This series unfolds as a collection of diary entries--private glimpses into one woman's life, where memory, desire, and experience all blur together. While the format borrows from the feel of a real journal, the subsequent chapters won't follow a strict timeline. The subsequent chapters will jump around, dipping into different moments of life. Some young and impressionable, others more mature and unapologetically bold, each reflecting the mood, hunger, or heartache of who she was in that moment.
You'll find that each chapter should carry its own mood. Some are introspective. Others look back with longing or regret. And some, like this one, simply capture the moment unfiltered, and alive with sensation. Not at the stage of her life to draw lessons from the experiences, but simply to record them.
This isn't about documenting life as it was. It's about capturing how it felt--in the heat of it, or in the slow ache after. So let yourself embrace the voice, and allow a bit of artistic license. After all, the real aim here is to tell a story... wrapped in the intimacy of a diary. This series offers a private window into Lily's world--her thoughts, desires, missteps, and awakenings. What may seem like fleeting comments or throwaway details often hint at a much larger story unfolding just beyond her awareness. Moments she records in passing may carry weight she doesn't yet understand, leaving room for the reader to sense the tension beneath the surface.
Some of those hints may eventually take shape in spin-off stories told from other perspectives, in a more traditional narrative style. These won't center on Lily, but they might offer context--filling in the shadows of things she mentions without ever knowing the full truth. Or at least doesn't know yet.
Because that's part of the pleasure, really--seeing the world through her eyes, even when we suspect there's far more going on behind the scenes than she realizes.
June 14, 2000 10:57 PM
Dinner for my birthday tonight. Just the three of us, same as always. We went to the little Italian restaurant in town, because Mum wanted somewhere "a bit proper" and Dad will eat anything if there's garlic bread involved. I wasn't particularly fussed, but I'm glad we went because... well. He was there.
Scott.
As in Scott-from-school Scott. As in Scott-was-on-the-football-team-and-had-that-smile-that-made-girls-squeal Scott.
I nearly dropped my fork when I spotted him walking toward our table with a notepad and towel over his shoulder. He's working there now. Took me a second to believe it. He looked different in the black shirt and apron. His hair's longer, bit messy, but in a way that suits him unfairly well.
He looked right at me, paused, then smiled and said, "Happy birthday."
I swear my heart stopped for half a second. For a moment I was completely flummoxed and thought, Wait, how would he know that? Like maybe he remembered. As if he even knew when my birthday was in the first place. As if he knew who I was.
But then I saw the card Mum had propped up on the table. Bright pink envelope. Massive "Happy Birthday Lily" printed across the front in sparkly letters. Subtle, that. He must've seen it.
Still, I blushed like an idiot anyway.
Mum, of course, leaned across the table the moment he was gone grinning like a cat and said, "Well, someone's got a sharp eye. You've an admirer, Lil." Dad didn't say much, just looked Scott up and down like he was sizing him up and then muttered something about whether they still did the veal parm.
It's not like I ever knew Scott in school. He was the kind of boy people orbited around, always had a group, always knew what to say, teachers loved him even when he mucked about. And me? I was the new girl with the funny accent, that can't keep her slang straight, because I'm just off the plane from England when we moved here for Dad's job.
Starting high school in a new country? Brilliant timing dad. Not awkward at all.
Anyway, Scott was miles out of my league. Still is, I probably. I was just... average. Not invisible, but not memorable either. And yet, tonight he looked right at me, and smiled like he meant it. For a second I almost let myself believe he knew who I was.
I must've said something idiotic about the lasagna. Or nodded weirdly. Honestly, I blacked out a bit from sheer embarrassment.
Now I'm lying here like a complete muppet, thinking it over a hundred different ways. The way he smiled. The way he paused.
It was probably just good customer service. He probably says "happy birthday" to ten tables a night.
So imagine my surprise when he smiled at me, like really smiled, and said, "Hey... didn't we go to school together?"
Cue internal panic. I think I squeaked out something like "Yeah, I think so" before pretending to look at the menu like it had just revealed the secrets of the universe. He was charming, friendly, and confident of course. He had noticed my birthday card on the table and asked how my birthday was going and told me I "look different, in a good way." Which... okay, brain, that could mean anything, but tell that to the swarm of butterflies I suddenly had in my stomach. And the look my parents gave me couldn't have been more different. I got "Someone's got an admirer!" expressed as a good thing and a bad thing at the same time by looking at either of their faces. God just kill me. I hope he didn't notice them.
I couldn't help it. I kept wondering--was he just being nice? Or was he eyeing me up? That half-second pause when he first saw me? The way he asked if I was back in town permanently, or "just visiting"?
Probably nothing. It's always probably nothing. I mean he didn't even realize I never left town because I'm out of his orbit. He probably said the exact same line to table five ten minutes before us. I mean, why would Scott Harper be checking me out? I'm not exactly the kind of girl you remember after high school when you didn't even know me in high school.
Still... it seemed like he remembered something.
I didn't leave my number (obviously), but I did write "thanks for making my birthday extra nice" on the receipt. With a little smiley face. God, it's like I'm regressing in age!
Anyway. Maybe nothing comes of it. Probably won't. But for the first time in a long time, I felt... I wasn't off the radar. Like I wasn't just blending into the background.
And that? That was the best birthday gift I didn't know I needed.
June 15, 2000 8:17 AM
Didn't sleep. Not properly, anyway. Two, maybe three hours, but it was one of those nights where you keep flipping your pillow over, hoping your brain will shut up for five bloody minutes and it just won't.
All I could think about was him. Scott Harper. Still feels a bit mad writing that down.
It was just him, all night. His smile, the way he looked at me, like I was actually a person and not just some background extra. When he said "happy birthday," it was like the whole room went quiet for a second. I swear my brain's got it playing on loop like some embarrassing messed-up love song.
And I know I'm being ridiculous. He's not into girls like me. He never was. In school, it was always the confident ones, the ones who wore crop tops without second-guessing themselves, who laughed loudly and tossed their hair like they were in a shampoo advert. Girls who just knew how to be looked at. I was more... background noise. Not invisible, but hardly the kind of girl someone like Scott would clock twice.
But last night... ugh. It felt different. Even if I was just imagining the whole thing.
And then, of course, my subconscious decided to have a field day.
I had a dream. Not just a dream--one of those dreams. The kind where you wake up and you can't even look yourself in the mirror without going red.
We were somewhere by the water, a lake or maybe the seaside, hard to say, but everything was warm and soft, the sky all hazy pink and gold. He leaned in, tucked my hair behind my ear (I know, I sound like something out of a dodgy paperback), and then he kissed me. Slow, like he had nowhere else in the world to be.
And then it all went a bit sideways in the best way, mind. My heart was pounding so loud I thought it might burst out of my chest. It felt real. Like he was touching me. Like Scott Harper was going to take me like I imagine he did the prom queen back in school.
He had me up against the tree before I could even catch my breath. One second I was standing there being all flirty, the next his hands were on my waist, then my hips, then my thighs. And hang on a sec -- when did my shorts disappear? I know I had them on. My heart was thudding so hard I could feel it in my throat. It felt real. Like Scott bloody Harper was actually going to take me, right there, right up against the tree, like I was in one of those DVDs dad thought he'd cleverly stashed behind the tax files in his office closet. As if I hadn't found those ages ago.
Then he slid his leg between mine, nudging them apart, and Christ, I could feel
everything
. I could feel rough hair on his thigh rubbing up against the softest part of me. And the stiff material of his shorts rubbing against my bare skin, while the bark behind me scraped my arse like a hundred tiny fingernails dragging across me, and urging me on. Like even the tree couldn't get enough of it.
I was wet, so bloody wet, I just knew I was soaking the edges of my knickers. When he pushed a bit more, and his thigh found the crease between my legs, I gasped. All I could do was bury my face into his neck and whimper. "Oh fucking hell," I finally muttered, and gripped his arms to steady myself. "For fuck's sake, you really are something, aren't you? Bet you've done this loads, haven't you? Got a proper routine and everything." Even in my own dream I couldn't be the confident one and had to think of other girls. "This the spot where you bring all the girls from school, then?"
"No, this is just for my birthday girl," he said, and that was it. Sod subtlety. I was trying to climb him like he was the tree behind me. I'd tightened my arms around his neck like I was trying to pull myself up, leg hitching round his waist without even thinking. Gave him a clear enough signal. And he got it.
His hands moved from my hips round to me bum, lifting me off the ground. The lovely thing about dreams is they don't have to make sense. And dreams being what they are, we weren't by the tree anymore. We were in the kitchen at his work, and he was completely naked as the day he was born, while I was still in my birthday dress with no knickers, and my legs wrapped around his waist.
He propped me on the cold steel counter, where I imagine they prep food, holding my waist with one hand, while his other tried to bunch up my skirt and give him access to my snatch. I swear, even in my dream the cool metal sent a jolt straight through me. I was absolutely wet. I could see me dripping on his knob before it even reached me. While he frantically guided himself to me, I gripped my legs 'round his waist, let go of his neck, and desperately tried to pull my dress from my shoulders so I could offer him my tits.
