Asking for It (8 page)

The two of us convulse with laughter and he doesn’t even seem to notice Mia leaving. We chat for another ten or fifteen minutes, until I forget why I even came over here in the first place. I’m actually enjoying myself, I realize. I never enjoy myself at parties, not really.

‘
Dineen
.’

The music has stopped so I hear his name clearly.

‘And remember when—’

‘No, sorry,’ I interrupt Conor, just in time to see Jack Dineen, tanned in a loose white wife-beater, walk through the kitchen door, shouting over his shoulder to someone behind him, and Laura and Mia and their friend in the corner start whispering loudly ‘
Oh my God . . .’ ‘. . . no way . . .’ ‘. . . is that actually . . .’ ‘. . . yes, it is
,’ and then Paul O’Brien walks in. It’s like someone famous has arrived – a moment of silence, then whispers, elbow nudging, stifled giggles.

I don’t get the fuss; he’s nowhere near as cute as Jack. Everyone is obsessed with him because he’s ‘Paul O’Brien’. He’s what I call a Reputation Boy. They might have been cute years ago, but no one seems to have noticed that the appeal has faded, that he’s ‘gone off’, as Mam would say. Sean sprints into the dining room, barely looking in my direction, and slaps both of them on the back. Paul makes a drinking gesture with his hand. His eyes fall on Laura and her friends, lingering on Mia, looking her up and down. He raises his eyebrows, turning to Jack, and says something, Jack snorting with laughter, turning to stare at Mia as well.

‘Hey.’ Conor takes hold of my elbow. ‘Do you want to go outside for some fresh air? It’s really hot in here.’

I step away from him. ‘No, I’m OK, thanks. I’m going to get another beer.’

Tossing my hair back, I walk towards Eli and Maggie, making sure I’m in Paul and Jack’s eyeline.

‘Hey.’ I put my hand on Maggie’s shoulder and pull her face away from Eli’s. ‘Where have Jamie and Ali gone?’

‘They were dancing.’

‘They’re not here any more.’

‘They could be in the living room. Or maybe outside?’ she says, her lipstick smudged.

‘Oh, you two.’ I lean in to pick a piece of lint off Eli’s shoulder, ignoring Maggie frowning at me. I wouldn’t do anything with Eli, of course not. He’s my best friend’s boyfriend. But it’s always nice to see if I
could.
‘You should get a room.’ I say this as slowly as I can. ‘There’s plenty available.

‘Sorry,’ I murmur, stepping between Jack and Paul to grab another can of beer from the case on the dining table.

‘Hey, Emma,’ Jack says, and I half smile at him.

‘Yes, hello, Emma,’ Paul says, and I tip my can in his direction. ‘I have to say, you’re looking particularly lovely this evening.’

‘Thanks.’ I turn on my heel and walk away before he can say anything else.

There’s no sign of Jamie and Ali in the garden, just some lads sitting around a rickety wooden table between two tall monkey-puzzle trees, playing poker. There’s a couple pressed up against the wall, the boy looking like he’s trying to mould her body into the pebble-dashed wall. Two blonde girls are smoking, wearing denim hotpants so short I can see their ass cheeks.

It takes my eyes a few seconds to adjust to the gloom in the TV room, but the girls aren’t in here either. I have to breathe through my mouth because of the mixture of Lynx, smoke and sweat.

‘Are you cold, Emma?’ Matt Reynolds pipes up from the two-seater chair opposite me.

‘What?’

‘I was just asking if you were cold?’

‘Not especially, Matt. It’s, like, thirty degrees outside.’

He leans forward, his legs splayed apart, and rests his elbows on his knees, crouching down. ‘Are you sure? Because it looks like you’re pretty cold to me.’

The others burst into raucous laughter, the guy next to Matt giving him a high five, and I feel like getting up and slapping him across his stupid face.

‘Very funny,’ I say. ‘So mature.’

‘What’s funny?’ Jack opens the door. (I knew he would come looking for me.)

‘Oh, nothing,’ I say. ‘Poor Matt here is just overawed at the sight of my nipples. It must be tough being a virgin at such an advanced age.’ I take a sip of my beer and pull a sympathetic face. ‘Like a bull tied to a gate, I’d imagine.’

He splutters, ‘Fuck you, Emma. You’re not that fucking hot, you know,’ and starts listing the girls he’s shagged. ‘. . . and then there was Lauren, and Saoirse, and . . .’ the others laughing even harder this time, hitting the armrests, stamping their feet, and jeering, ‘Virgin, virgin, virgin . . .’ at him.

‘Can I sit there?’

I take another sip of my beer before I look up. ‘But I’m sitting here.’

‘There’s room for one more, I think.’

‘I don’t know.’ I lean back in the chair. ‘I’m pretty comfortable.’

Jack rolls his eyes at me and sits on the armrest, pretending to watch the two lads playing the Xbox.

‘I need some health. This mission is killing me,’ one of them says, clicking furiously at the controls.

‘Just fuck a hooker, that’ll help,’ Matt Reynolds says, and they laugh.

‘So,’ Jack says to me, ‘were you at the match yesterday?’

‘Yeah,’ I say, giving an exaggerated yawn. ‘But I left, like, ten minutes before the end.’

‘Ah,’ he says, ‘then you missed the best part. I scored the winning goal.’

‘You scored a goal? Oh, well done
you
.’

I tap his knee when I say this and he grabs my hand. I try and pull away but he won’t let me. He swirls his thumb gently on my palm, a dimple forming in his left cheek, and I feel myself go liquid.

‘Maybe you’ll come to the next match.’

‘Maybe I will.’

‘And maybe you should stay until the end this time.’

‘Maybe I should.’

Our voices are getting lower, our heads moving closer to each other, inch by inch, wondering which one of us is going to crack and be the first to lean in so afterwards we can say that the other person instigated things. I’m getting so turned on I almost feel queasy, but this is the bit I enjoy the most, I think. The build-up, that moment just before you finally kiss, that’s always better than the actual sex. During sex I’m thinking about what I look like, trying to make sure the other person is having a better time with me than they did with the last girl. And, of course, even before they come I’m wondering how I’m going to make them keep their mouth shut about what we did or didn’t do.

‘Emma.’ It’s Ali, tapping my shoulder.

‘What is it?’

‘I’m sorry, OK,’ she says, ‘but I really need your help.’

I press my lips together tightly, but I don’t want to seem like a shitty friend in front of Jack, so I follow her out the room.

‘Jesus, Ali, what could be so important—’

‘Oh my God, are you still angry with me because of what happened earlier?’

‘What?’

‘About what happened earlier.’ She lowers her voice. ‘The FatBooth thing.’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Ali, I haven’t thought about that since. I was about to score with Jack when you—’

‘I know, and I’m sorry,’ she cuts in. ‘But I didn’t know what to do.’ She opens the door into the dated bathroom, the bath, toilet and sink a matching avocado colour, a scuzzy wool mat on the white lino.

‘Jesus,’ I say when I see Jamie collapsed over the toilet seat, heaving, but there’s nothing left to throw up, only a trickle of bile dribbling through her lips.

‘I know,’ Ali says. ‘What should we do? Should I call her parents?’

‘No,’ I say quickly. Jamie’s mam will have a nervous breakdown if she sees Jamie like this. ‘What happened to her? She was fine the last time I saw ye.’

‘She scored with Colin Daly.’

‘So?’

Ali turns her head towards me and says out of the side of her mouth, ‘He tried to have sex with her, and when she said she didn’t want to, he said that he had heard from Dylan Walsh that she was a sure bet.’ Jamie moans when she hears Dylan’s name, dry-heaving into the toilet again.

There’s a knock on the door.

‘There’s someone in here,’ I call out but they knock again, more urgently.

‘We said,
just a minute
,’ Ali snaps, and Sean Casey answers uncertainly, ‘Is everything OK in there?’

‘Shit.’ Ali steps over Jamie’s legs to get to the mirror, pulling her make-up bag out of the navy quilted handbag. ‘Do I look all right?’ She applies more bronzer to her overly tanned face, smooths down some flyaway hairs at her centre parting.

‘Sorry, Sean,’ she calls out, and I step in front of her.

‘You are not leaving me alone to deal with this, Ali.’

‘Please, Em. I’m begging you. Please do this for me. It’s Sean.’

‘And I was with Jack.’

‘I never ask you to do anything for me,’ she says, and we both know it’s the truth. ‘But I’m asking you now. Please?’ She hesitates. ‘I really, really like him, Em.’

He doesn’t like you, I want to tell her. He wants to be with me.

‘
Fine
,’ I say, and she squeals, gives me a massive hug and rushes out. I bolt the door after her and sit on the edge of the bathtub. Ali had the presence of mind to tie Jamie’s hair into a ponytail, so at least I don’t have to hold it back. I check my phone, sending Maggie a Snapchat, taking a selfie and posting it on Instagram, snorting when Matt Reynolds comments on the photo asking for a tit pic. After one violent retch that sounds like it might burst the lining of her stomach, Jamie wipes her mouth, then gets to her feet unsteadily, holding on to the toilet for balance.

‘Do you need help?’

She bends over the sink, splashing her face with water. Standing up straight, she looks at me in the mirror. Her face is blotchy, her eyeliner smeared halfway down her cheeks.

‘What do you care?’

‘Jamie—’

‘You said it would be better.’

‘Jamie, I—’

‘It’s not better, Emma. It’s not better.’ Her breath is rasping in her throat. ‘You said, you said . . .’ She can barely get the words out through her tears. She looks such a mess, and there must be something wrong with me, because I know I should feel sorry for her, but all I feel is disgust.
Look at yourself
, I want to tell her.
You’re ruining your make-up. Do you even care?
I try to shush her, telling her to ‘Come on, J, you need to calm down, this isn’t the right place for this’, but she ignores me, sitting on the toilet seat, her head in between her knees so all I can hear through her wails is ‘. . . you said . . . you said that if I . . . Dylan . . . you told me to . . .’

‘Come on. Stop it.’

‘But you
told
me—’

‘It’s happened to loads of people. It happens all the time. You wake up the next morning, and you regret it or you don’t remember what happened exactly, but it’s easier not to make a fuss—’

‘But that’s not how it happened.’ She stares up at me. ‘I
told
you what happened.’

‘But I wasn’t there with you, was I? How do I know what really—’

‘But
I told you.
I didn’t want . . . I didn’t want to.’

‘You didn’t say no.’ I crouch down in front of her, placing my hands on her shoulders. ‘You told me you didn’t say no.’

‘But –’ she shrugs my hands off her and looks at me with such despair that my skin crawls – ‘I didn’t say yes either.’

A phone call last Halloween. Jamie. (I look at the screen in surprise. Jamie never calls me.)
Do you want to go to Dylan’s party?
Maggie had hockey training. Ali was in the Bahamas. Just the two of us. (It was never just the two of us. We were too competitive for that, always needing one of the other girls there to act as a buffer.) Drinking. Another shot, another one, another one. Jamie in her Sailor Moon costume. Getting a lot of attention.
You’re so hot, Jamie
, they kept saying. I didn’t like it. I stroked her hair, kissed her, my tongue in her mouth, the boys crowing. (Her skin was so soft against mine.) She fell. I laughed. Zach’s hands on my waist then, replacing hers, hot breath on my neck, and then we were kissing, and folding on to a bed, and clothes were coming off. The next morning, too many missed calls. (Come to my house, her voice message said in a trembling tone.) Keying in the passcode at the reinforced gates to Jamie’s home. Her mother calling me a bad influence. Jamie, sitting on the bed, crying and crying and crying. (I felt uncomfortable.) (I felt weirdly excited by the drama.)
Be careful
, I warned her. (Dylan is a dick, but he isn’t
that
, he wouldn’t do
that
.)
You can’t just say stuff like that. When you say that word, you can’t take it back.
She kept asking,
What will I do? What will I do, what will I do, what will I do, what will I do, what will I do?

It would change everything.

I didn’t want anything to change.

Let’s just pretend it didn’t happen
, I told her.
It’s easier that way. Easier for you.

‘Jamie, come on. We talked it through and we agreed, didn’t we? We agreed it would be easier not to make a big deal of it, especially when everyone there was underage and there’d be so much shit if it got out. It would just mean that people would be pissed off with you for getting them in trouble, and you’d miss out on all of the parties because Dylan’s friends wouldn’t want you there any more . . .’ I trail off. I hope no one outside can hear us. ‘Listen,’ I say after a few minutes, checking my phone, ‘I think you should go home.’ She doesn’t respond, just turns away from me, trying to get her breathing back under control. I text Danny the Taxi, asking him to come collect her as soon as he can.

‘Emmie? Is everything OK in there?’ It’s Conor, his voice concerned. ‘Ali said you might need some help.’

‘Grand,’ I say as I open the door to him. ‘J’s not feeling well. I’ve ordered a taxi to bring her home.’

Conor helps me get Jamie to her feet, wrapping his arm around her shoulder.

‘What taxi is it?’ he asks, propping her up as her knees buckle.

‘Danny.’

‘I can’t afford a taxi,’ Jamie slurs up at Conor. ‘Me. Jamie Murphy. I can’t even afford a fucking taxi any more.’

‘We could ask Fitzy to drive her?’ Conor suggests, but I shake my head. I don’t want to have to ask Fitzy for a favour. I grab my clutch bag from the side of the bathtub and start scrambling through make-up and cotton buds and a tiny hip flask of vodka, looking for cash.