Saving from Monkeys (15 page)

"Crazy, sure," he agreed, 'but spot on about your arse."

I was sure he was having me on, but found myself slowly rising from the couch an
d starting to twist round anyway; trying to catch a glimpse of this supposedly attractive quality that had been secretly following me around all this time.

"You look like a dog trying to catch its tail," he remarked in amusement as I twirled around beside him.

"A dog trying to catch its
nice
tail," I corrected him and he laughed.

"Even a little bit of information is dangerous in your hands."

Trying to simultaneously catch a glimpse of my butt in the reflection from the TV screen, and sneer at Elliot for this patronising remark, I momentarily lost my bearings and caught my foot on a coffee table leg. I let out a little shriek as I tripped, and moving surprisingly swiftly for someone recently slingshot, Elliot literally snatched me out of midair and pulled me down onto his lap.

Well now…

I'd seen this sort of thing play out in movies before. Even in real life I'd watched girls play the whole 'oh I'm so weak, catch me' ploy, but it was only now that I really got its power. The point was, it's only when you're pressed up so closely against another person that you fully appreciate one crucial thing: whether you want to push them away, or pull them closer.

Always one to seek out option c, I did neither, instead I just froze. One of my hands was on his shoulder and the other was against his chest, in prime position to give him a shove back, but they stayed limp and unresisting.

For Elliot's part, he looked just as dumbfounded by the situation as I was. His arms stayed wrapped around me, holding, even welcoming, me where I was, but they weren't tight. It was a hold that both kept me there, and allowed me to go.

And we stared at each other, that
was perhaps the most crucial thing. My gaze was steady, unblinking, while his eyes were constantly moving, raking my face, presumably for any indication of what I was thinking.

Well, I wished him good luck with
that
. Not even
I
had any inkling of what was going on in my head, until I found myself whispering, "You smell green."

His eyes widened slightly,
and then he licked his bottom lip, as if his mouth had gone dry, and repeated, "Green?"

"Yeah," my voice was suddenly as husky as Abi's. "Like pine needles and lime, apples, green tea and grass. You smell green."

Perhaps I didn't fully understand what I meant by that, but it seemed that Elliot did because he closed his eyes briefly as if he needed a moment to himself after hearing it. When he opened his eyes again they no longer roamed across my face, but fixed directly onto mine.

"You called Papua New Guinea for me," he said.

And then, because there really didn't seem to be anything else to do, I cupped his face in my hands and leant forward to kiss him.

----------

Her mouth was light against his and he knew that one wrong move would see her bolting from him. It was more than he could deal with to just sit there and not do anything, however, and so, after a couple of seconds, he began to kiss her back.

His bruises were pulsing where she'd fallen against him, but it was a good pain, it kept him grounded and stopped him from grabbing her and kissing her in the way he had before.
The kisses from the night they’d slept together had been rough and hot, born from fury and confused lust, nothing like the lead up to this.

He would probably never be able to adequately explain to her, or even himself, how it had felt listening to her tell him he smelt green. All he'd known was that if she didn't kiss him, he was going to kiss her, and consequences
be damned.

Her hands tightened, clutching up little handfuls of his t-shi
rt as their kiss deepened, but with what little self control he had left, he kept his hands still. He held himself back because he knew, any moment now…

Rox suddenly stiffened and then, like a startled bird, she was gone; scrambling off his lap and across the room.
She pressed her wrist up to her mouth, not wiping his kiss from her exactly, but obviously trying in some way to cover it up.

Stifling a groan, he rubbed his hands across his face and waited for the yelling to begin.
It didn't. When she spoke it came out in a sort of strangled whisper.

"So that's what déjà vu feels like."

Well,
damn
.

"Listen," he started, but was
actually glad she cut him off because he didn't have a clue what he was going to say.

"
OK, you've had your fun," she was trying to be hard-arse, but her voice shook, "but that's it; now you've got to tell me. What happened the night we had sex?"

It was so different from the first time she'd asked. Then it hadn't been about her, no
t really, but he couldn't tell himself that now.

"
Christ, Rox." He dropped his head into his hands, suddenly feeling tired. "Don't ask me that."

"Why not?
I thought before you weren't telling me because you were just enjoying being such a dick, but now..." she trailed off and waved her hands around to demonstrate everything that had happened since. He stayed silent, unable to give her an answer, and she exploded, "What can be that bad that you can't tell me? What are you trying to protect?"

Who
m
, he thought desperately.
It's
whom
I'm trying to protect.

"Look, you turned up here, you'd already drunk a
fair bit and you were angry at me." He lifted his head and stared forwards, not looking at her, but at the TV she hated so much. "I'd just heard that Nan had had a stroke so I was trying to drown my sorrows in peace. You shouted, I shouted, there was a lot of drinking to emphasis points..."

"
And
?"

With a big effort he did manage to look at her then, but he wished he hadn't because she looked as
twisted up as he felt.

"You were sad," he said uncomfortably. "I was sad. We were really drunk. Does how things ended up really seem that incredible?"

"Why was I sad?" Rox folded her arms, ignoring his question. "Because that's what this is really about, isn't it? Not what happened once I got here, but why I came here in the first place?"

"I can't tell you." He was low, lower than low, and her expression told him she thought so too.

"You
can't
? Are you under some sort of spell? Is there a curse at work here so you turn into a mouse or something if you tell me?" Maybe someone else would’ve thought she was joking, but he knew she'd never been more serious. She glared at him, daring him to answer her, cheeks flushed with fury.

"Well go ahead and turn into a bloody mouse then," she snapped when his mouth remained firmly
closed, "because you're sure as hell not acting like a man."

He turned away and she let out a snarl of anger
at his cowardice. The next he heard was the door banging shut and he knew she'd stormed out.

He slammed a fist down onto his coffee table and swore loudly. Then, reaching blindly into his pocket, he dragged out his mobile and scrolled to Nan's number.
He needed her to laugh at him; to tell him he was a pathetic relic of chivalry and to drop the nobility act. If Nan could mock him it would tell him that everything was OK really; that this was just another of those times when he'd pissed off Rox, no big deal.

But the phone kept ringing. It rang and rang, until the line went dead.

Chapter 9 – The Bouncing and the Closed Doors

I burst into Abi’s and my room with no thought to my previous 'I'm so homeless, woe is me' complaints. There was no room for thought; my whole body was too full of my heartbeat. It pounded in my fingertips, in my ears, at my throat and in my temples until I was so consumed by the erratic thumping I was kind of surprised when I realised my autopilot setting had managed to bring me home.

Two heads flew up as I threw open the door, but thankfully, they were atop fully clothed bodies. Th
at was at least one stroke of luck, I don't know what I would’ve done if I'd run in on Abi and Jonah having sex. It was one thing to admit Jonah had grown into a decent sort of fellow, it was quite another to see him naked when I was in the midst of a breakdown.

Abi, bless her heart, was the first one of us to react. Jonah had presumably used up all his reaction time on the rugby pitch during his
teens, and I was frozen by the thought of him in nothing but his bare necessities. My friend obviously saw more than 'ewgh' in my face as she snatched the bowl Jonah had been scooping ice cream from right out of his hands and said, "Sorry, babe, you have to go." She jumped off her bed and then reached back to grab Jonah's arm as he sat there, dumbstruck.

I groaned and smacked my forehead against the doorframe as Abi's voice broke through the momentary relief the thought of Jonah in the nude had afforded me.
That thoughts of Jonah in the buff were a relief really went a long way in demonstrating how much I did
not
want to think about Elliot. That reprieve was gone now, however, and there Sinclair was in my mind, all sexy and infuriating.

"You alright, Cinders?" Jonah asked uncomfortably as he shuffled his feet into his clown sized shoes, and I started to rhythm
ically bang my head against the plasterboard.

"Uh-uh." Abi shot me a quick look of concern and then shook her head at her boyfriend. "No talking, only leaving."

I gave up hitting my head as it was really offering no assistance and moved inside to slump against the wall next to our Mona Lisa poster.

"I'll call you tomorrow, bye!" Abi smacked a quick kiss on her boyfriend's lips and then basically shoved him out the door. Slamming it shut, she came to crouch beside me where I'd slid down to the floor.

"OK," she breathed, her shocked expression telling me just how freaked out I looked. "What the hell?"

"I kissed him," I said blankly.

"Who?" She asked incredulously. "Jason?"

"
Jason
?" I repeated. "What? Why would I be kissing Jason?"

"I have no idea, but y
ou went out with people from your accounting class, he just seemed the most likely suspect." Abi waved her hands around in agitation, but the clanging of her bracelets unfortunately didn't drown her out as she added, "So who
did
you kiss?"

I buried my face down onto my drawn up knees and mumbled his name.

"What?" Abi leant in closer so that when I lifted my head, I was staring directly into her wide, grey eyes.

"Elliot." I repeated. "Elliot bloody Sinclair."

"You're kidding me!" Abi clapped a hand to her mouth and I felt my cheeks start to burn with humiliation.

"I promise you I'm not," I said miserably. "I grabbed his face and kissed him. Me, I kissed him, Elliot." It didn't matter how many ways I put it, it still came out sounding like an April
Fool's joke.

"Why?" Seemed to be the only word Abi could think to splutter.

"Because he smelt green," I explained through the hard lump in my throat. "But then he turned into a mouse so I left."

Abi stared at me speechlessly for a couple of moments and then, much as she had with Jonah, she grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet. Depositing me on my bed
, she reached into our little fridge and handed me the last few squares of a block of chocolate. Sometimes a stereotype is all a girl has to fall back on, I guess, and I really did love chocolate.

"
Right," she said as I picked morosely at the foil packaging, "from the top, please."

And so I took her through it
; from thinking of nothing but Jason's penis, to thinking of nothing but how I wanted to kick Elliot in the same region.

"I can't even blame him for the first bit," I had to admit. "
I
was the one who went to his place.
I
was the one who kissed him. Oh God, why did I kiss him?"

"Apparently because he smelt green."

I looked up quickly to see if Abi was making fun of me, but her expression was appropriately solemn.

"Lots of people smell nice, though. I don't go round kissing
them
," I pointed out. "Why did I have to kiss Elliot, no matter how green he smelt?"

Abi shifted uncomfortably beside me and I glanced at her.
"What?" I demanded.

"Well, I have another theory as to why you kissed Elliot, but you've not been so keen on hearing it in the past," she said meaningfully.

This was true; I'd pretty much blocked my ears and hummed loudly whenever she started in on the 'so what's the deal with you and Elliot?' stuff. I hadn't liked her scrutiny, especially as I'd been battling to stop a more positive opinion of him forming myself without taking on my best friend as well. However, much as I'd hated having Abi add her two cents worth to my 'Elliot isn't actually the spawn of Satan' savings, desperate times call for desperate measures...

"Fine," I said ungraciously. "What's your theory?"

"Do you know what you do when you talk to Elliot?" Clearly happy to be finally given a voice, Abi bit into a square of chocolate and looked at me enquiringly.

"Um, grit my teeth?" I suggested. "Lose my temper? Want to punch him in the nose?"

"Maybe, but the main thing I see when you're with Elliot is that you..." she paused, and I found I was leaning forward, desperate for the wisdom I was sure she was going to impart.

"I...?" I prompted.

"You...bounce."

What now?

"Bounce?" I repeated, just making sure I'd heard her correctly. Because, seriously, what the hell?

"Bounce," she confirmed.
"And not in an 'I hate you forever and always' kind of way, either."

"There's an 'I hate you forever and always' bounce?" I choked out.

"I don't know," she admitted, "but if there is, that's not what you do."

I tried to give some thought to what she was saying; I dedicated a good few seconds to deciphering what that was supposed to mean, but still came up with nothing.

"
Abigail
!" I groaned. "You're supposed to be helping me here, not confusing me even more."

"The second you see him, it starts," she ignored my complaint. "You're up on your toes and bouncing, it's uncanny. Your eyes light up, you're all full of spirit and off you go."

"That's because I'm
mad
." I rolled up some of the foil into a hard little ball and flicked it off the bed petulantly.

"Are you?" Abi put a hand on mine, stilling my frenetic shredding of the chocolate wrapper and making me look at her. "Or are you just kind of...fired up? And that's what you are 'up'. Being with Elliot doesn't bring you down. Every time I've seen you with him you've laughed at least once or blushed, or generally acted...up."

"This isn't high school!" I exclaimed in frustration. "When I talk to a boy it doesn't automatically mean I'm in like with him or something. And you seem to be forgetting that every time I've been with Elliot you've also seen me being insulted and looked down on."

She let out an annoyed sigh and sat back, crossing her arms. "Come on, Rox. You've been teased maybe, but I haven't seen anything he's said in the past couple of months actually hurt you. And, come to that, you'r
e not exactly the victim type. Are you seriously telling me you haven't given as good as you've got?"

I was about to protest, but she talked over me, so
far
removed from a hippy dippy artist I sometimes saw her as.

"Be honest with me," she
said bluntly, "what you have against him, is it because of the 'now' Elliot? The one who made you laugh about the creepy guy that hit on you at Haze? The one who felt so bad about the way he'd allowed his friends to treat you back in the day that he, misguided as he was, invited you to Papua New Guinea? The one you kissed tonight? Or the guy he
used
to be?"

The reminder of the kiss made my face flame and my voice shake as I replied, "The one I have a thing against is the guy who just said that he
can't
tell me what happened the night we had sex, even though he knows what happened. Maybe I'm not the victim type, but right now I feel pretty victimised."

"I drop my case and take back everything I just said. Dude's a dick." Abi uncrossed her arms and wrapped me in a hug, instantly contrite.

Leaning my head against her shoulder, I accepted her comfort, but at the same time, my brain was whirring. Something Abi had said had suddenly kicked my mind into gear, seriously working on the problem of what had happened the night I'd slept with Elliot.

I’d been so busy complaining about
Elliot withholding the truth from me that I’d not actually dedicated the time to working it out myself. Now that I was, however, I thought maybe, just maybe, I was headed towards an answer. It was nothing concrete; it felt the way it had when I'd kissed Elliot; a tickle of déjà vu that was simultaneously weak and yet incredibly strong. There was nothing I could do about it in the middle of the night, but first thing in the morning I was borrowing Abi's laptop and making some phone calls...

~*~

Long after I knew my roommate had fallen asleep, I tossed and turned; hot and itchy and just plain unsettled. Kissing Elliot had just been so...and he'd been...and it had felt...and then he’d...

Sometime in the early hours of the morning I must have drifted off. I know this because I was woken up a while later by my phone ringing tinnily in my bag.
My head was thumping from lack of sleep and the pale light filtering through the grimy window was weak enough to tell me it was ridiculously early, so I did my best to ignore it. I swear there's something in our genetic make-up, however, that makes a phone left to ring one of the most grating sounds in the world.

"Rox?"
Abi's voice was even huskier than usual as she was still half asleep. "Is that your mobile?"

"Umph," I replied, rolling out of bed and hitting the carpet with a thump.

Still caught up in the covers, I half crawled towards my bag, snatching the strap and yanking it towards me. The momentum rolled my phone out and into my hand and I blearily looked at the screen. The name blinking there made me sit up with a speed that made my head spin.

"Elliot?" The shock of him calling, and the earliness of the hour jolted his real name out of me
as I answered the phone. No childish nicknames this time.

"Nan stuff stays separate." He sounded hoarse, but even so, my stomach jumped. That was presumably my 'bounce' response when it was too early for my whole body to leap up and down.
I was so preoccupied by my reaction to his voice that I realised I hadn't really heard what he'd said and I babbled out a confused,

"What?"

"I said I'd call you."

"Sinclair..."

"Pack a bag, I'll be downstairs in half an hour." He paused and in that moment the true horrifying reality of the situation thumped into my chest with the force of a wrecking ball. "We're going home, Rox."

Oh no, oh no, oh no, no, no, no...

~*~

It was a cliché to say that the next half hour passed by in a blur, but there was no other way to describe it. From the hollow echo of Abi repeatedly asking me what was wrong, to the way my hands shook as I threw some basic necessitie
s into a backpack, it was all vague and distorted.

Nan stuff stays separate, he'd said, and he was right. How could I have been worrying about some stupid kiss? How could I have
lain awake all night worrying over some teaser of an idea about what had happened? How could I, in fact, have done anything except prostrate myself by Nan's bedside and fight off any bad thing that may have tried to get at her?

Don't let her be dead
, I found myself silently begging.
Please,
please
don't let her have died
.

The blur continued to whirl around me as I gabbled at Abi, asking her to let my lecturers know I'd had to go home for a family emergency and then hugged her tight, barely feeling her arms around me. Nothing was in focus, in fact, until I barrelled down the res hall stairs and saw Elliot leaning against the opposite wall.

He was slouched, leaning forward apparently oblivious to the students, most of them struggling in after a big night, who cast him odd looks. He wasn't oblivious to me, though, I'd barely come down off the last step when his head snapped up and our eyes met.