It Sounded Better in My Head - Nina Kenwood Page 0,9
open the door, but I’m still not quite ready to get out of the car.
‘Bye, Mum.’
‘Call me to pick you up.’
‘I’ll get an Uber.’
‘I can pick you up.’
‘I might…stay at Owen’s.’ I haven’t actually considered this possibility until the words come out of my mouth. Am I seriously planning on hooking up with Owen? Am I planning on having sex tonight? No. The idea is preposterous. Owen and I have had one conversation in our lives. We’re unlikely to make eye contact, let alone bodily contact, let alone kiss, let alone have sex. I don’t even want to have sex with him. But it feels important that Mum believes it could happen. That’s the first step towards it one day actually happening—that other people look at me and think this person could feasibly have sex with someone.
Also, I want to test Mum a little.
‘Oh, Natalie, no, I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
‘Do I need your permission?’ I’m not being snarky or rude with this question. I genuinely don’t know. I turned eighteen seven weeks ago. I’m an adult. I. Am. An. Adult. I do not feel like an adult. I feel light years away from being an adult. I mean, I’m also still a teenager, which is a relief. I always had this vision of myself doing something important during my teen years. I didn’t think I would be a child prodigy, but I thought I would be something very close to it, and now I’m almost out of time. Before I know it, I’ll be twenty-one and no one will be impressed by anything I do.
Mum purses her lips. ‘I suppose not. I mean, I like to know where you are. But you’re eighteen, so you can technically go wherever you want.’
‘Technically?’
‘Legally. Officially. In the eyes of the law.’
‘But?’
‘I don’t want my baby to stay at some boy’s house.’
‘Don’t call me your baby. That is gross and infantilising.’
‘You get a boyfriend and now you’re too good to be called baby. You’ll never have Patrick Swayze with that attitude.’
‘Patrick Swayze is dead.’
‘I know, sweetie. It was a Dirty Dancing reference.’ Mum made me watch Dirty Dancing, The Bodyguard and Muriel’s Wedding when I was fourteen, in order that I would, as she put it, ‘understand her emotional landscape’.
‘I get the reference. But it was weird to mention him.’
‘If I can’t make Dirty Dancing references, then end my life now because it isn’t worth living.’
‘He’s not my boyfriend.’
‘What?’
‘Owen. Just in case you somehow meet him and call him my boyfriend. It’s not like that. At all. We’re not even friends. We barely know each other. I don’t think he’d recognise me if we passed each other on the street.’
‘Well, why on Earth are you thinking about spending the night with him?’ Mum says, her voice jumping about five octaves.
‘Because that’s what people do. Boyfriends and girlfriends aren’t really a big thing anymore. People are more casual now. They just hook up whenever.’ One of my superpowers is pretending I know a lot more about something than I actually do.
‘If boyfriends and girlfriends aren’t a thing anymore, then what are Zach and Lucy doing?’
‘Being old-fashioned.’
‘Well, there’s nothing wrong with old-fashioned.’
‘I’m going now.’
‘I think you should at least wait until you know his surname.’
‘It’s Sinclair.’
‘Owen Sinclair? Didn’t he do something with a girl on a park bench once?’
I need to stop having conversations in front of my parents. My mother retains far too much information.
‘No, you’re thinking of someone else.’ I turn to get out of the car.
Mum reaches out and puts her hand on my arm.
‘You’ve scared me. I don’t want to let you go now.’
‘Mum, probably nothing is going to happen. I just wanted to clear a path in your mind in case it does.’
‘Clear a path in my mind?’ She’s smiling.
I frown at her. ‘Yes.’
She pulls me back into the car and kisses my cheek. ‘Okay. Consider the path cleared.’
‘Bye, Mum.’ I shut the car door and start crossing the road. I can hear the buzz of her window rolling down.
‘Bye, hon. Text me, too. I’ll be waiting up. And don’t do anything you don’t want to do. Don’t let anyone put anything in your drink. And don’t take drugs—you’re not ready for that. Have fun!’
Oh my god. I hurry away before she can think of another stream of mortifying things to call out. She hasn’t driven off yet, which means she’s going to sit there and watch me go in.