‘You used to only drink cherry cola,’ he said, as though out of all the changes he’d seen, that one was the most remarkable.
‘There’s a six-pack of it in our fridge,’ Andie told him, giving Darren a gentle shove in the direction of the kitchen.
‘Don’t move,’ Josh said as he went to follow his friend.
I shook my head, my throat too full to allow me to speak.
Andie barely waited until they were out of earshot before letting out the kind of sound I thought only lottery winners made.
‘Bugger me, Lily. Can you believe this, because I bloody well can’t.’
I shook my head, having to forcibly tear my gaze away from Josh’s retreating back as he wove through the crowd. He was easy to follow, for he was taller than almost all the other guys in the room.
‘It’s as if you magicked him up from your past,’ Andie declared dramatically. ‘Like voodoo.’
I knew what she meant. What were the chances of the very person I’d been talking about just hours earlier turning up tonight?
‘Well, if we did cast a spell, it’s gone catastrophically wrong, hasn’t it?’
Andie’s pretty features scrunched into a frown. ‘What do you mean?’
‘He’s here for you, isn’t he? He’s your date, not mine. Darren told him about you, and he’s come all this way to meet you.’
‘You’re joking, right?’ Andie asked, as though it was her fate tonight to be surrounded by total idiots. ‘One look at you and I could have been standing there stark naked and he still wouldn’thave noticed me. Come on, Lily, it’s not been that long since you’ve hooked up that you’ve forgotten what it’s like when someone has eyes only for you.’
‘That’s not how it was.’
‘He couldn’t look away from you.’
‘He was just surprised to bump into me again.’
‘Yeah, well, from the way it looked I have a feeling you’ll be bumping into each other again in a totally different way pretty soon.’
In the split second before I refuted her words, my head filled with an image that was going to be hard to shake off. ‘Josh and I have only ever been friends. It was never anything more.’
‘Well, that was then, and this is now,’ Andie said emphatically, her voice dropping unnecessarily as she spotted the two men beginning to cut a path back towards us.
‘He doesn’t want me,’ Andie said, spelling it out in case I was still in any doubt. ‘And as much as I love you, I don’t want your sloppy seconds.’
Josh and Darren were too close now for me to put her straight on that one, so I just shot her a glance that she chose to ignore. She saw the smile Josh was giving me and stepped to one side, in every sense of the phrase, as he passed me a fresh glass of wine.
‘Go for it,’ she mouthed silently, before linking her arm through Darren’s and dragging him away until they were swallowed up by the crowd.
It was Josh who suggested leaving the party, but it was as though he’d read my mind – not too accurately, I hoped, because there was definitely some stuff in there I didn’t want him to know.
Having a conversation at the party had been impossible, and trying to lip-read what he was saying involved a little too much staring at his mouth for me to stay focused. After the fifth ‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’ Josh bent down, positioning his mouth so close to my ear, his words probably left fiery scorch marks on my skin.
‘Do you want to get out of here?’
I nodded, half terrified, half excited, at the thought of being alone with him, which was ridiculous considering the thousands of hours we’d spent in each other’s company in the past. But as Andie had so succinctly put it, that was then, this was now.
‘Will your friend be okay if we leave?’ Josh asked, which ought to have been foremost in my thoughts, rather than his. But then, he had come all this way to meet Andie. Perhaps that was still on his agenda?
‘We could ask her to come with us?’ I said, hoping he couldn’t see how little I wanted that to happen.
Josh shook his head, and a lock of hair fell on to his forehead and stayed there. I wanted to brush it back so badly, I had to ram my hand into the pocket of my jeans before I ended up embarrassing the hell out of myself.
‘I’d prefer it to be just you and me,’ Josh said, making my heart skip momentarily out of rhythm as he placed a hand at my waist to guide me through the crowded party. The black halter top was short, not quite meeting the low waistband of my faded jeans. Had his fingers ever touched that narrow strip of skin before, I wondered? I didn’t think they could have, because nothing about this felt in the least bit familiar or comfortable. It was old and yet at the same time very, very new.
