Chapter Twenty-One
Saturday
Joshua:
I’ve spent the last twenty minutes pretending I’m listening to Cameron explain why the referee was a “corrupt little bastard with the spatial awareness of Stevie Wonder” while watching Tom from Ruby’s course try to chat her up across the pub.
The pretending isn’t going particularly well. However, Tom seems to be doing fucking brilliantly.
Ruby arrived with Emma maybe half an hour after us, wearing jeans, boots and this dark green top that brings out the darker tones of her skin and makes her hazel eyes shine.
She barely made it three steps inside before Tom appeared from a table near the windows, called her name and wrapped an arm around her shoulders as though they’d arranged to meet here, and Ruby laughed while Emma carried on towards Oscar without her.
“Joshie!”
I drag my attention back to Cam. “What?”
He’s wedged into the corner of the booth with one leg stretched underneath the table, in the tracksuit bottoms he changed into after the match, his third pint sitting in front of him beside a half-eaten packet of salt and vinegar crisps which was Dave’s.
“I said,” Cam repeats with great patience, “that tackle was attempted murder.”
“It was fine.” I wave to the bruise on my face. “Barely a scratch.”
Cam points at me. “This is why nobody likes defenders.”
“I’m not a defender.”
Dave snorts into his pint while Oscar, sitting opposite us with Emma tucked against his side, reaches across and steals one of Cam’s crisps. Cam slaps his hand away. “Get your own.”
Oscar glares at him. “They’re Dave’s.”
Dave waves his hands. “They’re communal.”
Cam tuts. “They weren’t communal when I started eating them.”
Oscar mutters, “You’re such a prick,” before eating the crisp anyway, and Cam launches into a completely unnecessary spiel about pork scratchings being superior.
I tune Cam out, trying to pick my mood up from the gutter.
I know we won. I know I played well. Oscar told me in the changing rooms that the assist at the end was exactly why he wanted me in the Firsts, then Cam punched me in the shoulder hard enough to bruise before screaming that we were all getting pissed.
All the lads on the team are making an effort with me too, which I should appreciate because I always feel so fucking lonely.
It’s why Dave even came and sat down, he’s never really spoken to me before.
But I can’t stop my attention from snagging on the unbelievable brunette across the room.
Almost kissing her the other day has done something to me.
I can’t stop thinking about what it would have been like if Oscar hadn’t knocked on that door, if Ruby had stayed between my legs with her hands around my neck and I’d finally stopped pretending I didn’t want her.
I think about her mouth more than I should, about whether she’d kiss me slowly at first or go straight for it the way she does everything else, whether she’d make that little breathy noise she made when my thumbs moved over her waist, whether she’d pull me closer when I touched her or make me work for every inch.
Tom says something that makes her laugh and she reaches out to shove his shoulder.
I fucking hate it.
Logically, I know she can talk to whoever she wants.
He’s on her course, they have a project together, and from what I gathered the other night they’re friends. There is nothing remotely unusual about him talking to her in a pub full of students, and Ruby certainly hasn’t given me any reason to think I should have an opinion about it.
We’re friends.
And I don’t think I can handle more than that. She’d be better off without me anyway.
So I’m not entirely sure why Tom touching the small of her back as he moves aside for a guy carrying three pints makes me want to walk over there and fling his hand off her.
“You’re doing it again,” Ewan says beside me.
I turn my head. “Doing what?”
He’s leaning against the end of the booth with his pint held against his stomach, ginger hair sticking up in every direction because he and Brooke were putting on a proper display of PDA fifteen minutes ago.
“Josh.” His voice is taunting and I can feel myself bristling already. “Come on.”
“Come on, what?” I snap.
He lowers his voice so the rest can’t hear. “Just go over there and pull her away. She’d probably want to spend time with you over him.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“Trust me. No one is willingly spending time with Tom the Tosser.”
My eyes slide in their direction and she’s laughing. “Seems fine to me.”
Ewan lets out a long, weary sigh. “So fucking stubborn.”
Thankfully, Cam chooses to start arguing with Oscar about whether assists should count towards a drinking game they’ve invented, which drags Ewan into the debate and gives me an excuse to turn towards the rest of the pub again without my best friend verbally diagnosing whatever the fuck is wrong with me.
I can tell you what’s wrong all by myself.
I am an emotionally inept creature.
I don’t fucking work properly.
I don’t know how to talk about anything that matters.
I either say nothing at all or wait until I’m so wound up that whatever does come out sounds angry, even when anger isn’t really what I’m feeling.
I disappear when things get too much. I ignore messages from people I care about and then spend hours hating myself for ignoring them.
I can sit beside someone I’ve known for years and have absolutely no idea how to tell them I’m having a bad day, so instead I make some shit joke, tell them I’m tired and go home.
I’m jealous when I have no right to be. I’m defensive about things nobody is attacking me over.
I can hold a grudge until I’ve forgotten half the reasons I was pissed off in the first place, and when someone gets too close I start waiting for the exact point they realise I’m more work than I’m worth.
I don’t trust people easily, and when I finally do, I trust them so completely that there doesn’t seem to be anything in between.
I either keep you at arm’s length or hand you every weapon you could possibly use against me and then act surprised when one of them eventually ends up buried in my chest.
I’m still angry at a dead person.
I’m still angry at myself for being angry at him.
I miss James so much there are days it feels impossible that a body can carry that much grief around and still do normal things afterwards, like go to lectures or play football or stand in Tesco deciding which fucking pasta sauce to buy.
Then there are other days where I barely think about him at all, and those are almost worse because I get home and realise I’ve gone six hours without remembering my own twin existed.
I don’t know which version of me is worse.
The one who can’t let him go, or the one who occasionally does.
And underneath all of that is this horrible suspicion that Dad might be right. I’m difficult. I’m exhausting. That loving me eventually becomes a job nobody asked for, and people either leave or get hurt trying to stay.
So, yeah. Ewan doesn’t need to diagnose me.
The long and short of it is that I’m fucked.
I find myself studying Ruby’s face for signs she’s uncomfortable before realising what I’m doing and feeling like a complete dickhead.
She can handle herself. I’ve seen her handle Bonnie.
I’ve seen her climb through a toilet window rather than admit defeat.
If Tom were bothering her, I doubt there would be much ambiguity about it.
That doesn’t make me want him there.
In fact I’d quite happily fling him through the fucking window.
Shit.
I take a long drink of my pint.
When did this happen?
There hasn’t been a day where Ruby suddenly became important.
No grand revelation. No point where I consciously decided I wanted to spend every spare hour with her.
She was just there, and then she was there again, and then I started asking whether she wanted breakfast before I’d even gone to bed the night before.
Now every room feels divided into where Ruby is and where Ruby isn’t.
“You gonna drink that?” Oscar asks, pulling my focus back to him. He looks oddly like Ruby and nothing like her at the same time. His brown eyes are assessing me the same way her hazel ones do. “You’ve been holding it for about ten minutes.”
“I’m pacing myself,” I grunt.
Cam makes an offended noise. “No fucking pacing after a win.”
“I told you already, mate, I don’t really drink.”
“We know,” Oscar tells me. “Cam won’t shut up about it.”
Cam sits straighter. “Because it concerns me.”
“My alcohol consumption concerns you?”
“Yes. You’re a footballer. There’s a culture to uphold.”
Dave leans across the table, eyes on Cam. “You could do with drinking less, to be honest.”
“That will never be true.” Cam rebuffs.
Dave looks at Oscar. “Remember when he threw up into a traffic cone after Varsity?”
Oscar nods. “Or when he got mowed down by a bull at Daisy Waite’s birthday party?”
“That bull tried to kill me!” Cam booms. “Speaking of, has anyone had a run-in with Bernardo recently?”
My head snaps towards him. “You know Bernardo?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” Cam asks, looking thoroughly unhappy. “Little fucker tried to eat my nose right off my face. He’s got it in for me.”
I look around the table, everyone is nodding sagely. “Why doesn’t the uni just get rid of it?”
“They can’t,” Oscar grimaces. “Swans are protected by the Queen.”
“What?” I stare at him. “What do you mean that thing is protected by the Queen?”
Oscar shrugs. “All swans belong to her, don’t they?”
“You’re telling me an eighty-nine-year-old woman is personally responsible for the fucking psychopath that keeps chasing me around campus?”
Cam looks the most serious I’ve ever seen him. “He almost got you too?”
“Yeah. In Freshers. Tried to take my toe.”
“Like my nose!”
Emma giggles, her cheeks rosy from the heat and wine. “How’d it get to your nose?”
Cam waves his arm in the air. “Well, I tried to pet him, didn’t I?”
I gape at the insane bastard. “Why would you try and pet that homicidal prick?”
“I thought if I got on his level he might respect me.”