Page 53 of The Reunion

‘Are you sure about that?’ I tease.

‘Yes. I’m sure.’

‘So … it didn’t get to you, that I didn’t want to kiss you, even for a dare? Didn’t disappoint you, that I said I wasn’t attracted to you?’

‘Correct. Believe me, Ryan, when I say I could not care less that you didn’t find me attractive. If anything’ – her shoulders drop and her body arches towards mine, eyes glinting – ‘it sounds like you’re the one who’s annoyed I never responded to your pathetic attempts to flirt with me. What did you say? It … drove you nuts.’

I swallow a laugh. ‘Thinking about my nuts, Easton?’

‘God, you’re insufferable, d’you know that?’

This time, I do chuckle. And I lean in a little closer, testing it – her – this tension that clings to the sliver of air between our bodies. She doesn’t move this time, so I brush up against her, and the heat of her makes my jaw clench.

I didn’t fancy Ashleigh at school. She was – fine. Not pretty in the way girls like Steph or Thea or Roisin were, didn’t make an effort and have that allure like Bryony or Elise. She just … was. And she was too much of a prick to be fanciable, even if she had been especially pretty.

But the Ashleigh in front of me, right now, tonight …

Hell, not even just tonight. The one I’ve seen in snatches, glimpses, on social media, too. It’s not like she grew into her body – more like it grew into her, shaped itself around that confidence, the way she carried herself, her absolute sureness of who she was.

But, also, it looks so damn good on her.

The wispy fringe that doesn’t look fashionable so much as sexy, the cut of her outfit comfortable and decisive instead of try-hard or trendy. Even that attitude that drove me crazy when we were teenagers … Now, it’s driving me a very different kind of crazy. The kind that makes me want to slip my tongue inside her mouth to taste her, feel the soft lines of her body pressing flush against mine.

Ashleigh draws a quiet, slow breath, and my gaze is fixed on her face as I watch her blink slowly, her whole body angled towards me, her lips parting as she moves them closer to mine …

‘Oh, Ryan,’ she breathes, barely an inch from my mouth – and just as I lean in, she draws back, challenge and triumph sparkling in her eyes as her mouth curves into a closed-lipped smile. ‘You couldn’t handle it.’

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Bryony

‘Most Likely to Become Famous’

It’s probably for the best that it’s pitch dark and that it’s Hayden who’s calling me out, because something about all that makes this a little bit easier – the surrealness of it all makes it feel like a fever dream rather than anything actually real – but that doesn’t make it easy.

I just keep thinking – he knows, he figured it out, he knows and everybody else will know soon, too. If I’m the narcissistic bully he says I was, why wouldn’t he go and blab to everybody? I would.

I don’t know how to get out of this. I can’t call him a liar; even a little drunk, Hayden’s smarter than that. Maybe if he was still the shy, quiet kid I remember, I’d be able to scare him into silence, but he’s not. This guy loitering in the doorway is someone who’s come into his own. He’s also apparently got more spine than I gave him credit for, because he didn’t bow out and leave me alone after I yelled at him and went for the jugular, calling him a sad failure or whatever. I can’t hide behind a clever photo and carefully worded caption, or dazzle my way out with a mostly true, only somewhat-exaggerated-for-dramatic-retelling-purposes, story.

And … part of me kind of doesn’t want to, I think?

Part of me – and it is a bloody big part, I have to say – is exhausted.

I lean on the filing cabinet in the staffroom, letting the cold metal anchor me, and the creepy, weird noises of the old building that spooked me earlier feel homely and comforting now. This school is still standing, even after all the crap it’s seen. I can come out the other side too, right?

Okay. Okay, now I’m officially losing it, comparing myself to the school.

If it were anybody else who put two and two together and found out I’m a teacher, I’d stand a chance at making sure nobody believed them.

If it were anybody else confronting me just now … I probably wouldn’t have believed them, for calling me mean and self-centred. The girl Hayden described sounded like a grade-A bitch, and I’m horrified at how easy it is to see that now.

Unless I’ve always known it and just refused to see it? Like, I know it was wrong to be flirting with Josh when he was dating Thea; I knew it at the time, too, but it was fun and thrilling and – Hayden’s right, I never considered anybody else’s feelings in that. Josh took the fall for it all when Thea found out he’d cheated, and we all rallied behind her like ‘men are trash, you deserve better, he played us both’, but I knew what I was doing. I just didn’t care.

How many people did I hurt, because I only ever worried about myself?

Am I still doing that? I don’t think so, but …

But, I guess it doesn’t matter what I think, because the reality is that I did hurt at least one person tonight, and I should take some responsibility for that. So I take a deep breath and I tell Hayden, ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said those things to you.’

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