Let's Get Lost (16 page)

“What time is it?”

“Don’t worry, it’s not even eight.”

I sighed a little because really, it was so nice and I could have just gone back to sleep and stayed there till morning, apart from the fact that I really needed to pee and my throat was parched.

“Don’t have to be back till eleven, maybe twelve,” I mused. “It
is
Saturday night.”

“Wish you could stay,” he said, tracing a line down my spine, and I squirmed away because it tickled, then rolled onto my back, dragging the covers up and clamping them under my arms. “I might . . . I guess I could phone home and see if it would be okay.” I hesitated because he might have just said it to be polite.

But Smith was nodding his head and I missed his rumpled, pillow-tossed hair already. “It’s not like you’d have to say what you were really up to.”

“On one condition, though.” I smiled and his eyebrows were already shooting up in expectation of whatever he thought I was going to say. Not like he was even close. “Make me a cup of tea. Milk and two sugars, please.”

The second he was out of the door, after pulling on his jeans and grumbling about how I was taking him for granted, I shot out of bed, grabbed something T-shirty from the floor, and hauled it on before I dashed into the hall and prayed that the bathroom was the first door I tried.

I peed for England and then, because I’m stupid and sixteen and not anywhere near blasé, I had the quickest shower humanly possible.

By the time Smith shouldered open the door with two steaming mugs in his hand, I was perched on the bed, still slightly damp and about to lie through my teeth.

“Hey, it’s me,” I said when Dad answered the phone. “How are you?” Then I winced because way to act suspicious. I never asked how he was.

“I’m fine, Isabel,” he said crisply to let me know that he was already on to me. “And how are you?”

“I’m okay.”

Smith set a mug down on the nightstand next to me and hovered awkwardly. I made fluttery gestures with my hand to let him know it was all right and realized that Dad wasn’t saying anything.

Usually I make him speak first, just for the small amount of satisfaction it brings me, but it didn’t seem appropriate when I was about to infringe on at least ten of his rules.

“So, anyway, I’m at Dot’s and I was thinking about staying the night.” Not a question, just putting the facts, or the kind of facts, out there and seeing what he did with them.

“Really?” I heard the clink of a glass in the background and then his voice clearer than before. “You want to sleep over?”

“Yeah. At Dot’s, because we’ve just got some DVDs out and we were going to phone for pizza and it’s getting late . . .”

“Forgive me but I find it extremely curious that you’re expressing such a fervent desire to have a
slumber
party.” His voice curdled on the last two words.

“Sleepover,” I corrected him politely.

“And will there be boys at this DVD-watching, crashing-out fest?”

“
What?
No!” I held the phone away from my ear and shook it. Then I lowered my voice. “Felix stays over at his friends’ all the time and you don’t give him the third degree about whether they’re going to pool their pocket money for a stripper.”

“You’re hiring a stripper?” he spluttered. “Well, then I insist that you come home immediately.”

“Oh, my God . . .” I started, and then stopped because there were no words.

“I’m joking, Isabel,” he said, and he sounded like he used to. “I am capable of doing that sometimes.”

Smith turned around and grinned at me, holding up a Broken Social Scene CD and waiting for my nod of approval.

“Well, I’ll be home by lunchtime. There’s some shepherd’s pie in the fridge, just take the tin foil off and heat the oven on five for about twenty minutes, and then it should take about . . .”

“I’m quite capable of heating up some dinner,” he said in that same jovial voice. “Have a good time.

Please don’t get drunk or smoke or take drugs or do anything foolish. Not until you’re at least thirty.”

It was far too late for that, and I shifted uncomfortably on the bed that I’d had sex on and wished that he wasn’t being so fucking nice when I had never deserved it less.

“ ’Kay. Well, I’ll see you, then. Remember to turn the oven off and leave the dish to soak, otherwise . .

.”

“Get off the bloody phone and go and watch your DVDs. Good night, Belle,” he added before he hung up, and it was a slip of the tongue, just an echo of the way we’d been and what he’d used to call me that made me sit there, clutching the phone and feeling like this utterly worthless scrap of humanity.

“You okay?” Smith asked as “Capture the Flag” started to play.

I picked up my tea and pasted on my Sunday best smile. “Peachy.”

He crouched down in front of me. “So your mum’s not around, then?”

I didn’t think he was prying . . . much. It was just a natural conclusion to draw from my side of the phone call. “I can’t talk about it,” I said in a tiny voice.

“But . . .”

“I can’t,” I repeated and I ran the flat of my hand over the knobbly ridge of bone at the back of his skull because he was the one thing in my life that had nothing to do with her and I wanted to keep it that way.

“And thanks for the tea.”

“Way to change the subject,” he muttered under his breath, but when he lifted his head, his smile glittered. “So I’ve got you for a whole sixteen and a half hours?”

“Yeah. Wanna play some Scrabble?”

“The others have gone to this bar, do you wanna meet up with them?” he asked, twisting around to snatch his cigarettes up so he couldn’t see the face I just pulled. Molly was all right. In fact, Molly was a source of endless fascination to me, but Jane seemed like she was a bitch from way back.

“We could stay in,” I said, pulling his T-shirt down over the large expanse of thigh I was showing.

“We should go out,” Smith argued. “It will be fun.”

And I was about to argue about just how much fun it wouldn’t be when he bent his head and kissed my knee as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

It was almost as if Smith has sprinkled me with some of his own supply of hipster dust, so when we strode into Alicats, not one person questioned my right to be there, even though I hadn’t had time to do anything more transformational than slick on some lip gloss and smooth down the sticky-out bits of hair that were starting to be the bane of my freaking life.

And because Smith had paid for everything during our Eastbourne adventure (and that was an oxymoron if ever there was one), I brandished a tenner at him. “I’ll pay for the drinks if you go to the bar and get them.”

He closed my fist around the note. “I’ll get them. You’re not working.”

“Neither are you,” I pointed out, standing on tiptoe so he could hear me and shoving the money back at him. “Vodka and Diet Coke, please.”

“I’m not planning on holding your head while you puke, just so you know,” Smith said sternly as he led me through the sweaty crowd to the bar.

“Well, I’m not planning on puking, so that works out really well.”

We were still arguing about just how many drinks it took for me to reach my cut-off point when I saw we were heading for the dingiest corner of the bar and it was déjà ewww all over again . . . because Smith’s friends? Not the most user-friendly gang in town. Then Smith slid his arm around my waist and one of the

girls looked up and smiled.

“Isabel! I’ll budge up and you can sit here,” Molly said, scooching over and patting the seat invitingly.

“Don’t worry, Smith, most of your secrets are safe with me. Well, apart from the time you tried to snog my cat for a bet.”

I smirked at him. “Very smooth.”

“Go and sit down,” he said, pushing me in her direction. “I just want to say hello to someone. Molly’s sweet, she’ll look after you.”

And Molly was sweet, or else she just really knew how to fake it as she gave me a fleeting hug and pulled me down next to her, nudging the girl on her other side who was smooching the face off the guy whose lap she was on.

“Jane,” she shouted. “This is Isabel. Smith’s Isabel.”

Jane’s head shot up and she pinned me with the deadliest stare I’d seen in at least a week. “Ah, Smith’s Isabel,” she said knowingly. “And not any of the other Isabels we know. Hey, kid.”

“Hey,” I said back because she was far too intimidating to call on the whole “kid” thing. I poked at the ice cubes in my drink with the end of my straw, but when I decided to chance looking up she was still eyeing me.

“So just how old are you, anyway?” she asked belligerently. “’Cause I didn’t realize that our Smith had taken to loitering around the nursery school gates.”

“I’m eighteen,” I bit out, fumbling for my cigarettes to give me something to do with my hands and because if I was smoking, I was sophisticated and cool. Obviously. Or else, puffing my way to emphysema in the mistaken belief that I appeared to be sophisticated and cool. It was a judgment call.

“Jane’s being tested for Tourette’s syndrome,” Molly said soothingly. “It’s the only explanation we can find as to why she never thinks before she opens her mouth.”

“Oh, whatever, Moll,” Jane snapped. “And if she’s eighteen then I’m the fricking queen of England.”

“Give us another kiss, Your Majesty,” said the guy she was sitting on, and she wriggled happily and flung her arm around his neck. He was seriously not ex-rock star boyfriend material. If you were being kind you’d call him homely. If you weren’t being kind you’d call him a ginger minger. Then I realized his piggy little eyes were gazing adoringly at her as she ruffled his hair and matched his besotted look with one of her own.

I sat there and smoked my cigarettes while Jane and Molly bickered good-naturedly about whether Seth Cohen had any right to be emo if his parents were so damn rich. It was the kind of easy friendship I’d always dreamed about having if I didn’t have only two settings, which were either silent and/or vicious.

Jane was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen in real life.

Model gorgeous. Film-star sexy. It was almost too overwhelming to look at her perfectly symmetrical features; a bee-stung kiss of a mouth, limpid green eyes, the delicate curve of her eyebrows, the sweep of her cheekbones, all topped off with a tiny smudge of nose.

But it was Molly who my eyes kept sliding back to. Not just because she was pretty in this quirky, mischievous way but because she was never still as she laughed and twirled her straw around quick fingers, knees bumping against the edge of the table in time to Ladytron. “
They only want you when
you’re seventeen, when you’re twenty-one, you’re no fun
,” she sang, and then laughed at me. “Story of my life, this song.” I guess she had charisma or something. Like, when she went to the loo, shoving her way through the clumps of people, it was almost as if she was giving off some kind of chemical or pheromone because people turned to look at her as she brushed past them.

Smith was still someplace else. I craned my neck and saw him talking to a couple of guys over by the entrance. He was jiggling about in time to the music even though he really couldn’t dance for shit.

And it was easy to get more and more mopey as I sat there surrounded by people who were so adept at just being themselves, while I had to make such a hash of it.

“Jeez, Isabel, you look like you’re about to slit your wrists,” Molly said as she climbed over my legs so she could sit back down. “I got you another drink.”

“Thanks.” I gave her a crooked smile and then sat there, racking my brain for something witty and interesting to say to her that didn’t involve lawsuits or ex-boyfriends or . . .

“Do you think the DJ’s cute?” she suddenly piped up, and then pinched my arm as I swiveled my head in the direction of his booth. “Don’t look!”

I’d got a glimpse of what seemed to be a standard issue hipster with mop-top hair. “He’s okay, I guess.”

“He always plays The Hormones. Well, original Hormones.” She sniffed. “Do you think that means something deep and significant about his feelings toward me?”

Just how much had she had to drink, anyway? “Well, maybe, or else he just really liked The Hormones when you were still with them.”

Molly gurgled with mirth. “I should so get over myself. It’s all about me!” She gave me a sly little nudge.

“I’m gonna get that printed on a T-shirt.”

“Actually it’s all about
me
,” I countered, because it was, and Molly laughed so hard that she sprayed a very unamused Jane with a mouthful of vodka and cranberry.

“You wanna know the worst piece of advice I ever got?” Molly asked me, once she’d finished snorting.

She was pressed up against me, her hot breath hitting the side of my face. I nodded, and she gave me a secretive smile. “The worst advice handed down to me by someone who should have known better was, just be yourself. Like, I could be anything else, huh?”

She glared at me and then shook her head like I wasn’t the person she wanted to be glaring at. “Sorry,”

she muttered, running a hand through her hair. “Vodka makes me maudlin, and then I start remembering all the reasons why my life is so shit sometimes.”

I wanted to say something incredibly insightful and empathetic but, as usual, I couldn’t think of a single thing. “ Vodka . . .” I echoed, staring at my own glass.

“I envy you,” she continued. “You haven’t had time to fuck things up too badly, and you and Smith are just getting together and that whole start of a relationship is so giddy and you’re just, like, completely into that person and everything they say is meaningful or pant-wettingly funny and you feel like you’re the only two people in the world and . . .” She tailed off and hugged herself as if she really wanted someone to do it for her. “God, I really miss that.”

“It’s not like that . . .” I started to say, because what she was describing sounded claustrophobic enough to press down hard on my ribs and choke me, but Smith was winding his way toward us, looking first at me and then at Molly as if we’d had nothing better to do than talk about him the whole time that he was gone. Which, not even.