Chapter 22 #2
‘Jesus, Jake. You sound like you need a beer, mate.’ Adam tried to diffuse the pressure between us that was threatening to implode, but Jacob only rolled his eyes.
He debated whether to say something for a moment – I could see his lips twitching as he tried to compromise with his conscience – but he eventually decided against it.
Instead, he got to his feet and moved to another spot in the circle.
He landed beside Pen, who, of course, had brought her guitar.
They soon fell into a conversation that he clearly liked better than mine.
It was only when he caught me watching them that I realised I was still unable to wipe the sour expression from my face.
Adam talked at me for another little while, but all I could do was watch Jacob and Pen as he made her giggle.
He seemed to have a hell of a lot to say for a man who had always been too shy even at his own dinner table.
What could he be saying to her? Why was she laughing like that?
He wasn’t that funny – not funny enough to warrant the leg slapping and the cackle, that’s for sure.
When he opened his bag and offered her my cheese and pickle sandwich with prawn cocktails crisps, which she had the audacity to reject with an upturned nose, I fought every urge to stamp over the row of barbecues like a hot coal walk and throttle him.
As the sun began to set and I was suitably fizzling in the sand, Alfie took his moment to mix things up a little, as he always seemed to do.
‘Truth or Dare!’ He announced to the group, gesturing to each of us with a burnt hot dog pinched between his fingers.
A few members of the party groaned while the rest sat up a little straighter in anticipation.
‘Will, you’re first,’ Alfie decreed, and his oldest brother swiped his hands on his shorts in preparation. ‘Truth or dare?’
Of course, Will chose the latter. I couldn’t imagine him talking about any of his feelings or secrets, so dare was by far his safest option.
Alfie tapped his chin for a moment, undoubtedly deliberating what he could force his big brother to do that would both torture and humiliate him.
‘Eat that sausage.’ He pointed to a victim of Will’s grilling skills that ended up flicked off the coals and into the sand, where it had lain collecting a sandy coating for at least the last hour.
Without a second thought or any worries about the ten-second rule, Will scarfed it down as though he hadn’t just eaten six, and all of his rugby friends, including Adam, cheered when he flashed his clean, if a little sandy, mouth to the crowd.
Callum opted for truth – again, unsurprising – and he confessed to having to go to the toilet in an old World War Two pillbox. I remembered this; it happened when we were fourteen after we walked a little too far once and he’d eaten a dodgy takeaway pizza the night before. Needs must, I suppose.
Charlie, another one of the boys’ mates, picked dare, and had to down an entire bottle of beer in one go.
It was gone in seconds with a roaring belch to finish it off, which of course elicited a loud reaction from everyone.
Lizzie went dare, and she had to stick her whole head in the sea and pull out a piece of seaweed using only her teeth.
She completed rather successfully without even a second thought.
As the game went on, two more of Will’s friends did dares, one involving an uncomfortable degree of nudity and another eating the seaweed Lizzie had pulled out.
‘Jacob, truth or dare.’ Alfie shoved the sausage of doom in his brother’s face and Jacob rolled his eyes. ‘Truth.’
Alfie, obviously hoping to command his other brother to do something ludicrous, looked a little disappointed for a second, until a menacing smirk crosses his face. ‘When are you going to grow a pair and tell Ava you’re in love with her?’
For the first time all day, everyone went deathly silent.
The sound of the waves crashing to shore grew louder and louder as we waited a lifetime for an answer.
If the group’s eyes weren’t on Jacob, they were on me, burning with excitement for the gossip, or awaiting a moment of heart aching rejection.
My heart rattled in my chest, and I wanted nothing more than to stand up and wade out into the sea and hope Poseidon swallowed me whole.
Jacob rolled his eyes after far too many beats of silence, and shook his head with a laugh.
That alone was enough to sting, but his words were excruciating.
‘There’s nothing between us. She’s my mate, just like Callum, and I’m not in love with him either.
’ His words were rushed, but I heard them loud and clear.
Callum didn’t laugh at this joke either.
He just looked at me with a sorry expression and tried to smile, but he looked about as pathetic as I felt.
‘All righty.’ Alfie too was a little lost for words. He tried to shift the attention to a new victim as quickly as he could. ‘Pen. Truth or Dare.’
‘Truth.’
‘Who do you have a crush on?’ Standard, easy – low risk, high reward.
‘Jake.’ She said it with a nonchalant shrug and blinked up at him expectantly. I didn’t think he’d heard her at first – he was sitting there with an absent look on his face as though he was in deep thought, but I couldn’t bring myself to watch them any longer.
I all but tuned out the game until my own name was called. Deciding that there had been far too many emotional confessions about matters of the heart that evening that had only left me feeling like a fool, I chose dare, hoping that Alfie might dare me to walk home, or just disappear into the night.
‘I dare you …’ Alfie thought for a moment, then smirked.
‘To kiss a person of your choice in this circle.’ My eyes flicked to Jacob, who was already looking at me, a dark expression clouding his eyes.
He’d humiliated me, and been nothing but an arsehole this evening.
He’d confessed to almost everyone he knows that he didn’t like me, that I was nothing more to him than a ‘mate’, no more special than any other person sitting in this circle.
So, I had not an ounce of hesitation as I turned to Adam and raised my eyebrow.
As soon as his head twitched in a nod, I clasped him by the face and pressed my lips to his with such force that he had to steady himself by anchoring his hand in the sand.
Whoops and cheers went up around the circle.
As I refused to do anything by half, I practically stuck my tongue down his throat, and Adam returned the favour with the same level of passion.
My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I finally pulled away.
Adam and I were both flushed and panting.
‘Ava Matthews!’ Lizzie looked at me with wide eyes and a look of pride slapped across her face as she whistled in respect.
Adam only stared at me, stunned, but I couldn’t bring myself to stay sitting beside him.
Getting to my feet, I began to wander back along the beach alone.
Adam started to follow me, but I was grateful when he was distracted by Alfie daring himself to run off into the sea completely naked.
I could hear the group cheering him on into the cold water.
‘Why are you following me?’ I didn’t need to turn around to know the footsteps in the sand behind me belonged to Jacob.
‘Where are you going?’ he fired back, increasing his pace to try and catch me as I neared the dunes I recognised from earlier.
‘That’s none of your concern.’
Jacob reached me as I tried and failed to scramble up the sand and instead ended up sinking into it until I lost my balance and fell to my knees.
‘Don’t touch me,’ I snapped as he held me by the arm to help me up. I shook myself out of his grip as soon as I felt his fingers on me.
‘Ava,’ he said sternly, though a little hurt seeped into his voice.
‘No, Jacob. You don’t get to do this – make me feel like shit, and then just pretend like nothing’s happened.
I ca–can’t keep doing this all the time.
You’re messing with my head and I don’t want to play this game any more.
’ I let him take a step towards me, but I still couldn’t bring myself to look him in the eye.
‘What game? Ava, I’m not playing any games.’ He tried to pull me closer, to move my face to force me to look at him, but I clung to my strength.
‘So why are you so hot and cold? Why is it that one minute am I the centre of your bloody universe, and the next I’m hardly even your mate?
How is it that we can spend hours alone feeling like we’re the only two people in the world, and the next, you can’t even look at me?
’ Finally, I stared him down, my eyed filled with tears, but my face was so stern, so unrelenting that he faltered for a second.
My phone vibrated persistently in my pocket, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at it, too charged, too angry to let this argument waver for even a moment.
Jacob ran a hand up his face, and he tugged at his hair with his fist as he tried to scramble for some words. ‘You—you’re upset because I didn’t tell all of Will’s mates that I’m in love with you?’
‘No, Jacob! I’m upset that you came all the way to London, and acted like I was a stranger.
You wouldn’t talk to my friends, you didn’t care about my art show, you looked like you wished to be anywhere else.
Then you acted like nothing was up, before switching up on me again on the beach.
I can’t keep up! I don’t understand what’s happened to you. ’