Chapter 2
TWO
KAT
Sweat slicks my skin as bodies jut and writhe on the dance floor. At this point, I don’t even know if it’s mine. I’ve had enough vodka, lemonade and limes not to care, either.
The flashing lights slash across my roommate, Ellie’s, face, interspersed with her gleeful half-shouting of the dance song’s lyrics.
Some drunken guy with a hairstyle far too reminiscent of an alpaca grinds against her from behind.
Gross. I take her hand and tug her through the sway of revellers until we reach the bar.
‘Tequila?’ Ellie shouts over the din.
‘Water,’ I insist. I’m all for drinking my bodyweight in shots on a night out, but we’ve got to pace ourselves if we don’t want to end up scrubbing vomit from the carpet by morning.
‘Stick-in-the-mud,’ Ellie says with a roll of her dark eyes. ‘Kat in the mud.’
I groan as she breaks into tipsy giggles. We’re definitely on different levels of drunk.
‘Going to pee.’ Ellie saunters in the direction of the bathroom while I wait to catch a server’s attention.
Leaning forward, I squeeze together my cleavage to expedite the process.
By the time I’m handed the two bottles of water, Ellie is back on the dance floor, necking the face off a stranger.
Thrusting the water between her and her beau, I lean against a nearby pillar and rehydrate.
When hands slip around my waist, I shriek and twist, squeezing my bottle and sending a jet of lukewarm water into Darren’s face.
‘Oh shit, sorry.’ I bite my lip to hide the laugh which bubbles.
‘It’s a good thing you’re my favourite troublemaker,’ Darren says, wiping his face with his hand before pulling my hips flush to his, and sliding his wet lips over my throat. A delicious little thrill danced up my spine. ‘Thought I wasn’t going to catch you before you went home.’
‘Mmm, and yet you did.’
‘It would be easier if you let me come to yours sometime. I could make you moan all night and cook you breakfast in the morning.’ God, he’s a sweet man.
Yet, I still kept him on a tight leash. No visiting my flat.
No labels. No feelings. Just sex. You’d think he’d jump at the chance.
He did, at first, but recently he’s been trying for more.
Trying for something I’m not ready to give.
Twenty-two and I’ve never had a boyfriend. Not a real one. Whenever I’ve been interested in a guy, proximity only seems to douse my ardour. Not my sex drive, but that romance you see in movies, or hear others talk about in sparkly-eyed wonder.
Maybe I’m just a product of my childhood.
Darren’s lips graze my collarbone before inching their way to mine. As always, Darren is a little heavy on the tongue. Which is more of a problem upstairs than down.
‘Baby,’ he moans, grinding his hips and pressing his growing hardness between my thighs. ‘C’mon, let’s go back to yours.’
Heat fills my cheeks as I tip my head back and moan. God, I may not want to marry him, but damn does it feel good to be adored.
‘Not tonight.’ I scrape my nails over his shirt and wish that it would make him groan. He’s never vocal. It’s nice to get a little appreciation for your efforts sometimes.
We kiss as the beat of the music thrums around us, the vibrations only adding to the moment.
Before I know it, Darren has me backed against the wall with his tongue in my mouth and two fingers between my thighs.
It’s reckless, but it gets my blood roiling through me.
Bodies writhe around us, the room dripping with youthful excitement.
And lust. Cheap alcohol and student inhibition always make for a horny-people soup.
‘So hot,’ he groans as I press my head back against the wall and focus on the delicious tension building between my legs.
‘Shh.’ Wrapping my arms around his neck, I arch my hips to take his fingers deeper. I don’t want him to talk. I want him to get me off.
It’s hard to focus with all the noise and the undercurrent of worry that someone might film me getting fingered and spread it around campus.
We could get a room at the shitty hotel across the street, like we usually do.
Sighing, I grip his wrist and slow his movements.
A furrow crosses his brow. My body screams at me to let him continue, to use an orgasm to escape for a little bit.
That it might be hot to let him make me come in front of a roomful of drunk strangers.
I can’t. My body might be enjoying the sensation, but my head’s not in it. Not tonight.
‘C’mon baby, let’s get a room.’
‘I can’t, I’m out with Ellie.’
‘Ellie won’t care, she’s all over that other guy,’ he wheedles.
The strobe lights flit over his face, and I feel like I’m kicking a puppy.
It’s not his fault. He’s a cute guy, seems nice, always complimentary.
There’s nothing wrong with him, per se. He just can’t fill that hole in my heart.
That little slice of me that is waiting for the boy with the dirty knees to come back as a grown man.
I know it’s crazy. He’d never spoken to me. Never even shared his name, if he had one. Just one summer of quiet friendship. One summer of seeing outside of my petted bubble for the first time. Darren wouldn’t understand. No one would.
So I give the only parts of me that I can. The fun. The flesh. And wait for the day when I lose hope for a boy whom I barely knew.
Ellie, thankfully, chooses that moment to barrel over in a fit of giggles and smeared lipstick and grabs my hand. ‘I need food!’
Before Darren can protest, we’re tumbling out onto the street amongst the late-night party-goers. A quick stop in the kebab shop has us heading home with dodgy-looking meat slathered in chilli and mayo, and some swaying steps.
‘You’re going to have to let him lock you down eventually,’ Ellie says through a mouthful of pitta.
‘It’s just a bit of fun.’
‘He likes you a lot. Every time I see him on campus, he pesters me for info on you.’ Ellie bumps my hip with hers as I walk. ‘He’s hot. He’ll happily chow until you wet his face, what more do you want?’
To fill the boy-shaped hole in my soul. To know what happened to him.
Stuffing my fork into my food, I lift my fingers to the heart-shaped rock I wear on a cord around my neck.
A gift from him. The dark-haired, dark-eyed, dirty-kneed, bruised boy whom I’d taken under my wing.
I’d treated him more like one of my dolls than a living, breathing kid, but he’d never minded.
His silence was calm and curious, but I was used to filling the woods with my sole chatter anyway.
We’d been like glue together for weeks. Until that terrible day. Then he disappeared as quickly as he’d appeared. For months, I pleaded with Nanny and my parents about him. My role was to be seen and not heard. To be good.
Always so sweet and good.
‘Earth to Kat,’ Ellie says, giving me a harder bump that sends a sea of lettuce onto the pavement.
‘Oi!’
‘If you don’t want him, you can always loan him to me for the night.’ Ellie wiggles her brows.
‘He’s not your type.’
‘Listen, sometimes you get to a point where you’ll expand your type to anything with a hard cock and half an ounce of stamina.’
I laugh before stuffing another mouthful of the highly spiced, salty lamb into my mouth.
We head around the side of the betting shop, down the bricked alley that leads to our ground-floor flat.
My parents would shit a brick if they saw the area I live in.
They believe they are paying for a plush, upmarket apartment for Ellie and me; little do they know I’m paying one-third of the costs and saving up for a rainy day.
Pissing their money up the wall is fun, but having a nest egg I can dip into without having to petition them until I can graduate and get a job — priceless.
So the flat is cramped, and a bit dingy, and I get a view of a brick wall from my bedroom window, but I love it. Ellie and I have it stuffed with drapes and pillows, like a cosy nest. We have stacks of wine and a fancy coffee machine. Our little escape from the other university students.
The citrus smell of Ellie’s favourite kitchen spray hits us as we walk in. I put my takeout on the side and go back for the letter I stepped over on the way in. It’s far too late for the postie to have been.
The envelope is thick. Expensive feeling. I turn it over as Ellie kicks off her heels and drops her backside into the sofa, sinking into the cushion pile.
‘What’s that?’ she asks, before popping a slice of pepper in her mouth.
‘I’m not sure.’
My name is written on the front, all in capital letters, in deep red ink.
Katherine.
My full name. Only my parents use it. And some professors.
A twist of anxiety threads through my stomach. No stamp. Someone brought it here. But who? Not Ellie, she’s been with me all night. I’ve never taken anyone else here. We only moved in a little while ago, transferring over from university halls.
I tug open the envelope and pull out a single, plain piece of cream card with five words scratched onto it. Words that make my intestines cramp.
I know what you did.
Swallowing hard, the card trembles in my fingers.
‘You okay, babe?’ Ellie asks, her eyes already drooping as she relaxes back into the seat.
‘Yeah,’ I whisper. ‘Fine.’
A lie.
Because only one person knows what happened that summer.
Him.
But if he found me, why would he taunt me like this?
Did he blame me for what happened? Shifting the softly snoring Ellie’s food off her lap before it ends up on the rug, I slink away to my room, closing the door behind me while I read the note a hundred more times, flipping it over and hunting for more. For something.
Someone had to be having a laugh. It doesn’t reference anything from back then. It’s just my paranoia throwing back to that awful afternoon.
I crouch against the door and screw my eyes shut, feeling every bit like the little girl I’d been back then.
Remembering the long, lonely days when I’d go out and play for hours just to escape the oppressive silence of home.
To avoid the piano lessons and dance tutors.
To get covered in mud and chat to frogs, and splash in the shallow stream.
To throw buttons in the well and wish for things my wealthy parents couldn’t give me. Attention. Siblings. Friends.
Even a puppy was off limits.
My childhood was full of echoes and emptiness, and yet I couldn’t complain. Others had it way worse.
I grip my heart stone necklace in my fist and breathe. Counting down from twenty and trying to reason that this has to be some weird joke.
It has to be.
Because if the boy is back, as a man, his memories of that summer might differ from mine. What if what I saw as saving him, he saw as betrayal? Or worse, what if it’s not him at all? What if someone knows?