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If Cress can eat it with a smile, so will I.
Mrs Norris purrs like she’s laughing.
“What will you do for the whole summer?” Ford asks us, genuinely puzzled.
“We’re doing a summer semester course,” Ethan says. “Scripting and acting a play. I have some work for Dad too. Other than that . . . hang out at the river, go to the beach, take walks through the bush, go to the market. That kind of thing.”
“How quaint.”
You don’t have to join us, I want to say. I stuff a bit of scone into my mouth instead. It’s okay for a few moments, and then the unique and special taste of mould hits my tongue.
I gag and spit it onto the plate. “I can’t swallow, even for you, Ethan.”
His eyes flicker with a wild panic at my choice of words, and I immediately regret them.
Cress and Ford don’t seem to have heard, busy in their own silent conversation of nods and face pinches.
I quickly add, “The kitchen is off limits to you this summer.”
Cress turns to us. “Or perhaps,” she says, smiling dreamily at Ethan as she pats his cat. “I could teach you few things?”
“What do you think, Finley?”
I open my eyes and take in the golden sunset glimmering over Mansfield’s pear trees. Cress and Ford have retired early to fight their jetlag, and it’s the first time all day I’ve properly been able to breathe.
“What do I think about Cress and Ford?”
“Are they like you remembered them from London?”
Pretty much, yes. “Have they changed for you?”
Ethan frowns slightly. “I mean, they’ve just had a very long trip. I’m sure everything will click better tomorrow.”
A sneaky tendril of hope snakes around my chest. “So . . . you didn’t click with Cress today?”
“I mean, it’s nice of her to want to teach me to cook.”
I want to bar them both from entering the kitchen. It is my domain. If anyone gets to teach . . . “So what made you feel less clicky?”
“I can’t put my finger on it. It’s like, she was very sweet to me, but to you . . .”
I shrug and reluctantly admit, “She’s nice enough.”
“It doesn’t feel genuine. It feels like . . . she’s particularly nice to you in front of me.”
A laugh lurches out of me. “Well, of course she is. She likes you, dumbass.”
Ethan’s brows shoot up. “Likes me.”
“Like-likes you. She’s nice to me because you like me and she wants to impress you.” I smile, but my teeth grit. “I’ve known since London that she wants in your pants.”
Ethan blinks, and his obliviousness is adorable. And frustrating.
“Really?”
“I thought you knew. Hell, I thought you might like her a little back. She plays the harp, for crying out loud. All those emails. Your eagerness to have them stay here.”
Ethan stares. Then he turns his frowning profile to me, and I hate myself for bringing the idea to his head. The possibilities.
Stupid!
“Do you want to head in?” I suggest, needing him to move on from this. “Watch a scary movie with me?”
“Probably not the best idea,” he says quietly, after a while. “I’ll end up in your bed again.”
Exactly the point. “Would that be so bad?”
“Yes.”
The simple answer hurts. My throat clogs up and I silently demand that he look at me. He can’t.
“It was just jerking off,” I whisper.
He looks at me sadly. “No, it wasn’t.”
No, it wasn’t.
I cry in bed as I touch myself, remembering every word he whispered to me.
His girlfriend had been more experienced. Had offered herself to him however he most wanted.
He wanted it in the dark. He wanted her from behind. He wanted the feel of a smooth back against his chest.
He’d closed his eyes too.
He’d worn socks, the ones with the pineapples on them. The ones I’d just given him for his birthday.
His imagination turned him inside out.
When his orgasm blasted through him, it lingered the longest at his curled toes.
Cress and Ford have been here a week, and Ethan spends every possible minute in their company. I know what he’s doing; I get why he’s doing it; it hurts.
I catch him looking wistfully at me across their heads, but he always ducks away again.
We sit right next to each other. We make conversation. We smile.
Under it, I’m screaming.
At the weekend, we’re invited to Rush’s pool party.
We’ve hung out twice all together, one time at the river, where Maria’s bikini top ‘accidentally’ came off and Ford dived into the water to recover it for her. Another time for a hike up through the woods, where Maria—wearing ridiculously short shorts—got a splinter sitting on a log. Rush gave up trying to get it out for her, claiming his fingers were too thick, and in swept Ford, who hoisted her over his lap and played operation at the crease of her arse.
