“Honestly, I’m not even sure. He was so drunk. He just kept telling me I should break up with him. And I just lost it at him.”

Sai adjusts his glasses and runs a hand through his hair. “Sounds like you need to have a chat with him, dude.”

“I don’t know what to say.” I put down my Wii remote down and look at him. “Help me.”

“Why am I the relationship expert? I’ve never even been in a relationship.”

“You’re smart. You’re doing English Lit at uni.”

“English Lit is utterly useless in the real world, Nicholas. Utterly useless. Trust me. Chaucer and John Donne aren’t going to help you with this.”

This makes me laugh. “I don’t even know who they are.”

“Exactly.”

I lean my head back on the sofa. “I think he… just… thought it was a good time to end our relationship. Like, teenage relationships never last. It’s a bit weird that we’ve made it this far anyway. And we’re so fucking dull as well; like, we hardly do anything interesting. We’re the most basic teenage relationship.”

“Basic teenage relationship?” Sai splutters. “Have you seen yourselves? You hang around with each other every single day and somehow haven’t wanted to kill each other yet. You’ve started sleeping round each other’s houses regularly on school nights! You can communicate by just looking at each other! Trust me, I’ve played board games with you two.” He shakes his head. “A basic teenage relationship is daring to hold hands outside the school gate and going on cinema-and-Nando’s dates on Saturday afternoons.”

I stare at him.

“If you want to break up,” he says, pointing a finger at me, “go right ahead. If you’re bored and want it to be over, fine. But just because you’re not going on fucking amazing dates every weekend doesn’t mean you’re boring and definitely doesn’t mean you need to break up. And just because Elle and Tao aren’t, like, passionately in love any more, doesn’t mean that you and Charlie aren’t.”

He slaps his hands on his legs and leans back.

“Shit,” I say.

When I pick up my phone a couple of hours later, I have a message.

The name on the screen reads Charlie Spring.

Five

FIVE

CHARLIE

I send him another picture two hours later. The one of us kissing that I took on my phone.

Two hours after that, I send him a third picture. The selfie we took in school on his last day.

The next morning, an old selfie of us I find on my Tumblr.

Half an hour later, one of our first selfies, back when we started going out.

And I carry on like that until Monday. Picture after picture until I’ve sent every single selfie of us I have saved on my phone.