Read Don't Ask for Free Online

just a very good listener. That’s on the checklist of ‘qualities to look for in a boyfriend’ in every magazine I’ve ever read, so I ticked it off, happily. He
wanted to know all about my friends, my schoolwork, my family, what films I liked, music, the books I’d read, everything.
    As the evening went on, I started to think that maybe he was
too
good a listener. Much as I like talking about myself, I wanted to know about him too. And in that respect, he was a lot
less generous. He was happy to tell me all about his karate classes (it turned out that was the type of martial art he did – apparently, it’s all about discipline and self-control and
other stuff that sounds no fun at all) and his college and his new friends, but when it came to anything more personal, he didn’t have much to say. It was almost as if he’d learnt and
rehearsed a set of answers, and he couldn’t deviate from them. Even asking the most basic, obvious questions made me feel I was prying. He’d deflect everything back to me, as though we
were playing tennis with facts.
    ‘How come you moved here?’
    ‘My mum got a new job.’ No pause for breath. ‘What does your mum do?’
    ‘She’s a nurse. So are your parents divorced?’
    ‘No, my dad died.’
    ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Jack. When?’
    ‘When I was twelve.’ No emotion. ‘Have you always lived here?’
    ‘Yes, since I was born. That’s awful, Jack, you must really miss him.’
    ‘Not really. I hardly remember him. Your parents seem cool, for parents. Do you get on with them?’
    And so on. It was frustrating and not a little bit weird. I justified it to myself, thinking he must be a private person and that things I could talk about as openly as what I had for breakfast
were simply harder for him to reveal. Then he kissed me, and I discovered a much more pleasurable way of getting to know him better. It’s amazing how kissing someone can make you forget all
your niggles, for a while at least, and how it can make you feel you know them inside out, even when you don’t.
    On our second date, we went to the cinema, so there wasn’t much time for talking – and the people in the row behind us would have had something to say about it. By our third date,
when we went bowling, we’d been talking on the phone for an hour every night and my state of continued ignorance was starting to nark me. I planned to have it out with Jack the next time I
saw him. But as soon as I opened the front door to him for our fourth date (ice skating), some sort of chemical reaction occurred which made me feel too into Jack to think anything other than,
‘Wow, you are so gorgeous’ (when I wasn’t thinking, ‘Arghh, I’m going flying’). I’m not making excuses, honestly. I’d just look at him and my stomach
would fall into my feet.
    By our fifth date, a burger and chips followed by a DVD at my house, we were beginning to slot into the routine of each other’s daily lives and had gone beyond those sorts of basic
‘getting to know you’ questions altogether. There comes a point when, if you’ve grown close to someone, you feel you can’t ask certain things because you believe you should
already know the answers. It’s embarrassing. It’s like not knowing how many brothers and sisters your best mate has, or realising you don’t know the colour of your
boyfriend’s eyes. It shows you haven’t been paying attention, that you’re a bad friend or a rubbish girlfriend. So you stop asking.
    Of course that doesn’t mean my questions went away. Sometimes, I’d completely forget about them for a while and then something would happen to make me think of them again. Jack might
let a new detail slip out – Alex’s surname, for example, when he was talking about a football match he’d been to – and it would get me wondering. Instead of pestering Jack
with my questions, I decided to discuss them with Katie instead. It wasn’t long before she began to come up with all her