Distracted By You: Book 1 in The Exeter Running Girls Series

by Eliza Bradley

  “Your dad and I will divide up our thing.”

  “What about my things?” I quickly started drawing ladybugs on my hand, etching the black pen hard onto my skin.

  “Well, you’re at university now, so we can store your other things. You’re always welcome home with me, sweetheart. I’ll get a place with two bedrooms.”

  It didn’t help. I still felt like I was being wiped from their lives, along with someone else.

  “And Rosie’s stuff?” I seethed down the phone, looking around to make sure no one was taking notice of me, but all the students were too busy running to lectures. “What about her room?”

  “It’s probably time to let go of some of it.”

  What? They were going to delete her out of our lives. Her life was not something that could be erased with a backspace button. My heartbeat was pumping fast around my body, so loud I could hear it pounding in my ears.

  “Can’t we think about this a little more?”

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but it really is the only option. We’ve been talking about it for the last couple of months. The for-sale sign has gone up today.”

  I couldn’t bear to listen to her voice anymore. I was so tempted to scream down the phone.

  “I’ve got to go, mum. Another lecture.”

  “Okay, sweetie, I’ll ring you tomorrow. Love you.”

  I ended the call without replying and looked down at my left hand. Around the newly drawn ladybugs my skin was red from the pressure I had inflicted.

  My phone pinged in my hand.

  FANCY COMING OVER TO MINE TONIGHT? T

  I paused before replying, sitting further back on the bench and hitting my head against the wall behind me.

  One of the last days I had seen Rosie she had been with Kyle. It was at the pub my mum and dad owned. I was twelve and doing homework sat in one of the wood-panelled booths when she and Kyle had walked in, both pink and sweating slightly from a walk along the river. They were holding hands, gushing about their walk and what a lovely day it was.

  Rosie had my hair, yet it didn’t look as strange on her as it did me. Instead of grey eyes, she had bright green, like emeralds shining in sun light. It wasn’t hard to see why Kyle had liked her so much.

  I felt the familiar ache develop in my chest as I began to draw a new ladybug on my hand. I missed her so much. After completing the ladybug, wearing a little bow tie, I picked up the phone to reply to Tye.

  By the time I walked into Tye’s flat in the city centre, I was fuming. If I could have seen either of my parents that day, they would have been stood on the wrong end of the most outrageous hissy fit.

  “Whoa, you alright?” Tye stepped back as I walked into the open plan kitchen and living room. It was a nice place, smart, must have been pricey.

  “Fine,” I lied. I had been breathing heavy all afternoon. A bit like a cartoon bull breathing smoke through his nostrils before charging the matador.

  Sam and Savannah walked out of the corridor that led to the bedrooms and stopped laughing when they saw my face set like thunder.

  “Who died?” Sam joked, pointing to my obvious mood. Tye was not stood so far behind me that I couldn’t see his sudden hand gesture to Sam to shut the hell up.

  “Sam, you’re an idiot,” Savannah didn’t mind putting it straight into words – she elbowed him sharply in the stomach. She must be a strong girl as the muscle man doubled up as if in pain. “Ivy, girl, what do you need?” She stepped forward and collected me from my position at the back of the settee, dragging me to sit down as she held my hands. “Chocolate, alcohol, cake, tv or clubbing? Each of them are infallible recipes for feeling better about something shit.”

  “There’s one other thing you forgot to mention that could do the same,” Sam walked past and narrowly missed another elbow from Savannah.

  “You need to forget whatever it is that’s on your mind,” she wriggled my hands in the air. “Pick one?”

  I looked back at Tye who was stood with his arms folded, his face quite unreadable.

  “Can I pick more than one?” I suddenly dreamed of forgetting all my troubles. Ignoring my mum and dad, ignoring Kyle, forgetting about the ladybugs.

  “You can pick as many as you want,” Tye turned to the kitchen and rifled through one of the cupboards, coming back seconds later with a box of chocolates. “We keep this for such emergencies, and I think this was the first on the list.”

  “How about all of them?” I smiled for the first time that day.

  Between the four of us, the box of chocolates hadn’t lasted very long, just about as far as pre-drinks. When ten o’clock came round, Tye had drank too much to drive so we called a taxi to take us to the Circle, one of the cheesiest clubs in town. Tye paid for my share of the taxi, not to mention most of my drinks too.

  The Circle was having a nineties evening, playing all the songs from the years we were born. Most of my memories from the night were of Savannah and I dancing in the centre of the floor. Probably swaying from drink more than attempting to dance. After our particularly out-of-tune rendition of Manic Monday, we headed back to the guys by the bar. They were laughing about something, so I took advantage of the distraction and snatched a shot from Tye’s hand, downing it just as he realised what had happened.

  “Can you still remember why you were upset?” He leaned down into my ear so I could hear him above the music, tickling my neck with his short hair.

  “No,” I lied. I knew exactly why I was upset, but the smile on my face was real, so there was no point in ruining a good time. I was enjoying the distraction, the pursuit of a great night rather than wallowing in sadness and as Tye prised the shot glass back from my hand to replace on the bar top, my imagination went wandering. I’m fairly certain my eyes were undressing him too – I was certainly thinking of what he would look like not wearing so much. Fortunately, Savannah gave me a light elbow to stop before he turned back and could notice. “Don’t you two dance?” I asked the guys who exchanged dark looks at the mere suggestion.

  “I only dance with her,” Sam pointed to Savannah, much to her delight.

  “Then come dance,” she spoke seductively before pulling him towards the floor. They disappeared easily between the mass of people.

  “And you?” I turned back to Tye, a little bob in my step with hope.

  “Rarely.”

  The music suddenly turned up in volume, making any snippet of conversation impossible. Some people covered their ears briefly before the drink could dull the pain.

  I took Tye’s arm and tried to pull him away from the bar towards the dance floor, but he planted his feet into the ground. I was determined to continue my fun night, with him. I pulled again, but still he didn’t move. I wasn’t going to give up so easily. Indulging in my fantasies of being alone with him, dancing with him, suddenly sounded like the best idea Tipsy Ivy had ever had. Was that so bad?

  He shook his head, his dark eyes barely visible in the navy blue and dark purple lighting.

  I dropped my hand down his arm and laced our fingers together, trying one more time to pull him towards the dancers. This time, he followed.

  I remember finding a space on the floor and as the music shifted tempo, we began moving together, his hands trained on my waist.

  My eyes felt grainy and heavy when I tried to blink them open. I wiped the sleep dust from my eyelids and looked up to see my face covered by a duvet. A grey duvet cover?

  That was not my bedding! I pushed the duvet off my face and sharply sat up to look around, but I hadn’t noticed just how close to the edge of the bed I’d been – my butt slipped off the side and I fell on my back off the mattress, in a tangle with the duvet and my legs in the air.

  I must have yelped as the bedroom door opened. I poked my head out of the duvet to see Tye stood in the doorway, chuckling when his eyes found me in a tumble of legs and bed covers.

  “My bed not comfortable enough for you?” He walked in and let the door shut behind him.

 
Oh my god. It was his bed…

  I looked up at what I was wearing, my legs were bare, and I was in an oversized black t-shirt that just hid my underwear. His t-shirt? It certainly wasn’t mine.

  “Your room?” Oh my throat hurt from how much shouting I had done the night before.

  “You don’t remember getting back here?” He walked to his desk chair, leaving me to look at him upside down. He was still annoyingly good looking, even from this odd angle. His short dark hair was messy from sleep, tufted up in places, the lightest of stubble had crept across his jaw and his cocoa eyes were bright.

  “No,” I whined, trying to clear more of the sleepy dust away from my own eyes and mask the view of him that only seemed to create a longing for him in my stomach. He was barely dressed himself, with tracksuit bottoms and a tight white top. My mind drifted to what he might look like without them… Oh yeah, I should probably be thinking more about how I ended up dressed in his top! “Did we…” I let the words hang in the air, gesturing between us with my hand to fill in the gap. If we had, and I hadn’t remembered it, I was such an idiot.

  “No,” this question only amused him. “Trust me, Ivy. Had we slept together I’d make sure you’d remember it,” he winked, that customary glint in his eye. Oh those words sent tingles through my stomach and lower. I was beginning to recognise his pattern – he coupled anything flirtatious with a wink, softening any meaning to nothing more than a joke. Why did he have to wink? Why not just mean the flirtation?

  “I don’t remember a lot from last night,” I sat up, pulling the duvet with me to hide my bare legs. “Is this yours?” I gestured to the top I had on, pulling at the baggy shoulders.

  “Yeah, you said you’d be too uncomfortable in your jeans.”

  “Oh god,” I buried my head in a mound of duvet, face planting and hiding my blushing cheeks. “Well, might as well hear all of it at once. Did I do anything else stupidly embarrassing last night?”

  “Depends what you rate as ‘stupidly embarrassing.’”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think you walked into the men’s bathroom when we were at the club.”

  “Oh for god’s sake,” I kept my head in the duvet. It could have been worse, I could have poured my heart out to Tye – that really would have been my crowning moment of embarrassment for the year.

  “You got anywhere to be today?”

  “Saturday, so no,” I sat up and looked at him. “Why?”

  “Stay here,” he leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees.

  “Here?” I raised my eyebrows in surprise.

  “Yeah, keep me company. Besides, we haven’t yet done tv and cake, which I believe was also on your list from yesterday.” He walked back to the bedroom door. “Breakfast in five. Oh and Savannah keeps some wash stuff in the bathroom if you want it.”

  After the door shut, I scrambled to a mirror. It seemed Ivy had done a runner in the middle of the night to be replaced by a panda! I wiped frantically at the black smudges around my eyes.

  Chapter 8

  “Had enough cake?”

  “Yes, if I eat any more my tummy will look like a beach ball,” I tried to balance my plate on my stomach to demonstrate my point.

  “Like that could ever happen,” Tye took the plate from me and wandered over to the kitchen to deposit it with the other dishes in the sink.

  We had spent most of the day talking, watching tv and eating. In the back of my head, there was a nag I should be back at halls doing coursework. I had a feeling it was my mother’s voice, but I wasn’t listening to it. I was listening to the part of me that wanted to be with Tye, to the part where my nerves, those little people in my stomach started jiving when he smiled at me.

  Tye’s phone stared buzzing from its place on the glass coffee table in front of the settee.

  “Tye, your phone is ringing.”

  He turned back from the kitchen island and used the back of the settee to vault into his seat. He leaned forward to the phone then his hand froze over the screen as his eyes danced across the contact’s name.

  He suddenly sat back into the cushions and let the phone ring out, his hands rested on his thighs as he watched the phone buzz. When it stopped, he said nothing, so I nudged his leg with my foot from where I was curled up in the other corner of the large settee.

  “Who was that?” I asked softly, aware how dark his gaze had turned.

  “My dad,” he answered, opening the phone, and deleting the notification of the missed call.

  “You don’t want to talk to him?”

  “No,” he put the phone down again and trained his eyes on the tv, not really looking at the moving pictures. I kept my eyes on him. A muscle twitched in his jaw with tension. I felt the urge to brush that tension away with a kiss, so instead I grasped tightly to the cushion I was sat on, ensuring I wouldn’t move.

  “Tye?” I waited until he turned to look at me from the tv. “Is everything okay?”

  “Not really,” he ran a hand across the back of his neck. A familiar sign of his I now knew signified he was stressed. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “Okay,” I nodded trying to regain our happy afternoon as I rearranged in the chair. “Your turn to pick.” I threw the remote control and he caught it mid-air.

  “Fancy a film?”

  “Sure.”

  It turned out that Tye had a taste for action films and two hours later of high-octane gun shooting, blood pouring, and pillow hiding, I felt frazzled.

  “It wasn’t that bad,” Tye laughed, digging into a bowl of popcorn we had made from scratch using a saucepan and popcorn kernels. The bowl was balanced in his lap as he leaned into the other corner of the settee, his head turned towards me.

  “It wasn’t the guns and shooting I had the problem with,” my voice was muffled from the cushion I had buried my face under as I leaned back on the settee arm. “It was the amount of blood.”

  “Yeah, there was quite a lot of blood, even for my tastes. It wasn’t all action.”

  “Excuse me? Pretty much in every scene someone died. Not even died but died dramatically and in a horrifying way. All scenes were death scenes. Apart from the sex scene.”

  “You can’t tell me you didn’t enjoy that?” To his words, I pulled the cushion off my face and lifted my head to deliver a death glare. “You know your angry eyes just make me laugh?”

  “That is the opposite reaction to what I’m aiming for,” I sat up on my knees, trying to appear taller, and slightly more intimidating, even though it was futile.

  “It’s a quirk of yours,” he offered the popcorn bowl, smirking and knowing what he was doing.

  “My angry eyes are a quirk?” I took a handful and started eating the popcorn one at a time. “It’s not supposed to be cute and fluffy; you should be terrified and apologising.”

  “Sorry, princess. It’s like I told Sam, you have a bite. It’s just you don’t shout about it. So when you are mad it tends to come across as more… cute,” he shrugged his shoulders in that helpless, what can you do way.

  “Cute? How dare you,” I snatched the popcorn bowl from his hands, stealing it for myself. “I’m surprised you’ve analysed me to such a degree. I had no idea I interested you that much?” I knew I was flirting, but I couldn’t help it. He was too tempting not to flirt with.

  His cocoa eyes turned to me with their normal wink.

  “Everything you do interests me.”

  Ooh wow. I’m fairly certain I audibly sighed.

  His phone started buzzing again, shaking the glass of the coffee table and breaking our eye contact. Tye checked the caller id, pausing as he had done before, then sat back, leaving the phone on the coffee table as it continued to ring.

  “Your dad again?”

  “Yep,” he kept his eyes trained forward. All the humour and flirtation we had just uttered had vanished, the tension was back in his jaw, evidence of the frustration.

  “If you don’t want to talk to hi
m, can’t you just answer and tell him so?”

  “Have you ever said that to your parents?” He looked back at me with full expectation of my answer.

  I bit my lip and shook my head. That’s not to say I hadn’t hung up on my parents. I had done that with my mum multiple times this last month, or made up reasons why I had to go, straight away. Lectures or seminars were a good excuse, she could never argue with that.

  “I just don’t want to talk to him right now.”

  “I get that,” I really did. At the thought I pulled my phone from my jeans pocket and looked at the screen. My mum had said she would ring at some point, but I had no desire to talk to her. No wish to listen to the endless complaining about my dad and inefficiency of the solicitors. I turned the phone off and placed it on the coffee table. At least now I couldn’t talk to her for a little bit.

  “It’s just,” Tye paused and ran a hand across the back of his neck yet again. “We only ever talk about one thing. Smalltalk isn’t even a thing he’s capable of.”

  “What is it?”

  “The business.” He shook his head again, throwing his hand down on the settee arm and punching the puffy material with frustration.

  “The business must be doing well,” I spoke softly and offered him the popcorn back, which he took though he didn’t look at me. “Well, the BMW is an indicator.”

  “Yeah, it’s a car dealership.” He had mentioned before how he and his younger sister didn’t want to go into the business, though their older brother had. Tye hadn’t shown just how far this conversation had gone – by the looks of things, the resentment on this matter ran deep. Very deep. “I just want a break from that world. I don’t want to talk about it with him.”

  “Can’t you tell him that?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he shook his head, illustrating that the brief open window he had given me to look through into his life had now been firmly shut. The glass all tinted black like one of his car windows, nothing more to see here.