Twisted Summer (22 page)

My room was littered with Esmé’s things: CDs from favourite bands we shared, clothes that still smelled like her sweet shop perfume, unfinished novels with their pages turned down. Silly pens with theatrical feathers. This was the part I dreaded most of all, but Esmé deserved to get her stuff back. Deserved to know where I was going, too.

She only had older siblings and they didn’t live at home. I knew her parents played Bingo every Saturday teatime. I leaned against a tree opposite her house and waited for their silver Toyota to pull away before I hauled the box of Esmé’s things over. Her doorbell squealed when I pressed it and a great heap of memories struck me right on the bruised forehead with all the force of a grand piano. The first time I’d visited, it took me so long to work up the guts to ring that doorbell; still, I felt the prickle of nerves as I waited to see if she was home.

All of that felt so stale now. Vacant. Lost.

The version of Esmé in the doorway looked like she felt the same way. Dressed in her old hockey uniform, hair unstyled, eyes still red; oh fuck. What had I done to her?

“I—I brought your stuff back,” I stammered. What an idiot.

“I don’t want it,” she said blankly. Like I was a hologram and she barely remembered my name.

“I wondered if we could talk for a second.” I stepped from foot to foot. “Just a second.”

“You’re not coming in.” She took thick, hissing breaths through her teeth, as if she opened too wide, something horrible might escape. “So talk.”

I put the box at her feet and stepped back. “I know it doesn’t mean much…but God, I really am sorry.”

“So am I.” She gazed at my battered old trainers.

“And I know I don’t deserve this, but Es…please don’t tell anybody what you saw.”

Her little blond eyebrows shot up, but she still wouldn’t look at me. “You think I want to do you a favour?”

“No, but—”

“I haven’t told anyone because it’s bad enough that you cheated. But Danni, you were with your—your un...” She couldn’t say it. Even when she shook her head to loosen the word, it wouldn’t come. “I just don’t want to think about it, okay?”

“Okay.” I pressed my lips together. “Thank you.”

“It’s not for you,” she snapped.

“I know. It’s not what I meant.”

We stood there in the doorway, avoiding each other’s eyes. Our uneven breaths merged in an odd rasp of a symphony. I’d gone on holiday as Danni: Lesbian Architect and come home the queen of pseudo-incest and awkward silences. Score, eh?

“I’ve deferred my course,” I blurted out.

“What? Why?”

“I’m taking a gap year. Going…travelling. Need to get my head sorted.”

“You’re going away?” she whimpered.

I nodded. As much as I hated to tell her another lie, I had to keep Gabe a secret. There was too much on the line now, and what good would it have done for her to know?

“You really don’t want to be with me,” she said, her voice cracking.

“Oh, Es. It wasn’t like that. I loved all my time with you—”

“
But not me.” She sniffed. “You didn’t love
me
.”

“I did.”

“Then stay.” A single tear caught the light on her cheek, pouring a tiny shadow as it fell. “Pixie…please.”

“I really can’t. I’m sorry.”

She kicked her box of belongings out of the way and threw her arms around me. Her hug was so soft, so familiar. The tears pricked my eyes too.

“I don’t want you to go,” she wept. “All sorts of horrid things happen to people who go travelling like that, it’s not worth it…” She pulled back and brushed the hair from my forehead. “Gosh. Look what I did to you.”

“Purple’s not really my colour, is it?”

She laughed. “No. Fashion fail.”

I gave her a squeeze before teasing her slim little fingers away, though they felt like lead weights. “I screwed things up with us. You deserve someone a lot better than me.”

She glanced down at the heap of artifacts from our funeral pyre of a love affair. “I know you did. But loving you doesn’t go away.”

God, I knew that. I knew just how that felt—but not with her. “Not even after what you saw?”

“No. That’s how I know I love you, Danni.”

I stared into her wet, glassy eyes, and wanted to tell her I knew how that felt, too. Even the words left unsaid between us were painful, let alone the ones we were brave enough to voice.

“I suck,” I mumbled.

“You don’t.” She scooped up the card box and hugged it to her chest. “God, pixie, take care of yourself. If you get murdered by some weird tribe or drug dealer, I’m gonna hunt you down and kill you all over again.”

“I’ll haunt your ass. Beat you to it.”

“Maybe,” she said softly. “Truth is, you kinda haunt me already.”

***

I said goodbye to my room.

It seemed silly, in a way. I’d probably be back in a few months while all the visa stuff was sorted out, and besides, I’d planned on moving away soon, even if just to uni. But Mum was right—Canada, what with it being squillions of miles from here, was that bit farther to go. Or to travel home.

Except I was about to make a new home with Gabe. He’d already texted me a picture of our new apartment;
bijou
, he called it. Which I’m pretty sure meant poky, but so long as it had a bed to call ours, who the hell cared? Couldn’t get much worse than his shed-slash-cabin in Devon, though since we made those gorgeous memories there, even that place didn’t seem so bad. And it had no Internet. Or phone signal.

Weeks ago, when Gabe said he was coming to see me, I’d bought new underwear for the occasion. Esmé loved lacy things and I owned loads of that, but this needed to be different, like thinking about him while I chose made everything sexier. Three hours of shopping later, I’d come home with a jade green push-up bra and matching boy shorts that said
give peas a chance
across my ass. He’d love them.

Tomorrow, I’d finally get to show them to him. We had an anonymous hotel room in an anonymous corridor and nobody would care what we did there. We could be noisy, naked, shower together afterwards. Kiss in the hall. Every new thought spiralled through me in a hot wave of excitement, and only my nerves kept my fingers out of my knickers.

Then there was the other thing: my father.

It’s a weird word, isn’t it? Father. Like farther or further, mine had always felt far away—to the point where he just hadn’t existed. So despite Mum’s offers of dinner or a walk, I spent my final night in our “poxy little house” alone in my room, watching the sun fall behind the tower blocks until shadows peeled off my empty walls. I drank my way through a bottle of Mum’s red wine and pondered the dilemma she’d given me:
stay, and I’ll tell you who he is.

Maybe if the choice had been easier, I’d have broken. I’d spent adolescent hours wasted in curiosity, Googling random terms and names with the few details I had;
that
Danni would have chosen to know who her dad was.

But then I wasn’t that Danni any more.

This Danni had learned you couldn’t cheat and lie your way to a happy ending; this Danni had learned what happy endings cost. You sure as hell paid in advance. But for Gabe, I so easily paid it, and we’d come so far now. My temples roiled with anticipation and my fingers itched with promise.

We were so close to getting our wings back and learning to fly.

Mum cried at the train station. We stood in a corner by the platform, her eyes pleading and mine narrow in shame. God, like there hadn’t been enough tears in my life recently.

“You’re sure about this?” she said quietly.

I took a great gulp of petrol-flavoured station air. “I’m sure.”

“And you thought about what I said? My offer?”

“I thought about it.”

“You don’t want to know?” She was rigid and defensive in her fluffy black coat.

“If you’re asking whether I want the name of someone who was never there for me instead of a future full of people who are, then…no. I don’t.”

She hugged me so suddenly and so hard that it took me a moment to return her embrace. My chest heaved against in peaky little shudders; oh God. I was going to cry, too.

“I’m sorry it’s that way for you, Danni. I’m sorry I tried to give you the choice.”

“I know you didn’t mean it that way.”

“I don’t know how I meant it. Christ. You’ve shocked me a couple of times lately.” She smiled through her tears. I was so glad she didn’t know the truth.

A robotic voice announced the arrival of my train from the speaker above, and a moment later, it whirred toward the platform. Other travellers said their goodbyes and gathered their suitcases; Mum and I just stood there, holding each other.

“Any time you want to come home, you just call me, text me, anything,” she managed.

“I will. Thanks.”

“Take care. Have fun. Enjoy yourself.” She smothered my hair with a cool hand.

I hauled up my big purple suitcase, which stuffed to bulge at the seams (even though I’d left half my clothes behind because they were purchased on sprees with Esmé, and were stitched and soaked in things I wanted to forget). Then I gave her one last squeeze.

“I’ll let you know when we get there,” I promised.

“
You better.” She stood back, nodded, and watched as I climbed on to the train. When it pulled out of the station, I left a little shred of myself behind and I
felt
it.

It took two and a half long, travel-sick hours to reach the station, and since Saturday night had been another sleepless stretch, I could barely keep my eyes open.

The sight of Gabe in the hotel lobby was like a shot of adrenaline stabbed right in my chest. Amid the buzz and clatter of the clean, modern hotel, he stood like a rock in a blistered rush of river: tall, sturdy, hair tucked behind his ears. His usual surfy T-shirt, this time paired with cargo pants. The ocean-whipped scent of him hit my nostrils before I reached his side.

“Good trip?” The grin split his face, made the corners of his eyes crinkle. So gorgeous.

“I’m knackered,” I admitted.

He brushed the base of my spine just gently as he ushered me into the lift. “Not too knackered, I hope,” he whispered.

I said nothing, but I blushed hard.

He’d booked a large hotel room, and the king-size bed clad in white sheets took centre stage. A widescreen TV loomed from one wall, and a desk littered with textbooks and files sat in the corner. His suitcase, spilling with its usual disarray, lay slain beside the sofa. Was there anything lovelier than a room slathered with Gabe?

“You like?” He came up behind me as I stared out of the window, and wrapped strong arms around my waist.

“Stunning view of the…tower blocks. And aircraft hangers.”

“Cheeky mare.” He pulled the hair from my shoulder and dropped his mouth to plant a sucking kiss. “Soon, we’ll be able to look out of our window and see mountains.”

“In Canada?”

“Yep.” He slid a hand under my T-shirt and caressed my stomach. Skin on skin…we’d had so little of that. “Just you, me, and the big bad world.”

“And bears. They have bears there.”

He laughed. “Not in the cities, baby.”

“My Mum.” I swallowed. Had to talk about this with someone, and how here I was…with my best friend. “She told me if I stayed, she’d tell me who my dad was. Is.” I frowned. “Was.”

He glanced down. “Must’ve been tempting.”

“A little.”

“But here you are.”

I nodded. “Here I am. With you, like I want to be. We’re really doing this.”

“
O, brave new world, that has such things in it.” He turned me. Shoved me right up against the wall beside the window, nearly pulling down the curtains in the process. Gabe’s mouth on mine, his tongue curious, his thigh shoved up between my knees…ah, I’d missed this so very badly. He knew everything I needed and then some, but it was the
some
part that made my nerves go soft at the edges.

“If you’re going to quote Shakespeare at me,” I mumbled into his warm neck, “I may have to suck you.”

“Oh, Jesus, Danni. I’m not stopping you.”

I was totally proud that I’d recognised Shakespeare, but three times as tingly that he wanted me to do this for him. I slid to my knees, ignored the slight gristle of carpet, and tugged down the straining zipper of his fly. If it was up to me, I’d have him right then, but he stepped out of his clothes hurriedly.

“
Better this way.” He panted. “We can take everything off if we want to in here, babe.” And he did want to. So did I. I leaned in to inhale the clean, hot scent of him, and remembered the naïve little things I’d said the first time we had sex; can we take our clothes off here?
I plan on it
, he’d chuckled.