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“What, and have his beard hair all over my… tickling your legs and everything? Nope. No. I don’t think so. It’s not happening.”
“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,” Penelope continues. “I told him as much the other night.”
“I’m sorry, what?” Stephanie asks, tension rippling from her as we all still.
“I told him beards were great for oral.” Penelope shrugs, looking from one of us to another, hoping for someone to back her up, but we’re all silent. “It’s no big deal.”
It is.
“So, let me get this straight, you talking to my boyfriend about oral sex is not a big deal, not in the slightest bit inappropriate at all?”
“It’s not like you’re together-together, like Tamsin and Taylor,” Penelope clarifies.
No, Oliver just bludgeoned someone half to death with his bare fists for Stephanie. No, it’s not the same thing at all.
“I’m going to tell you this once,” Stephanie hisses, pointing her finger towards Penelope. “Stay the fuck away from him. If I see or hear you anywhere in his general vicinity, you’re dead.”
“Really?” Penelope rolls her eyes dismissively. “You’re completely overreacting here. It was one little conversation.”
Because the way she rallied around Oliver and made the guy who frightened her pay was not an overcorrection in the slightest. She’s proven to be a bit of a loose cannon. This was a mistake.
“You fucking heard me,” Stephanie continues. “I swear to God, I’ll cut your beloved hair off in your sleep. Stay the hell away from him.”
The silence that spears the room is uncomfortable as Stephanie glares at Penelope, and I’m sure if she could physically harm her with just one look, she would, but Penelope looks anywhere but back at her, shrugging like it’s no big deal before pulling her book out and ignoring us completely.
I get Stephanie’s feeling, how ragingly jealous I was just minutes ago only thinking about someone else getting near Nick or Wyatt. So, to have someone throw that kind of comment in your face, well, I get it.
Stephanie goes back to texting furiously on her phone as Tamsin nudges my elbow, gesturing to the text I’m supposed to be reading. Aimee looks at Charlotte and shrugs, just as the meeting on the TV blares to life, our tutor finally arriving, ready to start.
There’s an air of awkwardness that simmers through the whole meeting, our group not quite the single unit we’ve become on the back of Stephanie’s outburst, and it goes on way too long. The meeting too. The second it’s over, Stephanie is slamming her books closed and storming out the door, no doubt going to tell Oliver exactly what she thinks about him discussing oral sex with another woman.
“I don’t know what her problem was, it was just a conversation,” Penelope says with a disbelieving shrug of her shoulders. “It’s not like we did anything.”
“That’s the line is it?” Tamsin asks. “You don’t entertain men wearing these matching bands, and you don’t fuck them, but flirting is fine, even if they’re with someone else?”
“I’m not responsible for his actions.”
“No, but you’re responsible for your part in it,” I argue. “Just becauseallyou did was talk about sex with someone else’s boyfriend, that does not make it okay. What if it was someone less captivated by their partner? Is sleeping with them okay? Just because you’re single and not responsible for someone else’s actions? That’s a fucking cop out and you know it.”
Red nails on his white shirt flash before my eyes, my blood heating even further.
“Oh, and whilst we’re on it, you can stay the hell away from Nick, and Wyatt too.”
“So, who exactly does that leave for the rest of us, Ivy?”
Somehow, we’ve both stood, facing off against each other across the coffee table as my anger surges.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“George is gone. Emmerson is gone.” She counts them off on her fingers. “Oliver is with Stephanie, Taylor is with Tamsin, Jacob and Leo are so obviously fucking it’s not even funny, and now you’re saying to stay away from Wyatt and Nick, so that leaves us with who? Jasper.”
I sink back into the chair, realisation hitting like a sledgehammer.
“Liselle keeps telling us how important it is to pair up with one of these amazing guys, and then they fucking disappear. Charlotte, Aimee and I… what chance do we actually have here?”
Silence swallows the room.
Aimee collects the coffee mugs and disappears to the kitchen, no doubt washing up and prepping food for everyone. That’s her go-to, her calm in the storm, it’s something for her hands to do whilst her brain processes, or at least that’s the idea of what she explained.
