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Fuck, indeed. Evie slowly released a breath, but the knot in her chest wouldn’t unravel. Stuart was leaving in a few weeks for his third year of university in Glasgow. Evie had discovered the previous autumn that distance did little to make her heart grow fonder. If anything, it rebelled.

How are we gonna make this work? She glanced down the beach, ignoring the beer-fueled kisses across the blanket. The farther Stuart walked, the dimmer he became until he disappeared completely into the falling shadows.

Her mind detoured, leaping south, wondering what Nick was up to in France.

“OH, BEHAVE!” Puggie’s nasal Austin Powers impression snapped Evie back. Prising himself free from Sunita, he flashed his girlfriend a flirty leer and heaved his unbuttoned shirt closed over his doughy stomach.

Sunita grabbed his leg as he stood up. “Bein’badissomuchfun!” All mushy consonants and flat vowels, her words ran together like a boozy, verbal stampede.

Evie laughed, but even a moment of hilarity couldn’t suppress the envy squeezing her core. Drinking with the goal of getting “off her tits,” as Sunita would say, was a luxury she could ill afford. Evie’s last piss-up with Stuart had been a month earlier, and while she paid dearly for it afterward with stomach cramps, she still hated being stuck on the sidelines, especially when all her friends were letting loose and pushing boundaries. Crohn’s was stealing invaluable coming-of-age experiences, and the ache of missing out sometimes hurt more than her symptoms.

“Dude! Wait up!” Running barefoot, Puggie hobbled through the curly doddies and prickly roadside brush where Stuart’s chariot, a dented 1998 Vauxhall Corsa, came alive with a caterwaul of rattles, its only functioning headlight a beacon in the growing darkness.

Sunita wriggled closer. “Sooo!” She sprang with a hiccup. “Tell me, tell me! How was last night? What’d you end up gettin’ Stu, anyway? Cologne or the rugby DVD?”

“Neither.” Evie looked at The Juniata as the swimmers sprinted past, swearing through chattering teeth. “I gave him a monogrammed flask and…” She arched her brows.

Sunita’s jaw dropped. “NOOO!” she screeched. “Evie Sutherland, you—!”

“Shhh!” Evie spotted her brother by the bonfire with the girl he was dating, both craning their necks in her direction as the Fletts strummed their out-of-tune guitars. “I don’t want Sam to know.”

Eyes wide, Sunita mouthed, “You fucked him! Finally!”

“I did!” She laughed giddily, still buzzing with the relief of it.

“Happy twentieth birthday, Stuart!” Sunita slurred into a perfect smile, her braces long gone. “So, gimme the goss! Where’d it happen?”

“The old camper in his mum’s garden.”

“Better than his shitbox car,” said Sunita.

Barely. Evie nodded, the camper’s ancient stench of mildew and weed still a stomach-churning memory.

“You were careful, right?” Sunita plucked her beer from the sand. “Used the condoms I gave you ages ago?”

“Yes, Mum,” Evie joked as her friend took another sip. Buying condoms herself would’ve set off alarm bells from Kirkwall to Yesnaby, but having a best friend who worked part-time in the pharmacy? Priceless.

“And? Was it everything you’d hoped?”

Hello, loaded question. Evie had built it up in her head for so long, how could anything compare to her hyper-horny imagination? And there was that one unrealistic wish—that her first time would’ve been with Nick. While irrational and ridiculous, she’d never given up hope.

Or told Sunita.

“Not exactly.” Evie shifted, tucking her legs beneath her bum. “It was over pretty fast. And hurt at first. I’m glad you warned me.”

“But after that?”

“Good, I guess? Stu wanted to do it again.”

“Guys always think it’s amazing even when it’s not,” said Sunita, a seasoned veteran of three brief sexual relationships. “They’re just happy getting laid.”

Doubt rolled in Evie’s stomach. “Shit. So I was crap?”

Sunita snorted. “Yeah, right! The amount of steamy novels you read?”

Raucous laughter erupted down the beach. The bonfire clique was pleased about something, not that it mattered to Evie. Head down, she budged closer to Sunita, determined to keep her conversation out of the ears of the spliff-smoking swimmers sat nearby.

“But…” Evie whispered, a gentle breeze rustling her bangs. “I didn’t come. Stuart did. Both times.”