“What—you’ve only had sex with two women?” Georgie said loudly—too loudly.
“Shhh,” he said, leaning forward, waving his hands up and down as if they might somehow magically lower the already spoken voice. “No, two times, same woman.” Beneath his skin, embers of a blush glowed.
Jodie sat back with a plonk and a twist to her face. “Oh my God, we need to get you laid.”
“And you, Georgie?” BJ turned to her, keen to remove the focus from his own dismal sex life.
“Oh, ah . . .” She looked upwards, recalling the numbers, smiled at one point as if one memory was a good one for her, and started counting softly. “Eight,” she announced, slurping loudly on the last of her drink.
And then all eyes turned to me. I blushed pink under their expectant gaze and I paused, I didn’t want to tell them. Not here, not with ears listening in.
“Well, spit it out, Aims,” Jodie said. I thought if I held my fingers up low perhaps Karson and Ethan wouldn’t know. I popped them out against my thigh.
“Two. That’s it?” Jodie said, eyes wide. “You’ve only slept with two men!”
I rushed to explain why. Why I needed to, I didn’t know, I guess, under the hot gaze of their mortification it was one of those many ‘speak first, think later’ moments. “I need to be in—” in the nick of time I realised what was about to fly from my mouth, I stopped the words from forming, but if I thought I’d gotten away with it, I hadn’t.
“Oh no,” Jodie said with a dramatic roll of her eyes. “You’re in love with him and, like a dick, he ignores you. Right, Amy, I’mdefinitely getting you laid tonight whether you like it or not. Just shag Ethan, you live with him, he’s hot, he likes you. Easy, no strings, sex.”
“For Goodness sakes, if you go anywhere near that, wear protection. God knows what could crawl into your pearly gates from his dick,” Georgie said as another tray of drinks hit our table.
“Georgie.” I gave a short, horrified laugh, covering my face with my hands. “Please stop.”
“I saw a girl the other day, it looked like she had large patch of cauliflowers growing from her forest, it was not pretty.”
“I like cauliflowers,” Darcy said, oblivious to her metaphor. He said it just as I was taking a sip from my drink, liquid sprayed in an uncouth manner from my mouth and all over the table.
We all laughed so hard we cried.
“Not those kinds of cauliflowers,” BJ explained, with a big kind grin.
“Oh, you’re talking about Human Papillomavirus, aren’t you? Yes, that’s nasty, why didn’t you just say that. I guess I can see how you’d think, when left without treatment, they look like cauliflowers. It can cause cervical cancer. In fact, cervical cancers are not found in the absence o?—”
“That’s okay Darcy, we get it,” BJ interrupted him. I glanced at Darcy. As much as he was socially mildly inappropriate at times he was endearing, inadvertently funny, and I held a genuine affection for him. Ethan slid in beside me. I shuffled over. Everyone fell into an awkward silence, the kind of silence that only happens when the person you were talking about suddenly appears.
“What are we talking about?” He smiled across at the group. I shot a sharp foot into his calf.
Jodie was the first to recover, she smiled. “Oh, nothing much, thanks for the drinks.”
“It’s my pleasure.” He gave her a dazzling smile. I rolled my eyes.
“Hot doctor alert,” Georgie spoke in excited hushed tones, “and your one-night stand has just arrived, Aims.”
I followed her gaze. My heart plummeted, as it did I felt the blood pull from my face as if someone was below me suctioning it away. My heart recovered and began to race sporadically in my chest.
This can’t be happening.
Standing inside the door, chatting, was the one person I thought I might never see again—Tom.
I hadn’t even realized I’d stood. As if a spirit had called his name his eyes caught mine. He excused himself and headed straight toward me.
Two questions raced through my head simultaneously, what the hell was he doing in Church Heights? And how fast could I run? But, like a deer caught in headlights waiting for the car to hit, knowing its inevitable impact would cause catastrophic damage, I stood immobile as he strode confidently toward me.
Georgie didn't notice my dismay. “Tom, come meet Amy,” she called out across the room.
Her words drove like a stake into my already panicked heart. Ethan was more astute than Georgie. His eyes narrowed, skating from me, to Tom, and back again.
“Amy, it's good to see you.” Tom's tone was smooth—too smooth, as if he wasn’t at all surprised to see me. No, he’d expected to see me, he’d come prepared.
