The Incredible Adventures of Cinnamon Girl (27 page)

‘You think I’m beautiful?’ I say. It’s possibly not the most important thing I should be focusing on, but a butterfly army is on manoeuvres in my belly, and my brain zooms in on that one thing cos it has no idea what else to say.

Grady’s cheeks flush. ‘You don’t know that?’

‘Well, yeah, but I didn’t think … you saw me that way. You never said you thought that about me?’

He looks at me for the longest time, as a guy wearing a novelty pirate hat yells something unintelligible in our direction before falling into the bushes.

‘Yes, I did,’ Grady says quietly. ‘So many times. When we were ten, at that stupid school barn dance … you were wearing a red dress and your first pair of heels … and when we were fourteen, and you dressed up as a pumpkin for Anthony’s Halloween party, and you got annoyed because the other girls were dressed as sexy cats and stuff but I told you that you made a really beautiful pumpkin … and last year, when we went to Comic Con and you wore that thing with the lace … but you were more interested in meeting the lady who writes
Batgirl
…’

‘I don’t remember,’ I whisper.

And Grady makes this sound, which is something like,
gahrhaah
!

‘Do you remember
anything
?’ he yelps. ‘Do you remember grade-five camp? You had chicken pox, and I ended up in hospital cos I ate a bunch of strawberries just so I could stay home too. Do you remember year-nine holidays? Dad wanted me with him, but I faked frigging
appendicitis
so I didn’t have to go. Do you remember this year, when I spent
six frigging hours
in one day on the train, when I should have just stayed the night in the city with Dad –’

‘Grady, I don’t understand –’

‘I know you don’t,’ he says helplessly. ‘You never have. You don’t understand why I haven’t been able to sleep properly in weeks – not since you told me you were thinking about staying here. You’ve never understood … that I can’t go anywhere where you aren’t, Alba. You’ve never understood that I can’t stand being away from you, even for a weekend. Not even for a day.’ He squeezes his eyes shut. ‘You just don’t
get
that I am so hopelessly in love with you that the thought of moving away, of not seeing you every day, makes me feel like someone is yanking out an arm, or – wait, let me put it in words you
actually
understand, Sarah … like I’m that
X-Men
chick, you know, the weather one with the hair, when that guy does that thing and zaps all her powers –’ ‘You first-named me,’ I whisper.

‘You first-named me
now
?’

He covers his face with his hands. And then he looks up at me, and his face is so sad that my stupid tears spill over again.

‘Alba … I have loved you for
seventeen years
. If it takes that long to get over you – do you know how old I’m gonna be? I’ll be living with a thousand dogs and collecting spoons or whatever guy losers do … because I’ve tried and tried to want someone else, but you are the only person in the whole world who I
know
I belong with. And I know you can’t care about any of that, because you’re too busy kissing Daniel cheese-head Gordon –’

‘Wait. Grady. You think I kissed Daniel?’

He shrugs, still refusing to look at me. ‘He pretty much said as much. He’s been needling me and hinting at … stuff with you, ever since he and his stupid abs came back to town. And I know how you two were when we were kids … I’m not an idiot …’ He kicks at a stray streamer floating past. ‘Why wouldn’t you kiss him?’

‘Why? Because,
Domenic
, you know I don’t kiss just anyone – despite plenty of offers over the years, and not just from Daniel fecking Gordon, either.’ Grady looks up with a start, cos I rarely swear, but whatever. I’m on a roll, my hands all shaky and energised.

‘I told you I was done with randoms – the only person I’m ever going to bother kissing is the person I am madly in love with. Sue me for being sentimental, but I’m still holding onto that. Even if the world is ending. Even if Daniel Gordon is the last guy in it. And even if he does have a spectacular six-pack.’

Grady scowls. ‘I’ve heard enough about his dumb-arse six-pack. Jesus, that guy is a moron, and a giant sleaze, and hello, one of your gnomes has more personality –’

‘God, why are you so obsessed with Daniel! It almost sounds like
you
wanna kiss him! And why would
I
kiss him if he’s such a moron?’

‘Why wouldn’t you!’ he yells back.

‘What
possible
reason would I have for kissing Daniel, when the person I love more than anybody else in the world is standing right in front of me?’

I take a step backwards. He’s still scowling at his feet, because my boy may be smart, and great at lots of things, but quick on the uptake he is not. I can practically see the moment my words sink into his stupid beautiful curly head.

He looks up slowly, and his eyes meet mine.

I take a deep breath, suddenly more nervous than I’ve been in my whole entire life. But I give him my best, most dazzling smile, cos despite everything, I know it works better than any words.

‘Hey, Grady?’

‘Yeah, Alba?’ he whispers.

‘If you don’t kiss me now, I might change my mind about smooching Daniel Gordon. Hell, leave me standing here for much longer, and Eddie’s gonna start looking like a viable alternative –’

He covers the space between us in one frantic bound, and he grabs my face in his hands. He stares down at me, his eyes travelling over mine – and then he freezes again. Funny thing is, I know exactly why. I know we are entering completely unchartered territory here, an alternate-universe,
Infinite Crisis
us. Ending one story and starting another that neither of us knows the rules for.

But still. Jeez. I have to do everything around here.

So I stand on my toes, and I kiss him.

If the universe worked the way it’s supposed to, then this is the moment fireworks should have exploded over the fields. At the very least, the song from the stage should have changed to something more romantic than ‘The Final Countdown’, which is a totally rubbish song that I only know cos it features on Cleo’s Zumba playlist.

But none of those things happen. Instead, the sounds in the gully seem to slowly disappear. The music, and voices, and pirate-hat-man’s puking, fade into the background.

Grady’s hands are immobile, his lips unresponsive for a few slow seconds. Then his entire body seems to just
dissolve
, with the teeniest of gasps against my lips. His arms wind around me, and my hands curve around him and our lips shyly find their way. His kiss is soft and strange and perfect; an undiscovered, full-colour volume of this person I’ve loved my whole life.

Eventually, somehow, I drag my lips away. His eyes in the darkness are all shiny and wide, and he’s looking at me with that dazed, adoring thing again, a brand-new look of his that turns my insides to moosh and jelly.

I giggle. ‘This is weird.’

Grady tucks my hair behind my ears, and he’s smiling like an idiot, but he shakes his head defiantly. ‘No. It isn’t,’ he murmurs as his lips softly brush the side of my neck.

‘No. It really isn’t,’ I manage to reply. My brain is occupied by his lips, and by my hands, which have found their way beneath his T-shirt to the warm skin on his stomach, and all my brain can process is
ooh, boy-muscles!
and that they’re another part of him I don’t know yet, but that they feel
really
nice under my hands. ‘You have abs. I didn’t know that,’ I say distractedly.

‘Sarah … do you have any idea what that feels like?’ he whispers.

I drag my hands away from his belly and loop them around him instead. ‘Don’t call me that, Grady. It isn’t my name. I mean, it is, but it’s not
me
. You know why everyone calls me Alba, right?’

He grins. ‘It was my fault, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, it was your fault, doofus! Like, hello, two-year-old Domenic, learn to pronounce
Albany
, it’s really not that hard –’

He leans towards me again. But through the haze, I realise that the music has stopped. The people around us are on their feet. The night sky is suddenly hushed and still.

I think we may have missed something significant.

Counting. There was counting.

When I glance over my shoulder, the flashing fish numbers on the stage are blank.

I glance back at Grady. He looks at me, and his eyes widen.

There is a pause in the universe, what feels like a frozen moment when the bodies in Eden Valley are holding their breath. I could swear I felt the breeze kick up a notch; that weird midnight summer wind that raises the hairs on the back of my neck.

I clutch onto the front of his T-shirt. He pulls me towards him, all warm muscle and tension, his arms securely around me. The two of us seem to be sharing one partial, held breath. The silence hangs above us, thick and tangible.

Who knows what form that whole life-flashing-before-your-eyes thingo is supposed to take. Surely mine
has
to be a flipbook of splashy comic panels, like the credits of any Marvel movie. But right now, I’m not being hammered by visions of all the pieces of my life that have gone before. I’m looking out over the swarm of people, this tiny world within my Valley, and the expanse of dark endlessness beyond it. I feel Grady’s arms around me, and all the possibilities that they contain. And all I can think is,
not yet not yet not yet not yet
–

Pretty sure I detect a faint, collective groan of disappointment.

And then the gully erupts into rapturous, euphoric cheers. A orchestra of car horns honk in unison, and above them an off-key ‘Auld Lang Syne’ drifts up towards us, rambling and discordant, like a thousand people in different dimensions playing the kazoo.

Grady’s hands loosen their grip. They trace the line of my spine, and the curve of my hips, then he touches my cheek with trembly fingers. ‘Alba … can I please kiss you again now? You know, I’ve kinda been waiting to kiss you my whole life.’

I swim back through the dreamlike fog, leaving behind a vision of Grady and me entwined for all eternity like one of those ash-potted couples from Pompeii.

I place my fingers on his lips. ‘Wait. Answer one thing for me.’

‘What?’ he says, his eyes all glazey.

‘If I did decide to stay here, would you still leave?’

His jaw tightens. ‘Alba, that’s not fair. Especially not now.’

‘Domenic Miles Grady. Answer the question. Take me out of your decision –’

He laughs. ‘Not possible. That was never an option. Not since that first time Cleo dumped me in your playpen.’

‘Gah! Would you stop being such a slushy romantic! Answer the question.’

He closes his eyes, his big hands framing my face. ‘I don’t want to. I don’t know how I can. But … I think I’d have to,’ he whispers. ‘It doesn’t have to mean anything, Alba,’ he adds quickly. ‘We’ll figure it out, if that’s what you really want, some way to make it all work –’

I run my hands through his curls until he opens his eyes again. ‘Domenic – right answer,’ I say. I ignore the confused look on his face as I pull him towards me, cos it’s been, like, thirty seconds, which is way too long to spend not kissing him. He kisses me back for the longest time, and then he nuzzles into my neck and mumbles, ‘I love you. So, so much. But don’t first-name me, Alba.’

‘Righto,’ I mumble back. ‘No first names. And I might have forgotten to mention this, Grady, but I love you too.’

Grady takes a tiny step away from me, his hands trailing down my arms until he can link his fingers between mine. His face is glowing and happy and more beautiful than I think I’ve ever seen it. And then he glances over my shoulder, and he says:

‘Aw, crap.’

I turn around to see Eddie, Tia and Pete gaping at us from the darkness of the tree line.

Eddie snorts. ‘Well. That was gross.’

Pete blinks at us. ‘Yeah. Like watching your cousins go at it.’

Tia’s face looks just like that time she saw a pair of cherry-red Louboutins on eBay. She pumps her fists into the air with a giant
whoop
and bellows, ‘Caroline! Hurry! They did it! You owe me money!’

Caroline shuffles her way up the road from somewhere behind them. She looks at us with this amused glint in her eye, and then takes a long swig from the plastic cup in her hand. ‘Ah. I thought it was something important.’

Grady wraps his arms around me from behind and rests his chin on my shoulder. ‘This is important, Caroline. This is mind-blowingly, earth-shatteringly important.’

I can feel those hysterical giggles bubbling up again. ‘This is, like, the most important thing in the history of the universe.’

Caroline rolls her eyes. ‘It’s really not. Seriously thought I was going to win that bet. But thank Christ you two stopped acting like morons.’

Eddie punches her in the arm, causing her to stumble sideways and spill half her beer. ‘My money was always on the G-man. I knew he wouldn’t turn out to be such a fecking pussy.’ He holds up his hand for a high-five. ‘Dude. Nice one.’

I can’t see the expression on Grady’s face behind me. But whatever it is makes Eddie drop his hand to his side with a start.

Tia is still gaping at us. She bolts across the hill and throws her arms around me and Grady at the same time. ‘I cannot believe this! I mean, this is so great! Seriously, we were contemplating locking you both up in Ed’s shed and leaving you there till you saw sense, but Pete was worried we’d get arrested –’

‘Yeah,’ Eddie says. ‘And now I guess I’ll have to watch you two suck face every thirty seconds as well. Caroline, s’pose you and me’ll be hooking up next?’

Caroline chugs the rest of her beer in one gulp. ‘Eddie, if you value your testicles, you will never breathe that sentence again.’

‘Fair enough,’ Eddie says. ‘But feck, guys – you couldn’t have sorted this out sooner? We just missed the biggest thing that’s ever gonna happen to any of us cos we were searching all over this godforsaken hole for your sorry arses. I missed my old man trying to crowd-surf off the stage. Apparently he’s home with an icepack on his nads. And am I at home laughing and pointing? Apparently not.’