Remix (21 page)

“Very poetic. I’ll steal – sorry,
save
– that too.”

The eyelash is still resting in the whorl of his thumbprint, waiting for one of us to claim it.

“I’ll let you have it,” I say over the rim of my cup. “I’m generous like that.”

Sebastian closes his eyes and blows my eyelash away across the field, his lips curved in a smile so private I’m almost embarrassed to have noticed it.

I think I know what he wished for.

I think it’s what I would have wished for too…

I am going to kiss this boy who isn’t Tom and I am going to do it now.

Only what I actually do is headbutt Sebastian in the nose as he reaches for his tea, knocking the glasses from his face.

“Oh my God, I am so sorry!” I say. For a second I think he’s crying until I realize it’s laughter.

“I’m fine. It’s fine. My nose is fine. You really don’t need to apologize.” But the fact that he checks his hand for blood when he lifts it away is far from reassuring. (Although there doesn’t appear to be any.)

Replacing his glasses, he says, “Do you want to try that again?” He edges forward slowly to place a soft, cool kiss on my lips.

A slight hesitation and I kiss him back, lips pressing briefly before I withdraw.

That was nice.

But Sebastian reaches out, his fingers running along the bumps of my braids, along the edge of my ear to rest lightly on my jaw.

“Again,” he whispers and this time, the kiss isn’t so soft – but it’s just as nice.

We stay like that, sitting, kissing in our bubble on the hill until we eventually have to stop. I’m cold and the other members of SkyFires keep calling to find out where their designated tour van driver has gone.

“I could stay,” Sebastian says, kissing my cheek, then the lobe of my ear and my jaw.

I smile as I say, “No. You couldn’t.”

“You’re right. I can’t – my friends would kill me.” He stands up, pulling me with him until my lips reach his once more and I breathe him in. He smells like his songs.

When I pull back I feel giddy.

“Are we going to do this again?” Sebastian asks as he slides his hand into mine. Our fingers intertwine the way I always wanted to do with Tom and never did.

“Same time next year?” I’m making light of it, because I don’t know how else to handle it.

“That’s a long time to wait between kisses.” Sebastian turns me to him and we stop on the path amidst a stream of people flowing from the arena.

“About two minutes and fifteen seconds, sixteen seconds…” I’m still talking as I press my lips to his and we smile through another kiss. And then another, until a passerby shouts, “Disgusting! That’s what tents are for, mate!”

And I pull away, hot with humiliation, my mind full of thoughts of Mum’s condoms and the horror of actually having a reason to use any of them.

“Out in the open is fine for me.” Sebastian squeezes my hand.

“Me too.” But my mind’s moved on to what I
have
done in the privacy of a tent – how much has happened since then and what will happen next…

“I really do have to go, Kaz.” Sebastian kisses my cheek. “Although I wish I didn’t. What’s your number? Your email? Your address? Anything?”

Much as I want this to happen again, I worry that it can’t – not the way I’d like it to. Not until I’m free from Tom. For the first time today, Sebastian looks something other than confident as I refrain from answering his question. “You know I’m not someone who usually goes round plucking beautiful girls from the audience and kissing them, don’t you?”

I can’t help but smile. “Did you just call me beautiful?”

“You are.”

Tom never once called me beautiful.

And it’s the fact that I can’t get him out of my head that’s stopping me from handing over my number. I don’t want to be like Tom, messing up my next relationship because I haven’t recovered from the last. If I see Sebastian again, I want it to be because I want to be with
him
, not because I can’t be alone.

It is not Sebastian’s job to cure me of Tom. It’s mine. And for that I need time.

“How about I find you?” I say.

“That sounds sinister,” Sebastian says, but I kiss his joke away.

“SkyFires must have a website?” He nods. “With a contact form?” Another nod. “That someone regularly checks?”

“That someone would be me.”

I kiss him again. “Then that makes finding you when the time is right easy, doesn’t it?”

“When the time is right?”

This time it’s me who nods, perhaps with a little more certainty than I feel.

“I hope that time is soon,” Sebastian says.

I hurry off the bus, nearly tripping over my boots because I haven’t put them on properly. I stop, hand resting on the bonnet to balance as I kick my toes down into the ends. Could do without a broken ankle. Then I half run, half hobble, because I still haven’t done up my laces, as fast as I can away from there, away from what I’ve just done. I’m short of breath as panicky sobs start swelling up and popping in my chest and throat.

That was a bad idea. All of this. So bad.

My breath comes in jagged gasps as though it’s harder to breathe than it is to cry, as if I’m actually drowning in my own tears.

I can’t understand why I’m acting like this. It was sex. Just sex. No big deal.

But I’m lying because sex
is
a big deal – at least to me.

I squeeze my eyes shut and try not to think, but a blank mind is just a blank canvas for the images of what I’ve been doing to flash up; the dark ink of his new tattoo pressing against the white of my skin; the twist of his mouth; the moment when it went from something I wanted to be doing to something I wished would end. And when it did…

“Knew you’d be quality,” he’d said, grinning at me like we were the same, like I was the Ruby who flirted with him over beer and not the one hurriedly scrabbling for her clothes. Flirty Ruby would have laughed and told him he wasn’t so bad himself.

That would have been a lie, just like the rest of it: the banter and the game-playing. “Quality” or not, I was only ever going to be another number and I wish with all my heart and soul that I hadn’t been so
stupid
as to get caught up in it. For fuck’s sake, that girl Kaya even said it…

“Idiot,”
I hiss at myself, pressing my wrists into my eyes to rub away the tears. I automatically lift my index finger to wipe a smear of mascara from under my lash line, but when my hand comes up to my face I can smell him on my fingers and I’m reminded of the disgust I felt at how grubby he was.

What was I expecting? He’d just come offstage. When exactly would he have showered? Where?

Thank God for Kaz’s mum and her embarrassingly large box of condoms. Thank God I took one, thank God I used it. I hope I put it on properly…

Please don’t let me have caught anything… Please…

I start imagining that I’ve got gonorrhoea or chlamydia or worse and I want someone to come and tell me that I’m being silly and not to panic and that we’ll go to the clinic and get me checked out and there’s nothing to worry about because I didn’t give him a blowjob despite the hints –
“It’s not usually an issue”
. For all I wanted to feel special at least one tiny sensible part of me must have known that I wasn’t…

There is only one person I want right now.

Kaz
.

But when I pull my phone out of my pocket and try to unlock the screen, I realize that I’ve left it too late. The battery is dead.

It’s a long walk up to camp, but I can’t think where else to go. The journey is exhausting and when I get there, all I find is the dead ash of last night’s fire and four dark tents. Without much hope, I open ours and look inside.

Kaz isn’t here. The only other place she might be is the Tom/Lauren camp, but even now, even though my pride is officially at an all-time low, I still have enough not to want Lauren to see me like this.

Shame clutches at my stomach, followed rapidly by an actual physical pang.

When did I last eat anything?

I dip into the pocket of my shorts, but all I’ve got is my dead phone, some change and the keys to Owen’s van. Crawling back into the tent, I hunt for the packet of beef jerky I insisted we bring…

There’s voices coming closer and I snap into full alert, hoping for Kaz or even Lee, but it’s only Dongle and Parvati. She’s giggling as he kisses her. “Stop mauling me!” she laughs, before pulling him back for another.

I clear my throat and Parvati pushes Dongle away so hard he nearly falls into the side of next door’s tent.

“It’s just me,” I say, then, “You guys seen Kaz or Lee?”

There’s an uncomfortable pause in which they look at each other before shaking their heads in perfect time. Left, right, left, right, slow to centre.

“I’ll leave you to it,” I say and try for a kind of jock-like arm punch as I pass Dongle, but like everything about me, the gesture feels hollow and worthless. I head up the path towards Owen’s van without looking back. I can’t be here, in the tent, whilst Parvati’s in Dongle’s. Better to be alone in Owen’s van with my beef jerky. And my misery.

The walk feels long. I’m weak and tired. There are a few people around, laughing, messing about by their tents and I find it hard to believe that away, in the distance, I can hear whoever’s on the main stage. How is it not so much later? It’s like time’s folded in on itself and left me on the outside, looking in.

The car park looks different from yesterday – different in a way that’s more than just light and dark – but once I get my bearings, Owen’s van’s not so hard to spot. All I want to do is open up one of the back doors, clamber in and shut out the world.

My eyes are half closed as I concentrate on turning the key in the lock. My whole body is ready to give up as I pull back the handle and swing the door open.

To find something that doesn’t make sense. There’s someone in the van—

No, two someones.

I don’t—

“Fuck! Ruby!” It’s Lee.

“Shit!” Not Lee. Not Owen. Not a boy I know.

My brain hasn’t yet processed what I’m seeing, but my body has decided that we’re going to respond by running and I’m away from the van, darting between rows of cars, beyond the sight of my brother, who’s shouting my name. I collapse against someone’s car and press my face into my knees and try to think of something to block out what I’ve just seen.

My brain comes up with the faded photo that’s up in the lounge – it’s of all of us, taken when we were kids: seven-year-old Ed and four-year-old Callum, toddler Lee, and baby me, sitting on the floor in front. I’m zooming in on us, me squidged up and giggling in Lee’s lap as he tickles me. It’s like we don’t even know someone’s taking a photo; we’re too busy hanging out. When I think about family and what it means to have one, I think about Lee’s expression in that picture.

That look is my definition of love.

“Ruby?”

Lee is someone I have always trusted. He is a flake and a shit-stirrer. An infuriating piss-taker who can wind me up like no one else – not even Callum. But he is Lee. He’s the person I wanted to be when I grew up.

I feel like I’m the one he’s cheated.

“Ruby? Where are you?”

Lee’s close by and I clench my teeth to stop myself from letting out the slightest sound as my shoulders shake.

“Please…”

He steps into view beyond my hiding place, his skinny white torso almost luminous in the moonlight. His shorts are still undone.

“Ruby.” His voice is quiet enough that I wouldn’t have heard him if I weren’t so close.
“Please…”

For a second I think I might call out, but then the other boy steps into view. I don’t know him. I don’t want to. I wish I could unknow his very existence. He puts a hand on Lee’s shoulder and murmurs something.

“What?” Lee brushes him off. “Get a fucking clue. She’s my sister, not my girlfriend.”

The boy takes a step back and I catch sight of his features in the moonlight. He looks like all the boys Lee fancied before he met Owen. Wide-eyed and boyish. Slim. Lee doesn’t even try to stop him as he walks away, just turns in the opposite direction.

I don’t know how long I wait before I stand up and start walking. Long enough for my tears to have dried on my skin. Time’s moved on and the campsite’s heaving because the arena’s tipped out and I walk, careless of where I’m actually going, until I wind to a halt near a hedge and step out of the lights marking the path until I’m deep in darkness, where no one will notice me. I slide onto the grass.

I can’t talk to Kaz.

I can’t talk to Lee.

And Owen…

I could never lie to him and I can’t tell him the truth. Guilt and sadness sweep over me and I think how pathetic this makes me when Owen’s the only one who has a right to this pain.

Dimly, I realize that someone’s standing near by.

“You all right, pet?”

I shake my head and will him to leave.

He doesn’t. “You shouldn’t be here on your own. It’s not safe.”

Glancing up, I see that he’s old. Mid-thirties. Skin pink from the sun, eyes pink from booze. Or weed.

“Not safe from people like you?” I say.

He shakes his head. “I’m not a crazy rapist. I’ve got chips.” He holds a cone of chips towards me.

“Crazy rapists eat chips too.”

The man shrugs and sits down a respectable distance from where I am. “Well, I’m not crazy and I’m not rapey. I’ll just sit here. You sit there and I’ll watch out for the rapists. OK?”

“Thanks,” I say, and suddenly I’m pushed over the edge and I find myself sobbing into my hands, tears and snot squidging in the gaps between my fingers. He shuffles closer.

“I’m going to put an arm round you. Just shove me off if that’s not OK.”

But I don’t. I lean in and I let this kind stranger hold me in a one-armed hug as I cry onto his shoulder, letting out everything that hurts until I’m just a Ruby-shaped shell of a human.

When he offers me a chip again, I take it. And then another until I find that I’ve eaten most of them.

It feels better to be full of chips than to be full of shame.

“You should find your friends.” He folds the paper up and asks if there’s someone I’d like to call. I tell him my phone has died.