She grabbed her bag and shoved in her keys and phone. ‘I’m off, Dad!’ she yelled down.
‘Yep!’ he yelled back.
Outside, the afternoon was as blistering as it had been for weeks. Mae prayed not to sweat through her deodorant. It had never been more important that she not smell like a teenager. She needed to smell like a woman who was fully in charge of her sweat glands.
She gave herself one last subtle sniff as she reached the tree next to the pond. Nothing disastrous rose to meet her nostrils.
Callie was already there. Oh God, had she seen the sniff?
‘I saw that,’ Callie said.
‘No, you didn’t,’ Mae said.
Callie rose to meet her. Mae didn’t know if she was going to hug her or kiss her on the cheek. What did they normally do? Mae wasn’t sure. She’d never had to think about it.
But then Callie leant in and did a big, exaggerated sniff. ‘Pretty good.’
Mae swatted her on the shoulder. But she wasn’t really mad. She was grateful for some normality between them.
Mae saw that Callie had already laid out a blanket under the tree. There was a rucksack beside it, bulging in a suspiciously lumpy way.
Callie sat down. ‘You look nice,’ she said, patting the spot beside her.
Mae sat. ‘So do you,’ she said, because Callie did. She was also in jeans but paired with a T-shirt that she’d always said made her arms look hot. Which it did.
Which meant Callie was trying to look hot forher. ForMae. Christ. Mae didn’t know how she was gonna survive this.
Callie’s smile went crooked. ‘Can I try that greeting again?’ she leaned forward.
Mae leaned awkwardly towards her. They settled on a quick, awkward side-hug that went on a fraction too long for ‘just friends’ and a fraction too short for ‘it is now fine for me to casually mount you’.
‘Hi,’ Callie said when they separated.
‘Hi,’ Mae echoed, breathless.
Callie kept grinning at her and then seemed to realise it was going on too long. ‘Right. Got things to do.’ She turned to her bag. She began to unpack.
Mae glanced around her while Callie set to work, at the familiar village peeking beyond the hedge, the faint glimmer of the pond beside them, and the caterpillars dropping out of the tree every so often. It was all just the same.
The only thing that had changed was the girl sitting next to her. And really, not even that. So why did it feel like Mae was sitting on the moon?
Callie cleared her throat. ‘Right. Before we begin, I’d like to state for the record that I haveattemptedromance.’
Mae eyed the array in front of them.
There was a multipack of crisps, two sausage rolls in their plastic coffin, a loaf of sliced white that had seen better days, a sweating tub of coleslaw, and something that looked like an approximation of hummus.
‘Goodness,’ Mae said. ‘You really have.’
‘I know,’ Callie said. ‘It’s a sad situation.’
‘It’s nice,’ Mae lied.
‘In my defence,’ Callie went on, ‘every nice thing available in this village comes from your bakery, and I couldn’t exactly come in and ask your dad.’
Mae’s heart squeezed inconveniently. ‘Youcould’ve.’
‘Yeah, I thought about it. But I wasn’t sure… what you’d told him.’
