My eyes widen. My immediate thought is that it sounds scary and will be full of intimidating, popular types, all confident and able to make even a plain white T-shirt look good on them, but I know Jack would love it. I have no idea if Mum will agree to it, although since she appears to have been replaced with some crazed festivalgoer, maybe anything’s possible. “Leila, that’s amazing, thank you!”
Leila smiles. “Be a surprise for him, yeah?”
“Yeah.” I glance at him again, and then back at Leila. “He deserves a surprise.”
“OK,” Leila says. “I’ll message you with the info. I have to go. I’m doing a podcast with one of the organizers – catch up with you later, yeah?”
I nod and smile and she’s off.
Leaving me with Elliot, who is so busy with his burger he still can’t look at me. I need to say something. Maybe I need to apologize, or make it clear the kiss just happened, and it won’t happen again, but it’s all too awkward, so instead I just start flicking through my phone, swiping away at Instagram, because even though I hate that site, it’s still better than talking to Elliot right now.
I freeze when I see it.
The news is out! reads the caption on Dylan’s post. A post with a picture of him and Tariq, proudly showing off the rings on their fingers. So happy right now. Exchanged promise rings with this one today. Best day of our lives and first day of our future.
I shiver as my blood turns to ice. There are assorted hideous hashtags, and then a whacking one thousand likes. And then the comments:
Love wins!
You guys are so cute together!
Babe! Congratulations!
Love wins!
Hot!!!!
Love wins!
When I finally look up, Elliot is just staring at me. “What is it?” he says.
I pass him the phone. He reads, and scrolls, then look back up at me. “Look, you know,” Elliot mutters, “they have their thing, you have yours, and—”
“What thing have I got? Huh?” I ask him, fury suddenly bubbling up inside me. “What have I got?”
Elliot looks stumped.
And I push my way through the crowd, out of there, anywhere, anywhere but here, anywhere away from people, and friends, and exes, and expectations, and hopes and dreams and anywhere except my own head and my messed-up life.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
JACK
No way is Mrs Nate coming down from the shoulders of this random bloke. I can’t make out exactly what she’s saying to me, but her session with the yoga guru was apparently “enlightening” and “life-changing” and now here she is, “releasing herself from her shackles”. She tells me to tell Nate to “take a chill pill” and then loses herself in the beat once more, hands in the air, blissed out to Bowie.
There’s nothing else I can do. She must be either drunk or high, which kind of annoys me because we’re the teenagers here, so really that should be our thing, so I push my way back to the lovebirds. When I get there, though, it’s only Elliot.
“Ou est le Nate?” I say.
“I think you need to check Dylan’s Insta,” Elliot says.
So I do, and oh. I’m not hurt. I’m furious. Promise rings? The thing that was my idea at prom? I don’t even care about their undying and eternal love and commitment, it’s just maddening that Dylan doesn’t have an original or creative bone in his body, and now he’s getting all this love and praise for something that I came up with, and which he would never have thought of on his own.
I put my phone away. “Nate’s upset?”
Elliot nods.
I nod back. Chew my lip. Screw it, I’m gonna say it. “So you kissed him, then?” I need to know what the deal is. If they’re getting together, that’s fine, I’m sure I’ll get used to it. Maybe I don’t feel that way about Nate anyway. Not really. Sometimes I’m not sure I know where horny ends and romance begins.
Elliot shoves his hands in the pockets of his shorts and kicks the ground with his trainers.
“I mean, maybe you should go and see if he’s OK?” I continue. “If you’re a thing now?”
Elliot’s eyes widen. “Oh, we’re not a thing.”
I nod. “Uh-huh? Just a kiss?”
“Right!”
“No such thing as ‘just a kiss’, Elliot!”
“No, there is!” he protests. “There is with me and Nate, we’ve…” He stops himself.
“You’ve kissed before? In my tree house?”
Elliot’s cheeks flush red and he nods. “How did you know?”
“I mean, I’m not an idiot. It was always either going to be that or a game of Doctors and Nurses, wasn’t it? God, the pair of you are insatiable! Can’t keep your hands off each other!”
“Jack, that’s not true. Sometimes, you just get caught up in the moment. The music … the atmosphere…”
“The smell of freshly cut MDF?”
“Look,” Elliot says, “I can’t explain why we kissed when we were ten, but I also can’t explain my obsession with slime or why stories involving snot or peeing your pants were so damn funny, because I was ten. But right now, we just kissed, but I think it was kind of … as mates?”
Elliot tentatively glances at me, like he knows I’m not going to let him get away with that.
“Ha!” I laugh. A small swell of relief ripples through me, but I know better than to trust it. “Ha ha ha! Oh, excellent! Elliot, fine, OK, more of this later. I’m going to find Nate, and when I do, maybe I’ll just stick my tongue in his mouth, since that’s what all the cool kids are claiming is friendship now?”
Elliot shrugs. “Well, maybe you should,” he mutters.
I stop and stare at him.
He slowly lifts his eyes to meet mine. “Oh, come on,” he says. “You and Nate.”
I hold my hands out. “Me and Nate, what?”
“Well, it’s obvious,” Elliot
