Amber: Chapter 2 – Stopping For a Green Light?

Author’s Warning: This is a link scene in a series rather than a story and as such it doesn’t contain anything of a sexual nature… I decided to write during my lunch at work and this is what I finished with:

“So what do you think I should do, Disco?”

“I wouldn’t do anything,” Disco replied, after carefully considering the proposition while taking a sup of beer.

“I know you wouldn’t do anything. I asked you what I should do.” ‘

Disco’ Dave wasn’t the right man to be having this conversation with. Dave was the most boring man I knew, and he was guaranteed to take the path of least risk. Dave knew he was conservative by nature. He delighted in the fact. Dave’s outlook on life was particularly inexplicable given that both his parents were so full of energy and vitality. You know something’s gone wrong with the nature of things when a father tells his son to ‘fuck-off, you boring bastard’ as he hairs around the garden blasting a football into the flowerbeds while his teenage son stands aghast, shaking his head disapprovingly.

“No son of mine,” he said, semi-seriously. “I knew that when the fucker was born wearing slippers and a smoking jacket.”

The only interesting thing about Dave was his name and his nickname. He’d decided to shorten it from ‘David’ to ‘Dave’ (hoping to become known as ‘Dangerous’ Dave – in homage to an early computer game by his computer programming hero, John Romero) but instead he’d been Christened ‘Disco’ Dave as an ironic statement as to the last place you’d ever find him. That name had stuck and in all likelihood, ‘Disco’ would be wandering the neighbourhood with his Zimmer frame in years to come.

“Schoolgirl? Sounds dangerous to me.”

“Dangerous… Dave?” I couldn’t help but tease him, although years of abuse meant he probably didn’t even register the taunt. “She’s definitely 16, so she’s legal, and she fancies me…”

“Yeah but it’s ten years’ difference. She’ll probably be more hassle than it’s worth.”

“Than ‘it’s’ worth? We could be made for each other, Dave. This could be happily ever after.”

“That’s what you said about whatsherface – the 40-year-old.”

“Lisa.”

“Yeah, that’s the one. Why can’t you just find a nice girl your own age?”

What he didn’t add was ‘like me’. Dave had found a girl who met all his criteria and married her. I had no intention of following his lead right now. But I did want to find a ‘nice’ girl and do ‘nice’ things with her. In Amber I knew that I had found a nice girl – and possibly a naughty girl, which was even better, one who I fancied and who I was sure fancied me. The only thing holding me back was her age. It was definitely weird for a 26-year-old man to date a schoolgirl but I’d said that age was no limit when I’d dated Lisa and it seemed wrong to use it as an excuse to deny a relationship with Amber.

But how to do it? I imagined asking Amber out. It seemed ridiculous: a grown man asking out a schoolgirl at a bus stop. As it happened, Amber wasn’t at the bus stop on the Monday or any other day that week. I missed her; and her extensive collection of knickers. I wondered what had happened to her. Her friends were on the bus as normal and I thought about asking them if she was okay. Had I scared her that much? Was she sick? I wanted to know and realised just how much I cared about the girl with whom I had shared but a smile.

Then on Thursday, I heard about it. A fight, or rather an attack. My ears felt like they swivelled in my head as they desperately sought to amplify the voices of the girls who were being uncharacteristically quiet in their discussions. “Amber” and “attacked” were the key words that I managed to pick out. Someone had attacked her? Something knotted inside me; I should have been there to protect her.

Friday morning brought a surprise. It had been a week since I’d seen Amber. I ached to see her and when the door of her house opened, my stomach lurched with excitement. But it wasn’t her. In Amber’s place was an older woman with similar facial features and the way she moved told me that the woman was Amber’s mother. I deliberately didn’t watch as she approached, so jumped when she spoke to me.

“Errr, hi,” she said. “I’m Marie – Amber’s mum.”

There was a hand there to shake and I took it. A soft, but firm grip, which rather disconcertingly, didn’t let go.

“Hi,” I said.

“This is a bit awkward – but I need to talk to you about my daughter.”