives together, but planning your life out with someone you'd never even met screamed dodgy to me.

"I hope so, I would have gone this summer but I've already booked holidays with friends from home. So we'll see how it goes. I know you're not totally convinced on this, but I am Jane. I've never had feelings like this for anyone."

Softening, I managed to give him a genuine smile. "Well, if you're happy, how can I be anything but happy too?"

He smiled back and hugged me, whispering in my ear. "And now you know, I give you the task of restraining me whenever I get horny enough to consider the feelings not worth it!" Groaning and shoving him away, I couldn't help but laugh at his grin. That was definitely the Ray I knew and loved, crossing the line every time.

Friend drama sorted, I turned back to my desk and fired up Facebook, then searched for Gary's name in my messages. Ray knew what he wanted - time for me to figure out if I did too.


~ Author's Note: If anyone fancies any procrastination, here's the game that Ethan and Renae were playing (along with pretty much our entire group half the time!): http://www.travelpod.com/traveler-iq.
I take no responsibility for any consequent addictions and lost productivity! ~