18
Toby
The Sea Rave festival came to Newquay every year. It had everything—music, surfing, good food, and all the hippy stuff Cole seemed to dig. It was clean and green too, no hard drugs and piles of litter. Just a bit of weed, campfires, and acoustic sounds that chilled me out, even without the fat joints floating around.
And, it was free... for us, at least.
I scaled the perimeter fence.
Cole followed me over the wooden structure and landed like a cat beside me. “Are we going to get nicked for this?”
“Nah. Look.” I pulled wristbands from my pocket and fastened one around his arm. “The owners are big donators to the farm. They send these every year for Joe, Harry, and whoever else on the staff wants them.”
“Joe and Harry are here?”
“Dunno. They don’t always come.”
“Do you?”
“Depends.”
Cole gave me a look that made my blood rush in my ears. I grabbed his hand and turned away from him, pulling him into the crowd.
Music and herbal smoke engulfed us. I saw faces I recognised and many I didn’t, but I ignored them all, too enraptured by Cole’s hand in mine.
The bar tent was by the main stage. Cole bought cider and a round of rum chasers. I took the rum and tipped it down my throat, letting the burning, fruity liquor take the edge off the spinning thoughts having a party in my brain. We were friends who’d come out to have fun. The fact that I wanted to drag him to a dark corner and finish what we’d started all those weeks ago wasn’t important.
I can still feel his hands on me.
Booze would help with that. Holding his hand? Not so much, but rum made me reckless. I didn’t care. I wanted this night with him.
We found a stage playing the kind of music we had in common—low, moody beats with sparkling electronica over the top. Home alone, it would’ve been chill. With Cole’s body pressed against mine as we moved with the crowd, it was heady and deep. It vibrated through me, and for the first time in months, I felt like myself. We drank more rum, more cider, and moved from tent to tent until we were kissing with an audience of faceless strangers, and I didn’t care about that either.
It was the strangest state of mind, to be so easily kissing him when I’d spent the last few weeks telling myself that I shouldn’t. That if I ever truly wanted him to be my friend, he was off-limits. But I was so drawn to him, I couldn’t stop. And he didn’t seem to want me to. He kissed me back and danced with me for hours, and the pressure to leave it alone or call it something that scared us just wasn’t there.
Eventually, though, he pulled back from me and cupped my face. “Whatever craziness this is turning into, I need more food before I fall over my own feet.”
I couldn’t argue with that. I let him pull me from the dubstep arena we’d somehow wound up in and over to the vegan burger van by the circus tent. He bought something smoky in a wrap that I inhaled, then we stumbled to some hay bales to lie back and take stock of the dizzy new world we’d found ourselves in.
Somewhere along the line, he’d bought water too. We drank it, then I leaned against him and watched the festival play out through heavy-lidded eyes.
It was a nice place to be.
His arm around me was even better, and I was halfway to perhaps falling asleep when Rhys, Joe, and Harry appeared from nowhere and dropped down beside us.
None of them seemed to notice Cole wrapped around me or how content I was with the situation. Rhys and Joe were drunk, and Harry was tolerating the pair of them.
I laughed. Cole grinned down at me. “Something funny?”
“Just watching Harry play daddy bear.”
“That’s his vibe.”
“You’re obsessed with that word.”
Cole snorted. “It’s a good word.”
I hummed and leaned harder against him, watching Joe and Rhys pass a joint between them.
