All That's Been Said

by Doherty, Emma

  Stupid slut.

  He remembers what he said to me, and by the look on his face, he’s ashamed of it.

  “Yeah, you were pretty angry.” I cast my eyes over to Finn. “And then Finn told me he didn’t sleep with stuck-up, arrogant, selfish princesses.” There’s a gasp from somewhere around the table, but my eyes don’t move from Finn’s. “That was a fun day for me.”

  Ethan’s head snaps to Finn, who doesn’t look away from me. Obviously he didn’t tell Ethan about that part of our conversation.

  “Wait,” Lila breaks in, looking between me and Finn. “Why would Finn be talking about sleeping with you?”

  I feign innocence, enjoying the look on her face. “You’d have to ask him.”

  Finn chuckles across the table and sits back in his seat, never taking his eyes off me. Something about that soft chuckle releases a strange tension in me. Maybe he’s ready to stop being mad at me.

  “So yeah, Pippa’s party.”

  Ethan looks between Finn and me a couple of times before remembering what I just told him. “Biz, I…I didn’t know…I’m really—”

  I cut him off immediately. “It’s fine. You were angry. I deserved it.”

  He stares at me, and for the first time since I moved here, we seem to get each other. We’re not fighting and we’re being honest, and it actually feels good.

  “I’m sorry,” he tells me.

  “So am I.”

  He smiles at me and a weight lifts off my chest. Maybe we’ll be okay after all. We’ll never be what we were, but hopefully we can get better, because if the last months have taught me anything, it’s that I want things to improve between us.

  “So, Pippa’s party,” I hint, wanting to get back to that and not focus on what’s been said between us.

  “Pippa’s party,” he repeats quietly. I know this is the last thing he wants to be talking about right now, but he knows I won’t keep talking about our relationship. I’m not like him; I can’t be as open and honest as he can. I never could be.

  “Pippa’s party. Two weeks on Saturday. Are you gonna be there?”

  His mouth opens slightly at the invitation, and I know he’s registering the fact that I’m actually inviting him to something, actually trying to include him in my plans.

  Evie bristles next to him. “He can’t,” she tells me coldly, clearly not enjoying the fact that Ethan and I are talking, reconciling. “We already have plans. I’m having people over at my house that night.”

  My eyes flash to hers as I remember what Rachel said about her ruining Pippa’s birthday years ago. I raise an eyebrow in her direction and she stares back at me.

  Ethan goes to say something but she cuts him off. “We’re busy.”

  “Oh that’s okay, Evie. You aren’t invited,” I tell her. Her jaw falls open in shock, and I hear sniggers from some of Ethan’s friends. I don’t care. Even though Ethan and I seem to have made a breakthrough, I can’t be nice to his girlfriend, or whatever she is. She’s just not a good person.

  “What?” she demands.

  “You heard me. You’re not invited.” My gaze shifts to Lila, who has her eyes narrowed on my face. “Neither are you, Lila.”

  Her jaw drops open. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  “I’m Izzy Kavanagh,” I tell them. “I’m throwing a birthday party for my friend Pippa at my house, and I don’t want any nasty little bullies there.”

  A stillness falls over the whole table as they register my words. Evie and Lila are just staring at me in shock. They don’t know what to say.

  “Izzy…” Ethan’s voice sounds tired.

  “You have an opinion on who I sleep with. I’m allowed to have an opinion on who you’re sleeping with.”

  He can’t really argue with that.

  “You complete and utter bi—”

  Ethan drops his hand onto Evie’s arm. “Don’t,” he tells her. “We’ll sort it out later.”

  “Are you two back together now?” I ask him.

  “No,” he answers at the exact same time she says, “Yes!”

  Her head snaps to him in anger whilst he rakes his hand over his face. “We’ll talk about it later, Evie.”

  She looks at him in disgust and then her eyes find me, narrowed in on my face. She’s really pissed now. Not only have I not invited her to the party, because of me, Ethan has publicly rejected her. “You’ll regret this.”

  I smile back at her. “I already told you, Evie—come at me. I’m right here.”

  Ethan looks between us in astonishment, clearly having no idea what we’re talking about, but I don’t focus on him. Instead, I keep my eyes on Evie. She blinks, glancing around and looking for support, but all her friends are looking away—even Lila. The guys around her table all have small smiles flitting across their faces, and Logan isn’t even remotely hiding how amusing he finds all of this. That tells me everything I need to know. Evie’s not as popular as she thinks she is. People are getting tired of the way she’s treating other people.

  “So.” I look away from Evie and turn my attention back to everyone else at her table. “The rest of you are invited. I’m gonna use my dad’s guilt money to buy the booze, so you don’t need to worry about that.”

  “How’re you gonna get that?” Logan asks.

  I shrug. “I know a guy.” Someone will definitely be able to help me down at Marcus’s even if he’ll flat-out refuse to supply me alcohol.

  A snide chuckle comes from Lila. “Yeah, and we all know what you’ll do to get it.”

  My eyes flash to her and I can feel the tension that suddenly surrounds the table. Ethan’s face has slowly turned towards her. “What the fuck did you just say to my sister?”

  She pales, and it’s clear she knows she’s messed up.

  “Ethan, stop,” I say sharply. “I don’t need you to fight my battles.” My eyes stay latched onto her face, and her cocky bravado falters. “I think you were just trying to insinuate that I’m sleeping around, even though you just heard what I said about that not being true. Is that right? Only you don’t have the guts to actually say it to my face.”

  It’s her turn to shoot her eyes around the table, looking for backup, but nobody comes to her rescue. Even Evie, who I know thinks the same thing, doesn’t say a word.

  “I didn’t…I didn’t mean it.”

  “Yes you did,” I tell her, my voice low. I cross my arms over my chest and peer down at her. “Don’t ever try to slut-shame me. I don’t give a shit what anyone in this school thinks of me, especially not some random girl who pants after my brother’s best friend no matter how many times he says no because you screwed him over for a guy who drives an expensive car but is boring as hell and told everyone how you ended up in his back seat.”

  Her face burns bright red. I’d bet money she had no idea I knew any of that.

  “The party will start at nine,” I continue, dismissing her. I look around the rest of the group, waiting for some sort of response, but they all remain silent. They’re still not sure about coming. If it will insult Ethan, they won’t do it, and they’re trying to figure out what he thinks about me. I don’t blame them for being confused; I’m pretty confused about it all myself.

  My eyes find Finn and I tilt my head to the side, surveying him. “You’ll come to my party, right, Finn?”

  He stares back at me for what seems like a lifetime before a small smiles crosses his lips. “Sure, Kavanagh. I’ll come to your party.”

  I grin as a murmur of surprise runs through the table. I’ve got them and I know it. It’s only a matter of time until Ethan will follow. They don’t do anything separately, and I know he wants to come. Despite it all, he doesn’t want to give up on our relationship, and this is an opportunity to hang out, especially after we’ve just cleared the air. I turn my gaze to Ethan and raise an eyebrow at him. He regards me for a second and then turns to Evie on his left. “Babe—”

  “You’re kidding me, right? She decides to speak to you for the
first time in months, throws out an apology, and you just do what she says? After everything she’s done?”

  She waits for him to back down, to change his mind, but he doesn’t say anything.

  “Unbelievable.” She spits the word at him and then gets up and storms away whilst a wary Ethan turns back to me. He looks tired, like his life is full of drama he just wants to get rid of. I can’t say I blame him.

  I grin at him. “Great. Spread the word, and bring gifts for Pippa.” With that I turn on my heel and return to my own table, where Pippa and the rest of the table are looking at me in astonishment. “It’s done,” I tell them. “Party at mine, two weeks on Saturday.”

  “You okay, man?”

  I pull my gaze away from Izzy as she cuts across the parking lot and climbs into the back of Marcus’s truck. She grins at something he says and then they take off. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  Matty’s eyes follow mine. “I guess she’s heading off to get her licence.”

  “I guess so.”

  “You know we could go down there, if you want? Show up at the end.”

  I shake my head. “If she wanted me there, she would have said something.”

  Matty chuckles. “I don’t know if you noticed, but communication isn’t exactly one of Izzy’s strengths.”

  “What? You’re the expert on Izzy Kavanagh now, are you?” Finn interrupts. He’s trying to act casual, but it’s obvious that Matty’s words piss him off.

  Matty rolls his eyes. “I didn’t mean that. I just meant she bottles things up, doesn’t always say what she’s thinking.”

  “And you’d know…how?”

  “Shut up, man,” I tell Finn. He’s been a real pain around Matty lately. “He’s right. Biz’s complicated—that’s obvious to everyone.”

  He’s not impressed that I’ve not backed him up. “Whatever,” he mutters, swinging his bag onto his back and taking off down the steps of the school’s main entrance where we’re sat after classes have let out. “I have to go meet my dad.”

  I watch him leave. “He likes Biz, doesn’t he?”

  Matty snickers. “How are you only just figuring this out?”

  I have no idea. Likely because I’ve been so wrapped up in my own drama with her I haven’t stopped to see when my best friend fell for her. I glance at Matty. “Is it wrong that it doesn’t completely gross me out?”

  “No. I think he’d be good for her.” He’s right. Finn would be good for her. He’d offer her that stability she needs, and he’d be someone she could rely on without any of her issues from the past getting in the way. “I just wish they’d hurry up and hook up already so he’d stop bitching at me.”

  I manage a smile at that and then glance around to make sure no one is in earshot. There’s nobody near us. “You know you could just tell him the truth and then he’d know you’re not into her.” He swallows down a gulp, and I know that’s a step too far. “Sorry. You don’t have to do anything.”

  He lets out a sigh, his eyes darting around nervously. “I will eventually. I know he won’t care.”

  “Have you spoken to Logan yet?” He and Logan have been best friends since they were in kindergarten.

  He shakes his head. “No. I just…I dunno…”

  He doesn’t have to say anything else. He’s scared his news might change the way people see him, and I can’t blame him for that. It must be terrifying. “Well I’m here if you need to talk,” I tell him. “Or need anything. Just ask.”

  He nods his thanks and we sink back into comfortable silence for a few moments.

  “What was Izzy like when you were kids?”

  I snort. “Clever.” That much has always been true. I swear I feel like she came out of the womb with an encyclopaedia imprinted on her brain. She got all the smart genes, that’s for sure. “Fun.” When Izzy’s in the right mood, I can have more fun with her than anyone else in the world—at least that used to be true. I haven’t seen that side of her for a long time. “Careful.” She’s always been more cautious than me, a little bit more reserved. She sees the world differently. “Stubborn.” That doesn’t need any explaining; he’s seen it for himself. “Annoying.” Izzy can annoy me more than anyone else can. I let out a long sigh. “She was just her, you know? She was my best friend.”

  “It sounds like you were close.”

  “We were. We had the whole twin thing down. We used to be able to finish each other’s sentences.” I shake my head as I think of where we are now. “Now I don’t have a clue what she’s thinking.”

  “Did you really miss her when you moved over here?”

  I don’t even have to think about that. “Yes.” I missed her so badly I cried my first night back in Texas and nearly called my mum to book a ticket straight back home, but I don’t quite know how to explain to Matty how I felt knowing I was the one who had caused our separation and as a result she was refusing to speak to me.

  “Why’d you decide to move here?” Matty asks, and I realise no one’s ever asked me that question before. They just took it as a given that it was because of my dad. “Did you not like the UK?”

  “I really like the UK,” I tell him. “It wasn’t that, and I know Izzy thinks it’s because Dad has more money and a huge house and Mum was just in a small flat, but it’s not that.”

  He nods. I’d like to think he knows I’m not shallow enough to just pick somewhere because of money.

  “Look, in the UK they start school earlier than we do, so when we moved back to London when we were eight, I was already behind. Izzy caught up straight away, but I really struggled.” My face burns as I admit this. I can still feel the shame as I watched everyone around me get on with their work whilst I didn’t understand. “And she’s so smart, you know? You don’t even know the half of it,” I tell him. “The way her mind works is unreal, and it just made me feel so stupid, you know?”

  He bites his lip. He doesn’t know, but I’m hoping he gets the picture, hope he’s realising how much I hated going to school and feeling like I was stupid. I hope he understands how I resented my sister because she could do everything so quickly and couldn’t understand how I couldn’t get it, how she’d get frustrated with me as she tried to explain things again and again.

  “Anyway, Izzy tried to help me, but she couldn’t understand why I didn’t get it and why it was so hard for me. Then the summer we were twelve Dad wanted us over here in Kellan for a couple of weeks.”

  He tilts his head as he remembers this, how I met them all for the first time that summer. “Izzy didn’t come, did she?”

  I shake my head. “No. She’d hated it the last time we came and visited my grandparents, so my mum made an excuse and my dad agreed to see her in London at the end of summer instead. I don’t really know why he wanted me here so badly, probably to show off the new house and hoping I’d go home and brag about it to Mum or something”—seriously, that’s how petty my father is—“but he sent me to this football camp for a week…do you remember?”

  Matty nods, a grin spreading across his face. “That’s right. You didn’t have a clue what to do with the ball on your first day, but you were already taller than the rest of us.”

  I laugh as I remember back to those days, how I threw the football like it was a rugby ball and had to have the rules explained to me at least three times. “Yeah, I sucked.”

  Matty snorts. “Yeah, for like three days, and then it clicked and you kicked all our asses.”

  It did click. Suddenly I just got it and the game seemed to come to me as easily as breathing. I loved the sport instantly, the friendships and camaraderie that went with it. I felt like I belonged when I played football that summer. It still gives me that feeling now. “Do you remember going back to Finn’s house one night that week?”

  Matty shrugs. I’m not surprised. It wasn’t anything special, really, but I’ll always remember that night because it was the first time I thought I could do it. I could come and live over here.

  “We were eating foo
d and I saw some of his books out from school. He had summer homework.” I remember seeing the science and math worksheets and my eyes scanning the contents. “I could answer the questions,” I say simply. “Or at least most of them. I didn’t feel dumb or like I couldn’t do it. I could keep up with a majority of the questions on the sheet. That was a really big deal for me, what with my dyslexia and all.”

  Understanding crosses Matty’s face. He knows about my dyslexia, but he’s one of the few who do. It’s not something I talk about.

  “I realised right then that I’d fit in more over here. I’d be able to do the work and could play football and enjoy it. Sports aren’t as big in UK schools. They play them, but if you want to excel, you play outside of school in academies and clubs. I liked the idea of it being incorporated into school life. I dunno, something just clicked and I knew I wanted to be here.”

  “And that was it?”

  I nod. I flew home a week later and had the conversation with my mum. What Izzy doesn’t know is that I cried my eyes out when I told her. I felt like I was betraying her, but although she was surprised—I definitely knew I’d surprised her—I think she knew I’d been struggling and she wanted the best for me so was willing to give it a go on certain conditions she wanted my dad to agree to. She wanted me to be happy. “Mum was cool with it. Izzy was not.”

  That’s the understatement of the year. She looked at me like I’d stabbed her through the heart and then she shut me out. It was like she didn’t want to know me anymore now that I’d chosen to live away from her. She only tolerated me after that.

  “Did you explain why you moved over here to her?”

  She didn’t give me a chance. “No.”

  Matty rolls his eyes. “You two are as bad as each other. Does she at least know it has nothing to do with your dad’s money? Did you tell her you’ve trained so hard in football so you can get a scholarship anywhere in the country and then be independent of his money?”

  I shift in my seat. No, but it’s not as if she’s asked.

  “Seriously, Ethan? How is she going to know all this stuff if you don’t tell her? Tell her. Tell her why and make her see your point of view. It might change things.”