The notion of love at first sight is an unlikely one, but with Laura I was almost prepared to make an exception. When I first saw her in the corridor I knew I'd fall for her, and when she glanced back at me with a coy half-smile, I suspected it could be reciprocated.
Back then she was so skinny she barely troubled a third dimension, but she was pretty as a pixie. I was always attracted to small, slender brunettes, and Laura was just about the paradigm.
Unfortunately I was useless at chatting girls up, so although she was single when we met, that soon changed. She hooked up with Mark, a pleasant, reliable, intelligent but essentially dull guy (in my eyes), and I'd missed my opportunity.
The only upside of this, at least that I could see, was that a comfortable relationship meant she started to acquire curves. She would always be elfin, her breasts small enough not to demand a bra, but Laura began to look less like a girl and more like a woman. I watched with a mixture of pleasure and frustration as her bum became increasingly pert.
She began to grow her hair. Apparently Mark liked it long, untied, hanging down to her shoulders. Unsurprisingly, I didn't. Laura looked far lovelier when it was shorter and she tied it back, revealing her pretty face, her small, delicate ears, the slender bareness of her neck. But who was I to get involved?
Then we started working together. Laura moved into an office next door to mine, and began to spend most of the day with me. Sometimes she'd accompany me to the pub afterwards too. Mark was usually working late, and wasn't very interested in socializing, at least not where alcohol was concerned. This suited me fine. Laura always went home to Mark, or had him come and fetch her, but, subconsciously or otherwise, she was making me feel like she needed me.
One evening when it was just the two of us in the pub, Laura came back from the bar looking distracted. She put our drinks down on the table and looked at me slightly curiously.
'Can I ask you a question?' she asked.
'Of course,' I replied. 'What is it?'
'Do you want to live with me?'
It came like a bolt from the blue, totally unexpected. My heart started racing.
'Yes, I'd love to,' I said, feigning nonchalance, 'but won't Mark mind?'
'I haven't told him yet,' Laura responded. 'I wanted to know if you were interested first.'
I'd been renting a house with two friends, and Laura had been sharing an apartment with a girl she didn't know. My contract was coming to an end and she was looking for a change, so she proposed we cut our losses and move in together.
To reduce the costs, and perhaps not wanting to make Mark too suspicious, she suggested we try to find a couple of other people to join us. Luckily, one of my old house-mates, Chris, was also at a loose end, and he knew someone else who needed a new place to live.
The four of us moved into a terraced house the following month. Chris's friend, Alistair, seemed a nice guy, but kept himself to himself. We rarely saw him more than three times in a week. Meanwhile, Chris's girlfriend lived a couple of streets away, so he was always flitting between her place and ours.
To begin with, Laura was fairly elusive too. Mark almost never came round, so she'd spend plenty of evenings round at his, but gradually she began making excuses and staying put. She'd appear at my bedroom door, wondering what music I was listening to, or join me on the sofa when I was watching TV, or hang around me in the kitchen whilst I cooked. It was as if Laura knew she'd made the wrong choice, but that she'd rather torment herself (and me) than tell Mark what she really thought.
This went on for months, her relationship with Mark appearing stable to most people, but seemingly in stasis to me. They were like a long-married couple, obliged to be together but showing little outward sign of love. Perhaps it was different when it was just the two of them together, but whenever they socialized together in a group, the signals they gave off had an awkwardness about them. It didn't help that Laura and I were getting on like a house on fire.
I knew, however, that she was never going to take this any further. She just wasn't that kind of girl. If we were ever going to be more than just friends, I had to be the instigator. If I was wrong about her, if it back-fired, I might lose her altogether, but I had to take the chance.
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