The Saving of Benjamin Chambers (The Uni Files) (4 page)

BOOK: The Saving of Benjamin Chambers (The Uni Files)
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I reckon I would have made it to at least our second cup of coffee before I asked her.

“Still leaving the band?” Dave asks later as we pack up our gear.

“Nah, not yet,” I tell him, which earns me one of his superior smirks.

“And may I be so bold as to ask why?”

“I’ve got a New Year’s Resolution that I have to keep.”

He raises his eyebrow. “Yeah, and what’s that?”

“I have got to find that girl again, and you are going to be the one to help me do it.”

“That’s your New Year’s Resolution?”

“Yep. Are you in?”

“Yeah, I’m in.” He grins at me, and I start to grin back.

I am going to scour every venue we play from here on in, even if it takes me a whole year to do it, but I am going to look for her, and I am most definitely going to find her.

Of that I am completely sure.

Nine Months Later

Nine months.

Nine months and not one sign of her.

That’s a spring and a summer, which has included the Queen’s Trillionth Jubilee and the Olympics, where the whole of the United Kingdom went Team GB crazy apart from me.

I spent two weeks fixed in front of the telly just in case I saw
her
in a crowd at an event. Ten days in, Dave asked me to explain just what I was planning to do if I actually saw her on the telly. I have to admit, I did not have a very precise plan of action but it would have involved jumping into a Black Cab and shouting the words, “Get me to the ‘fill in the blank’ as quick as you can.” It never happened though.

I haven’t given up, but I am trying to stop myself from chasing after every swish of brunette hair that I see. My main concern is that I might get a restraining order against me, or, end up down at the police station overnight. Again.

“Excited?” Dave asks. He is unwinding one of the microphone cables and trailing it along the floor of the stage.

“What about? Singing the same songs for the gazillionth time?”

“No, you miserable bugger. About tonight and tomorrow and every day after?”

Dave thinks he is a genius. He does not just think it; he knows it. And he likes to gloat about it at every opportunity.

What a wanker.

Tonight we are playing the Fresher’s Ball gig at Roehampton University. After the gig, instead of heading back to the flat with the others, I shall be hauling arse across campus and entering my new room; my new room in Digby Stuart Halls of Residence, in my new capacity as an undergraduate student.

This is why Dave thinks he is a genius. It was his idea in August that I apply, something along the lines of the fact I was being such a boring shit sitting in my room reading every night when we were not gigging that I may as well join University.

Dave was pissed off with me moping about
lovesick,
and I was pissed off with sitting in my room every night playing ‘Hey There Delilah,’ until my fingers were close to bleeding.

Dave has announced that if he ever hears me play that song again he is going to beat me to death with my guitar and then burn my body using the remaining splinters of wood as fuel.

I think he was probably joking.

Ha. The joke’s on him now.

I am actually doing what he suggested. I signed up to study History (I have no idea why but it was very much a case of eenie meenie minie mo) and on Monday I will be starting the course with who knows who.

It’s not been the full year that I allowed myself but it is nearly the end of September and I am beginning to realise that I may not be able to complete my New Year’s Resolution to find
her,
Delilah, again. 

Whilst failing at one half, I have maintained the other side of my resolution, because while I have been waiting for her, I have not been near anyone else. Not one flirt, not one drunken snog, and most definitely not one hung-over awkward naked conversation.

I feel quite virtuous. 

Dave’s just relieved that I am not quitting the band. So is Liam, and so are Mondeo Man and Trav.

It’s still in the cards. They just don’t know it yet. I might end up being a natural historian and decide to become a professor and wear tweed for a living. I would undoubtedly earn more money than I do with the band. It was embarrassing moving my stuff into my new room the other day. I hardly had anything to move in with, just my damn guitar, some books, and a bag of clothes. Bloody pathetic.

I give my head a little shake and turn back to the here and now.

“So who is on before us?” I ask Dave.

“God knows, some terrible DJ, then another band, and then we are headlining.”

“Really? We are headlining?”

“Oh yes, you are going to be the best thing this Uni have ever seen, and you are most definitely going to earn that room you managed to snag on campus.”

I pull a face at Dave. It was his idea that I negotiate some gigs in return for a room. I felt like a complete arse asking, but they went for it anyway. I am now the proud owner of a room about five steps wide by ten steps long.

I am hoping for an all-male dorm, preferably full of geeks.

“Shall we go back to my, uh, room while we wait?” I am not opposed to hiding for a while. Hiding sounds like a great idea but I also know it is a stupid one when I am going to be on a stage in a couple of hours regardless.

“No need, we have some space out back.” Dave smirks.

Out back of where? There is nowhere. This place is tiny and I have a concern that I may get lost if I venture too far. The college is like a rabbit warren of rooms and I am just keeping my fingers crossed that I don’t have many lectures in here because there is a good chance I will never find my way out again. I know my way across campus in the direction of the dorm and that is about it.

Dave leads the way through a black sheet acting as a backdrop and I find all the others sitting around a table smoking fags and pouring what looks like a combination of champagne and tequila.

“Champagne?” I ask. I walk towards them and pull my own smokes out of my jeans.

“Heeeey, Shben,” Trav calls.

I believe he may have been on the champagne tequilas awhile.

“Are you going to be able to play?” I accept his sidestepped hug and the drink he thrusts at me all in one go.

“Shben shdon’t shbe shuch a shbore.”

Okay then.

Dave chuckles next to me and elbows me in the ribs.

“I’m proud of you,” he says. He clinks a glass also containing a dangerous mixture against mine.

“What for? Running away?”

“No. For sticking to your principles. You always have been the more determined out of us all.”

I pull a face.

“Really? I am the determined one.”

“Yep. Well, just don’t have too much fun being chased around campus by hundreds of teenage girls.” He motions the others around, clearly building up to his speech. “And if you see any really hot ones then make sure you call us. It would be a shame to waste the opportunity!”

Arse.

“Come on, let’s gets pissed,” I say. We may as well.

So we do. Well, we start the ball rolling with some of Trav’s dodgy cocktails until much, much later, and we are running low on tequila, champagne, and cigarettes when a flustered Ball organiser comes looking for his headline act.

Five songs down and it is hot, hot, hot on stage, and I am not talking about the partially dressed girls bouncing around in the front of the crowd, although there are busload of them, all half cut.

Or maybe it is me who is half cut.

The room is spinning and the bass from the drums is making my stomach roll.

I keep thinking I can see something, something I recognise, but every time I focus on the crowd, my vision gives a little spin and I have to look back up at the ceiling.

I need some water bad. Otherwise there is little chance of me finishing this gig. I will just become known as the singer guy who threw up all over the crowd, and that would not be cool at all.

I turn and give a wave to Dave, trying to mime that I need to get a drink. He reads my sign language easily. Ten years on a stage together will do that, and he nods at me. At the end of the song I swing my guitar back and reach for the bottle of water at my feet. Dave keeps the crowd pumped with a drum solo, which does weird things to my stomach. I turn my head to the side as I gulp my water down and look at Trav. I could throw something at him for doing this to me. I don’t need to. He is green and hanging on to his microphone stand.

Ha! Suck it up.

The water helps. The moment it starts to settle, my vision becomes clearer and for the first time I can focus on what is in front of me. I gulp down some more, hoping to wash away the hideous mix of alcohol swishing about inside me.

Then I see it. A flash of white.

Something about the white burns like a brand inside my mind and I try to focus.

A girl in white walking away from the dance floor.

I am not sure what it is about the girl in white but I have to stand there and stare for a moment. I anchor myself to the edge of the stage and watch the swish of white move in a fluid motion.

Dave starts getting agitated. He wants me to jump back in, so I do, a renewed vigour coursing through my veins from the hit of H20.

While I play and sing, the words of one of our oldest covers ‘Dakota,’ fall easily from my lips. I can’t take my eyes of the swish of white moving further and further away.

Then she turns and I see her.

Her. Her. Her.

Lilah. Lilah. Lilah.

I recognise her straight away, like I always knew I would.

She leans back against the wall clutching a bottle of water and even from this distance I can see that she is clearly looking through one eye, her lips curved in a smile as she thinks some amusing thought that I will probably never know.

I carry on watching, waiting to see what will happen, then I remember the banker wanker who has been tormenting my nightmares for the last nine months so I risk taking my eyes off her for a moment.

There is no sign of him, and I breathe a sigh of relief and allow a smile to colour my lyrics.

Before I can lose her again, I cast my eyes back to her spot against the wall.

For fuck’s sake, she is gone again.

Nope, there she is, walking towards the exit. As if in slow motion, I catch a glimpse of some tall blond guy watching her leave and start to walk after her.

Fuck no. Not again.

I don’t think, I don’t hesitate, I don’t really even register what I am doing but before I know it my guitar is down and I am leaping off the stage like my sanity depends on it, which I guess depending on which way you look at it, it does.

I chase through the shocked crowd, ignoring their glances, as I race to get to the woman in white first.

I do.

She is at the bar. I can hear her, clipped tones asking, “How much?” to a bottle of water. I start to laugh because even though I don’t know anything about her, I know that is exactly what I expect her to do.

I plant myself behind her so that when she turns from the bar I am the first thing that she sees.

She looks up and I catch my breath as I meet the speckled grey eyes I have been trying to keep in my mind for so long.

She does not recognise me. That much is clear. She obviously does not remember our previous meeting at all. No acknowledgment flickers over her expression although I desperately search for it, but unlike last time when her eyes slid right over me, this time she stops and stares, her lips puckered on the edge of a smile.

She just stands there for the longest moment, for as long as I can bear, and I just stand there and soak it up.

“Ben,” I say, holding out my hand.

“Lilah,” she tells me, reaching out her hand to me. But instead of shaking my hand, she just kind of places hers in mine.

I can work with that.
I don’t let one moment pass before I wind my fingers through hers.

There is no way she is escaping again.

Lilah continues to watch me. I wish I knew what she was thinking. She is just staring at me, her lips ever so slightly parted.

Normally staring is a good sign with girls, but then I don’t expect this one to act the same as all the others so I don’t want to read too much into it.

“You’re the singer guy, right?” she says with a small nod, like she is pleased that she can place me. Yeah, I am the singer guy, but she is nine months late in placing our meeting.

“Singer guy, I am,” I confirm. I can’t help it.  A smile creeps onto my face and into my voice. I probably look like a complete twat but I don’t care. I am standing here talking with
her
whilst holding
her
hand.

“You’re the girl in the knock-out white dress,” I play.

Oh, and it’s a knock out all right; slinky to the floor and hinting at all the stuff underneath that I want to get to know.

She says nothing but her mouth pops open in surprise.

Shit I’m going to kiss her.

No. Stop it.

“Would you like to go outside for some fresh air?” I ask instead of placing my lips against hers.

She hesitates. Of course she should. That is the right thing to do.

“I should find my friends,” she says. Despite her words, she does not seem in any rush to do so.

This is my moment. Act now or regret it forever.

“Come on, Lilah,” I coax. Her name sounds electric on my lips. I wonder if she can hear it?

I pull her towards the door, my fingers not letting go of hers as I head towards the cool September air. Outside, I walk a short distance and then in a bid to stop myself from jumping her and getting arrested I pull my smokes out of my pocket. I nearly miss it but as I look up to offer her one, I catch her watching my hand slide back out of my pocket, her teeth nibbling her bottom lip.

Holy crap.

I am not surprised when she takes one of my cigarettes, I always knew she would be a smoker. It goes hand in hand with the filthy language and the dirty laugh.

“I wasn’t winking at you, by the way,” she says.

“What?”
What? She was winking at me, and I missed it?

BOOK: The Saving of Benjamin Chambers (The Uni Files)
7Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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