Chapter Twenty-Eight
Thursday
Joshua:
I’d like to consider myself someone who doesn’t get flustered very easily.
I wouldn’t say it’s because I’m level-headed, but because my general response to anything stressful is to go very quiet and hope everyone stops looking at me until I’ve worked out what the fuck I’m supposed to do.
It’s served me well enough over the years, even if every therapist I’ve ever had would probably argue that shutting down in the face of adversity isn’t technically a coping mechanism.
I think the events of tonight would be enough to send even the most strait-laced of men absolutely round the bend.
Abi has been pacing the living-room, trying to coax the condom out. She flits from hysterically laughing, to swearing to crying.
Ruby is standing close to me. I’m still reeling from her face being tilted towards mine, her fingers twisted into the front of my hoodie and the fact we basically kissed.
Even now, with Abi shrieking about her vagina and Ruby’s eyes darting across the scene, I keep finding myself wanting to reach for her hand again.
“Well?” Brooke asks, hands on hips. “Is anything happening?”
“No,” Abi hisses. “It hasn’t.”
“Abi, you need to calm down,” Ruby firmly instructs.
She’s had enough wine that some of her words are slightly softened, but her voice is steady, coaxing, calm. Even in this absolute shitshow, she’s somehow become the person everyone has turned to.
“I do not need to calm down! I need to get the condom out!” Abi’s face is flushed red and a bead of sweat is sliding down her temple. Just looking at her is making me feel hot.
Ruby moves closer to her. “Have you really thoroughly stuck your fingers in there? I mean gone hell for leather? As far in as you can go?”
“Oh, fucking hell,” Ewan groans, burying his head in his hands.
“Yes!” Abi wails. “I can feel it in there! I just can’t reach it! What if it travels to my bloodstream? What if it gets to my heart and kills me?! They’ll have to tell my mum I died via a condom! What am I going to do?”
“Have you googled it?” Brooke asks.
“No! I haven’t fucking googled it!”
“Well, maybe we should?”
“All I wanted,” Ewan is saying, “is to come home and play PlayStation. That’s honestly all I wanted.”
All I wanted was another five seconds before the front door opened but now isn’t really the time to point that out.
“Brooke. Google it,” Ruby commands, looking at the phone still clutched in Brooke’s hand. “There has to be something online telling us what to do.”
“I think I’m going to faint!” Abi screams.
“What position was he even putting you in for this to happen?” Brooke asks as she starts typing.
“I’m going to faint. Or throw up. Or just die. That’s it. I’m going to die! I think I might have a panic attack—”
Ruby grabs the glass of water from the coffee table and throws it straight into Abi’s face. “Pull yourself together! It is a condom. You are not pushing out a baby. We will get it out of you!”
There’s a brief, shocked silence while Abi stands in front of us dripping wet. Ewan’s mouth has fallen open, Brooke has stopped typing altogether, and Ruby is still gripping the empty glass while breathing a little too hard from the force she used to throw it.
God. She’s so fucking hot.
Shit. There is something fundamentally wrong with me.
Abi slowly wipes the water from her eyelashes. “Did you just throw water at me?”
“You were hysterical!”
“You’ve made me wet!”
Ewan makes a strangled noise beside the sofa.
Abi’s head snaps towards him. “I DIDN’T MEAN LIKE THAT!”
He holds his hands up. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Everyone shut up,” Brooke cuts in, looking back down at her phone. “I’ve found something.”
Abi abandons Ewan and hurries towards her. “What does it say?”
“That it can’t get lost inside you, so stop thinking it’s travelling towards your heart.”
Abi’s entire body seems to loosen slightly. “It definitely can’t?”
“No. Your cervix stops it going any further.”
“My cervix?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Ruby moves over to Brooke and peers at the screen. “What does it say she needs to do?”
“Relax, squat down and bear down while trying to hook a finger around it.”
“What the fuck is bearing down?” Abi hotly demands, looking fucking nuts.
Her blonde hair is all over the place, and she’s in a snot-green plastic top with a hot pink skirt.
I have no idea what kind of event she was dressed for before all this kicked off, but whatever it was, I’m hoping the outfit made more sense there.
Ruby considers it. “You’re going to have to push.”
“Push what?”
“Like you’re having a poo.”
“I am not taking a shit in Josh’s living room.”
“You’re not actually going to shit.”
“What if I do?”
“Please don’t,” I beg.
Ruby points to the wine stain. “The carpet’s already fucked. What harm could it do?”
“Oh, cheers, Rubes.”
A grin spreads across her stunning face and she winks at me. “Anytime.”
I stifle a laugh.
Ruby bends over Brooke’s shoulder. “It says lying down might make it easier. Maybe one of us could get it out if you put a pillow under your bum?”
Abi’s gaze lands on the sofa. Then it moves to me, full of an amount of embarrassment I don’t think I’ve ever seen on another person. “Can I?”
“Course.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
She gestures vaguely towards herself. “Because I’m going to have my vagina out on it.”
I don’t really know what response she’s expecting. “Yeah? What do you want me to say here? I’m not going to make the situation worse for you. I should probably lay some towels down or something, right?”
“Oh, please,” Abi snaps, as though I’ve thoroughly pissed her off. “Don’t be precious. I bet you’ve had loads of girls naked on this sofa and haven’t even bothered to clean it.”
“I haven’t,” I snap back, indignant. “No one’s been naked on that fucking sofa.
” My admission seems to send a strange ripple through the room.
Brooke’s eyebrows lift, Abi looks briefly distracted from her own crisis and Ewan turns to me with a look that makes me regret speaking up.
Ruby doesn’t say anything. “Why is that shocking? I’m not the slag everyone seems to think I am. ”
Ewan snorts. “No one called you a slag.”
“You were all thinking it.”
Ewan shrugs. “I know the truth.”
“Exactly, so stop looking at me like that.”
“IS THIS THE TIME?” Abi screams. “PLEASE HELP ME!”
Right. Condom.
Brooke clears her throat and points at the sofa. “Lie down, put a cushion underneath your bum and bend your knees.”
Abi makes a move for one of the blue cushions and shoves it underneath herself before lowering her body onto the sofa. My sofa. I can already tell I am never going to look at that cushion in the same way again.
She lies there staring at the ceiling, hands locked over her stomach and body so stiff she looks like she’s waiting to be executed.
There’s a pause while she starts to wriggle out of them and, thankfully, from where I’m standing I can’t see anything. A small part of my brain tells me I should probably turn around anyway, but the entire thing has become so much like watching a car crash that I don’t seem capable of looking away.
“This is the worst night of my life,” Abi whimpers.
Ruby is hovering over her like some kind of surgeon, which would be more reassuring if she didn’t also look mildly horrified. “This is the first time I’ve ever been involved in anything like this, and I’m really starting to question why everyone decided I was the person for the job.”
“Because Brooke said you were good in a crisis.”
“I threw water at you. Do you still think I’m the one who is good in a crisis?”
“Well,” Abi sniffles. “I didn’t faint, throw up, or have a panic attack.”
Brooke looks back at the phone. “It says you need to relax, Abi.” Brooke continues reading. “Whoever helps needs to wash their hands properly, get close, use a light and sort of sweep a finger around.”
Abi’s voice is small. “You want one of them to... finger me?”
“Well, someone is going to have to,” Brooke tuts, running out of patience at a rapid rate. “I can’t believe I am involved in this. Ruby, you need to wash your hands.”
Ruby looks aghast. “Why me?”
“Because I’m not doing it.”
“I don’t want to!”
“SOMEBODY HAS TO HELP ME!” Abi screams.
Ruby, in a daze, stumbles towards the kitchen with the enthusiasm of someone walking towards their own execution. “Fine. I’ll wash my hands.”
My attention follows her as she crosses the room towards me, and I realise there is no situation horrific enough to stop me noticing Ruby Hollis.
Ewan edges closer to me while Ruby is out of the room and lowers his voice so the rest can’t hear. “What the fuck was happening with Ruby when we came in?”
I don’t look at him. “Nothing.”
“Bollocks.”
“Leave it alone.”
“You were practically on top of each other.”
“We weren’t.”
“Josh.”
“Ewan.”
He studies my face for a few seconds. “You were going to kiss her, weren’t you?”
“Shut up.” I bite out. “Shut up right now.”
“Oh my God.”
“Will you keep your fucking voice down?”
“You were!”
“Ewan.”
His grin is enormous. “After all that ‘we’re mates’ shit—”
“I will put you through the fucking wall.”
“You’re pissed because I interrupted you.”
“I’m pissed because you kicked my front door into the wall.”
“You’re so full of shit.”
Ruby pushes past before I can kill him, sleeves pushed up and hands freshly washed. Her gaze flicks between the two of us, suspicious, but thankfully she’s got bigger concerns because Abi is lying on the sofa looking as though she’s about to cry.
“I’ve washed my hands,” Ruby announces. Her voice is brisk, no-nonsense, although the way she keeps flexing her fingers tells a slightly different story.
She’s trying to act like she isn’t fazed by any of it but she’s bluffing.
That girl doesn’t want to do this. But I’m not saving her, because I really would smash my head against brick then help.
I’ve never claimed to be any kind of knight.
“Right,” Brooke continues to read out the instructions. “You need to get close and try and find it.”
Ruby looks like she might throw up. “I don’t think I can do this.”