Page 100 of People Skills

‘I love you,’ she says. ‘I still love you.’ Her voice wavers a little.

‘I—’ Xavier starts to speak but Lana cuts him off.

‘No. Don’t. Don’t say anything back. I just wanted you to know that, and unless you still love me too, please don’t say anything.’

There is a beat of silence. I can hear my heart pounding, my blood pumping. I am terrified he’s going to speak. I don’t want him to speak.

He doesn’t speak.

‘I knew,’ I hear Lana say quietly. ‘Deep down I knew as soon as I saw you tonight that something had changed.’

I hear the front door close, and she’s gone.

28

I WALK OUT of my bedroom, and Xavier is standing there, looking at the closed front door, with his back to me.

‘I’m sorry I invited her here. I needed to get out of there and she wanted to see Rex, and I…It was probably a bad idea.’ I am babbling, nervous. I should give him space, that was a difficult moment, but I want to see his face. I want to know what he’s thinking.

He is still, and we listen to the sound of Lana’s car driving away, and he takes a deep breath.

‘Xavier?’ I say.

He turns around, and there’s a look in his eye, a kind of feral look, and he steps towards me.

‘What happened, back at the house, with your family?’ I say.

He’s very close to me.

‘I don’t want to talk about them.’

‘What do you want to talk about?’ I ask. He moves closer still, and lifts a hand to cup my face. My heart is suddenly going a million miles an hour. My skin feels flushed, and my legs are shaky.

‘I don’t want to talk,’ he says.

I shouldn’t kiss you again, I think, but I don’t say it, I don’t form the words, because for all my protests, for all the reasons it’s a bad idea, the relief I have that he’s not with Lana, that she didn’t stay, that he’s here, with me, makes me hungry and warm on the inside and, oh god, I want to kiss him, I want to do more than kiss him.

Maybe I just need to be with him, just once, to get him out of my system.

I press my face against his hand, and I look up at him and I try to convey with my eyes that he can do anything he wants.

He moves his other hand to my face, pushing his fingers into my hair a little.

We are both breathing hard.

‘What do you want to do?’ I whisper.

‘Oh baby, so many things,’ he whispers back.

Baby. Did he really say that? My head feels like it’s spinning, my hands are tingling.

‘Tell me one of the things,’ I say.

‘I want to kiss you,’ he says.

‘So do it.’

He leans down very slowly. He must sense how skittish I am, because his kiss is incredibly soft, and gentle, and he moves his body slowly closer to mine, waiting for me to put my arms up around his neck before drawing me to him, kissing me more deeply. And we kiss, and kiss, and kiss, and I’m scared to stop because we’ve just made a complicated situation more complicated and, also, he’s the best kisser I’ve ever kissed. I can feel a warm, prickling heat moving through my body, down my spine, into my stomach, lower. He slides one hand deep into my hair and one across my back and we keep kissing, and I never want it to end. I can feel my mind emptying of everything except this. I run my hand over his buzzed head, along his jaw.