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‘We really are,’ I reply, unable to control my grin. ‘I don’t actually think this could have gone worse.’
‘But we did win,’ he points out. ‘And we definitely had fun.’
We really did. And now I’m going to be counting down the minutes until we meet again.
15
Lying in my bed, thinking about the events of the evening, smiling to myself about what a good time I had with Rocco – honestly, I don’t think I’ve lain awake at night daydreaming about a boy since I was at school.
I love that even though everything couldn’t have gone more wrong, it all worked out well in the end, and we both had such a blast making such a mess.
Naturally, ending the night covered in cream meant that I needed to have a shower when I got in. When I arrived home, Mum and Dad were sitting at the island, chatting, eating bowls of cereal for supper – something they used to do, so it made me feel especially uncomfortable. Gail is away for a work thing so she wasn’t around, and Jess had decided to get an early night. So I had a nice long bath, instead of a shower, and now I’m in my bed. I feel squeaky clean and I can still smell all the products I used on my hair and my skin. General life stresses aside, I feel like I’m on cloud nine right now, lying in my bed, thinking about Rocco.
I let out a sigh of contentment as I snuggle down into my bed. I pull a face when it sounds like the bed reciprocates. Obviously that didn’t happen.
I listen carefully for a few moments. I’m about to get back to daydreaming when I hear it again. A sort of ‘mmm’ sound.
I jump out of bed and follow my ears to my bedroom door. Is that laughing I can hear? I dare to head out into the hallway where my worst suspicions are confirmed. Oh, my God, it’s my mum I can hear, giggling. Chatting quietly, letting out little sounds, in her bedroom with the door closed.
I forget my feet and step on a creaky floorboard. I hear a hushing sound before Mum’s giggling quickly stops. The house falls so silent the only thing I can hear is my own heartbeat, banging inside my chest. Is that my mum… and my dad… in her room? No. No, no, no. They can’t be, can they?
I continue to Jess’s room, light on my feet, before slowly opening her bedroom door. I feel bad, waking her up if she’s having an early night, but we’ve got ourselves a worst-case scenario on our hands here.
Jess isn’t in her bed, though, which is odd. I take my phone from my pocket and check her location – turns out this was an excellent idea. It says she’s in the house. I wonder if she’s downstairs watching TV. Perhaps she heard the same noises as I did and wanted to get as far away from them as possible. I smile at the idea of drinking tea, eating biscuits and watching a festive movie with my sister late at night, like we used to do when we were kids. It’s not quite the silver lining of whatever is going on tonight but it’s a great excuse to be downstairs.
I walk down the stairs into darkness. As my eyes adjust, in the living room, which is illuminated by both Christmas trees, I see that the room is empty. Very odd. She wasn’t in her room, the bathroom door was open – oh, could it have been her up late with Mum, having a giggle together in Mum’s room? I grab my phone again, to message Jess, to check before I knock on the door to join them, but as I do, Jess’s location gets more accurate, and the flashing circle around my house tightens up, getting smaller, until it shows me exactly where Jess is. She isn’t in this house at all. She’s next door, at Kenny’s house.
I let myself outside, walking a few steps down my driveway until I can glance back at Kenny’s house, to see if there are any signs of life over there. As though it isn’t bad enough that the only light on in his entire house is his bedroom light, he’s got his colour lightbulbs set to red, and I doubt it’s red to signify Santa Claus’s uniform.
I slink back inside and creep up to my bedroom. All seems quiet now, but I don’t want to take any chances. Inside my bedside table there is a pair of ear plugs, back from when I was having building work done, and the noise was so loud no matter where you were in the house. I wedge them tightly into my ears to block out any potential bumps in the night. This bloody family, I can’t figure them out at all. I don’t know who to speak to first in the morning but clearly everyone needs a talking to. You would think I would be used to it, being a teacher, but telling off your parents and your grown sister, for having the hormones of teenagers, is just too much.
I need to get back to daydreaming, to thinking about Rocco as I drift off to sleep, but instead the thought of my divorced parents potentially getting it on in the next room is all I can think about.
It’s a difficult one because, as much as I just wish I could fall asleep right now, I’m definitely going to have nightmares if I do. Let’s just hope they’re about something less traumatic, like a monster eating me alive, or standing up to do a speech and realising I’m naked. At this point, anything is better than the reality.
16
‘Someone must’ve got in late,’ I just about make out Jess say.
I roll over to see her sitting on the bed next to me. I pull out my ear plugs one after the other before grabbing my phone from the bedside table.
‘Oh, my God, it’s lunchtime,’ I say. ‘When did that happen?’
‘Well, if you will stay out into the wee hours,’ she teases.
‘Except I didn’t,’ I point out. ‘I must have slept through my alarms or maybe just having ear plugs in kept me even more zoned out and stopped me waking up naturally.’
‘What’s with the ear plugs?’ she asks.
‘You would know that they were to block out the noise last night, if you had been here,’ I point out. ‘You also would have known that I wasn’t out all night, if you were here, but you weren’t. You were the one out all night.’
Jess smiles, sort of guiltily, but in a cheeky, proud sort of way.
‘Okay, I will tell you where I was,’ she starts.
‘Oh, I know where you were,’ I interrupt. ‘You were next door, with Kenny.’
‘I was, but you’ve got to admit, he’s hot, he’s funny, he’s charming, he’s—’
