Losing Grip.

I pushed one of the big double doors forwards and walked through to my form room, chewing on one of the drawstrings on my jumper. It was Monday morning, and I had managed to catch the bus on time, meaning the sight of Aled and Matt greeted me; both sat on a table near the middle of the room.

Matt was reading some comic, while a few girls surrounded Aled. I grinned and headed over to them.

“Alright everyone?”

Matt looked up at me briefly and nodded as a greeting, before returning to the fantasy worlds on the pages. Aled looked up and grinned.

“Sean, mate. Hi. Good weekend?”

“Yeah, not too bad,” I replied, scratching the back of my head. “How about you?”

“It was pretty fucking tidy, yeah,” He smirked. I noticed that as we talked, his right hand was sneakily sliding down the hip of the girl sat to his right. Cassie, I thought her name was. I wasn’t sure though- I had trouble keeping up with the names of all the different girls Aled went out with.

“Oh, I’m going to Cardiff to get new shoes this weekend,” Aled added, “Wanna come?”

I nodded, stifling a laugh at the thought of Aled in shoe shops. Honestly, he’s obsessed with shoes. You’d think he was the gay one, the way he runs about them with his eyes going all big and a smile stuck to his face.

I was guessing that he wasn’t “going out” with (possibly) Cassie though, by the way I noticed the fingers on his left hand surreptitiously slipping underneath the waistband on the girl on his left’s school skirt. Ah, he’s a cheeky flirt, is Aled.

Or maybe it’s a three-way thing. Who knows?

“How’s Ian?” Aled questioned, whilst the girl on the left (who’s name I didn’t have a clue about) slipped her high heeled clad foot a little way up the inside of his leg. I looked away and tried hard not to laugh.

“He’s... uh… good,” I told him, keeping the straight face as much as possible. Aled nodded as if to say, “oh, cool,” before beginning to devote more of his attention to both of the girls. They didn’t seem to mind sharing him, thus inclining me further to the theory of it being a three-way thing. I wouldn’t put it past Aled to be into something like that.

Suddenly, the bell rang. Both of the girls stood up to go to their own form rooms, looking disappointed.

“Until next time, ladies,” Aled grinned, winking at them both as they swanned out of the room, short skirts and shiny hair all the way. He watched them go, eyes fixed firmly on their legs and eventually turned to Matt and I.

Aled glanced at Matt and saw that he was absorbed in batman again. He sighed, rolled his eyes and lifted a hand to knock the comic right out of his hands and onto the floor; before taking a seat. Matt jumped, horrified, and immediately retrieved it from the floor.

“Aled!” He hissed, annoyed.

Aled just grinned in his oddly charming way and put his feet on the table in front of him, putting his hands behind his head.

“Yes, Matthew?”

Matthew sort of scowled at him for a few moments then mumbled something and drew out a chair to sit down himself, a space away from Aled, though. I sat down in between them and decided to try and bridge the gap so Matt wasn’t too pissed off. He’s used to being the butt of Aled’s jokes and whatnot, but I sometimes wonder if it does actually bother him. Maybe someday he’ll get one more insult and explode into this huge, incredible-hulk-matt beast that wants to destroy everything as revenge.

I looked up to see that Matt was carefully wrapping his batman comic in some Clingfilm to keep safe and slipping into a pocket on his bag to keep it safe. Next to it was a lunchbox that we all knew would contain cheese spread sandwiches made freshly by his Mam this morning.

Maybe he won’t be a huge avenging monster after all.

“So…” Aled yawned, “What did you two get up to at the weekend then?”

“The cousins,” Matt muttered darkly.

“Ohh.” Aled winced at Matt’s words and then bit his lip, thinking.
“Does Hattie still wear that red hat thing?” He wanted to know.

“Er...Yeah, sometimes. Why?”

“No reason,” Aled replied innocently. I looked at him a moment later and he mouthed “hot]/i]” at me.

I laughed at his one-track mind, and Matt glared at us both accusingly.

“Don’t even think about trying to get on my cousin! That’s…just… wrong!” Matt spluttered.

“Don’t worry Mattie, I won’t. I’ve known you too long, it’d be like doin’ one of my own cousins,” Aled chuckled, reaching over and ruffling Matt’s hair. Matt jerked his head away and made a disgusted face, but smiled ruefully a second later, letting us know he was over it.

“I’ve got some other people interested, anyway,” Aled told us, smirking.

“Yeah, I noticed,” I informed him. “What are their actual names?”

“Cassie is the dark haired one,” (Ah, I was right!) “And the redhead is called Hayley.”

“And are they both blind or just desperate…?” I asked cheekily.

“Shuddup you!” Aled tossed his hair, or rather pretended to, “Actually, they’re competing for me.”

Matt started spluttering with laughter.

”What the hell do they want to do that for?” He asked, clutching his side.

“Cos I’m irresistible, blates,” Aled told us, eyeing his fingernails. I laughed at him then, too. That’s the thing about Aled- he’s a right little partying pretty boy flirt and he knows it, he’s proud of it, yet he’s likeable all the same.

“Anyway, I don’t see you with anyone, Matthew,” Aled said pointedly. Matthew went red and mumbled a bit.

I felt kind of bad for him so to take the heat of him somewhat, I piped up with; “Well, I might not be, soon.”

As soon as I said it I felt horrible. I hated the idea of not being with Ian any more, I hated it! I didn’t want him going to Uni to tear us apart, but at the same time couldn’t feel that it might be inevitable. All the same, suggesting it out loud felt like the equivalent of uttering a curse upon your best friends.

“What?” Said Aled, shocked, his normal cool evaporated.

“How come?” Inquired Matt quietly from the other side.

I fiddled with the cuffs of my hoodie and swallowed, keeping my eyes on the table that we were sat at.

“He, um, he…” I trailed off, not wanting to talk about it. Aled obviously didn’t realise this because he prodded my arm impatiently.

“He what? He’s being distant?” Aled guessed.

“No. No, he’s… he’s been accepted at Manchester University.” My voice came out very quiet. I didn’t change my expression, just went on staring at the table and poking at my sleeve.

“Well, isn’t that good? I heard Manchester was quite good! He-”

“Aled,” Matt interrupted quietly, breaking off Aled’s ramble, “Sean means that Ian is going to move to Manchester.”

A few seconds later Aled made a sort of “oh,” sound.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I… sorry, Sean.”

“S’ok.”

The three of us sat in awkward silence for a few minutes. It’s kind of tricky with feelings sometimes, isn’t it? They aren’t the most fun topic of conversation in my experience; with boys it’s even more awkward. Guys aren’t supposed to even have any feelings, let alone express them through speech. We’re supposed to greet each other with violence and grunt to communicate.

Obviously Aled, Matt, and I didn’t quite conform to that status quo because all of us had something that was slightly… off, shall I say, about us. Maybe that’s why we’d bonded in year seven and stuck together till now.

Or maybe it was because no one else was stupid enough to put up with us.