‘Exactly.’ I stand up and walk over to his wardrobe. Sinclair actually raises a hand to catch the T-shirt I throw to him, but he misses. It takes him half a lifetime to unbutton his shirt and pull it off. When he stands up to take off his trousers, I really try not to look, but I can’t help seeing the way his shoulder blades move, and what that does to his back muscles. At last, he’s slipped on the T-shirt, and I take the chance to pull back his duvet. He has to cling to my shoulder. For a moment I’m scared as he stumbles forwards, and I’m only too aware of the weight of his body. Sometimes I forget that Sinclair’s almost head and shoulders taller than me. That happened kind of overnight. Before the summer holidays at the end of the fourth form, we were almost the same height, but by Hogmanay in the fifth, he could suddenly put his chin on the top of my head when he hugged me at that party in Edinburgh.
I feel Sinclair’s forearm, hard beneath my fingers, as I hold onto him. My mouth goes dry. Where the hell did all those muscles come from?
I steer him back onto the mattress by the shoulder and step between Sinclair’s legs. I guess he’s feeling dizzy and needs to hold onto something, because I suddenly feel his fingers on the back of my thigh, his hot hands through the thin fabric of thedress he picked out for me, and suddenly I wish he’d pull it off me. When he looks up at me, I get butterflies. His blond hair falls into his face. How does he manage it? Even pissed out of his mind, he looks hot. Sinclair’s jaw muscles twitch; he gulps. His fingertips stroke my leg very gently for a second. Then he pulls back his hand. My heart thumps nervously. I don’t have to tell him to lie down – fortunately, he works that out for himself.
‘So, what’s it like?’ he asks, as I turn away again to chuck his clothes into the laundry basket.
‘What?’
‘Being noticed by the person you want to kiss . . .’ He sounds tired, his words are slurred. ‘Must be a great feeling.’
And, zap, I’m freezing.
What does he mean? Is he talking about Val?
Who else, Tori?
But why does he sound so reproachful? What’s it to him who I kiss or don’t kiss? Sinclair’s had hundreds of opportunities to do what Val did. Seriously, maybe even more. I can’t remember when I stopped counting. Hundreds, thousands, and he didn’t take one of them.
Luckily for me, Sinclair doesn’t seem to expect an answer. He’s too drunk. Probably forgot his words the second he uttered them. I haven’t, though. He sinks onto the pillow, eyes closed. How can he just fall asleep?
For a moment, I stand uncertainly in his room. I’m longing to get out of here, but I stupidly promised Henry and everyone that I’d stay with him.
I suppress a sigh. I’m conscious of standing barefoot in the middle of my drunken best friend’s bedroom, wearing a long evening dress. On the night of the New Year Ball. Wow.
And yet I’m kind of glad that I’m now getting undressed in Sinclair’s room and not Val’s.
Sinclair blinks.
‘Shut your eyes,’ I order, as I reach for the zip. Luckily, it’s on the side so I don’t need any help.
‘I won’t look,’ mumbles Sinclair. His eyes are heavy. They close. ‘And if I did . . . I know what you look like naked.’
‘This may come as a surprise to you, but women’s bodies change between the ages of twelve and eighteen.’
‘You were thirteen,’ he slurs.
Damn it, he’s right. But it was dark that night in the second form when we went for a swim in the loch near Ebrington. Skinny-dipping. No one could have seen a thing.
Sinclair’s window is on the latch and a slight breeze catches my shoulders as I slip out of the dress. It falls to the floor around my feet. I’m not wearing a bra – it has that low back and the bust is tight-fitting enough to hold everything in place. I step out of the circle of fabric on the floorboards, turn aside and pull another of Sinclair’s T-shirts from the wardrobe. It’s the one from the charity run last summer and it reaches to my thighs.
‘OK,’ I say, turning back to the bed.
Sinclair doesn’t respond. He’s lying on his back, his head slumped to one side. Towards the wall. His heart-shaped mouth is slightly open, his chest rising and falling evenly.
Well, I guess he really wasn’t looking. Well done him.
The weird silence is oppressive as I slip into the tiny bathroom and use his shower gel to clean the make-up off my face. I gargle with his mouthwash, which will have to do for the time being, and drink ice-cold water out of my hands. When I straighten, my eyes look back at me in the mirror, red and tired. Luckily, I find one of my hair elastics in his bathroom cupboard – I leave them all over the place. When Sinclair’s hair is as long as it is just now, he sometimes puts his fringe into a wee topknot. I have a bit of a soft spot for that ‘hairdo’, but there’s no need for him to know that. I skilfully tie up my long, copper-red hair into a bun because every time I’ve shared a bed with him, he’s managedwithout fail to roll over and lie on it in the night. It’s amazing how painful that is.
Sinclair’s still out for the count when I come back into the room. Just to be on the safe side, I put the bathroom bin at the head-end of the bed. You never know. Then I climb over his sleeping body. He twitches as I squeeze between him and the wall.
‘Hm?’ He blinks.
‘Budge up, chicken.’ I shove him towards the edge of the bed. I’ll never stop calling him that. Not since the time in the juniors when we went on a trip to an organic farm in Highbourne and he panicked at the sight of the hens running everywhere.
‘I’ll fall out,’ he moans.
‘No, you won’t. I’ve got you. But I don’t want to be in the way if you boak. There’s a bucket next to you.’
