Chapter 19: First Date

Good luck tonight. First dates are always tricky

I think Chloë’s message actually made me more nervous that if she hadn’t sent it. I wasn’t even really thinking of it as a date—well, as a first date—until she called it that. So as I stood at the door to Hannah’s house having knocked, I was suddenly nervous when I wasn’t before. Was I dressed okay? Or was I too casual in black jeans and a white shirt? Or was I overdressed? It was just a movie so should I have gone with blue jeans and a T-shirt? I’d shaved, but not used any after-shave, just my usual body spray. Should I have used some of the expensive stuff I brought back from America with me? And what about condoms? Did I need condoms? I hadn’t even thought about condoms because I hadn’t really considered there was any chance of ... You know, needing them, if you know what I mean. But would I—

The door opened and Hannah came into my field of view looking utterly, utterly stunning.

With wide eyes, I said, “Wow! You look...” I shook my head. “Wow.”

She blushed and said quietly, “Thanks. I didn’t know if ... I’m not overdressed, am I? I mean, I know it’s just a movie, but we did say we’d meet everyone in Central Pier afterwards and—”

“It’s perfect,” I said. “You look perfect. Better than—no, wait, you can’t get better than perfect. But if you could, that’s how you’d look.”

She blushed again but didn’t reply.

She wore a black knee-length skirt—I think they call that style A-line, but I could be wrong—that shimmered slightly. It was clearly meant to be worn in a nightclub and designed to catch the lights on the dancefloor. Her black strappy-heels also screamed dancefloor rather than cinema. She also wore a simple white blouse, that I later found out was sleeveless when she took off the short black hoodie she was wearing as a jacket when we settled down to watch the movie in the cinema.

I probably haven’t done the outfit justice—after all, I’m just a boy, as more than one girl has said to me in the past when I’ve failed to be enthusiastic enough about their clothes or shoes, especially the her shoes—but Hannah really did look stunning.

“Shall we?” I said, holding out my arm for her to take it.

I walked her the short distance to my car parked by the kerb outside the house and made a big show of opening the door for her. She rolled her eyes, shook her head, and gave me a silly grin in reply to my silly performance. After closing her door, I raced around to the driver’s side and got in. I knew that driving us meant I’d have to drink Coke all night when we met up with our friends in Central Pier, but that didn’t really bother me. It didn’t feel right taking someone on a date in a taxi.

I also knew that I might end up as designated driver and have to give some of our friends—Amanda—a lift back up the hill to campus at the end of the night. That did bother me. A little. But I’d cross that bridge if and when I had to.

The movie we were going to see started at seven. That meant it would finish around half-nine and we could be in Central Pier with our friends by ten and they probably wouldn’t have been there very long by then anyway. The club didn’t close until two and with the drinks as expensive as they were there, we usually spent the first few hours of the night somewhere cheaper like The Mariner.

Of Mars & Men wasn’t exactly what you’d describe as a date movie. It was a retelling of the Steinbeck classic Of Mice & Men but was set in the future on a partly colonised Mars rather than in the early 20th century California. The book was my favourite out of all those that I’d studied as part of my A-Level course.

The film had already been out for a few weeks but none of my friends had wanted to see it with me, even though it featured our favourite movie star friend (Chloë, of course) in a minor role. She was playing the character that was the equivalent of Curley’s Wife in the book—the one that is accidentally killed by Lennie. I’d asked Chloë about it because it was quite a small part for someone with her star power, and she’d told me she did it as a favour to the film’s Director & Producer, who was a friend. It was then that I realised just how famous and powerful she was, because the man she was talking about, Sam Bradwell, was probably the biggest movie star on the planet. Thinking about it, I’m sure she’d mentioned being friends with Sam before in passing, but I don’t think I’d taken much notice. I guess I’d just assumed that all big stars were friends, but Chloë’s friendship with Sam Bradwell seemed to be something more than that—she even described him as her mentor.

Anyway, like I said, it wasn’t exactly a date movie. It was a serious movie that didn’t shy away from the difficult themes in the book—if anything, it expanded on them. But I enjoyed it and so did Hannah—although it did leave us feeling a little melancholy as we left the cinema at the end of the show.

“I don’t really fancy going dancing after that,” Hannah said. “It feels wrong.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I get what you mean.”

“There’s a coffee shop around here somewhere, isn’t there? Fancy a hot chocolate or something?”

“Yeah, but not here. There’s a lovely little place on the seafront, at the end of West Pier. Let’s go there.”

“Okay. We can have a walk along the seafront too if you like.”

“In this weather? It’s freezing.”

She smiled sweetly. “I’m sure you can think of some way to keep me warm.”

I drove us into town and parked in one of the free spaces by Central Pier. Westmouth’s three piers were fairly evenly spaced along the mile and a half seafront, so the walk from where I’d parked to West Pier where we were headed was about three-quarters of a mile—about a fifteen-minute walk if we didn’t walk too slowly.

But we did walk slowly.

As soon as we started walking, I held out my arm in invitation and Hannah moved in close so that I could wrap my arm around her to keep her warm. It was a pleasant walk—as long as the weather is kind, the walk along the seafront always was. We chatted, as we always did, about nothing and about everything. The film we’d just seen was the catalyst, but from there we branched off at seemingly random tangents before coming back to the film.

Central Pier was just over four hundred metres long. West Pier was a little less than half that and East Pier even shorter. The coffee shop we were heading to was at the end of West Pier and had both indoor and outdoor seating areas. The outdoor seating is lovely in the summer, but it was the end of October and nearly ten o’clock at night, so we went straight inside. Hannah found a table while I went to order our drinks. I ordered us each a scone with jam and cream too. I was amazed they had any left at this time of night.

“Oh, thank you,” Hannah said as I got back to the table with the tray. “You didn’t need to do that, but I do love scones.”

“Doesn’t everyone?” I said as I sat down.

We set about preparing our scones, slicing them in two and smothering both halves with clotted cream and strawberry jam. Or at least, I did both halves of mine. Hannah did one half and then took a huge bite out of it.

“Oh my God,” she said with her mouth still full. “These are amazing!”

I smirked, then picked up one of my halves and took a bite. She was right, it was amazing. But I already knew that because I’d had them from here before.

“Two and a half years I’ve been in Westmouth, why have I never been here before? Why have I never had one of these before?”

I shrugged. “I think it’s more of a tourist place than a student place. I only know about it because of the day trips here growing up. It’s a bit like The Inn on the Pier over on Central Pier. Most students know the nightclub, but not the pub at the end of the pier—but that might be because they don’t charge student prices.”

“Whatever. These are amazing and I’m coming back here as often as I can. I might even bring the girls tomorrow if we go shopping in town—they will love these.”

We ate the rest of the scones in relative silence. But after they were finished, and after a sip of her hot chocolate, Hannah took a deep breath and suddenly looked quite nervous.

“Paul?” she said, tentatively.

“Yeah?”

“Can I ask you something? I mean, I know I can ask you something because we do all that all the time, talk and ask each other things. But I mean ... It’s not...” She shook her head.

“It’s not what?”

“It’s not what we usually talk about, you know? I mean, we talk about everything. Almost. We’ve fixed national problems, we’ve solved climate change, we’ve ... We’ve put the world to rights multiple times over. You name a problem, we’ve discussed it and solved it.”

I grinned. “They should put us in charge. When we come to power, the world will be a better place.”

She smiled one of her lovely smiles. “Yeah. It probably will be. But of all the things we talked about over the past couple of weeks—politics, religion, music, movies, television, everything—do you know what the one thing we’ve never talked about is?”