I take a running jump at the bed and wrap myself around her. Ada’s hugs are like solar eclipses, rare, but always perfect. She doesn’t let people close enough for touches like this often, so every time I get one, I make the most of it. Then I tuck the memory away in the special little Ada pocket of my heart where I can pull it out when I need an extra surge of strength.
“You girls want a cup of tea?”
“Go to hell, Jake!”
“We like Jake now,” Ada whispers. “We’ve made up.”
“Ooh, yay,” I whisper back. “Yes, please, Jake, that would be great!”
“Sure thing, Cee.” His voice is drier than the Sahara, and I shrug at Ada.
“Better to be safe than sorry.”
She smiles. “Definitely. Could I please have a cup of tea,too, babe?”
“Of course,” Jake says at once.
“Ooh,babe,” I tease Ada, and she pokes me right in the ticklish part of my ribs. “Sorry, sorry!”
“I’m guessing you listened to my voicemail?”
“Yeah.” I flop back on the mattress. “Thanks for saying sorry. But you were right about some stuff. I should have bitten Col Wintergreen’s ear off for that gum stunt.”
Ada snorts, no doubt at the thought of me physically attacking anyone, let alone a member of the first fifteen. “You couldn’t save me from myself.”
“I could have done better. Ishould have. I was so insecure about myself and where I fit in, and I was afraid to call people out for their shit behaviour.”
“Ah, Cee.” She squeezes my hand. “High school was a balls-up for everyone. The whole fucking thing.”
“Doesn’t matter what it was. I’m still sorry.”
“Me too.”
“Can we draw a line under it now?” I ask. “Forgive each other for how we both acted when we were too stupid to know better? Dump all the underlying causes on our future therapists.”
“Sounds good to me, best friend.” Ada smiles, and at least one of the massive knots that’s been pulling my chest tight all evening unravels.
“I love you,” I say, holding up my forearm.
Ada bumps her tattoo against mine. “I love you too.”
We keep our forearms pressed together for a moment until the eye contact clearly becomes too much for Ada.
“Right,” she says, turning away. “So, is there a reason you’re knocking down my door after midnight, instead of being badly sexed up by Will Sharpe? Is the nightmare already over? Did he lose his dick in a violent car-related accident? Please say yes.”
I sigh. “Unfortunately, he remains intact. Even more unfortunately, he remains functional. The closest he got to me was an elevator pash and an extremely mild feel through his pants, so you can take heart from that.”
Ada gapes at me. “Not that I’m not incredibly pleased, but how the fuck did this happen?”
“What’s going on?” Jake enters the room carrying two cups of tea. “I heard something about dick touching?”
“It was over the pants and definitely does not count.”
“True.” Jake delivers us our tea and rightly moves to pull the cozy-looking armchair in the corner over so I can stay where I am on the bed next to Ada.
I look at Ada over the rim of my teacup. “God, you were right. Will Sharpe issucha raging asshole. You’ve been trying to tell me. And I’m sorry I didn’t listen.”
“What about Davis?” Jake interjects, and I stare at him in confusion.
