‘Clearly we all needed something to power us through Friday afternoon,’ Jenna says as Alice bounces up the sofa cushions to make room. ‘We were just talking about the game tomorrow.’
‘Game?’
‘First fixture of the football season,’ Michael tells her. ‘Me and your man over there are going to make the pussies from Mossington Uni wish they’d never been born. Mostly him, I’m planning on having a nice easy day at the back.’
‘We’ll do our best,’ I promise, doing my best not to stare. She’s wearing some kind of lip gloss that sparkles whenever it catches the light, like there’s glitter in it maybe. We’ve barely seen each other since our night in the medical centre, occasional nods across campus, passed once or twice in the hallway, and that’s okay with me.
‘Well, well, well. There must’ve been a bloody big cat to drag all of you in at once.’
When I tear my eyes away from Mia’s mouth, I see the blond dude Mia was with in here last week standing behind Michael’s chair, a smug look on his face.
‘And you’ve even let the dog sit on the furniture,’ he says, smiling at me. ‘Only joshing, mate, I’m sure you’re housebroken.’
‘I don’t know, I’ve been known to bite.’
‘Children behave.’ Michael flaps his hand between us. ‘Ethan, Oliver. Oliver, Ethan.’
He stoops to shake my hand, and I suddenly hate the stupid, sagging sofa. I have to stretch to meet him, even though I easily have at least four inches and thirty pounds on this guy. He couldn’t tip the scale at 160, soaking wet.
‘Nice to meet you,’ I say through gritted teeth. It’s not often I don’t like a person on sight, but my instincts are usually pretty sound and I definitely do not care for this asshole.
‘You’re American!’ He pulls his hand out of my overly firm grasp. ‘Do you know Mia?’
‘Yeah, I know Mia. We went to the same school back home, we’re roommates here.’
‘Really? She hasn’t mentioned you. Interesting.’ The guy rubs his chin as though it’s anything but and it takes all my self-restraint not to stand up and spear him off his feet. ‘Right lads, not to be rude but Mia and I came to study. Unless you’d rather sit with—’
‘No, we should study,’ she says, cutting him off before he can even finish his sentence. ‘I know y’all understand.’
‘Oh, we sure do.’ Alice raises her eyebrows in Mia’s direction and I’m kind of surprised someone as smart as Mia would be into a guy who looks like he’s about to show me how to clean my keyboard in a YouTube tutorial.
‘Busy bloody weekend. Football tomorrow, celebratory party at Members tomorrow night and Sunday, it’s the big day,’ Alice adds and for one terrifying second, I think she means Mia and this dickwad are getting married.
‘Alice, you promised, please don’t plan anything.’ Mia looks down, her hair covering her face. ‘I’m really not a birthday person.’
‘Alice might’ve promised but I didn’t, and I am most definitelybirthday people,’ Jenna says, rubbing her hands together. ‘You’re going to be twenty, that’s a big deal. New decade and all that. What are we thinking, foam party, silent disco or stripper jumping out of a cake?’
I have no idea how serious she is, but Michael shakes his head, his steady expression barely shifting, which I hope means we can take the stripper off the table at least. Mia looks as though she’d rather die than acknowledge the day, which is weird. Who doesn’t love birthdays? It’s also interesting that she’s only turning twenty. But it makes sense that the librarian skipped a grade somewhere along the way.
‘I’m so serious,’ she says. ‘I really don’t do birthdays.’
‘Why?’
Everyone turns to look at me instead of asking Mia the same, very reasonable, question.
‘For real, why not?’ I ask again. ‘If your friends want to celebrate you, isn’t that a good thing?’
‘Not everyone loves being centre of attention.’ With a pointed look at the blond douche, she nods towards the opposite corner of The Snug. ‘We really should get to studying, I’ll see y’all later.’
‘That’s us told,’ Michael says as they cross the room, Mia sitting as far away as possible, back turned. ‘Has she always been so prickly?’
Jenna’s attention moves to me. ‘I have a better question. What did you do?’
‘I was born and then, let me think … No, that’s it.’ I grab my Coke and squeeze the can a little too hard, two indentations appearing under my pointer finger and thumb.
‘As I understand it, she didn’t get on very well with your girlfriend back home,’ Alice says. ‘Not exactly best friends?’
‘She knew Breanna?’ I screw up my face, more confused than ever.
