Things I Know About Love by Kate Le Vann

if I’d forgotten what it was. “Oh, I brought it with me,” I said. “I got here less than a week ago.”
    “You are English, then,” the boy said, as if he was quite excited about it. He was really insanely skinny . His wrists were 2-D.
    “Yep,” I said. “I’m visiting my brother. He’s getting some books from the library and then coming to meet me.” I didn’t mean it to warn him off, because it was quite nice talking to a stranger, particularly an English stranger.
    “How long are you staying?” he said. “I’m Vaughan, by the way.”
    “Oh, Livia,” I said, holding out my hand to shake hands and, as I always do when I do that, wondering if that was what I was supposed to do and whether he’d just stare at it and leave it hanging there. He shook it. “I’ve been here a week already, I’m here till August fifteenth, so a bit more than two weeks to go.”
    “How do you like it so far?”
    “Hot!” I said, waving my hand in front of my face.
    “Yeah…,” Vaughan said, and pulled at his collar with his little finger. Then there was a bit of chitchat, a bit of yes-I-like-that-too, and he explained that he was a PhD student, he was from London, and he’d just broken up with his girlfriend. I don’t remember how he worked that last thing in. He asked if I’d been to the university art gallery yet, and I said I hadn’t.
    “How much time have you got?” Vaughan asked. “I’ll show it to you right now, if you like.”
    “Is it near here?”
    “Literally two minutes away.”
    I thought it might be nice and cool, art galleries always are. Well, you know, it wasn’t that, it’s just that I am useless at saying no, even to stick-thin Englishmen with too many teeth. So I said yes.
    We were just reaching the gallery, and Adam came round the corner, nearly bumping into us. I must have done that thing where you reel in shock. I said, “Oh, hi!” very brightly, and then wondered if I should introduce the complete stranger I’d just met and agreed to go on a morning date with. Is there such a thing as a morning date? My “hi” had made Adam stop, so we’d all stopped, but no one had anything to say.
    “I’m sorry we didn’t go to your party,” I said.
    “Yeah, that’s a shame,” Adam said.
    “I really wanted to go. My brother thought I was too tired.”
    “Oh—you didn’t miss much,” Adam said. “It was really Dougie’s—my brother’s—party. His friends.” He looked straight at me after he’d finished speaking and I didn’t have anything else to say either, I just wanted him to keep looking. He has this way of looking slowly at things, as if he’s taking his own time to see them properly. It’s quite intense, being looked at that way. Adam glanced at Vaughan and eventually said, “Well, see you later?” and walked off again, and I felt stupid and wished it was him I was walking into the art gallery with. I fancied him more today. It’s those eyes, dark, like Luke’s. Well, that’s probably not a good sign.
    Anyway, Vaughan and I were in the art gallery and I was waffling on about the amazing painting of a woman in red by Manet, trying to sound clever, and then I realized Vaughan’s hand was on my bum. I’d thought, at first, that he was just standing too close, and maybe it was his leg somehow, but then I kind of checked out his position, and he moved it slightly and it was still definitely on my bum . And his head was really close to mine, as if he was smelling my hair.
    So, what do you do when a boy you don’t know very well puts his hand on your bum? Well, if you’re me, you’re probably too polite to mention the fact that he’s doing it. I said, “You know, now I think of it, I’d better get back in case my brother shows up, because I don’t have my mobile, so he can’t call me.”
    Vaughan took his long nose out of my hair.
    “Okay,” he said. “Shall I come back with you?”
    “No, no need for that!” I practically shouted. “Better dash!