Remix (8 page)

Kaz plants her hands firmly on my shoulders, holding me steady. She’s so close I can’t really see anything else.

“Ruby.” Kaz looks at me. “Tell me.”

But what am I supposed to say other than the truth?

“There’s nothing going on with me and Stu. I couldn’t kiss him, that’s all.”

I don’t tell her that the reason is because I wanted to.

Ruby says nothing more, just starts walking back to camp, and since I don’t seem to have any other option, I walk with her. When Ruby clams up, there’s no point trying to prise her open and even if we’re not walking arm in arm, at least we’re not walking alone. Camp is deserted when we get there, tents zipped shut like mouths keeping secrets, and someone’s stamped down on the ashes of Owen’s fire. Ruby looks like the (barely) walking dead as she struggles to pull off her vest. It’s not unusual for her to hit a wall after a night out and usually I’d be tutting at her, untangling her hair when it gets caught in a zip or reminding her to remove her make-up.

Not tonight.

We brush our teeth, taking turns to spit from our tent into the ashes and listening for a hiss of success. Ruby’s more accurate than me, but then, as she says, Naomi and I didn’t engage in spitting contests as often as Ruby and her brothers.

“Callum always won.”

“Really?” Our conversation is paper-thin over the fissures of our argument.

“Don’t let his pretentions towards being an intellectual fool you. Callum is a champion Spit Meister.” It’s a weak attempt at humour and so is the smile she gets for it.

By the time I’ve finished brushing my teeth and cleaning my face, Ruby’s already down and out on her back, arms folded above her head, breathing with the kind of depth that comes with too much alcohol. The eyeliner she slicked on so thick this morning has held fast, but it looks wrong on her sleeping face, like graffiti on a statue.

When she’s awake, Ruby is as big as her personality, but sleeping she looks as small as she really is. Her arms look snappable and I feel a prick of dismay at how thin she is at the moment. Without the smiles and the energy, the enthusiasm and the passion, Ruby looks … vulnerable.

As I unlock my phone to set an alarm for the morning, it buzzes in my hand.

Tom
.

There’s a rustle somewhere near by. A swoosh of the zip, a whiff of cool night air. By the time my beer-befuddled consciousness claws its way out of oblivion the tent is still. I roll over and see that Kaz’s sleeping bag is open, slipper socks and pyjamas flopping out like entrails. Her shoes are gone when I pull open the front flap. Toilet trip, I guess.

Until I hear a familiar laugh.

Just outside of our camp, silhouetted against the glow of the fires beyond, I see Kaz. And Tom.

I yank the zip shut as if not-seeing can turn into not-believing.

But who am I kidding? Everything Kaz has done today has been leading to this moment with Tom.

Now it’s here, I’m no longer so sure why I thought it was my place to stop it.

Tom broke her heart before, but who’s to say he’ll do it again? Maybe he made a mistake? Maybe he’s been regretting it all summer and now he’s finally got a chance to make things right?

Maybe I’m not thinking about Tom when I say that.

Go home, brain, you’re drunk
.

Tomorrow, when I’m sober, when I know how to use my indoor voice, I will tell Kaz I’m sorry and I will mean it.

Tom hands me back Ruby’s phone. The battery is at thirty-seven per cent and I make a mental note to remind her to take it to the charging tent tomorrow.

“Stu found it. I thought you’d rather I was the one who brought it back.” He smiles and brushes a bit of floating ash off my cheek with the back of his fingers.

“I should head back.” I half-turn towards my tent, but Tom lays a hand on my shoulder.

“Wait.”

When I turn back there’s no mistaking his expression.

“Yes?” My voice might be light, but the look I’m giving him is so heavily loaded I can barely lift my lashes.

There’s a second in which he swallows and I expect his gaze to dart away, for him to remember that we (presumably) broke up for a reason.

Tom doesn’t move an inch. “Let’s go somewhere for a bit. Just you and me.”

We make our way towards Three-Tree Field, pausing to cross the main track. Even though it’s past midnight, late arrivals are still tramping down from the car park, rucksacks on, ground mats rolled under their arms as they carry crates of beer and carrier bags. Mostly it’s the older crowd – people who have driven here from their day jobs – and the conversations I catch seem to be focused on whether there’s space to pitch their tents. I don’t think there’s anywhere left unless they’re prepared to camp up a tree. When I make this joke to Tom, he huffs a laugh at me.

The smell of roast pork and popcorn, candyfloss and hot chips engulfs us as we pass the food vans lining a track marked
WEST WALK
, fading into the night as the track peters out on the far side of the site. There’s a choice between turning towards Tom’s camp, or turning away.

It’s Tom who decides, each step he takes pulling us away from the noise of the campsite and up a slope that starts off gentle before taking a savage turn up into a copse of trees. There’s no one here and we let the hill get the better of us as soon as we’re beyond the first of the trees. My hands are shaking. Every part of me is consumed by energy, my skin buzzing with suppressed excitement like it’s opening night and I’m singing the solo.

“So what exactly are we doing here, Tom?” I look up at the sky, at the trees near by and then, finally, at Tom, who shrugs. The setting might be romantic, but the boy isn’t. After all, this is Tom. The person who thought an umbrella was a suitable Valentine’s gift “because we’re having a wet February”.

“I just know it’s been good seeing you,” he says. “I didn’t know how much I’d missed this –
us
– until I saw you.”

And there it is: the gulf between the way I feel about him and the way he feels about me. I’ve missed him every second of every day since we broke up.

And yet…

He misses me
.

Tom reaches out for a hug and I go with it, putting my arms around him, resting my face on his shoulder and finally,
finally
letting myself breathe in the smell of him. A moment longer and I’ll pull away, break the contact.

It feels good, standing here on the balls of my feet, my nose pressed into the material of his top.

A second later he kisses me on the cheek.

I kiss his cheek in return.

He kisses me again, not on the safe skin on the apple of my cheek, but in the no-man’s-land towards my lips.

I turn my face closer and kiss him in the same place, my lips soft, the touch a little lingering, and when I pull back, I don’t turn my face any further, but rest it there, my nose so close to his jaw he must be able to feel my wavering breath on his skin.

Tom turns. It’s only a fraction of a degree but enough for the skin of his lower lip to brush against mine. There isn’t a sound between us as each of us hold our breath, waiting.

Did you ask about his girlfriend?

I don’t think I need to.

Apparently I went back to sleep, because I’m jolted awake by voices outside the tent.

It’s Lee and I shuffle out of my sleeping bag, wanting to tell him what’s happened, because telling Lee always makes things better, but the zip’s only halfway open when I stop.

Opposite, Lee is in Owen’s arms, the pair of them so closely wrapped around each other that they seem like one person, not two. Their faces are turned inwards, Lee’s pressed into Owen’s neck, Owen’s hidden in my brother’s hair. Even in the near-dark, I can see the muscles standing out on Lee’s arm as he pulls Owen to him.

I do the zip back up, not wanting to intrude. It’s enough to know that some of us are capable of fixing our fuck-ups.

It doesn’t feel the way I remember it –

… it’s subtly different …

– it feels better –

… like he’s been practising with someone else …

– and I don’t want it to stop –

… I should say something …

– but I pull away and look at him.

The half-light dims the contours of his face, softening what I see. His breathing is slow and heavy, and his eyes watch my lips. Neither of us says anything as he pulls me down the hill and towards where he’s camped.

It’s as deserted here as it was at ours and we ghost into his tent, Tom pulling me down against him, our bodies pressed together, fused by a kiss. Everything about this is urgent, as if there’ll never be another chance – so different from all the months of hushed fumbling under the covers or on the sofa. When Tom leans over me, my spine curls to press as much of my body into his as possible. Our breathing has escalated from heavy to ragged as Tom lifts away from my mouth to kiss my cheek, working across to my earlobe, where the sound of his breath engulfs everything else.

There’s no hesitation when his hand runs firmly up the bare skin of my thigh, under my dress and into my knickers and I’m tugging at his top, his belt, his trousers until he’s naked next to me…

“Your turn,” he breathes into my ear, his tongue brushing down my neck and across my collarbone to my cleavage. I unzip my dress, the material falling away until he’s kissing skin that’s not seen the sun.

My bra is off within seconds, his fingers twisting the clasp as if he’s been doing it for years.

I’ve lost control of my body, let alone my brain, but Tom pulls something out of the side pocket of the rucksack my head’s resting on.

It’s a condom.

Nine months of talking and, in the end, when we actually do it, neither of us says a word.

When I wake up next I’m thirsty.

“Kaz?” I croak, hoping that I won’t have to look for my own water supply.

There’s no reply and I turn my head to see her empty sleeping bag.

I don’t have the energy to find a cup for myself and I let myself get pulled under the surface of the sleep that’s lapping at my brain, wondering how long it’s been since she left me.

As soon as it’s over, Tom rolls away from me and all the things that have been masked by a soft-focus haze of lust and adrenalin become real and sharp and harsh. The elastic
thwap
as he pulls off the condom, the chill of the canvas my arm’s resting against, the cramped tent and the smell of what’s just happened, sweat and deodorant, the drinks Tom’s had. I realize how naked I am, how tight and sore.

I pull my knickers back on, but I’ve no idea where that bra went. “Have you seen my bra?”

But Tom’s still sitting up, his back to me, head down, and I don’t think he heard me.

“Tom?” I rest my hand on his back and he flinches away.

That is not the response I wanted.

“Oh God, Kaz…” Tom still isn’t looking at me. “What have we done?”

If I was feeling confident and clever, I would make a joke about the birds and the bees.

I don’t.

When Tom turns round, he isn’t looking at me the way I want him to.

He’s looking at me as if he’s frightened.

I hope Kaz is OK…

No
.

I pull my dress on too fast and I get stuck, plumbing the depths of indignity as Tom tugs it down over my bra-less breasts because I was trying to cover myself up as quickly as possible.

I want to be sick.

“Kaz, please, let’s just talk—”

“No.” It’s the only word I’ve said since he told me the truth.

“Let me explain.”

“No.”

“It’s you I want to be with, not her.”

“No.”

“Does that mean…?”

I’m going to have to say something. “It means nothing, Tom. It means don’t talk to me. It means I can’t believe what you’ve done.”

“So it does mean something?” Even when he’s this far in the wrong, Tom can’t help but try to be right.

I put my face as close to his as I can, close enough that he can’t miss the tears I’m crying or the pain I feel when I say it again. “
No
.”

Spying my bra under his sleeping bag, I grab it and back out of the tent, not even bothering to check whether the coast is clear. I hurry away from him, from what we’ve done, from what I have become.

Even as I clear the circle of tents, I glance back, half hoping that I will see the boy I love running after me, begging me to forgive him, telling me that he loves me, that there is something he can do to make this right…

That he didn’t just cheat on his girlfriend with me.

There’s no one there. Tom zipped his tent shut the second I left.

An ugly sob hiccups out of me and I nearly cannon into someone else on the path. For a horrifying second I recognize the pale pink hair, but Stella’s too preoccupied draping herself across whoever it is she’s walking with, and before either of them can see who’s knocked into them, I’ve hurried past into the shadow of a nearby gazebo.

If there’s one thing that could make this worse, it’s
anyone
knowing what I’ve done.

It hurts.

There’s a steady pulse in my right temple and my eyelids are gummed together with mascara and reluctance to function. My fuzzed tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth and I feel like I’ve just exhaled gas that is one part rotten eggs to five parts processed alcohol.

Injustice flickers in my thoughts, but when I try and add up how much I drank, I get a bit lost. My indignation lowers its head and edges away, allowing humiliation to step up to the plate as I think of all the terrible things I said to Kaz. Groaning, I roll over and knock into a MASSIVE bottle of water with a paper cup resting on the lid. There’s a message written on the cup:

DRINK ME

On the floor next to that, there’s a packet of paracetamol with
EAT ME
written on it and then,
(BUT ONLY THE RECOMMENDED DOSE!)
in tiny little letters underneath. Kaz’s sleeping bag has been neatly folded over, her pyjamas sitting on top like towels on a hotel pillow, but other than this there’s no sign of her. I can’t remember her coming in last night… Once medicated, I pull on Ed’s massive hoodie that I’ve been using as a pillow and shuffle out of the tent and into the sun, prepared to ride out whatever looks I get from the others about how weird I acted last night.