He reaches out and places a hand on my hip. It’s almost weightless, barely a touch, but his hand is big, and warm, and it envelops the space from my hipbone to the small of my back. His fingers are tentative, moving almost imperceptibly. It doesn’t do anything to help my ragged breathing. It’s not like an accidental brush from a stranger. It’s undisputable, and deliberate, and it makes my entire consciousness feel like it is tunnelling down to the spot that he is touching.
‘Sophia,’ he says. He swallows a couple of times. ‘Is this okay? Do you … want me to take you home?’
I reach through the swirling vortex of rubble and noise that is my brain, but nothing of any logic is forthcoming.
So I lean forward, over the space between the steps, and I kiss him.
The beat from the music thumps through the stairwell, and for all of five seconds, Joshua’s lips don’t move. One of my hands is still holding the railing, and the other is resting on his chest because I don’t know where else to put it. His body freezes beneath my hand.
And just when I’m thinking I’ve caused some sort of psychosomatic paralysis, his body shudders, and he takes the remaining steps between us in a single bound. His hands curve around the nape of my neck, and he is kissing me back.
And dammit – my stupid, traitorous heart splutters like it’s forgotten how to beat a sensible rhythm. My hands find their way to his face, pulling it down to mine because he is far too tall to kiss when we’re standing on the same level. His hands curve over my face as he kisses me, like he’s trying to touch every part of it at once.
It is a good kiss.
If there were some sort of kissing barometer or altimeter, Joshua’s kisses would be, like, instrument-imploding level.
Fact: Joshua Bailey kisses me like he’s been waiting to kiss me his whole life.
My lips move against his. But I can’t get my brain to stop spinning. I’m hyper aware of our bodies pressed together, and I can feel every place where we are touching – my hands on his chest and his palms on my face. It’s so much heat and contact, so much of another human being in my untraversed space, and it’s this, more than anything, that makes me falter.
I pull away with a sharp intake of breath. He looks like he’s struggling just as badly for air.
My hands reach up and take his. They seem to be operating on autopilot as I disconnect his gentle hold on my face.
His entire expression is a question mark, full of expectations that I have no chance of meeting.
Say something say something say something, my brain chants.
Say anything at all to make this less terrifying.
‘Sophia,’ he says breathlessly. His eyes are so full and hopeful. ‘I think I might be in love with you.’
Yep. That should do it.
I feel it coming, like the rumble of a train across a faraway track, the compression of my chest and lungs. My face is instantly sweaty but my hands are freezing, so icy that my knuckles lock in place. I can’t breathe. I know that what I am experiencing is just a misplaced fight-or-flight response. But knowing that doesn’t make the visceral response any less real. All I know is that I am going to die, right now, on this beer-stained stairwell, if I don’t get away this instant.
I shove past him and all but tumble down the stairs. I push through the crowd, past the startled face of Joshua’s friend Sam, before bolting out the blue door. Distantly, I clock that it is drizzling again, my feet skidding on the cobblestones before I stumble onto the road. There are people everywhere, so many people, all loud and happy and so freaking normal. I dash across the street and somehow find my way into a mercifully passing taxi. I recognise, distantly, that my actions are so theatrical they would probably gain me a resounding A in Drama, if Ms Heller had the misfortune of observing me.
I give the driver an address, hearing my robot-voice as if through a vast void.
I can still feel the lingering press of Joshua’s lips. I could swear, though I know it is impossible, that the warmth of them still lingers.
I can’t kiss a boy who looks at me like I’m the only thing that matters in the world. I know, for a fact, that nothing I am or will become could be momentous enough to warrant that.
I can’t kiss a boy who makes my heart stutter; my heart should know what the hell it is doing. I cannot sort out my flawed, failing brain if my basic autonomic functions start letting me down too.
I can’t. I am not that girl.
Surely he has to know that? If this continued, sooner or later, I know he would figure out that the person he thinks he wants is only theoretical.
I can’t do this.
Even if part of me wants to rewind time and replay that kiss over and over and over again.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The exclusion principle
Colin opens the door to the Nayers’ house. Warmth radiates from inside, almost painful against my skin; I left my jacket on the bar-house stairwell, and the icy drizzle feels like needles on my bare arms.
Colin uses his feet to corral Chuck behind us as I squeeze inside. A one-eyed ginger tabby I haven’t seen before also tries to make a break for freedom. The cat sniffs my foot suspiciously as Colin manages to shut the door.
Colin leads me into the living room, where he, Ryan and Rajesh are playing Trivial Pursuit. Raj looks up at me, yelps, and immediately covers his head. Elsie and I haven’t been allowed to play Trivial Pursuit since we were eleven, when I won because I knew that a pluviometer measures rainfall. Ryan accused me of cheating, and Elsie got so mad she chucked one of her mum’s dog figurines at him, fracturing his nose with a porcelain Irish Setter. I had nothing to do with the nose-breaking incident, but the Nayer brothers seem to find it infinitely more amusing to feign fear of me instead of their sister.
Ryan gives me a curt ‘hey’. Colin flops onto the couch, Chuck jumping into his lap.
‘Whatup, Pinky?’ Raj craws. ‘Hey, excellent timing – where are a snail’s reproductive organs?’
‘On its head,’ I answer on autopilot. My voice sounds strange, like my ears are filled with water. Raj whoops amid a chorus of protests from Colin and Ryan.
‘Nice one, thanks,’ Raj says, dropping a green wedge into his wheel with a megalomaniac’s chuckle. He glances at me standing there, dripping on their foyer carpet, and does a bit of a double take.
‘Hey there, Pinky. Everything okay?’
I pick up the random ginger cat. ‘No. I don’t think so. Is Elsie home?’
The three Nayer brothers point, wordlessly, up the stairs. I cuddle the protesting tabby and float up to Elsie’s room.