I’m sorry.
“No,” I mutter. “Please. Don’t.”
I try to swat George’s hands away but he pins my wrist to the wall.
“What’s your problem?” he snarls. “It’s only a bloody blow—”
And then someone wrenches the door and, thank God, the lock is damaged and flies off. It strikes George in the mouth. A spray of blood hits the partition wall. Then a pair of hands reaches into the cubicle and drags my drinking partner out into the bathroom. I blunder after him in time to see the adorable kid from the bar pull George to his feet and throw him against the wall.
“Get your dirty little hands off him.”
“Or what, Raj?” George sleeves the blood from his mouth. “Or what?”
Raj crosses the distance between them. “Or I’ll tell Bradley you’re hustling in the toilets and not cutting him in.”
Raj releases him and George grumbles his way to the door. When we’re alone, Raj gives me a pained grimace.
“I think you need some water.”
I shake my head. Something familiar about this kid. Can’t quite…
“You’re him,” I murmur. “You’re the one who was with Ellis at New Year.”
Raj nods. “Okay, Dylan, I think we need to talk.”
The digital clock above the counter flashes 00.14, and for the first time in my life I push away a slice of perfectly edible pizza. My stomach feels like a sack of rubbish churning in the machinery of a refuse truck. Whenever I look at the neon in the window of the takeaway, stars explode behind my eyes. The table’s greasy but I don’t care. I have to rest my face against something cool.
When Raj returns with a bottle of water, I lift my head a couple of centimetres only to find a cold chip stuck to my cheek.
“Wow.” He nods, handing me my drink. “I can totally see why Ellis fell for you.”
I unpeel the chip. “Yeah, he thought I was a real catch, clearly.”
This is the ultimate in weirdness – my dead boyfriend’s fling being kind and buying me food. I’m not really sure how we got here, either. One minute I’m zipping up my fly in the bathroom, next I’m waiting for a slice I never asked for, sweaty palms pressed between my knees.
Raj takes the seat opposite and swigs his own water. And honestly, El, I can see what attracted you to him. This boy has serious eyes. I mean, onyx-dark and so freaking fathomless I can’t look away.
“So, I heard you and your incredibly gorgeous friend talking at the bar.”
“Yeah. Mike. He’s straight.”
“The world is full of such tragic stories.”
His finger makes patterns in the spilled salt on the table, jags and little darts that make me think of a pale blur on a dark road.
“Okay,” he sighs, “I’m guessing from what you said that Bradley showed you a video of me and Ellis at New Year? So there are a few things you need to know about what youthinkyou saw. First, and most important, there was nothing going on between me and Ellis.”
“Really?” I arch back in my chair, suddenly wanting to put some distance between us. “Gotta say, you had me completely fooled.”
He leans forward. He won’t let me get away. “Yeah, you know something, Dylan? A twenty-second snapshot of a person’s life can be pretty deceptive. Your regrettably straight friend was right about that. So let’s get this clear: I kissed Ellis once.Once. And what you saw on that video was the first Act, the interval, and the final curtain of our entire whirlwind romance. So I thought he was cute when I saw him come into the club that night. Are you going to blame me for that?”
No, El, I can’t blame him for that.
Raj scrunches up his face, trying to remember, or perhaps searching for the right words. “He looked so sad and, I don’t know, desperate.”
“Desperate?” I nod. “Cheers.”
“Dylan, please stop being so touchy. From what I know about you, this moody teenager act isn’t a good fit.”
