“Have you seen Ellie?” I asked Cara just as Leonora slipped away to the bathroom. Cara was busy pouring herself another drink at the edge of the kitchen.
“Yeah, she’s on the hunt. Going for the next guy on her list.”
The confirmation sunk low on my shoulders.
“I wish she didn’t have to,” I muttered, pushing away the alcopop Cara was offering me.
“Wait, what did you say? You like the guy she is going after?” Her big brown eyes were wide with expectation.
“Crikey, you pounced on that!” I laughed, urging her to quieten her voice. “It’s like a cat following a laser light.”
“Can’t help it. So, do you?”
“I don’t know,” I shifted my weight between my feet, struggling to put the wayward and random thoughts I had been having into words or anything that made sense. “Seriously attracted to him, then yes.”
“Like moth to a flame style?”
“Like moth to a bonfire.” I exaggerated for dramatic effect. “My poor little moth wings will get burnt.”
“Sounds painful,” Cara giggled. “You have to tell Ellie.”
“What? No I don’t.”
“Tell her now,” she prodded me with a surprising amount of determination and force for someone so small. “Look, if I had told Leonora who I liked last term, there is no way she would have gone for him.”
“That’s true,” I shrugged, knowing Leonora’s nature well. She still didn’t know about Cara’s crush and I certainly didn’t fancy being the one to tell her.
“Exactly. So go and tell Ellie before she sinks her gorgeous claws in.” She pushed me out of the kitchen.
“God you’re strong for being so tiny! You’re like a little evil pixie.” I groaned and rubbed the sore spot on my ribs she had prodded.
“Aww, I love you too,” she smiled falsely with glee then shut the kitchen door on me, ending the conversation.
“Pixie!” I called through the door.
“More like a fairy. Fairy godmother,” she called back through. “Now go!”
I stomped off around the rooms in search of Ellie, not particularly liking my new task that Cara had pushed on me, even though she was right.
The party seemed even busier than earlier, so much so that finding one person in here was more insane than a needle in two haystacks. I kept bumping into people, ending up being pushed into walls and nearly knocking over precious ornaments. I saved one before it hit the ground, wincing at the thought I might have broken something really expensive.
I eventually did clock eyes with someone I knew. Benji was standing in the corridor, talking to a couple of guys who looked vaguely familiar.
“Hey, Benji?”
“Yeah?” He turned round instinctively but followed it with a frown. Maybe he still did not know who I was. I tried not to roll my eyes, honestly. I’m not sure I managed it.
“Have you seen Ellie?”
“Yeah, she’s out the back.”
I walked past them quickly, not wanting to linger for him to ask who I was, but I had little luck. As I passed, one of Benji’s friends asked that very question and lo and behold, he couldn’t answer it.
I had nearly reached the back door when a hand on my elbow swung me back the other way. I crashed into the person who the hand belonged to, nearly losing my footing.
“Whoa, darling, falling for me already?”
I looked up to see the face of someone I hadn’t seen for a few years.
“Wait, Kyle? Is that you?”
“Aww, you remember me,” he said with a charming smile. Wow, he had really grown up, but not in a good way. His body and face looked stretched. As though he were once a little elastic toy that someone had stretched out. “You at Exeter uni now?”
“That’s right,” I nodded as I tried to disentangle myself, but his grip on my elbow tightened slightly. Ouch.
I hadn’t seen him for many years, not since I was twelve. He had always been about, hanging around Rosie. It was what he did. When she left, he’d retreated into a sick puppy, then one day his family moved away. I had never had to see him again.
“You’re here too?” I asked, pointing to the elbow and trying to be released.
“Masters, this year,” he smiled proudly, but still refused to let go. His hair had grown long, the blonde tendrils nearly touched his shoulders, and his dark eyes sparkled, a colour I couldn’t really decipher in the dim lights of the house. His smile was beginning to creep me out, not to mention his death grip.
“Well, as good as it is to see you again, do you think you could let go of my elbow now? It’s hurting a bit.” I wiggled the elbow, he eventually let go – using the hand to brush through his hair. It looked like a practiced action, one he thought girls liked.
“Good job growing up, by the way,” his eyes perused me. So much so I instantly regretted the choice in the dress. I moved my arm across my chest, making a show of rubbing the sore spot he had created on my elbow, but actually using it to cover up my cleavage. He had been harmless as a kid, but this was just a little strange.
“Erm, thanks? I guess?” I struggled to know what to say. “Listen, I’ve got to-” I pointed to the side, trying to move around him, but he moved in the way and started walking forward. I found myself backed up against the wall. “Whoa – little creepy, Kyle.” I held up my hands, as though I was trying to calm a wild animal. Though technically, I was very much the cornered animal!
“You don’t need to be scared of me, Ivy,” he dipped his head, making me hit my head back against the wall. “We go way back.”
“So we do.” Yet I was twelve and he was sixteen at the time. He had been all over Rosie. I get that was no longer possible, but this was a little forward after not seeing each other for six years.
“What would you say to a little fun?” His eyes dipped down to the dress again. I folded my arms.
“Afraid not,” my voice took on a deep tone I saved for people I was only truly pissed off with.
“Five minutes upstairs on your back, Ivy, and I could change your mind.” He leaned towards me, his breath stinking of alcohol.
“Ew!” I vocalised my disgust loudly, prompting his eyebrows to shoot up in surprise. “Does that actually work on many girls?”
“You would be surprised.”
“Not interested. Go bother someone else,” I tried to squirm away, but he leaned against the wall next to my head, making my path of escape disappear.
“You look a little like her, you know?” His words made me freeze. I knew exactly who he was talking about, I didn’t need to ask. Rosie. Yet his words and the proposition he had just made suddenly made me nauseous. If he continued down this vein, I would be throwing up all over his shoes soon, despite the lack of alcohol.
“Hey, Kyle,” Benji appeared round the corner. “Take a break from your love life – we need your help. Luke is off his face, can’t even stand up.”
“Not now,” Kyle turned his head momentarily to look at Benji, revealing my nervous face and my attempts to push by him. I attempted to move away again, but Kyle reached for my arm, squeezing hard.
“Ow!” Okay, now he really was hurting me. “It sounds like your friend needs you,” I tried to wiggle out of his grasp.
“Come on, Kyle. You’re fighting a losing battle here anyway. She’s not interested.” Benji’s words were pacifying though he grabbed the back of Kyle’s shirt and physically drew him away.
I breathed a sigh of relief when his hands released me, rubbing the sore spot again.
“It’s good to see you, Ivy,” Kyle’s voice lingered as they left. Benji shot a look over his shoulder just for me to see. I think it was supposed to be apologetic.
I turned around, trying to shake of what had just happened. I literally shook myself, as a dog would to shed water, but it did little use. I straightened my dress instead, wishing I could remove that new memory as easily as I could the creases. Ew!
Concentrate, you were looking for Ellie.
“Ellie? Can I talk to you-” then a blur came sharply into focus, “oh god.”
Ellie was standing very, very close to Tye. Their surprised faces visible in the fairy lights strung up outside.
Chapter 3
The look of shock in their eyes was poignant. Visible from the orange glow of the fairy lights.
I think they had been kissing before I came out. They were standing so close to each other and her hand was on his arm in that ‘come hither’ gesture she had mastered. Their look of surprise only grew on the nauseous feeling I already had from bumping into Kyle.
“Ivy!” Ellie pleaded, gesturing with her eyes to go away. I had clearly interrupted their somewhat intimate moment.
“Sorry,” I went back inside and shut the door as quickly as I could.
Well, maybe I had just had my second most embarrassing moment of this year. Nope that one topped the first… What a horrible start to the year.
I headed straight for the kitchen to find Leonora and Cara deep in conversation, laughing happily with crinkled eyes and wide smiles.
“Did you tell her?” Cara asked with excitement, jumping past Leonora when she saw me.
“No. I was too late.” I was surprised how much the image of the two of them was actually painful. I didn’t know Tye after all.
“Too late? For what?” Leonora asked, leaning over Cara’s head.
“I’ll tell you tomorrow,” I scrunched my hair at the base of my scalp. “I’ve got to go home. I suddenly feel sick.” Well, it wasn’t a lie.
“I’m you’re ride, Ivy,” Leonora didn’t want to leave me again. “Let me get my keys.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s still early and I don’t want to drag you away. I’ll get a taxi. You two have a good time.” I was speaking quickly, leaving Leonora switching between her feet, uncertain what to do. “See you tomorrow, okay?”
They both nodded, offering smiles and well wishes that I felt better soon.
As I stepped outside the front door, I took a deep breath and tried to shake of the twinned feeling of anger and nausea. Those little people I once thought of as a metaphor for nerves in my stomach were doing something quite different tonight – they were fighting with each other. Brawling and turning my stomach round in circles.
Who was I kidding? As if a guy like Tye would ever be interested in a girl like me over Ellie. I had no reason to be angry. Less reason to be jealous. I didn’t know the guy. Yet I suddenly felt disgusting. Looking down at my dress with frustration and wondering why I had bothered when the only attention I had received was not welcome.
I pulled the strap of my handbag over my shoulder and tried to blow the anger away. It was time to be practical. No point standing outside the house party, I needed to get back to halls. I started walked down the street, cursing the fact I hadn’t yet received my first salary payment from the coffee shop. No taxi for me tonight. At least the party was a little closer to my halls than the bar was, more like a forty-minute walk.
I kept to the fully lit streets and crossed my arms over my chest to keep warm. It was an insanity that no uni student took a coat on a night out. We just all seemed to copy each other, agreeing we were more liable to lose them than get hypothermia for some reason. The February frost did not agree with me. I could feel it pinching at my arms and legs.
I tried to focus on the cold, but my mind kept drifting back to the awful image of seeing Ellie and Tye stood so close. I loved Ellie, we had so much fun together, but why she had to do the player thing in the first place puzzled me. I knew why Leonora did it, that was hard enough.
I had only been walking ten minutes when a car screeched to a stop beside me. I jumped back away from the kerb, amazed at the sound and fearful of what was happening. The passenger window was down, and I looked inside to see Tye staring at me from the driver side, eyes deadly serious.
“Want a ride?”
“No thanks. I’m walking.” At that moment, I didn’t want to see his face. I couldn’t picture it without the thought of gorgeous Ellie stood there with him under the fairy lights. Damn, why couldn’t he have been impervious to her charms too? The anger was still fizzling in my stomach. The night’s whole events leaving me frustrated.
“Walking will take forever.” He continued, undeterred by my answer.
“It will only be another half an hour. Easier than a piece of cake,” I turned away and stood straight to carry on walking up the path, but the car crawled along beside me. I scrunched up my eyes in realisation of what he was doing. “You do not need to follow me, you know. Any policeman watching will get suspicious.”
“You’re making it a habit to walk home from a night out by yourself,” he called from the car, choosing to ignore me. I returned the favour and refused to look back at him, keeping my focus down the road and long path ahead up to campus.
“As I said, I am a good walker. It won’t take long.”
“Even in those shoes?” This question was tinged with the smallest slither of humour.
I looked down to the black heels I was wearing as I stepped between the cracks. They were beginning to hurt, but I was hardly going to confess now. I was angry for him giving into Ellie’s charms, I was hardly going to let him think he was right about something.
“They could be running shoes they’re so comfy,” I smiled, still refusing to turn to the car as it moved along at the side of me.
“You must be freezing. My car says it’s five degrees outside.” His deep voice turned dark again with definite growing annoyance.
“This is good weather for Exeter. It’s not raining for a change,” I turned the corner and he followed down the street.
“I still don’t like you walking home alone in the middle of the night. Get in the car, Ivy.”
“No,” I tried walking a bit quicker, but he sped up.
“You can’t outrun a car.” He was exasperated as he too sped up the smallest of amounts.
“Shame my parents weren’t greyhounds.”
“This car can go very fast, so I think you’ll break your ankle before I have to slow up. Get in the car, Ivy.”
“No. Are you planning to follow me all the way home?”
“If that’s what it takes to make sure you don’t walk home alone, yes. Do you seriously think I’m going to let you walk through back streets of Exeter at midnight by yourself?”
I stopped walking; the car stopped too.
“Your whole chivalry thing is a little annoying, you know that?”
“Well, you can tell me off the whole way home.”
If he was going to follow me anyway, at least if I got in the car then I could say goodbye sooner and not have to put up with the anger I felt towards him. I turned to the BMW, he took this as a sign of relenting and leaned over to pop open the passenger door again.
“Alright,” I sighed and climbed in. Okay, it was quite a bit warmer in there. I wasn’t going to admit that to him though.
He pulled smoothly away from the pavement and headed through town, though he said nothing. One hand was balanced tensely on the steering wheel, the other gripped the gearstick hard, the knuckles turning white with the pressure. I didn’t particularly want to speak either. The anger was practically sizzling through the veins of my whole body now. Why did he have to capitulate to Ellie’s charms?
“Are you serious?” The sudden question had a surprising amount of volume in such a small space, his deep voice gravelly with rage. “Walking home alone at this time of night?”
“It’s not as bad as you make out. It’s a safe town.”
“Safe? That means nothing! It only needs to happen once. Statistics say nothing,” he shook his head and focused on the road. “I can’t believe your friends didn’t stop you.”
“Well, that’s not fair to them.” I scrunched my hair again, wishing the nausea in my stomach would stop. Great, the second conversation I had ever had with the
guy and it was an argument. “I told them I was getting a taxi.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
I shifted uncomfortably, rearranging the handbag in my lap. For some reason my anger made me a more bitter person than usual. I decided to throw it in his face, aware of the classy and rather expensive BMW we were sat in.
“Because they cost money. Something I do not have a lot of at the moment.”
Some of the tension from him seemed to vanish at these words. He removed his hand from the gear stick and rubbed the back of his neck.
“Well, I can’t argue with that.” He stretched his neck for a minute, causing his black hair to tip across his forehead. “Right, pull out your phone.” I did as instructed. “Add a new contact, here – this is my number.” He pulled back the sleeve of his long black t-shirt where a phone number was written in biro across his arm.
“Why is that there? A rather strange place to keep it,” I commented with the smallest of smiles.
“Long story. Add me as a contact and if you’re stuck in town again, I’ll be your taxi.”
“You can’t do that.” Just before he dropped his sleeve, I got a glimpse of something else dark on his skin, a curve of writing of some kind. Did he have a tattoo? For some reason, that thought sent my stomach into somersaults of intrigue. “You have a life, I can’t call you every time I need a lift, chauffeur.”
“Yes you can, princess,” he turned the car onto campus just as I saved the contact. I was tempted to tell him off for the princess jab, but I had called him chauffeur again, so I didn’t have much ammo.
He wasn’t going to accept a no to his new proposition anyway, that meant there was little point in dragging him into another argument. We fell quiet, listening to the bumps of the wheels on the tarmac until we pulled up outside my block.
“Thank you for the lift,” I felt some of the anger dissipate as I opened the car door. After all, it was a sweet gesture. I was glued to the seat all of a sudden, my legs swinging freely outside of the car. I was being cruel on purpose and that was not fair. “I’m sorry,” I turned my head to look back at him. “For earlier, I mean. I didn’t mean to interrupt you and Ellie and whatever was… well, I just wanted to talk to her about something. I had no idea you were…” I trailed off, not wanting to say the words out loud.
Distracted By You: Book 1 in The Exeter Running Girls Series Page 3
