Mutual Feelings Read online

  Mutual Feelings

  Copyright © 2017 by Billy Taylor

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever including Internet usage, without written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, or events used in this book are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, alive or deceased, events or locales is completely coincidental.

  eBook design by Maureen Cutajar

  www.gopublished.com

  Print ISBN: 978-1541036772

  For my mum

  Without her none of this would have been possible. Just Friends wouldn't exist. And this book definitely wouldn't exist. She has supported me for every second throughout my journey, and I cannot thank her enough for it.

  I love you mum x

  Table of Contents

  31st December

  Sixteen Years Later

  January 11th

  January 12th

  January 15th

  January 16th

  January 18th

  January 19th

  January 21st

  January 22nd

  January 23rd

  January 24th

  January 25th

  January 29th

  January 30th

  January 31st

  February 1st

  February 2nd

  February 8th

  February 14th

  February 20th

  February 21st

  February 22nd

  February 24th

  February 25th

  February 27th

  February 28th

  March 1st

  March 2nd

  March 9th

  March 13th

  March 15th

  March 16th

  March 19th

  March 20th

  March 21st

  March 22nd

  March 26th

  March 27th

  March 30th

  April 3rd

  April 4th

  April 14th

  April 17th

  April 18th

  April 19th

  April 20th

  April 21st

  Eighteen Months Later

  October 27th

  31st December

  I’ve always loved dinosaurs. Always. My love for them started when I was old enough to play with dinosaur toys, I guess. My mum bought me some when she could trust me to not try to eat them. I used to take them with me to nursery school every day in my dinosaur backpack. And I would have dinosaur-shaped meat on my sandwiches, which were stored in my dinosaur lunchbox.

  My love for dinosaurs is how I became best friends with Ted. I was sitting in the sandbox one day at nursery school. I was only four, but I remember it so well. It’s strange how you can remember some things from your childhood, and then others memories that my mum or sister will bring up are a complete blur. Most of them involve me running around naked somewhere, so maybe that’s why I decided not to keep those memories.

  Anyway, I was sitting in the sandbox one day. It was quite warm. I knew this because the sand was warm and I used my backpack as a seat to prevent it from burning my bum. I had my trusty dinosaur cap on though so it didn’t hurt my eyes or burn my face. (It was one of those caps that came over your ears as well. I was such a cool kid.) And I was lining up my seventeen dinosaurs. Yes, seventeen. I counted them every day so I knew I hadn’t lost one. They were pink and blue, my dinosaurs, but somehow clear, too. Sixteen were lined up against one. The smallest one, alone by itself. But this dinosaur was what I called a superhero dinosaur; he had powers to defeat all the other dinosaurs. And as he was about to kick every other dinosaur’s ass, a shadow hovered over my seventeen dinosaurs and myself.

  I glanced up and squinted. For a second I thought it was myself. I thought he had travelled from the future so myself and myself could play together with our dinosaurs. I’d never had anyone to play with because every other person at the nursery was a girl and they played with dolls. Apart from Josh, but he played with the dolls, too. I think he had a crush on the girls.

  After a second I realised it wasn’t myself, and I was very disappointed. This boy had blonde hair, and mine was brown. He was wearing khaki shorts and a T-shirt with a Chewbacca design on it.

  “I’m Ted,” he said, stepping into the sandbox.

  “I’m Will,” I said.

  “Today is my first day. My mum said I have to be nice and have to make at least one friend.”

  “Do you like dinosaurs?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “Do you want to sit and play?” I asked.

  “Ok,” he replied. He sat down and crossed his legs. I saw his shoes as he sat down and noticed that they had dinosaurs on them. And the soles flashed every time he took a step. I thought they were so cool at the time. A teacher came over a few moments later and placed a roof on the edges of the sandbox to protect us from the sun. The shade was very nice and it was like we had our own fort now.

  “Why are all the dinosaurs lined up there, but one isn’t?” he asked.

  “Because this one is a superhero dinosaur, and he is about to fight all of the other dinosaurs. I call him Bob.”

  “What are Bob’s powers?”

  “He’s strong and he can run really fast.”

  “Can he fly?”

  “No, he doesn’t have wings.”

  “Superman doesn’t have wings.”

  “He isn’t a dinosaur.”

  “Ok.”

  We sat and played for a couple of hours and had an awful lot of fun until it was time to go home.

  “Are you coming tomorrow?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Ok. I will bring my dinosaurs tomorrow.”

  “Ok. Bye, Ted.”

  “Bye, Will.”

  He brought his dinosaurs the next day and soon we had an indestructible army of dinosaurs. We spent pretty much every single day after that playing with our dinosaurs until we moved into primary school and then we had to leave them in our backpacks because we had to pay attention in lessons.

  Sixteen Years Later

  It’s approximately two or three minutes until midnight. Two or three minutes until the New Year. If I’m honest, New Year’s Eve is just another day for me. I know the year is ending and a new one is beginning and that calls for celebration, but at the end of the day it is just another day.

  I’m currently sat on the roof of the house where Ted’s girlfriend lives. Before you worry about me falling off—the roof is flat. The surface is so large you could maybe play a tennis match on it. I’m not sure if I’m allowed up here, although there was a ladder on the balcony that led up to here, so I figured its purpose was to get people up here. The roof seemed like a nice spot to stand and wait for all the fireworks to start firing into the air. Also, everybody inside is gathered around Hayley, the girl Ted is seeing, who is crying about something. One minute she was fine. The next she started crying. Then she was fine. Then she started crying again. The only girl who wasn’t bothering with her was Kate. But the only conversation she wanted to have was about Patrick Miller’s TV show on Christmas Eve. She kept talking about this magician. I wasn’t paying much attention. I just wanted to go home and watch the celebration on TV from my sofa.

  The ladder began to rattle behind me, and then Ted Maguire, my best friend, rolled onto the roof in the least fluid way possible.

  “That’s not as easy as it looks,” he said, walking over and standing beside me.

  “How come you’re not with Hayley? She’ll need your lips to kiss in thirty seconds.”

  “She’s still surrounded by her friends who are consoling
her. She’s upset about another friend who is being a bitch. I really don’t know what’s going on. I think I’m going to break up with her. Being with her is exhausting. I thought I would come and find you anyway. It seemed like a more interesting start to my year.”

  Everyone inside then started counting down from ten.

  “I’m not kissing you. Let me make that very clear,” I said, with five seconds to go.

  “I wouldn’t have wanted to kiss you anyway,” Ted replied.

  “Good.”

  Then everyone inside started to scream and cheer. One firework flew up and burst with a deafening bang. It spread across the night sky, illuminating it. It was shortly followed by a dozen more from different areas. Within seconds everywhere you turned you could see fireworks exploding.

  “Happy New Year, bud,” Ted said, holding up his drink.

  “Happy New Year, man,” I said, clinking mine with his. “Got a New Years resolution?” I added.

  “To find a girl that I like. How about you?”

  “Yeah, that’s a good one, I think I’ll join you with that one.”

  “I doubt it will happen,” he said. “But we can dream.” We laughed and then took a sip of our beers. The fireworks were still flying from every angle, providing a very nice image to begin our New Year with.

  Ted and I have always done everything together. We went to the same school. We went to the same college. We live together. We work together. We work for a company called Ron’s Ice Cream. Ted happens to be the great-grandson of Ron, creator of Ron’s Ice Cream. And Ted’s dad, Rob, is currently in charge. I don’t think I have ever called him Rob. I’ve always called him Ted’s dad. It’s funny, I know. A twenty-year-old employee calling his boss “Ted’s dad.” It’s been a habit since I was four so it’s hard to suddenly stop calling him that after all that time.

  Before you start to think we were gifted these jobs and aren’t qualified for them, you should know that we studied business and all sorts of crap at school and then college for another two years. We could have skipped all of that and still been given a job, but we wanted to prove we could do them. The hard work at college also means Ted and I get to share our own office and we can sit around and relax if we have completed all our tasks. I think Ted’s dad put us in our little office so we didn’t distract everyone else every two seconds, too. Ted is expected to take over the company one day because his dad is going to want a break. So Ted will need to reliable and mature, not like the super unreliable immature Ted I know.

  The apartment we live in we didn’t work for. It was a present for Ted’s twentieth birthday from his dad. We do work to pay the bills though. So, let me give you a tour of our apartment. It’ll be brief, I promise. So you come through the door, and in front of you on your left is the living room, fitted with two sofas, a wooden table, and a television. My sofa has its back to you and is facing forwards. Ted’s is to the right and is rotated at a ninety-degree angle, so his is facing the television in the back left corner.

  An inch away from the back of Ted’s sofa is the kitchen. It’s not very big, but it has everything you need to make and store food.

  My bedroom is past the living room, so if you come through the front door it’s on the left. And Ted’s bedroom is behind the kitchen, so if you come through the front door it’s on the right. We both have our own bathrooms in our bedrooms. Obviously he chose me to be his roommate. But we hadn’t seen the apartment before we moved in. We both stood in the middle of the living room and stared at each bedroom door. Since it was Ted’s apartment he got to choose which bedroom he would have. But to make things interesting, we couldn’t see inside them first. As we know, Ted chose the bedroom to the right, and he would later regret that decision as my bedroom is slightly bigger and also has a bath and shower cubicle in the bathroom, where as Ted only has a shower cubicle. I’ve hardly ever used the bath, but it’s nice to have and it’s more spacious.

  You may think that Ted or we sound spoilt because of the apartment being bought by Ted’s dad, but that simply isn’t the case. Ted’s dad has millions, and if he’d bought Ted a giant mansion or estate for his birthday, I don’t think I would have been surprised. But instead he bought a regular apartment to start him off, so he remembers to stay humble and keep his feet on the ground. He believes it’s something he needs if he is expected to take over the company in the future. Ted and I were extremely grateful for the apartment. We had originally planned to get a place together anyway. But now we can save up a little.

  January 11th

  Sundiscussion Topic:

  What is the best book of all time?

  Before our Sundiscussion takes place, I should explain what a Sundiscussion is. It’s a discussion that takes place between Ted and me every Sunday. Because Sunday + discussion = Sundiscussion. I’m sure you’re thinking why not just call it a discussion, but we were fifteen at the time when we decided to create it, and we were very pleased with coming up with the name. And today’s topic was: What is the best book of all time?

  So we sat down on our sofas to discuss it.

  “As I am a lover of J. R. R Tolkien, I’m sure you already know that I will be supporting The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings novels,” Ted began.

  “I certainly do. And as you already know, I am a fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his Sherlock Holmes novels, so I will be supporting them,” I replied.

  “Yep,” Ted said.

  “You didn’t really think this topic through, did you? I think it’s taken less than thirty seconds to establish that neither of us will budge on our choices,” I said.

  “No, I didn’t. I completely forgot to think of one, and that was the first thing that popped into my head. I’ll think of a better one for next week.”

  “We haven’t done any ‘who would win out of’ ones for a while.”

  He nodded. “I’ll think of a good one for next week.”

  “Please do. This was very disappointing.”

  January 12th

  “I ended things with Hayley last night,” Ted said as we walked from the car park to our office.

  “Why didn’t you tell me when you returned to the apartment then?” I asked.

  “Because I didn’t end it with her then. I texted her before I went to bed. I’ve just had enough of her. She’s no fun at all. She may be hot, but she’s so miserable and boring.”

  “That could come back to haunt you. You could have at least told her in person.”

  “She would have gone on for hours and hours about unnecessary crap. So I took the easy way out.”

  “I see. So what are you going to do now?”

  “I don’t know. We were only seeing each other for a month or so. I don’t think I want to be in a relationship to be honest. The girls I seem to take interest in are such high maintenance.”

  I shrugged as we walked through the automatic doors to the reception area. “I’m sure you’ll meet someone you like soon, man.”

  Ted and I said hello to Ellie, who works behind the reception desk, and then we walked up the first flight of stairs to the office. After you’ve walked up the first flight of stairs, you come to a small landing and have to turn left to walk up the next flight. Then once you have walked up the stairs you reach two doors and they lead into our main office.

  The main office is where most of our departments are based. Everyone has their own desk; they’re all connected, but they have those opaque glass separator things so no one can see what you’re doing. The first desk you come in contact with is Jeremy’s. Jeremy is our office manager. He’s one of the youngest in our office, at the age of twenty-two. But he’s very good obviously. He makes sure everyone is working hard and if they need any help, then he makes sure that they get it. And he makes sure that the social media sites and websites are updated appropriately every day, which Ted and I are in charge of. He sends us what needs uploading onto them, and at what time, and then we make sure that happens. It’s as simple as that really. Jeremy could probably do bot
h of our jobs by himself, but it would take up much more of his time. Then Ted and I would have nothing to do, which isn’t what his dad would want.

  We have lots of different workers doing lots of different work in the office. But the main ones I know are admin and emailing. Admin make sure all deliveries and orders for everything are sorted. So they organise all the ice cream ingredients for each day and for each factory.

  We have three factories. We have this one, here in England. Then we have another one in America and China. The admin team calls the guys who are working in those factories and makes sure they know what deliveries are coming so they can prepare to make certain flavours on certain days. And then they also handle the simple things, like making sure we have enough paper in the office. Then we have accountants, who take care of money obviously. And then we have mailers. They handle all the emails that are sent to Ron’s Ice Cream. For example, if somebody emails in explaining that they found a toe in their ice cream, then this issue would need to be addressed and taken care of. (Just so you know, no one has ever found a toe in their ice cream. Nobody should ever find a toe in their ice cream unless they put it in there themselves.) But we don’t reply to emails such as:

  Plz tell me what ur recipe is for the cookie 1?

  They don’t get replied to. Because they’re silly.

  “Good morning, Jeremy,” I said. “How was your weekend?”

  I ask Jeremy this every Monday morning. Now there are only two possible answers from Jeremy to the question I just asked. If he says, “It was ok, thank you. How was yours?” then it’s a normal conversation. But if he says, “So listen here, right,” that means buckle up because he has some gossip to share.

  “So listen here, right,” he began, swinging around on his chair to face me. My ears pricked up and I leant my behind on his desk. “I went on a date with this guy from my gym who I’ve been meaning to ask out for a while now.”

  “Ok,” I said.

  “So I asked him out and we went for some dinner on Saturday. I took him to this Indian place that is always so quiet and lovely. Anyway, we had some wine, had a laugh, and had some good food. We fed each other and stuff, you know. It was going well. Really well. And afterwards he asked me if I wanted to go to his house.”