I smiled to myself as a metaphorical packet of fizzing candy erupted in my stomach.
“That smile,” Rose said, all holier-than-thou, “tells me everything I need to know.”
I grinned again. “It’s nothing. Nothing happened.” But it would’ve happened, wouldn’t it?
“You’re not behaving like nothing happened.”
“Stop being so wise. I’m sick.”
“You’re not sick, you’re hung-over.”
“Same thing.”
“No it isn’t.”
“Can you bring me some more water?”
“Only if you tell me what happened.”
“I told you – nothing. But if you bring me water, I’ll play with your hair while we watch a DVD.”
“You’re on.”
Rose returned with water and carbs and we cosied up in my smelly duvet to watch The Virgin Suicides. Her head was in my lap, and I stroked her hair, rubbing my fingers over her scalp. Rose was like half human, half Labrador when it came to getting her head rubbed. She utterly blissed out and went all trance-like whenever you did it.
I only half-watched the film. I’d seen it countless times. Sofia Coppola was probably one of my favourite directors. Though I didn’t know how much of that was down to her being female, and me wanting to support a girl doing well in Hollywood…without taking her clothes off or starving herself. The dreamy highlighted shots were just what my hangover needed, but Guy was never far from my mind. Did I like him? What would’ve happened if the others hadn’t come in? Did he like me? Was it normal for me to keep getting crushes on every boy who showed interest in me? Was that bad? And what would happen when I next saw him? Was he going to ask me out? I didn’t deserve to be asked out again, did I? Not after how awful I’d been with Oli.
I wanted Guy to ask me out though.
He would, wouldn’t he? I mean, he’d been about to kiss me. Me. That’s how it worked, right? You like them, they like you, they want to kiss you, you start going out. Right?
Rose dozed off and I soon joined her, the film playing as backing vocals for our nap. I was just on the brink of utter unconsciousness, when my phone rang.
I sat up blearily. “Huh?” I answered, instead of hello.
There was no answer, only sobbing.
“Hello?” I asked. More sobbing. I looked at my screen. It was Lottie.
“Lottie? Is that you?”
It prompted a massive howl, a heartbreaking one, one that rips through your soul.
“Evie?” I could just make her out through the snot. “Evie? Can you come over?”
“Sure. Are you okay?”
“He…he… Can you just come round? Bring Amber.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Nineteen
Lottie’s mum answered the door, her big owl glasses poking around the gap. She looked – and dressed – exactly the same as she did when I was eleven.
“Evie? Is that you, darling? I haven’t seen you since you were yay high.”
She opened the door and Amber and I pushed past the beaded curtain, setting off five wind chimes as we did so.
“How are you, Ms Thomas?” I asked as she pulled me in for a hug. She smelled of hemp – I think. I’d never really smelled hemp before. I was proud of myself for remembering the “Ms”. Lottie’s mum always refused to be called “Mrs”, despite being married.
“I’m good.” She released me then waved her hand around my body – cleansing my aura. Yep, just like when I was eleven. I remembered then why I used to be scared of going round.
“And this must be Amber.” She pulled her in for the hug treatment and Amber’s hair practically obliterated Ms Thomas’s face.
“Nice to meet you,” Amber muttered into her shoulder.
“I’m glad you’re here, girls,” she said, releasing Amber. “Lottie’s in a state; she won’t leave her room. I can hear her crying but, of course, she won’t tell her mother what’s happened.”
I headed up the stairs to Lottie’s room. “We’ll look after her,” I reassured Lottie’s mother. It’d been so long since I was here, but everything was the same. The weird seventies style wallpaper, the big painting of the words “THIS IS IT” hanging over the stairs that a monk had painted for them on an educational family holiday somewhere. I knocked softly on Lottie’s door, already able to hear her cries through the thin plywood.
“Who is it?” she croaked.
“It’s Evie and Amber. With freshly cleaned auras.”
The door opened and a puffy-faced Lottie appeared, her eyes almost gone from crying.
“Oh God, sorry about her.” Lottie’s back was already to us as she stumbled over to her unkempt bed. She slumped down on her belly and buried her face in the pillow.
Amber and I sat gingerly to the side of her.
“Lottie,” I said gently, putting my hand on her back. “What’s wrong? Where did you go last night?”
“He…he…” she stammered into the pillow, her voice muffled. “He broke up with me.”
Both of us leaped into action. I rubbed her back more, while Amber provided the indignant outrage. “What? Why? How? What a bastard.”
Lottie slowly raised her head, leaving at least half of her hair sticking to her face.
“That’s not even the worst of it,” she said. “He was confused…he didn’t even think we were going out in the first place!”
And we sat there as she sobbed and cried and sobbed some more.
Twenty
“I’m such an idiot,” Lottie announced to the pillow. “I’m such a goddamn idiot.”
I rubbed her back. “I think he’s the one we should be calling an idiot.”
“No, it’s me. I’m so stupid. Thinking we were falling in love…when it was just me.”
“There’s nothing idiotic about having feelings,” Amber said, who was on hair-stroking duty.
“Yes there is. Feelings are for losers.”
Eventually Lottie turned over. She looked so different with all her heavy eye make-up cried off, her face much softer.
“Sorry, guys,” she hiccupped. “I feel so stupid, crying like this over a stupid smelly boy.”
“What happened?”
“Ergh, it’s so clichéd.”
“Tell us.”
“Okay.”
What happened between Lottie and Tim
She’d agreed to meet him at the house party. She was looking forward to us meeting him properly, since they’d been seeing each other for a few weeks.
But he was weird from the moment he got there.
“Well, you saw him,” she said. “He barely said hello to either of you, and wasn’t interested in the party at all. He kept trying to whisk me upstairs.”
I could hardly remember meeting him, but then I had killed about twenty million brain cells in the last twenty-four hours. I remembered him trying to shake mine and Amber’s hands, and we didn’t really know what to do with something that posh. Amber and I had disappeared into the kitchen to start our drunken oblivion mission, leaving them alone to make small talk with people.
“It was awful,” she said, curling her knees up, tucking them neatly under her delicate chin. “He seemed to get posher and posher, and all judgemental of our friends. Like, I know Joel and that are a bit odd to look at…especially with Joel’s new nose ring thingy, but he’d been to their gig, he knew what they were like. It was like the louder the music got, the more upper-class he got. I bet he was probably wishing we were all chinking champagne glasses, wearing blazers and yelling ‘tally ho’ to each other or something.” I giggled and Lottie smiled weakly. “I got so wound up. I just wanted things to be better. And he kept whispering into my ear, saying we should go upstairs. And I thought maybe that would help, I dunno, get him out of his weird mood.”
Amber and I each raised an eyebrow at each other over her head.
“So we went upstairs. And then he…we…” Amber bristled and my hand went tight on Lottie’s back. “We had sex. Right there in the toilet. Argh… God.” She picked up the pillow and buried her face in it again. “It was awful. He was all rough, not like usual. Like he was just doing a job. And then…then…afterwards…” She started to cry again, a really hollow cry, from the very pit of her stomach.