The Boy IN My Phone

Date with a Clam-trap Armchair

Lisa

Doubts assailed Lisa all the way from the student village accommodation (where the Kingsmead School rugby teams were staying) to the cafe they had spotted from the coach on the way through the main campus. She smiled stupidly at Batty Roberts, who was leaning by a building texting home. Batty whistled in response to Lisa's make-up and sexiest shortest skirt. Rounding the corner, she saw the cafe was open and full of her fellow Kingsmead pupils. Not ideal, she decided, but as she approached the door, she saw the ingredients of her first date falling magically into place:

     Calen – check;
     Alone – check;
     Coffees, two – checkity-check;
     Soft comfy seat invitingly empty opposite him – check! 

We have date-off.

As she approached the cafe door, she tugged at the short skirt she had put on, realising that it was not going to fare well in the descent into the low squishy armchair, possibly revealing more than was usually recommended for a first date.

She entered to a buzz of low whispered conversations. A few heads flicked up like distrustful lizards, but most were too absorbed in their socialising. Calen was staring towards the counter with a look of blissful happiness painted across his face. Of all the people in the cafe, he was the only one who had taken as much care over their appearance as she had. Lisa felt some of her flustered stressing evaporate; the last time she had seen him looking this happy he had just smashed into an opposing winger while throwing a try-scoring pass to his scrum-half. And then he had been as much half-dazed as euphoric.

She eased her way through the labyrinth of tables and chair-backs to Calen's table and practically hurdled the chair arm to drop, possibly a little inelegantly, into its promise of spongy yielding cushions. They gave beneath her fulsome butt, sinking a tad deeper than she expected, skirt riding-up higher (was that even possible?) and bare knees prominent.

'Li-sa?' said Calen with less romantic exuberance and more volume than Lisa had ideally hoped for. She felt, as much as heard, the hubbub of excited conversation to drop away as she wrestled with the skirt, the armchair and her own absence of equilibrium. Her head seemed barely as high as the table on which her skinny latte(!?) steamed.

'Hey Calen,' it came out squeaky, 'thanks for the slimming latte. I won't take it as a hint. Give me a sec to suppress this armchair and I'll be transmitting oodles of charm in your direction. You can tell me more about your suicidal gerbil.'

Her voice boomed in the sudden quiet that seemed to have afflicted the cafe. A few smothered giggles could be heard. Only Snogger Harris, ensconced with a couple of cronies at a table by the window, competed with Lisa's voice, as he laughed boisterously.

'Lisa, you can't sit there,' Calen's elfin features seemed confused. The tumble of artfully teased black hair that fell over his forehead bobbed in agitation and his jay-blue eyes fretted.

'You're telling me,' she laughed, 'this chair's cushions seem to be stuffed with quicksand.'

'No, I mean that seat is taken already.'

The hush in the room had taken on sinister proportions. Lisa battled to edge herself closer to the front of the unforgiving chair. She heard Snogger Harris bawl, 'What's everybody looking at? Is that Lisa Samuels?'

'Taken? By who?' Lisa managed.

'By me, Wenge,' said a voice some way above her head.

Only one person ever called her 'Wenge'.

Looking up, she saw the immaculately, understatedly, lip-smackingly made-up Isabel holding the latte and smiling down at her. 'You seem to be trying to muscle in on my first date with Calen.'

'Your first date?' Lisa said, still momentarily bemused, although the penny was rolling faster, about to drop. Her conclusions were confirmed as she heard the cafe door open and Batty Robert's plaintive voice asking, 'Am I too late? Have I missed it?'

'My first date, Wenge,' said Isabel, 'I've finally agreed to Calen's many pleas to go out with him. I don't imagine our date is going to go any more dreamily with you here grappling my armchair into submission.'

Laughter was bursting out around the room now and Lisa realised she had been set up. Everyone seemed to be in on it, except possibly the odious Snogger Harris, who was saying loudly to his friends, 'Oh it's just Queen Bee-tch putting one over on one of her wannabees.'

Ouch, thought Lisa.

Isabel offered Lisa her hand and helped extricate her from the possessive chair: 'I'll treat you to a cappuccino though; I'm sure you must be used to something with a few more calories.'

Lisa was now standing beside Isabel with Calen staring open-mouthed at the two of them. A comeback remark formed in Lisa's mind along the lines of: 'I just came to help, Izzy. I know you have so much to learn about relationships.' But, for once, her brain engaged before she spoke. No-one would hear in the general clamour and she didn't trust her voice not to trip up, stumbling over the ruins of her dreams. 

For a whole week she had believed she would finally get together with someone she fancied, someone who actually fancied her back. Her dreams had been demolished in a few calamitous moments, suffocated away while she struggled with a clam-trap armchair. She felt unsteady on her heels as if the waves of laughter were buffeting against her.

Standing next to Ms Perfect Bod was not good for her ego either. Lisa was perhaps a little taller than the school's acknowledged beauty, curvy rather than chubby (OK generously curvy), but proximity to Isabel always made her feel stocky and unattractive.

'Best go, Lisa,' said Isabel softly, the use of her real name, rather than the disparaging 'Wenge', somehow made the words more hurtful, 'while you have any dignity left. I'd pull your skirt down a bit first though.'

As Lisa left the cafe, it erupted further. She saw Batty going over to high-five Isabel and many others leaping up to congratulate her. There were cheers.

Hoorah