hair, taking one last chance to breathe in her sweet, vanilla scent.
“We’re already hurting, baby girl,” I say and leave the kitchen a fucked up, heartbroken mess.
Chapter Twenty
Ana
An entire month after my break up with Elijah, I’m still just as miserable as I was the minute he walked out of my kitchen for good. After he’d left that day I’d cried until Dad came home from a club meet and found me passed out on the floor. He’d picked me up, carried me to my room and that’s where I’d stayed for two days before Holly came a calling to kick my lazy, heartbroken arse out of bed.
A month on and she’s still dragging me around to places I don’t want to go. Tonight, it’s a harvest hang-out. I don’t know how many of these things Holly and I have attended, but they always begin with a bunch of idiots gathering in a newly harvested cane field on the outskirts of town and end with a bunch of drunk idiots running from the cops before they get arrested for drinking in a dry zone and lighting bonfires during bush fire season.
Tonight the crowd is mostly old enough to know better, and yet here we are: a bunch of high school leavers too afraid to admit we’re not ready for adulthood and more terrified still to leave our safe little town for the big, bad world.
Before Elijah, I would have given anything to get out of this place. Afterwards, I’m thanking my lucky stars for the job security that comes with being the pie shop owner’s daughter, because it means I don’t have to face what all my school colleagues are going through; where they should study, where they should live, and that all- important period of self-discovery you go through after you’re given the weighty title of being an “adult”.
Thanks to my mother and father’s dreaming, my future is securely mapped out for me. I’ll work in the diner until I’m too old to remember the recipes, I’ll more than likely still be cleaning up after my kid brother until he’s forty, and then I’ll die alone with a thousand cats who won’t hesitate to eat me once the kitty chow runs out, and all without ever having left Sugartown.
I should be more upset about my future prospects being so bleak but I just can’t seem to give a crap these days.
Holly groans, “Would you at least try to look like you’re having fun, please?”
“But I’m not having fun, Hols. I’m watching a bunch of bogan dickheads chugging beer-bongs while avoiding watching you be mauled by your boyfriend. No offense, Coop.”
The boyfriend in question is Cooper Ryan, the hot bartender that Holly got lucky with at the Sugartown Hotel a few weeks back—and he’s recently become a permanent fixture in my best friend’s life which is fine by me because he’s sweet, he treats her right and he gives me Holly-free time enough to wallow in my misery. He swings his head out from the hollow of her neck and smiles at me. “None taken. I do maul. I should really cut back but I’m just a stupid, beer-chugging dickhead unable to resist her charms.”
“Well, they say awareness is the first step.” I smile back, but it’s as weak and horribly disingenuous as they always are lately.
“Aww, Cooooop.” Holly reaches up on tiptoes to kiss him. “Do you have any idea how much I want to tie you up and screw your brains out when you say things like that?”
“I have some idea,” he mutters into her ear.
I roll my eyes. “Would you two get a room, already? You’re making the other bogans nauseas.”
“Ha! Now you know what it was like when you and Eli-” Holly begins but her eyes double in size as she realises she almost named ‘he who shall not be named’. “Shit, Ana, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Hols. I’m going to go grab a drink. Why don’t you two go grab a room, or the backseat of Coop’s car, or any other semi secluded place to … um … get busy, and I’ll meet you back here in fifteen?” I tease, but I’m only half joking about the sex. At least if they get it out of their system now, we won’t be run off the road because Holly decides she’d rather jump on Coop’s gearstick than get us home in one piece.
“Ana?” Holly starts.
I shrug her off with a wave. “I’m fine Hols, just thirsty.”
“I love you my little slutsky!” she yells, just loud enough to draw the attention of everyone around us, in true Holly fashion.
I laugh and make my way over to the bonfire, which oddly enough is where the eskies with all the combustible liquor are.
I pull out a bottle of Stella Artois and think of Elijah. I wonder where he is and if he’s thinking of me, too. Earlier, I saw Nicole and her evil minions, so at least I know he’s not fucking her up against a wall somewhere. My heart thuds against my chest as I think back to that night. A part of me hates him so much for making me witness that because never in a million years would I wish the same fate upon him. I love him too much, which makes me think that, despite his declaration, he didn’t love me at all.
I flip the bottle cap off my beer and take a long hearty swig, which almost comes straight back up when I open my eyes and see Scott standing before me.
“Hey, Blondie. Rough night?”
“And it just got worse.”
“Ouch.” He raises his own beer in a toast and gives me that stupid half-smile that used to turn me to complete mush but now kind of makes me want to punch him in the face. “You really know how to wound a guy.”
“So I’ve heard.”
He reaches into the nearest esky and pulls out two more Stellas. “You wanna take a walk with me?”
“Why would I do that, Scott?”
He shrugs. “Payback for drinking all my beer?”
“Sorry, I didn’t know it was yours,” I mutter, as I avoid meeting his eyes. Though I despise him, his eyes are still kind of pretty to look at. In fact, all of him is pretty to look at. Not as pretty as Elijah, but pretty, none the less.
I run a mental tally in my head—one vodka and cranberry at Holly’s house and one and a half beers since we arrived. It’s not much, but it’s enough for a lightweight like me. Still, I’m in a reckless, poisonous mood, so despite the buzz I have going, I feel like it’s not enough.
Weirdly, Scott must pick up on that because he says, “Come on, I have some hard stuff in the car and you look like you could use a stiff drink.”
“What kind of hard stuff?”
“Tequila.”
“To-kill-ya! Awesome! Lead the way.”
Scott smiles, stuffs two beers in the pocket of his hoody and walks me over to his giant, dual cab, fifty- thousand dollar Toyota HiLux—which is just what every idiotic nineteen-year-old needs to be driving, especially when there’s alcohol involved—and fishes out the bottle of tequila before handing it to me. I’m so relieved I could kiss him, but I’ll settle instead for not punching him in the face.
Scott leads us to a small ravine, far enough away so we can no longer hear the noise of the party. He slides down the small embankment and sits on a patch of soft grass. I follow suit, though my descent is a little more awkward and I end up stumbling a few steps before backing up and plonking myself down next to him. We’re looking at nothing but row upon row of cut cane fields and there’s no other light but the moon—and yes, I am here with the McDoucheNozzle that basically told the whole town I was a giant slut, but it’s peaceful and Scott always was good at distracting me from reality.
I twist the cap off the tequila and take a hearty sip. It burns like nothing else going down but once it’s finally settled the warmth spreads through my tummy and it feels sort of nice, so I take another.
“Easy, tiger.” He takes the bottle from me and swallows back some of the contents. It must go down the wrong way, because he coughs and splutters and beats at his chest like a gorilla. “Holy shit that hurt, I now know
