Callie suddenly looked mortified. ‘Oh, wait. Maybe you weren’t even thinking—’
‘Iwas,’ Mae said quickly. And then blushed.
Callie took a very big drink of wine.
She decided to tell Callie about her neighbour, whose car had been shat on by so many squirrels, day after day, that he’d started talking about it being a targeted attack. Today, it had all culminated in him yelling at the trees, begging for mercy in full view of the bakery.
By the time it got to Mae’s impression of him, Callie was laughing her arse off. ‘But what did he do to bring on the vendetta?’ she asked through her mirth.
‘That’s the question we wereallasking,’ Mae chuckled.
With every giggle, the knot in Mae’s stomach loosened a little. This was still Callie. The girl whose laugh she could pick out in a crowded room.
They took their glasses to Mae’s bedroom. The room suddenly looked very small with both of them in it.
Callie’s gaze took it all in like she hadn’t been here a million times, lingering on the framed photo of the two of them at thirteen, pulled faces and crooked fringes.
‘God, look at us,’ she said, going closer. ‘You’d never know we’d turn out this hot.’
Mae didn’t know what to say to that, so she sat on the bed instead, putting her glass down on the floor.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
Then Callie crossed the room, slow and deliberate, and sat beside her. The mattress dipped under her weight, tilting them closer together.
‘We can stop at any point,’ Callie said quietly.
‘OK.’
‘Seriously.’
‘I know.’
‘I mean it. I don’t want you to be nervous.’
‘I’mnot,’ Mae said quickly. She didn’t know if that was true, but she wanted to stop feeling like the little kid in the situation.
‘Good.’ Callie paused. ‘I thinkIam, though.’
Mae looked at Callie. She could detect no flippancy. ‘Why wouldyoube nervous?’
Callie shrugged. ‘This is my first time too.’
Mae gave her a look.
‘I meant with a girl, so you can put that eyebrow down,’ Callie told her.
‘Oh, right.’ Mae smiled. ‘Good.’
‘Good? What if I’m… terrible?’ Callie asked anxiously.
‘What if I am?’ Mae asked, but she was no longer as scared as she’d been a minute ago.
Callie hooked her pinkie finger onto Mae’s. ‘We don’t have to rush, right? If all we do tonight is kiss and then, I don’t know, eattoast, that’s fine.’ She shook her head at herself. ‘Sorry, not fine. It’sgreat.’
Mae cleared her throat. ‘Callie.’
‘Yes?’
