Page 54 of Oar Than Friends

‘Yes?’ I dropped down in my desk chair, because we’d clearly reachedthatpoint. The one I’d been dreading for a week. The one I thought I might have gotten away with. The one I didn’t know how to explain.

I’d been waiting for the subject of Oz to be broached, on tenterhooks for the week whenever the three of us were together, and it wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell them, I just didn’t know how. The two girls in front of me had quickly become my best friends, and aside from Hannah taking different classes, we did everything together.

Back home I had my best childhood friends; the kids of my parents’ friends, all of us forced to grow up together whether we wanted to or not. That’s not to say I didn’t love my friends from home, but they were never interested in rowing, or had the urge to run their own business, and after Jake died and I took up studying harder they took up dating, and we kind of drifted apart a little.

But here, with these two in front of me, was the first time I’d made friends on my own, who liked what I liked, and weren’t kids of my parents’ friends. They were part of a life separate to poor dead Jake’s sister, and I hadn’t wanted to fuck it up by making a stupid mistake.

‘Are we going to talk about what happened last week?’

I chewed on the end of my thumbnail, trying to buy myself even the minutest amount of time so I could figure out how to word the conversation we were about to have. ‘Which bit exactly?’

‘Let’s start at the bit where we found you shouting at A. O.-C. after the heist meeting, shouting like you knew him, and finish with yesterday when you were partnered with him for cleaning duty.’

‘Okay.’ I rubbed my hands along my thighs, then brought my legs up to my chest, hugging them close. ‘Well … I do know him. Kind of.’

‘What?! How?’ Imogen’s eyes popped wide. ‘And how have you not mentioned this before?’

I sighed, my head whirring in a cyclone of confusion and guilt, ‘It wasn’t on purpose. I didn’t know I’d met him until it was too late … until the first race of the season against Oxford.’

Hannah put her book down and knelt forward, herarms resting on her knees, ‘You’re going to have to start from the beginning. I’m having trouble keeping up with this, my brain is obviously fried from all the maths.’

I huffed a laugh, ‘What’s my excuse then?’

I looked between them, both their faces mirroring the other’s confusion. Ugh.

‘Do you remember the first night we went to the pub? I’d just arrived the day before and we went with some of the girls from the Downing crew … Sarah, Ivy … remember?’

They both nodded, and I proceeded to tell them everything, starting with my walk home from the pub and the nearly kiss, and ending with me storming out of the changing room.

And now they were both staring at me with mouths wide open. I wondered how long they’d stay quiet and if I had time to pee before they started talking, but then Imogen broke.

‘With Arthur Osbourne-Cloud?’

‘In the girls’ bathroom?’ added Hannah, horrified.

I nodded. ‘Yeah, in hindsight he did look like he was sneaking in, but as we were talking I realized he was who you’d been talking about.’ I pointed at Imogen, who at least at the grace to look slightly guilty. ‘He figured out that something had changed my mind, I alluded to some of what you’d said, and he got really mad. But I told him that we couldn’t see each other, and left.’

The pair of them sat there looking at me with the exact expressions I’d expected them to have. They’d made it no secret they didn’t like him, but after a minute their faces changed. Hannah looked like she’d gone back to herapplied mathematics, while perfectly straight lines formed down Imogen’s forehead as her brows knotted together.

‘Hang on, the Oxford race was over a month ago.’

‘I know. What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Well … A.O.-C. was mad at you last week …’ She gesticulated so wildly that she nearly knocked her water over, ‘What happened since the race?’

‘Oh,’ my shoulders sagged, ‘nothing. He’d been texting me, but I never replied, and he wanted to know why. The heist meeting was the first time I’d seen or spoken to him since that day in the bathroom.’

‘Are you telling us he’s been texting you since the first race of the season?’

I nodded.

Hannah’s mouth opened wider, as did Imogen’s.

‘Arthur Osbourne-Cloud has been texting you since the Oxford race and you haven’t replied,’ Imogen repeated slowly, because she was clearly still struggling with this breaking news.

I nodded. ‘Correct.’

‘I don’t know what to say.’

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