‘– so she won the date,’ Parisa finished, popping the last morsel of her cupcake into her mouth. ‘Thank God.’
‘What do you mean, thank God?’ Jess D asked.
‘Well, we all know what would have happened if Dylan JM got to pick his own winner,’ Parisa said.
‘Do we?’
‘Oh, come off it, Jess, you know what I’m talking about,’ Parisa said. ‘He would have picked Dylan G. Like he always does.’
Dylan swallowed. ‘Excuse me?’
‘It’s obvious you’re his favourite,’ Parisa said. ‘He always grabs you at Last Chance Parties. You never have to steal him. You’ve been on every single group date—’
‘Not every single one!’ Dylan protested. ‘There was one I didn’t go on.’
‘Oh wow, a wholeone,’ Parisa said. ‘On top of that, you’ve got the one-on-one time in just about all of those group dates—’
‘One.Oneof those group dates. The first one!’
‘And Love Jockey Hockey,’ Belinda said.
‘That was group time, because our team beat the Convent team,’ Dylan said. ‘Which I spent most of trying to make sure you hadn’t suffered some kind of permanent facial injury, Belinda.’
‘You still managed to slip away with him for forty-five minutes,’ Lily Fireball said, materialising smoothly from nowhere. ‘Longer than any of the rest of us.’
‘Don’t you start, Lily.’
Lily raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m just stating a fact. But how about we ask your little sidekick?’ She turned to me. ‘Amanda, do you think it’s obvious that Dylan is the Romeo’s favourite?’
My fingers were curled so tightly around the edge of the kitchen bench that my knuckles were white. How long had they been like that?
Everyone was looking at me. Including Dylan.
‘Well?’ Lily demanded.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I think he likes her better than anyone else.’
That wasn’t the end of the argument. It went on long after everyone had angrily eaten all the cupcakes. ‘I can’t believe you all think I’m getting special treatment,’ Dylan said.
‘We didn’t say you’re getting special treatment,’ Parisa said. ‘We said that he likes you the best.’
‘In fact, you’re kind of getting the opposite of special treatment,’ Kumiko added. ‘They’ve started keeping you away from him, because it’s so obvious he likes you the best.’
‘That’s total bullshit.’
‘No, it isn’t.’
I slipped upstairs somewhere in the middle of the discussion. Well, it might have been the middle. It might also have still been the beginning. Neither side was giving ground, and I couldn’t think of anything I’d like to do less than endlessly debate the subject of whether Romeo-Dylan liked Dylan best of all.
I went into the bathroom to take my make-up off. The splash of cold water on my face did nothing to erase the image of them standing on the deck, holding each other like they might never let go.
The door clicked shut behind me.
I looked up, and had to suppress a groan. ‘I don’t have the energy for this, Lily.’
‘The energy for what?’ she said. ‘Taking your make-up off? I can tell. That falsie’s dangling by a thread.’
I pulled the fake eyelash off. ‘I’m tired. I just want to go to bed. So if you’re going to hit me with your snarky littlecomments, could you do them all at once? As some kind of monologue, perhaps?’
