Harriet- Chapter 1

Chapter 1:

I’m never quite sure of the best way to describe my relationship with Cameron O’Neil. Sometimes I think of him as the love of my life. Sometimes I just think of him as some boy I loved. Most of the time I think of him as my first love, and the best friend I could ever want.

And I’m definitely never sure of how I ended up as the ‘you’ in a whole bunch of songs that everyone in the world attached their own meanings to.

When I first saw Cameron O’Neil, I was 15 and I fell in love with him. He was on stage, sweating under the lights and leather trousers. He’s shirt was a little too tight and a little too open and his eyeliner was sliding off. He was playing guitar and was singing about heart brake and unrequited love. He was older and looked like the kind of man your mother warned you about. I was 15 and I fell in love with him.

He didn’t even know that I existed. I was just a fan, standing at the back of a dark room, trying to look cool.

It took a year for him to notice. In the meantime, I lusted from a safe fan-girl distance. I went to every gig his band, Pathetic Fallacy, played in Cambridge. I met a whole lot of great people during this time. We all became great friends. We went to gigs, and drank cheap cider outside, danced inside and became a sort of club of the ‘cool gig people’. All that time I never really thought that Cameron would ever be anything other then a teen-fantasy. I might have been hopelessly in lust, but I wasn’t stupid.

Of course, our paths crossed occasionally, mostly at gigs. A lot of the people I knew knew the band. After all, Cambridge is a pretty small place, and the indie-gig scene is even smaller. Sometimes we were at the same parties, or whatever. He still didn’t really know who I was. Anyway, on the few occasions I’d actually spoken to him, I’d always said something utterly ridiculous and wished I was dead, so it was probably best he didn’t know who I was. Fantasies are better that way.

When he did notice, the whole thing took me totally by surprise, and snowballed beyond the reaches of my imagination. I was at a party, at Rick and Mike’s flat in Cambridge after a Pathetic Fallacy gig. The party was in aid of Sophie’s 18th birthday. Sophie (along with Emily and Sarah) had become one of my closest friends out of my gig-going-group. She is rather indescribable, and some would say totally mad, but I love her all the same. Even if she does have a habit of calling people “Muffinhead” and hitting them with things (including the birthday presents she’d just been given!)
Anyway, I’d been dancing for what felt like hours, firstly at the gig, and then back at the party. For me it was a double celebration really, Sophie’s birthday and the end of my GSCE exams- which in turn meant never having to go back to my secondary school, which I’d hated.

After all the dancing, I was sitting on the back doorstep, catching my breath and resting my feet. My head was spinning a little bit from too much cider and dancing and it was cool outside. It was about 1.30am and the garden (if you can call it that!) was quiet, with only the noises from the party inside filtering out. I was just sitting there minding my business, catching my breath and resting my feet when Cameron O’Neil came along and changed everything.
“Mind if I join you?” someone said from the doorway behind me. I turned around, it was Cameron, I didn’t really know what to say, so I just nodded, giving myself a mental reality check. He stepped out of the door, gently closing it behind him and sat down next to me.
“You’re Harriet aren’t you?” he asked as he settled on the step. I nodded, still a little dumbstruck by his presence, “I recognise you from gigs,” he continued.
“Yeah, I go to a lot,” I said rather coyly, suddenly very aware of not only our proximity, but also the fact that this was really the first time we’d ever had a proper conversation.
“What did you think of tonight then?” He looked straight at me, apparently eager for a critical fan-girl opinion.
“Well, pretty good,” I started, “my only complaint would be that the set was a little boring.” There was an uncomfortable pause.
Just as I was about to backtrack, fearing I’d been a little too critical, Cameron said, “What do you mean? The same old songs?” I nodded. “I’ve been thinking the same, we’ve got some new songs, but the others want more practice before we go public with them.”
“New songs would be good though. Not that the old ones are bad, but variety is always good,” I concluded, and we lapsed into silence again.

The silence was weird. Not uncomfortable, but tense. I wasn’t really sure why it was tense, but it felt as if something was about to happen.

“Why are you sitting out here anyway?” Cameron asked eventually. I could feel him looking at me, but I was almost scared to turn my head enough to meet his eye, so kept staring straight ahead into the dark garden.
“I needed to sit down, my feet hurt from dancing, and I needed the fresh air as well.” Cameron looked down at me feet, “I’m not surprised they hurt. Those shoes look lethal!”
I laughed, and looked down at them, chunky black high-healed boots, “I suppose they do look pretty bad, but they are pretty comfortable normally, I’ve just danced too much.”
“I’m not convinced they’d ever be comfortable, but I’ll take your word for that.”
“Sure you don’t want to try them?” I joked.
“It’s tempting, but I’ll pass… they wouldn’t go with my trousers!” He gestured at his rather infamous leather trousers. The leather trousers were one of the things I’d fallen in lust with, they were tight in all the right places and wonderfully naff. Just the thought of them made me go rather girly and giggly. I was starting to feel the tension again, but this time I knew what it was.
“Yeah, there is nothing worse then miss matched leather trousers and shoes…!” I joked.
“It’s not a joking matter, this is a look I work very hard to achieve, the wrong shoes would spoil the entire thing!”
“You mean you actually spent time putting that outfit together?” The nervous tension was subsiding and giving way to a new slightly flirtatious feel to the conversation.
“Literally hours,” I could feel that Cameron was trying hard not to laugh, “I mean, everything has to coordinate, or else you just ending up looking like Tom Jones’ wardrobe vomited on Bruce Springsteen!” This set us both off into fits of laughter. The kind of laughter you only really get with slightly drunken friends.

Once our laughter died down, we slipped into an easy silence again. I felt wonderfully relaxed, with just a hint of something like nervousness in the pit of my stomach. The tension was still there, but I was comfortable with it. Hell, I was loving it. I never really thought I’d have this kind of tension with Cameron.

“You’ve been a fan since the beginning haven’t you?” Cameron asked me, as he shifted slightly on the step, meaning that our arms were pressed against each other and his hand very nearly resting on my knee.
“Yeah, I think I was at your second gig. You were pretty bad then, but you’ve improved somewhat since!”
“Jesus, we were pretty bad back then. Why on earth did you ever want to see us again? I never wanted to see us again after our first few shows!”
I thought for a second, how could I answer that question, I mean the reason I kept going to see them was really because of my teenage crush on Cameron, certainly at least until the music got better and I got to know people.
“I don’t know really, maybe I have some kind of sixth sense for hidden talent. Although it’s more likely that I became an accidental fan-girl for the leather trousers.” I turned my head and met Cameron’s eye, grinning. He laughed.
“How do you fan-girl trousers may I ask?”
“Good question, I don’t know really, but it sounds good.”
“It sounds rather dirty if you ask me!” Cameron winked at me, ever so subtly, almost unnoticeable, but it was a wink, loaded with flirtatious tension. And his hand was very definitely resting lightly on my leg.
“It probably is a little bit dirty, but mostly harmless…”
My teenage hormones were having a field day. This was starting to get a little bit too good to be true; Cameron O’Neil was flirting with me. I might have been a bit drunk, but I wasn’t so drunk that I couldn’t recognise that. Half of me was aiming for “play it cool”, the other half; well the other half did definitely not want to play it cool. That half of me had passed cool quite some time ago and moved on to hot. Very hot indeed. As my inner debate over whether to play it cool or not was raging, Cameron’s thumb was softly stroking my leg, so gently that it was almost unnoticeable. Play it cool was losing big time.
“Only a little bit dirty? Damn, it sounds like it ought to be a lot dirty.”
“Well I guess that is up for debate”

And this is where it all starts to get the kind of slightly drunken hazy that you get with people you really like. The flirting gets steadily more outrageous and the gazes are held a little bit longer each time, and your stomach does the flipping thing. And almost out of nowhere, although the build up has been obvious enough, you actually are kissing.

That’s how I ended up kissing Cameron O’Neil and then some for the first time. I was 16 and I fell in love with him.