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‘But she doesn’t deny it.’ He’s so tall that when he leans in, he still needs to lower himself to my ear. ‘I know girls like you. I’vehadgirls like you. You’re quiet and nervous but you have a hunger for submission.’
‘You don’t even like me.’
‘Do you want me to fuck you like I like you?’ His lips move down my throat. ‘I can’t promise I’ll be gentle, but something tells me you don’t want me to be.’
I can’t stop thinking about what Cassie said about Archer pulling her hair. Suddenly I want him to pull mine.
‘Get off me, Archer,’ I say, my voice firm and clear.
He doesn’t move straight away. His hands tighten painfully on my thighs, as if it takes great effort to restrain himself enough to pull away. He steps back. A muscle pops in his jaw, but he says nothing as he watches me jump down from the counter.
For some reason, I back toward the door. Something tells me Archer Toban isn’t used to being turned down, and that makes him dangerous.
Chapter Two
Hot Date
Five minutes after I walk through the door my mum calls from the kitchen, ‘Frankie. Kitchen. Now.’
Noplease. Nohow was school?
I curse her under my breath and backtrack down the stairs.
She points to the sink without a word, signalling to the mound of pans and dishes from last night. Nothing of which is even mine, because my job is around the corner from a kebab house. By the time I get home, I’m too tired to cook, so for the past six months I’ve used the money I would generally spend on a taxi home to exhaust in takeaways. It doesn’t bother me that it takes an hour to walk—it means I reach home late, which means there is always the possibility of evading my parents' arguing.
As I wash up, I don’t ask where my dad is. I don’t want to give her an opportunity to speak ill of him, but my mum doesn’t need prompting.
‘Don’t know why I bloody bother making him food. Feel like spitting in it,’ she says as she slaps mashed potato onto a plate. ‘He does nothing around the house. He’s been in the garden all day, working on that stupid car.’
He does nothing because of his hip. He does nothing because he’s on crutches. He’s been in the garden to get away from you.
But I refuse to add oxygen to the fire.
‘I’m working tonight,’ I say. ‘In till one. Make sure you leave the door—‘
‘I’m going out tonight.’
I frown. ‘With who?’
‘Hot date.’ She winks, and for some reason, I don’t think she’s joking. ‘I’ll leave the key under the rock for you.’
???
The only perk about working reception in a cinema is the movie discounts. Typically, customers are rude and reproachable, and management are, most of the time, much worse. Peak hours are dreadful, too. But the drinks are good, and I usually whip myself up a portion of popcorn and shove it beneath the counter and dip into it when traffic lags. My favourite part is when movies show perpendicular to each other, which means no customers for two hours.
Which means Kai.
I open my phone to find three texts from him.
Kai:Hey Cucumber?
Kai:came home to find a squirrel in my kitchen. a fucking squirrel!!! I don’t even know what to do with a squirrel, but we saw each other at the same moment and we just sized the other up. are squirrels aggressive??
Kai:I really could do with your expertise on this particularly dire situation, I fear my death may be imminent
I laugh.
It’s been six months since Kai first texted, and we’ve spoken every day since. We text in the evenings, when both of our schedules relieve us. We both have school, and we both have exams coming up, so our messages are reserved until after school hours. He’s been helping me with math; I just never deemed math necessary enough to actually want to learn it, and every time I’ve even attempted to understand it, it’s concluded with me in angry tears and a shredded notebook. But Kai is a patient tutor; he is sympathetic to my frustration, and he explains equations step-by-step, and it helps.
