by Tim O'Dell

Created on: June 07, 2009

Will was fed up. It was Wednesday evening, he had spent three days trying to sell insurance to disinterested morons, with little success, and all he could think about was a girl. He decided he needed a drink to take his mind off Hollie. He slipped into the Oak and sat at the bar. Cool, fizzy, tart. The first pint of lager slipped down his throat like the nectar of the gods. As he ordered another one, he thought about his predicament. All his life he had been awkward around the opposite sex. Never having had a girlfriend, he felt a pressure to talk to females of his own age that never concerned him with his male friends. That pressure made his mind race for interesting things to say. Nervous, tongue-tied, uncomfortable; he hated the tide of emotions that assailed him when talking to women he fancied. It was his fear that caused him to avoid these potentially embarrassing situations.

Yet, he felt different with Hollie. As soon as she had welcomed him into the building, that Sunday he found himself at her church, he felt at ease, comfortable, relaxed. It was almost as if something had clicked into place, a new confidence, a settling of his nerves. So, was it Hollie that had put him at ease? Or had something inside him changed? Had the Amsterdam incident given him a carefree attitude? Had all his fears and failings been vanquished by that one failed encounter? He didn't believe that. He knew that his issues were still lurking; holding him back, restraining him, blocking his passage to freedom. Which meant the cause of his security must lay with Hollie. The big spoiler, however, was the fact she was a bible basher.

Will had been brought up in an academic atmosphere. God was an alien notion. The son of a Cambridge professor and a school headmistress, any questions about faith had been described as pointless, and all signs of spirituality quashed. While his parents had been distant, and emotionally separated, from him from a young age, their humanist ideals had still been firmly planted in his psyche. To date a Christian seemed like a bad idea, a failing, a weakness. He knew part of his attitude was lodged in the concern that she might try and convert him. Their last conversation on Sunday had been going in that direction. He toyed with the idea that she was only interested in 'saving his soul' as she would put it. But he had convinced himself she was interested in him, as a person, a boy, a male, and her spiritual interest alone

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