Page 19 of Hot Summer

Cas peeked out from underneath the duvet.

“Thank you.” She tried to smile at him, but she was mostly squinting into the overhead lights.

“No problem.” Femi patted her shoulder once more before he stood up again. “I’ll see you outside in a few.”

“Doubt it.” Cas snaked her hand out and grabbed her coffee. Femi laughed before walking back outside.

Cas sipped at her coffee and picked flakes off her pastry for the next few minutes, all the while trying her best to listen to what everyone was talking about outside.

She should probably just get up, see what they were all on about, but the idea of leaving this bed...

Ada slid open the garden door, her face splitting into a grin when she saw Cas still snuggled under the duvet.

“How have you not gotten shouted at yet?”

Cas shrugged. “I’m awake. What else do they want from me?”

“I’d venture that they want you to get out of bed and join the rest of us in the land of the living.”

“Overrated.”

Ada snorted. “Okay.”

And she dropped down on the end of Cas’s bed. She watched as Cas tore a chunk off her pain au chocolat and stuffed it into her mouth.

“How did you sleep?”

Cas hummed and lifted her hand to cover her mouth. “Okay. It was weird being in a room with, like, nine other people, though.”

She’d really only thought about how awkward it would be once people started hooking up in the bedroom, but it was weird full stop. Every exhale, rustle of the sheets, stray snore, was a reminder that Cas wasn’t in her own bedroom in London anymore.

“No, yeah, that was weird,” Ada said. She sounded contemplative, a little distant, like she was mulling something over. “How did you find sharing a bed with Femi?”

“Yeah, it was good,” Cas said. “He didn’t hog the duvet or kick me, so...” She shrugged. “Success.”

“Hmm.” Ada nodded absently, and Cas raised an eyebrow over another sip of coffee.

“How was sharing a bed with Brad?”

“It was okay,” Ada said slowly, her eyes moving from Cas over to the garden door. “I felt like he was trying to, like... brush up against me, though.”

Cas frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Like he was really close to me all night,” Ada said. “And maybe that’s just how he sleeps, but it was like... mate, we’ve literally just met, give me a bit of space.”

Cas couldn’t say that she was entirely surprised, especially given his behavior yesterday. Brad seemed like he was the kind of person who felt he was entitled to whatever he wanted. Attention, affection, you name it.

Still, she wanted to be careful how she worded this. She didn’t want to upset Ada if she could avoid it.

“Do you feel like he was, like... trying something?”

“No, it didn’t feel like that,” Ada said. Her gaze drifted off over Cas’s left shoulder, looking toward the bed that she and Brad had vacated half an hour before. “More like he doesn’t have proper respect for boundaries. Like he expected that, just because we’re sharing a bed, I was going to be all right with him trying to put his arms around me.”

“No, yeah, in no way are those two things the same,” Cas said. “Did he ask?”

Ada shook her head. “When I brushed him off and shifted away, he seemed to take it fine. He didn’t try it again.”

“But you felt like he was there the whole night.”

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