Loveless. Alice Oseman

about pizza.’

      ‘So she’s just, like, insanely good at getting people to like her?’ said Pip through a mouthful of pizza later that evening.

      ‘That’s pretty much it, yeah,’ I said.

      Jason shook his head. ‘And you want to be like her? Why?’

      The three of us were sprawled on Rooney’s aqua rug, pizza in the middle. We’d had a minor debate about whether to watch our group favourite, Moulin Rouge, or Jason’s favourite, the live action Scooby-Doo movie, but we eventually settled on Scooby-Doo and were playing it on my laptop. Rooney was out for the night at some sort of themed bar night, and had I not already made plans with my friends, I probably would have gone with her. But this was better. Everything was better when Jason and Pip were here.

      I couldn’t admit to them how desperately I wanted to be in a romantic relationship. Because I knew it was pathetic. Trust me. I completely understood that women should want to be strong and independent and you don’t need to find love to have a successful life. And the fact that I so desperately wanted a boyfriend – or a girlfriend, a partner, whoever, someone – was a sign that I was not strong, or independent, or self-sufficient, or happy alone. I was really quite lonely, and I wanted to be loved.

      Was that such a bad thing? To want an intimate connection with another human?

      I didn’t know.

      ‘She just finds it so easy to talk to people,’ I said.

      ‘That’s just what life is like when you’re abnormally attractive, though,’ said Pip.

      Jason and I looked at her.

      ‘Abnormally attractive?’ I said.

      Pip stopped chewing. ‘What? She is! I’m just stating facts! She’s got that sort of “I could step on you and you would enjoy it” energy.’

      ‘Interesting,’ Jason said, raising an eyebrow.

      Pip started to go a bit red. ‘I’m literally just making an observation!’

      ‘… OK.’

      ‘Don’t look at me like that.’

      ‘I’m not.’

      ‘You are.’

      Since the events of prom, I’d given some solid thought as to whether I might actually be a lesbian, like Pip. It would make sense. Maybe my lack of interest in boys was because I was, in fact, interested in girls.

      That’d be a fairly sensible solution to my situation.

      According to Pip, the hallmarks of realising you’re a lesbian were: firstly, getting a little intensely obsessed with a girl, mistaking it for admiration, and sometimes thinking about holding their hand, and secondly, having a subconscious fixation on certain female cartoon villains.

      Jokes aside, I’d never had a crush on a girl, so I didn’t really have any evidence to support that particular theory.

      Maybe I was bi or pan, since I didn’t even seem to have a preference at this point.

      The next couple of hours were spent talking, snacking, and occasionally glancing at my laptop screen to watch the movie. Pip rambled at length about how interesting her introductory chemistry lab class had been, while Jason and I both mourned how dull our first lectures had been. We all shared our thoughts about the people we’d met in college – how many posh private-school kids there were, how bad the drinking culture already seemed to be, and how there really should be more cereal options at breakfast. At one point, Pip decided to water Roderick the house plant, because, in her words, ‘He’s looking a bit thirsty.’

      But soon it was eleven o’clock, and Pip decided it was time to make some hot chocolate, which she insisted on doing on the stove rather than using the kettle in my bedroom. We all headed out of the room towards the tiny kitchen on my corridor, which was shared between eight people but had been empty the few times I’d been in there thus far.

      Tonight, it was not empty.

      I knew this from the moment Pip glanced through the door window and made a face like she’d been given a mild electric shock.

      ‘Oh shit,’ she hissed, and as Jason and I joined her, we finally saw what was going on.

      Rooney was in the kitchen.

      She was with a guy.

      She was sitting on the kitchen counter. He was standing between her legs, his tongue in her mouth, and his hand up her shirt.

      To put it lightly: they were both very much enjoying themselves.

      ‘Oh,’ I said.

      Jason immediately stepped away from the situation, like any normal person would, but Pip and I just stood there for a moment, watching this go down.

      It became clear to me in that moment that the only way I was going to make any progress in my finding love mission was if I asked Rooney for help.

      I was not going to be able to do it on my own, ever.

      I’d tried. I promise I’d tried. I’d tried to kiss Tommy when he went in for one, but the Kill Bill sirens started going off in my mind and I just couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

      I’d tried to talk to people at the Freshers’ Barbecue, and when we were huddling outside the lecture halls, and at lunch and dinner when I sat with Rooney and all the people she had befriended. I’d tried, and I wasn’t terrible at it, I was polite, and nice, and people didn’t seem to hate me.

      But I would never be like Rooney. Not naturally, anyway. I would never be able to kiss some guy just because it was fun, because it made me feel good, because I could do what I wanted. I would never be able to manufacture that spark that she seemed to have with almost everyone she met.

      Unless she told me how.

      Pip finally tore her eyes away from the window. ‘That’s got to be unhygienic,’ she said, making a disgusted face. ‘That’s where people make their tea, for God’s sake.’

      I murmured my agreement before moving away from the door, our hot chocolate plans abandoned.

      Pip had this look on her face like she’d seen this coming.

      ‘I’m so dumb,’ she muttered.

      I knew almost everything about romance. I knew the theory. I knew when people were flirting, I knew when they wanted to kiss. I knew when people’s boyfriends were being shitty to them, even when they couldn’t tell it themselves. I’d read infinite stories of people meeting and flirting and awkwardly pining, hating before liking, lusting before loving, kissing and sex and love and marriage and partners for life, till death us do part.

      I was a master of the theory. But Rooney was a master of the practice.

      Maybe fate had brought her to me. Or maybe that was just romantic thinking.

      

      In the middle of the night, between Tuesday and Wednesday, I woke up to hear someone having sex in the room above ours.

      It was a sort of rhythmic thumping. Like a headboard hitting a wall. And a creaking, like the bend of an old bedframe.

      I sat up, wondering if I was just imagining it. But I wasn’t. It was real. People were having sex in the room above us. What else would that sound be? There were only bedrooms up there, so unless someone had decided to do some 3 a.m. DIY, there was only one thing that sound could be.

      Rooney was fast asleep, curled up on her side, her dark hair splayed around her on the pillow. Utterly oblivious.

      I