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“I should take a leaf out of your book.” Climbing to her feet, she indicated towards her bag and laptop, open in front of her on the coffee table. “I’m just going to go to the loo. Can you keep an eye on my stuff, please?”
“Of course,” Elliot was quick to assure her. But the second she was out of earshot, he spun around, and suddenly, I was very, very aware of our proximity and how close his face was to mine. “Why am I here? Are you getting her number, or do you already have it? Wait, why aren’t you at football training?”
“Whoa.” My head was spinning from his rapid-fire questions and not at all from the minuscule distance between us.
We’d kissed.
Done more than that.
Fuck you, brain. This was not a time to be remembering how fucking good my best friend—
No. No, no, no.
“I don’t know why you’re here, but I’m glad you are,” I said honestly. “My day’s been shit if you want to know the truth. I got sidelined in football, just a tackle that was nothing, but the coach and Travis took it seriously. They made me leave the training session, and I’m not allowed to play the next game.”
His eyes widened, concern filling his gaze. “Ace. I’m sorry.”
My stomach did that dipping thing again, like I was on a roller coaster. “It’s not your fault.”
Raising his hand, he curled it around the back of my neck, his touch grounding me, like it had so many times before. “Still, I’m sorry. I know how much it means to you.” He swallowed hard, staring at a spot behind my ear. “What…what about Daisy’s number?” he whispered hesitantly.
Beneath my palm, his stomach tensed again, and all I wanted to do was to make sure that the person I cared most about in the world knew how important he was to me. Without even pausing to think about whether it was a good idea or not, I angled my head forwards, my nose brushing against his. “I didn’t get her number. I don’t…I don’t think I will.”
Our eyes met, so close, and my heart stuttered again. I was free-falling, and I didn’t know where I was going to land.
“Oh,” he breathed.
“Oh,” I repeated.
18
Somehow, I’d ended up next door at number 3, squashed into the lounge with a combination of people from numbers 1, 3, 5, and 7 and an assortment of various friends. Drinks were flowing, and the only reason anyone had given for drinking so much on a weekday (other than the fact we were students and therefore never really needed an excuse) was that it was the annual LSU Kiss an Eel Day—aka KED. It sounded ridiculous, like some weird, made-up thing, but it was, in fact, real. Long story short, the site on which the university was built had originally been a fish market where the jellied eels were so popular people would come from all over London to buy them. Apparently, people used tolovejellied eels. Thankfully, our palates had improved since then…mostly. Not that I was shaming anyone who liked jellied eels, but would I personally eat them? Absolutely not. No way.
Anyway, the legend was that if you kissed the eel statue that used to stand in the centre of the market on the date that the market was founded, you’d have good luck for the rest of the year. So, after the market had closed and LSU had bought up the land, they decided to honour the tradition by claiming it as KED. There was even a bronze statue of an eel in the foyer of the arts building, which some insane students would queue up to kiss every KED.
I did vaguely remember the day being celebrated the year before, although from what I could recall, I’d been stuck in bed with the flu, and Ander had spent the entire time looking after me, both of us watching endless episodes ofThe Great British Bake Off, one of my comfort reality TV shows.
“Let’s play never have I ever,” someone shouted, and I dipped my head to my cup of the unidentifiable greenish-blue drink that Travis’ girlfriend, Kira, had given to me, in an attempt to avoid being dragged into anything. I wasn’t in the mood for playing games—wasn’t in the mood for anything social, if I was completely honest. In the back of my mind, I knew that my feelings were mostly to do with the fact that things between me and Ander were weird at the moment. Really, really weird. And with things being the way they were and the knowledge of Ander’s flirtatious behaviour at parties, I would rather have just stayed in my bedroom and binge-watched TV.
But every single one of my housemates had ganged up on me and forced me to come, so here I was. Except now Levi had disappeared, probably to call Asher or something, and Charlie was nowhere to be seen, so of my housemates, only JJ, Ander, and I were left in the lounge.
“Elliot! You’re playing.” Before I had a chance to process anything, JJ was forcibly dragging me into the loose circle that had formed around the centre of the room. “Sit.”
He pushed down on my shoulders, and I found myself sprawled on the floor, sandwiched between him and Finn, a guy from the football team. Directly opposite me was Ander with a pretty girl on one side of him and Noah on the other.
Great.
When everyone was in place, JJ began. “I’ll start. Never have I ever…had sex in a public place.”
At least two-thirds of the people playing raised their drinks to their lips, including JJ himself. Were you supposed to pick something you’d actually done when it was your turn? As for me, I was frozen for a second—what counted as sex? Playing it safe, I lifted my drink. I was pretty sure that oral and handjobs in a club counted, and then there was everything that had happened with Ander around the back of Cloud…that was a sexual act, right? Even if we hadn’t finished?
From across the circle, I felt Ander’s gaze boring into me as he took a large gulp.
I suddenly found it hard to swallow.
“Never have I ever had a threesome.” The next person was up, a girl who was shooting hopeful sideways glances at both Ander and Liam, although she was barking up the wrong tree with Liam. Liam caught her look, and he huffed, getting up from his spot on the floor and moving to where Noah was sitting. He squeezed in next to him, dropping a kiss on the side of Noah’s head and curling his arm around his waist. Noah smiled at him, and for a second, they were lost in their own little world. I wanted what they had so badly, and I couldn’t have it. It hurt more than I wanted to admit.
Ander drank again. I didn’t. It was a reminder of just how different our experiences were.
