Nick and Charlie

‘Basic teenage relationship?’ Sai splutters. ‘Have you seen yourselves? You hang around with each other every single day and somehow haven’t wanted to kill each other yet. You’ve started sleeping round each other’s houses regularly on school nights!? You can communicate by just looking at each other! Trust me, I’ve played board games with you two.’ He shakes his head. ‘A basic teenage relationship is daring to hold hands outside the school gate and going on cinema-and-Nando’s dates on Saturday afternoons.’

‘Did he actually say, Charlie, I want to break up with you?’
I frown. ‘Well, no, not exactly. But, he didn’t say I don’t want to break up.’
‘But obviously he wouldn’t have said that.’
‘What?’
‘If he thought you were trying to break up with him, he’s not going to start protesting against it. If he thought you didn’t love him any more, he wouldn’t make it difficult for you. He’d just be heartbroken.’
‘Well, he’s an idiot then!’
Aled laughs. ‘Exactly. Two idiots in love. Couple goals.’

Then again, Charlie could lie for Britain – he lies to loads of people. He lied to people at school for months about his anorexia. He lies to his parents sometimes when he wants to go out somewhere with me but isn’t sure they’d let him. He lies to Mr Shannon to avoid becoming unpopular with other students. To be fair, he hardly ever lies to me, but occasionally I can tell that he’s saying something just because he doesn’t want to bother me. I think this might be one of those times.

‘If you want to break up,’ he says, pointing a finger at me, ‘go right ahead. If you’re bored and want it to be over, fine. But just because you’re not going on fucking amazing dates every weekend doesn’t mean you’re boring and definitely doesn’t mean you need to break up.’

‘You’re smart. You’re doing English Lit at uni.’

‘English Lit is utterly useless in the real world, Nicholas. Utterly useless. Trust me. Chaucer and John Donne aren’t going to help you with this.’

This makes me laugh. ‘I don’t even know who they are.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Well, he’s an idiot then!’

Aled laughs. ‘Exactly. Two idiots in love. Couple goals.’

‘Come take a selfie with me,’ I say. ‘I want to piss off my Tumblr followers.’

Nick grins and puts down the hairdryer. ‘Why would that piss them off?’

‘Selfies piss everyone off.’

‘So passive aggressive.’

You’re Nick and Charlie, aren’t you?’