Authors: Non Pratt
“This should be interesting,” Tom murmurs next to me.
“Something like that,” I whisper back, turning my head so that my lips are level with his ear. I’m distracted from all my Ruby-related worries by the freckle in the centre of his earlobe that I have a sudden and overwhelming urge to kiss.
“I’m pleased we’re not like them.” Tom looks at me. “That we’re not angry with each other.”
“I could never be angry with you.” I try and keep my focus on his eyes, but I can’t help glancing down at his lips. There are freckles there, too.
“We need to talk, Kaz, just me and you. There’s something I—”
But Dongle’s shouting and whatever Tom was about to say gets drowned out as others take up the chant. It takes a few seconds for their timings to sync and I’m able to decipher the words.
“Spin the bottle.”
Stu hasn’t so much as glanced my way since I sat down between Goz and Travis, but the second Dongle starts chanting, he looks straight up at me and the look in his eyes is a gut-punch of lust to the stomach. I grab the fresh bottle of beer that Goz has just opened for himself.
My need is greater than his.
As everyone shuffles into position, I force myself not to look at Tom, lest he see how much hope I’ve got pinned on this. Maybe a kiss will unlock the promise of all those shared looks, the whispers that are a little closer than necessary, the touches that don’t need to be made.
Maybe this is my chance to win him back.
It’s only once I look around the group that it occurs to me that the odds are not in my favour. I’ve as much chance of kissing Stu as I have of kissing Tom.
All of a sudden this has gone from looking like the best idea in the world to the worst.
“What happens if you don’t want to kiss someone?” I hiss at Anna, who’s moved next to me.
Anna rolls her eyes. “I say that every single time Dongle tries to play this game.”
“Does it happen a lot?”
“Every time he’s drunk and Parvati’s within kissing distance.” I must look as incredulous as I feel. “They went out for, like, half an hour about two years ago and he’s been desperate to convince her what she’s missing out on ever since. I don’t know why we need to bother with the bottle charade. The pair of them’ll shag before the weekend’s over anyway.”
“Really?”
“They usually do.” Anna sighs and sips her beer and looks at me closely. “Who is it you’re worried about kissing? Your ex?” She glances over my shoulder at Tom, who’s helping clear up some of the rubbish from the middle of the circle.
“Someone else’s,” I say, nodding at Stu.
“Who’d he go out with?” Anna asks before she sees where my gaze has shifted and the colour drains from her face.
“Shit.”
“So here are the rules.” Dongle claps his hands and everyone falls into a silence mellowed by drugs and alcohol. “You spin the bottle, you kiss the person it lands on. That person gets the next spin.”
“Some of us need vetoes!” Anna shouts and I see her glance at Kaz. “No way am I prepared to snog your ugly mug, Dongle.”
“And I’m not kissing any guys,” Travis adds, getting a well-deserved eye roll from the rest of us. “What? I’m not gay.”
“Shut up, Travis,” Stu says, blowing out a stream of smoke. “Or I’ll kiss that disgust right off your pretty little face.”
There’s a lot of laughter and a couple of good-natured threats thrown back and forth before Anna brings the conversation back round to the vetoes.
“Anyone not prepared to pucker up drinks a shot of tequila instead,” Anna says.
Kaz shakes her head too violently, which only attracts unwanted attention.
“Who is it you’re so keen to avoid kissing, Kaz? It can’t possibly be the boy next to you,” Stu says, loud enough that everyone turns to stare at me as I’m consumed by flames of embarrassment. I can’t even bear to look at Tom.
“It’s you she doesn’t want to kiss, asshat.” These are the first words Ruby’s said to him since she arrived.
“And what about you, Ruby?” Stu says in a low voice that everyone can hear.
Ruby shrugs. “Nothing I haven’t done before.”
Dongle and Parvati exchange a glance. There’s none of the surprise that Anna displayed – they knew the score before they suggested the game. For a moment I feel like bashing their heads together.
If Owen or Lee were here, that’s exactly what would happen.
It’s Stella − who’s sitting pressed up a little too close to the other side of Stu − who spins the bottle first.
Goz.
Their kiss isn’t anything too racy, and when it’s Goz’s turn, it lands on Parvati, who groans, but still goes for a snog over a shot. When she spins the bottle, it lands on Tequila Girl No. 2 and the pair of them shrug and go for it to cheers from the boys.
“Grow up.” Parvati rolls her eyes at Dongle.
I lose interest in all the to-ing and fro-ing, concentrating instead on knocking back the beer in my hand and then going for a tequila rather than reaching across to the cool box behind Stu.
My attention snaps back to the game when the bottle knocks against my foot. It was Dongle’s spin and the neck end is pointing at Stu. His groan is cut short as Dongle dives on him and they roll around on the floor with Dongle making kissing noises that we can all hear because his face is about a foot away from Stu’s.
Stu’s laughing when he’s released and the sight of him squeezes at my insides.
I require more tequila.
Ruby looks thunderous as she tips her head back to drain her cup before pouring another slug of tequila into it. I try and tot up how much she must have drunk today.
“Shit.” Both Anna and Tom have gone very still on either side of me.
“What?”
Neither of them say a word and I follow their gaze to the bottle that’s sitting on the rug in front of Stu. Pointing at Ruby.
“What you waiting for?” Stu smiles across the circle at me. “Nothing we haven’t done before, right?”
My words in his mouth, mocking me.
Bollocks. If I hadn’t talked it up I could have just taken the shot.
No going back now.
Not that I want to. Every muscle in my body is clenched tight with excitement at the thought of kissing him. I can remember the way it feels … the way it tastes…
No way in hell will I admit to it though.
I shrug. “Whatever.”
It only takes seconds for him to crawl the distance from one side of the circle to the other, his eyes on mine, but time seems to slow, the same way that the noise fades and the people around cease to matter.
My pulse starts thrumming in my throat and I swallow, the last few drinks loosening my grip on reality.
When he’s right in front of me, I can’t escape the look in his eyes, as if he can see my memories of everything we’ve done together playing on my retinas like a film reel. His clothes are infused with the warm smell of weed and wood smoke. I breathe in a short, shallow breath and taste the memory of sun on his skin and the beer on his breath.
“Come here, then,” Stu says in a low voice, a murmur that no one but me can hear. That no one but me has heard before. He raises a hand to my jaw, his fingers brushing my hair back off my face and behind my ear as he brings his face to mine, his nose brushing my cheek and I don’t mean for my lips to part, but…
I can’t do this
.
No one seems to know what happened. One minute Stu’s about to kiss her, the next Ruby’s leaped up and away from him, downing her drink so fast it spills across her cheek. Wiping her face with the heel of her hand, she kicks the bottle across the circle to where Stu’s sitting back on his heels.
“Spin it again.”
And she’s gone, fast, unsteady steps on legs that look thin and cold and white in the dark night. When I look over at Stu, all he does is shrug. It’s only as I’m running after her, following a rushed goodbye to Tom and a hop and skip over the guy ropes blocking my path, that I realize that Stu might have looked like he couldn’t care less, but it’s the first time he hasn’t been smiling about something.
Good
.
“Ruby!”
I can’t even identify the emotions that are flooding through me at the sound of my name.
“Ruby – wait!”
All I do know is that the person calling me is Kaz – not Stu – and she’s not the one I’m running from. Within seconds, Kaz has caught up with me and I feel her arms round me, pulling me in for a hug that’s more reassuring for her than it is for me.
“Are you OK?”
“No. I’m not OK.” I glare at her, too angry with what’s just happened for it not to spill out into everything I see or hear or touch. “What the fuck was Stu doing there?”
“I don’t know.” Kaz looks pained. “I’m sorry, Ruby.” Actually, Kaz doesn’t look so much pained as
guilty
. “God, this is all my fault.” She almost whispers it, then, louder, she says, “I saw Stu earlier and—”
“You
what
?” I explode, my brain barely managing to process the words. “And you didn’t think to mention it?”
“I did, but—”
“You thought lying was a better idea?”
“No! It’s not like that. I thought maybe you wouldn’t want to know.”
This is the second time Kaz has decided what is and isn’t good for me when it comes to the truth about Stu. At least last time she was doing the right thing. This time though… “You thought it would be better if I was totally punked by Stu turning up at my campsite instead?”
“That wasn’t supposed to happen. Owen said—”
“Owen?”
I hadn’t meant to throw Owen under the bus (had I?), but it’s too late to cover that up as well.
“I asked Owen what I should do. He said not to tell you.” Oh God, I have made that sound so much worse for him than for me.
“So what? Owen is my brother’s boyfriend – he’s not my
best mate
. Owen can keep whatever secrets he likes from me. I didn’t think you and I were meant to have any at all, but this weekend you’ve been stacking them up like a set of Piss Ruby Off Top Trumps. What part of ‘we don’t do secrets’ was so fucking hard to grasp?”
“I said I’m sorry.” Tears rise up behind my eyes and I blink them back down. I hate that I cry so easily. I hate that it’s Ruby making me want to. “I was trying to protect you. I didn’t think we’d run into him again. If I’d been there when Dongle called Travis, I’d have stopped him.”
“And where were you?” The way Ruby’s looking at me turns me inside out, as if my mind is a sheet of music and she’s reading every note.
“I was getting chips with Tom.”
“Of course you were. And when you were
getting chips
with Tom, did you by any chance ask about his girlfriend?”
“I don’t need to, Ruby. Tom would tell me. It’s not like with you and Stu. We’re
friends
.”
“Really?
Friends
– that’s what you call it? Have you looked in a mirror lately, Kaz, because that dress is not a
friendly
dress. It’s a—”
“It’s just a dress.”
“No, it isn’t. Not when you wear it near him.
Come and see our camp, Tom!
” She sounds so much like Lee did and I wonder whether she has any sense of how mean all that tequila has made her.
“Let’s go get chips, Tom! I love the way your trousers look, Tom!”
I really wish everyone would shut up about his trousers.
There’s a moment when I can totally see there’s a choice. Either I can a) stop shouting at the person I love the most in the world and apologize, or I can b) carrying on shouting.
I’m not someone who knows how to stop once they’ve started.
“Yay, please, let’s play spin the bottle, Tom!”
“Why are you being such a
bitch
?” Kaz snaps.
I want to snatch the word from the air and crush it in my fist until there’s nothing but a corpse of letters smeared in my palm. But that’s not how words work. Once you let them out, you can’t take them back.
We’re in free fall.
“I’m not being a bitch!” I say, barely believing Kaz even said that word. “I’m being a
friend
!”
“Really? Because right now you’re just being poisonous. What has Tom ever done to you to make you hate him like this?” Kaz is properly crying now, but I don’t know if it’s anger or sadness or both. And I don’t know how she can even ask me that question.
“HE BROKE YOUR HEART!” I hadn’t meant to shout that loud and I can see people staring at us. “That’s what he did. I spent all summer gluing it back together and you’re just going to hand it over to him to smash again. When are you going to get it? Tom is
over
you. It doesn’t matter what dress you wear or how much you flirt with him.
You
are not what he wants.”
Even as I am shouting it, I know that it’s a lie. Tom looks at Kaz the way that I want to look at Stu.
“Why are you shouting at me about this?” I’m furious at the tears that have escaped and I practically punch myself in the face as I wipe them away. “I followed you over here because I was worried about you and somehow it’s ended up with you telling me why I’m the one who’s a mess.”
Ruby looks confused as if she’s lost her train of thought and it’s like I’ve pulled a plug – I can actually
see
the fight draining out of her.
I try to backtrack through the words that brought us here, but when I look for them, they’re jumbled and nonsensical and I realize that all the beer and tequila haven’t so much caught up with me as overtaken me.
Kaz doesn’t drink. Ever. And when she looks at me, it’s no longer with guilt, but with disapproval. Just like that, the conversation pivots under me and I find I’m the one holding the shitty end of the stick.
“I know you’re not OK, Ruby. But I don’t know why.” Her voice is bordering on kind, but her expression is hard, patience stretched thin. “Shout all you like about Tom – or maybe wait until you’re sober and use your indoor voice. But that’s not why you bolted from the campsite. What’s going on with you and Stu?”