‘This game really is so nice,’ I sniffed, almost moved to tears as an elderly couple shared a delicate peck on the lips. ‘I almost feel bad for always pretending I had period pains to get out of rounders. It’s all so lovely.’
The camera cut away from the sweet older couple and landed on a much younger man and woman who immediately launched into the kind of clinch I could only hope their mothers never saw.
‘Spoke too soon,’ I muttered, looking away. I’d had far too many drinks to see that much of someone else’s tongue.
And then everyone around us started yelling.
At first I couldn’t understand why the next girl on screen looked so familiar. Blonde hair, blue eyes, oversized sequinned cowboy hat, nacho stain on her T-shirt. It was only when she raised her hand to her face a split second after I raised my hand to my face I realized what was going on.
There we were, me and Ren, staring up at ourselves in horror on the Jumbotron.
‘Oh, no,’ I protested pointlessly. ‘He’s not – we’re not—’
But the crowd did not want excuses. The crowd wanted kissing. And the crowd would be appeased or else.
‘KISS KISS KISS KISS KISS.’
I turned to Ren in panic but before I could breathe a word, he leaned in towards me, eyes closing as hismouth found mine and every single voice in the stadium exploded in deafening ecstasy.
He kissed me.
It was all over in a second. The camera and the crowd had already moved on, hungry for fresh blood, but I was still trapped in the kiss. The touch of Ren’s hand on my face, his hair brushing against my cheek, his soft, full lips gently exploring my own. I was nothing but a mess of sensation and reaction. The scent of him, the feel of him, the taste of him. I gasped when we broke apart, my lips tingling as I stared into his dilated pupils, my breath caught in my chest.
‘Phoebe?’
The way he said my name, I could have died.
‘Ren?’
I was fixed in time, his forever.
On the field, a man with the bat and a black helmet pulled back his arm and waited, coiled and ready, springing into action the moment the ball was released. The sound of leather on wood reverberated through the stadium, snapping me back to reality, and I was shocked to discover there were still other people around. The ball soared up into the air before landing neatly in a waiting Dodger’s catcher’s mitt and everyone jumped up to celebrate once again. Everyone except for two people who stayed in their seats, staring at each other, not quite sure what just happened.
One was me.
And the other was Ren.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
‘It’s the first time Bel has cancelled on me ever.’ Suzanne picked up an avocado and gave it a speculative squeeze before placing it carefully in the shopping trolley. ‘I’m worried about her.’
A dark uneasy feeling churned inside me. This was my fault, I was sure of it.
‘Probably not feeling it after last night,’ I suggested, mindlessly prodding at a gargantuan beefsteak tomato. ‘God knows I’ve felt better.’
‘That’s because you drank enough to put the Night’s Watch on its arse,’ my sister replied as she added a bunch of grapes to our bounty. ‘No, something’s wrong. Bel never cancels. She even turned up the morning after Burning Man. She was tripping on mushrooms and wearing glitter pasties and a silver thong, but she still turned up.’
Thanks to a very long line for the ladies, Suzanne managed to miss the Kiss Cam debacle and Bel was busy hunting for an Instagram famous fried chicken sandwichonly available inside Dodger Stadium which ended up being so spicy, she couldn’t even eat it. Our kiss was a secret belonging only to me, Ren and about fifty thousand other people. As soon as Suzanne reappeared, armed with four cinnamon pretzels, Ren moved back to his seat and we did not speak again for the rest of the game.
On the upside, the Dodgers won.
‘No, something is definitely up.’ Suzanne squinted as she examined a fifteen-dollar bottle of celery juice, putting it back before I had to remind her where she was from. ‘She wasn’t herself at all, Bel isn’t usually on edge like that. And a “sorry can’t make it” text? Not likely. When has Bel ever given a short answer when a much longer one would do?’ She picked up a jug of orange juice and grinned. ‘You know what it is, don’t you?’
‘She’s joined a cult?’ I guessed.
‘That was last year. She spent a whole week working on a satsuma farm in the valley for fifteen cents a day before she came to her senses.’
‘Love satsumas,’ I replied, fondling a strawberry-banana-ashwagandha-CBD-THC smoothie and putting it straight back when I saw the price tag. ‘God forbid, but maybe she just didn’t feel up to it.’
