Self-imposed solitude doesn't go to plan

So, we had both agreed to avoid each other for a bit – stay out of each other’s territory. The problem was, Charley’s territory was not only pretty much the whole house, but also the entirety of London. And that meant more time cooped up in my room, which was starting to get a bit grating, even for me.

Being alone with my thoughts right now wasn’t helping. Had I made the right decision when I told Charley we shouldn’t ever do it again? Surely, yes – us starting some secret, borderline incestuous love affair opened us up to a whole host of potential problems. But on the other hand, I’d had a crush on her my whole life, and as you can imagine recent events hadn’t helped with my plan to move on from her. I kept thinking about how incredible that night had felt. Was I an idiot for giving up the opportunity to do that again?

Anyway, now I had plenty of time to go in circles trying to answer these questions in my head. And now that there was no Friday party on the horizon that would alleviate my incel behavior, my parents were starting to give me grief.

The Monday after my talk with Charley, my stepmum came knocking on my door.

She walked in, and immediately grimaced. “Ugh, it’s a pig sty in here.” She sniffed. “And it smells … ripe, to say the least.”

“I appreciate the constructive criticism. I’ll get on it real soon, I promise.” I swung my chair to face her a flashed her a sarcastic smile.

“It’s really not healthy to hole up in here constantly, Luke.”

I sighed. “It’s the holiday. It’s not that deep.” I wasn’t about to let her in on the fact that the real reason I wasn’t leaving my room was because I had drunkenly slept with her only daughter and was now avoiding her.

She muttered something under her breath and walked out, shaking her head. I had a feeling this wasn’t over.

Sure enough, that weekend there was another knock on my door.

“Come in,” I sighed, preparing myself for more nagging. But it wasn’t my Mum or Dad that walked in. As soon as I saw the flash of blonde hair, I averted my eyes and looked up at the ceiling. “Uh … hello, Charley.”

“Hey.”

“Um … what can I do for you?” I coughed, wincing at how awkward I was being.

“Very formal,” she remarked, one eyebrow raised. “I just came to see if you wanted to come to this party tonight. One of my old school friends is hosting.”

“Oh.” Weren’t we supposed to be avoiding each other? “And … why exactly did you decide to invite me?”

She shrugged. “It’s probably only going to be people from my year coming. You might know some of them, want to catch up.”

Now that was far-fetched. She knew I’d only had six friends in school, and all of them were from my year’s football team. “Mum told you to, didn’t she?”

Charley looked away. Or at least it looked like she did, out of the corner of my eye. “You got me.”

“Great. Well, you don’t have to worry – I’ll tell her you begged me to go, but I told you to piss off and let me rot.”

“No,” she sighed. “You should come. We can’t just avoid each other for the rest of our lives. It’s time to push through and move on.”

Why not? We’ve done it for the past four years, no problem. But I didn’t say that. Truthfully, despite the fact that I hadn’t sorted my feelings out yet, I wanted to go. If only to get my parents off my back.

“Okay,” I said. “When are we leaving?”

“We’re not going together. Unless you want to leave right now and spend two hours sitting around while we do our hair and makeup.”

Two hours?? Luckily, I knew better than to comment on that absurd amount of time. “Alright, sure. So, when should I get there?”

“Around ten. I’ll text you the address. And don’t come empty handed, bring beer or something.”

I rolled my eyes. “Thanks professor, I know house party etiquette. I’ll see you then.”

She gave me a small smile and left.

I sighed and rested my head in my hands. Are we really ready for this? We hadn’t even looked each other in the eyes once during that whole conversation.

I took a deep breath. No. You got this Luke. I knew there would be ****. And I knew that Charley was so popular that she’d likely be flitting around all night, trying to find the time to greet a hundred people.

There was no pressure for this to be a massive turning point to put us back on track. Baby steps – first, we needed to show we could spend an evening in the same area. Of course, in order to make it all go smoothly I was going to pre-game hard.