Just two calories
Towards the end of secondary school my pubic hairs were getting well established, I’d had several surprise nocturnal incidents, and my voice was dipping humorously across the octaves. The only thing left to do to complete my adolescent bingo card was develop an all consuming obsession with a member of the opposite sex.

My school was large – there were around a thousand pupils in it at any one time, so roughly 500 girls. My friends were a little ahead of me, and would discuss in brilliantly misguided detail how they’d ‘hump’ some pretty girl or other given half the chance. “I bet you could get four fingers in her,” “I bet she’s wicked at tossing off,” etc etc. They largely stuck to the obvious choices – girls none of us had ever spoken to, and who were inevitably hand-in-hand with one of the hard lads. Gobby lasses, the kind who’d tell you to fuck off if you accidentally walked into them, making you spend the rest of the day bright red and nervous with a secret stiffy. Great years, they were.

For some reason though, I was drawn to someone else. Someone I’d never seen with a boy, and who to my knowledge, was unfancied by anyone. I confessed this to my three best mates in our den one night, in my back garden, only to be met with wild hoots of derision. “She’s got a face like a fucking horse!” “Her arse is MASSIVE!” “She’s a stuck-up miserable devil bitch!” The consensus was: what the fuck do you see in her?

Quite simply, she liked Tic Tacs. And I fucking LOVED Tic Tacs. And don’t believe their bollocks about being low calorie, because I lived on those little sugar pills and I was a bonafide fucking blimp.
I learnt of our shared passion for minty obesity when I was stood outside a classroom at break, shaking the fucking things into my jowels like a sow on a bushel of acorns. She broke away from her gaggle of friends and skipped up to me – “Can I have a Tic Tac please?”
I stopped and stared cautiously at her, mouth full of sugar. What did she really want? But there was nothing in her angelic equine face other than a youthful hunger for tooth decay – a look with which I sympathised entirely. I mumbled “Um humf” and shook a few into her open hand. She beamed at me – I’d never been ‘beamed’ at by a girl before – said thank you, and pranced back to her mates. I watched them from a distance, waiting for them to whisper, look over at me and burst out laughing. Nothing.
After the class had finished I was shuffling out and already rooting in my pocket for some sweety goodness. Then there she was, at my side again.
“Thanks for the Tic Tac earlier.”
“Ummm, yeah. Right. No problem.”
“Could I have another please?”

And there it began. If I had Tic Tacs, she spoke to me. If I gave her Tic Tacs, she was grateful. Tic Tacs, it seemed, made me a goddamn diabetes-prone chick magnet. Oo ra.
This went on for the rest of the year. Our relationship barely developed from giving and receiving sweets, but it was all I looked forward to all day. I had a renewed spring in my heavy step. My slouched posture was vaguely more proud. My friends, of course, mocked me without mercy. “Ooh, there’s your fucking horse over there, are you going to go and feed her then, you fucking weirdo? Don’t forget your nose bag.” I didn’t care. To me she was perfect. An angel with a thirst for confectionary that almost rivalled my own.

The school year came to an end. After the last lesson of term I was hanging around the car park waiting for my mates, and up she sprang. I happily reached for my little box of trusty friends.
“Oh, no, I don’t want any thanks.”
This was new.
She passed me a piece of paper.
“I just thought I’d give you this, in case, you know, you wanted to meet up over the summer.”
It had a phone number written on it.
“So, see you soon I hope.”
And off she went onto her bus.

I was completely dumbfounded. That first week of the holidays I could barely think straight. By the second week I was calmer and wondering what to do. The third week I had got to the point of dialling five of the six digits before hanging up, gasping with anxiety. And finally, four weeks into the summer, I called her. It was a painful call, filled with the awkward cack-handedness and evasion of fatness and youth, but somehow we managed to arrange a time to meet in town.
If I thought that call was bad, the walk to meet her was even worse. My body was wracked with tremors and flutters, my face kept going pointlessly hot, and I nearly turned around and went home several times, to the comfort of mum, chips and Spectrums – where there was none of this weird lovely awfulness. But, I didn’t turn around.

We met in a cafe and had a cup of tea. She wittered on about her summer so far, her friends, her family, her horses. It was the most she’d ever said to me. True to form, I sat there silently, desperately trying to think of interesting and funny things that had happened, wishing I was a hard lad so I could at least impress her with a fight I’d won, but other than a few SMASHING goes on International Karate Plus I had nothing.
And then she said it. Two decades hasn’t dulled the impact of the words at all.
“By the way, I’ve got a new boyfriend.”

Nothing she said registered for the next five minutes. My expression didn’t change, but my sight narrowed to the point where only my teacup was visible. A red, roaring noise drowned out everything. There was nothing at that table but me and the world-ending, horrible sickness of your first ever proper rejection.
We carried on for an hour or so, her talking and me seeming to listen, but actually just wondering what the fuck I was doing, where I was, what was going on. Something seemed to register, because at last she said “Are you ok?”
I suppose there wasn’t much point continuing the facade any longer.
“Dunno”
“What’s the matter?”

I looked straight at her for probably the first time that day, and began muttering a load of rubbish about being tired, being late, needing to go, got to meet my friends. Just waffle, something to fill the silence until I could leave without admitting anything, without letting on why I’d turned up. But somewhere, deep within my burgeoning balls, there was an idiotic and brilliant voice that needed to be heard –

“And I’d been wondering what it would be like to kiss you.”

That hung in the air for a moment.

And to this day, I’m happy to report that it tasted like Tic Tacs.

Iffy crushes? It was the best one I’ve ever had.
( Wet-chinned bag shanker Cannot parse Wogan, Fri 7 Oct 2011, 11:55, 15 replies)

Exactly the kind of stuff this QOTW needs
*clicks*
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Fri 7 Oct 2011, 12:01, closed)

Brilliant
simply
brilliant.
( .Yeti. El amor en los tiempos del cólera, Fri 7 Oct 2011, 12:03, closed)

tl;dr
hehehe not really

fantastic we need more like this
(sittingduck Attention seeking, bullshitting fuck-knuckle, Fri 7 Oct 2011, 12:06, closed)

If that has been shit and dissapointing, I would have clicked anyway just because someone actually made an effort.
As it happens, it was great too.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Fri 7 Oct 2011, 12:22, closed)

^All of the above^
Thank fuck someone's finally written something worth reading.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 7 Oct 2011, 12:40, closed)

Ata Boy!
click
(SpangoTheWonderBadger is brewing beer, Fri 7 Oct 2011, 12:51, closed)

excellent stuff

(TheManWithThePlan cussed your mum on, Fri 7 Oct 2011, 12:51, closed)

tl
dr
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Fri 7 Oct 2011, 12:53, closed)

fantastic
Reminded me of how I foolishly and weakly took the easy way out of the few romantic openings that presented themselves to me in my early to mid teens. Awkward, stammering shyness ftw.
(mersault, Fri 7 Oct 2011, 13:00, closed)

Cheers all :)
And belated apologies for length.
( Wet-chinned bag shanker Cannot parse Wogan, Fri 7 Oct 2011, 13:35, closed)

Hats
off for writing something not run of t'mill.
( shadyron, Fri 7 Oct 2011, 13:40, closed)

I'm going to click this as it's likely to be the only 'phwoar, I'd smash that' story this week.

( Amorous Badger NAKED BEA ARTHUR PHOTOS 4U, Fri 7 Oct 2011, 14:35, closed)

Cuter than a kitteh in a teacup
..and sadder than the death of Little Nell.

Have a click.
(all my scars face forward possesses 2.5% of a hyperalloy combat chassis, Fri 7 Oct 2011, 16:04, closed)

Aaw
Clicky.
(Le Grenouille, Sat 8 Oct 2011, 20:07, closed)