Part Two: Jonah

'Want to come round to mine?' Jess' voice made him jump. He hadn't seen her come up behind him.

'I can't...Homework.' He mumbled.

'We don't have any homework.'

'I've got...extra Spanish.'

'You spend too much time doing Spanish.' Jess was walking beside him now, swinging her bag casually back and forth. 'just come round for a bit.'

He was tempted to. He'd enjoyed the time they'd spent together last term, but his feelings for Jess had never even approached those he had for Cesca.

'Please,' Jess had her head on one side now, trying to look appealing. 'Just come round as a friend, no pressure.'

He knew he should probably say yes. He could use another friend and, as a girlfriend, she was a far more sensible option than his Spanish teacher. He stopped and looked into Jess' eyes. She was smiling, tilting her head forwards with her eyes closed, obviously thinking he was going to kiss her. He turned away. Kissing Jess, being with Jess, even as a friend, felt like cheating on Cesca...Not that he was dating Cesca. In truth he didn't know what was going on with Cesca, but there was the possibility of something wonderful.

Jess opened her eyes and regarded him thoughtfully. 'You're seeing someone else, aren't you.' She said, matter-of-factly.

'Yeah...'

'Who is she? Is it...' Jess paused to think 'Amy Porter?'

Jonah laughed at the absurdity of that suggestion. As if Amy Porter could ever compare to sophisticated, beautiful Cesca. 'Amy's not really my type, Jess.'

'I guess not.' She was laughing too now. 'Is it Lauren?'

'Jess you wouldn't guess who it was in a million years.'

'Vicki MacDonald? Siobhan?' They were walking again now, Jess giggling and naming all the girls in the school, while he shook his head again and again, trying not to laugh.

Finally, they reached the end of his road. Jess put her hands on her hips in mock annoyance. 'You have to tell me now, Jonah. It'll be annoying me all night otherwise.'

'Then you'll have to be annoyed.' He said airily, tossing her a smile. Then he walked away, feeling, for some reason, as if he was walking on air. All those girls she'd named, even Jess herself, suddenly didn't seem attractive anymore. They paled beside the memory of the kiss he'd shared with Cesca.

Once inside his house, Jonah wandered up to his bedroom. No one else was home yet. He dropped his schoolbag on the floor and sat at his desk staring at an open textbook. He had a couple of chapters to read before tomorrow, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to read even a single sentence. Instead, his gaze fell upon his Spanish textbook. He picked it up, thinking about how Cesca had once touched it, held it just as he was doing.

Eventually he realized that sitting there, holding a textbook and dreaming of his Spanish teacher was a little pathetic, so he turned once again to the book he was meant to be reading and again failed to find the motivation to concentrate on the history of Russia c.1900.

Without really realizing what he was doing, he wandered over to the bed and lay down on his back, just staring at the ceiling. All at once Cesca seemed to fill his senses. Visions of her danced before his eyes, he heard her soft, musical voice whisper his name. Hanging from the back of his door was the jacket he'd worn when they kissed. The faint smell of her perfume still clung to it. He reached out and pulled it down from the door and, holding it to his face, breathed in the smell of her.

'Cesca...' he whispered, lost in the memory of the night before. He knew he shouldn't feel this way, knew that it was fine to spend all his time thinking about Jess or any of those other girls Jess had mentioned, but it most definitely wasn't fine to think of a teacher like this. If he was being sensible, he'd pick up his phone right now and call Jess, say he'd changed his mind, he would come round.

Of its own accord, his arm reached out and his fingers closed around the phone. He quickly typed 'I want to see you, please let me see you' and found Jess' name in his contacts list. His mind though was suddenly filled with an image of Cesca as she'd looked in the lesson that morning at the moment when their hands brushed. She's gasped and looked at him with eyes filled with longing, eyes which held the promise of a future. Without thinking, he scrolled upwards through his contacts list, until his fingers found Cesca's name.