Page 8 of Prudence
“Derek! Where the hell have you been?” Aidan called out as we entered, clearly already tipsy. “And where’s my birthday kiss?” He came forward, but Derek held up a hand.
“No birthday kisses for you this year. Not after what you gave me the last time,” Derek joked.
“Ah, what’s a little herpes between pals?” Aidan exclaimed jovially before his attention fell on me with keen interest. “Who’s this?” His hooded gaze travelled over me, and Derek’s hand tightened on mine.
“This is my friend, Milly,” Derek replied.
“Milly!” his brother Tristan said loudly as soon as he spotted me. “I remember you! We went to the same primary school. You healed my boo-boo.” Okay, Tristan was even more tipsy than Aidan. I laughed quietly. I’d completely forgotten that I’d assisted in cleaning and bandaging Derek’s brother’s scraped knee until he’d reminded me that day at the supermarket. Honestly, I’d proudly pulled out my first-aid kit too many times to count in the school yard that year. So much so, I’d earned myself the nickname Nurse Milly. My teacher, Mrs Freyne, had given me a special gold star and everything. The strange thing was, whenever I’d focused on helping with an injury or tendingto someone who was sick, all my social anxiety had fallen away. I’d been too driven by purpose to think about being nervous.
“Bloody hell, Tristan, how many beers have you had?” Derek questioned, frowning, his protective big brother instincts coming out.
“Ah, he’s only had two,” Aidan interjected. “Sure, you know he’s a terrible lightweight. Anyway, welcome to my party, Derek’s friend Milly. I hope you’ll have an enjoyable time.” Then he turned and rejoined the gaggle of girls he’d been impressing with some anecdote before we’d arrived.
“So, where was I? Oh yes, and then I said to her, I’ve never even seen a penny-farthing!” Aidan proclaimed, finishing his story, and the girls giggled wildly.
Warm breath hit my neck as Derek bent to murmur. “Sorry about Aidan and Tris. They can be a little overzealous when they drink.”
“That’s okay,” I replied, my voice suddenly breathless with how close he was.
“Come on, let me introduce you to Theo and Rhys.” A pause as he smiled. “My hopefully less drunk friends.”
I chuckled and allowed him to lead me farther into the room. Once I’d been properly introduced to everyone, I sat next to Derek on one of the couches, and we sipped our rum and Cokes while observing the drunken antics of his friend group. At one point, his sister, Nuala, arrived with a pretty brunette, who Derek quietly informed me was their cousin, Charli. She was visiting from America and staying at their house for the summer. Nuala and I shared a few classes at school, but we didn’t move in the same circles. Still, even though she was friends with the popular girls, she was one of the nicest people I’d ever met. Her eyes lit when she saw me with her brother, a smile gracing her lips as she cast me a little wave before Theo grabbed her hand and pulled her over for a chat.
The entire time I sat there, I was aware of Derek’s arm resting across the back of the couch. I felt the heat of his arm at my neck. When I finished the last sip of my drink, Derek quietly slid the empty glass from my hand and set it down on the nearby table. His eyes met mine, slowly travelling back and forth before dipping to my mouth.
“I feel I need to clear something up,” he said, frowning hard like he was having trouble grasping some philosophical concept or mathematical equation.
“Oh?”
“Contrary to what was said earlier, I did not, in fact, contract herpes from Aidan.” His deadpan delivery had me bursting into laughter, and a pleased smile graced his handsome face.
“That’s good to know.”
His smile deepened, and he nudged my shoulder with his. “Just in case you were thinking of kissing me later, you don’t have to worry about contracting any venereal diseases.”
My skin heated so much my cheeks were probably bright red. “Thank you for informing me of your clean bill of health,” I managed to reply evenly. “And as romantic as that sounds, I don’t currently have any plans to kiss you.”
He feigned offence. “No?”
I swallowed thickly. “Well, it hadn’t crossed my mind.”Liar.“But, uh, if you …”
His features softened while I wrangled with my fluster, unable to coherently finish what I’d been trying to say.
“What if I had plans to kiss you?” he asked then, gaze probing.
My eyes widened, and I suddenly wished for another rum and Coke, much heavier on the rum this time around. Derek had always been friendly towards me when he’d driven me home from school, and sure, sometimes he’d say things that might beconstrued as flirtatious, but nothing like this. Daytime Derek I could handle. Flirty nighttime Derek was another thing entirely.
“That … um, that would be—”
“Hey, Derek, want to dance?” a flirtatious voice asked. One of the girls from the group who’d been giggling at Aidan’s anecdote stood before us. She had long, wavy blonde hair and shiny pink lips and wore a sparkly pale mini dress that exposed her toned, tan legs.
In the middle of the room, Aidan, Tristan and a bunch of the other girls were dancing to some pop song. I’d been so wrapped up in Derek that I hadn’t even noticed. His sister and their American cousin had left at some point, and Theo and Rhys sat in the corner talking.
“No, thanks, Francesca,” Derek replied politely, and the fact he knew her name made me uneasy. I wondered if they’d ever been together. On our car journeys, he’d mentioned having a few past girlfriends, but I didn’t remember him ever speaking of a Francesca. She didn’t attend my school, so she must’ve been a classmate of his from St. Mark’s.
“But I love this song,” she pouted. “Remember we danced to it last year at the spring disco?”
Okay, now I was feeling uncomfortable again. I’d been relaxed ever since Derek’s reassurances that my outfit was fine back in the kitchen, but now, well, comparison was wheedling its way into my subconscious. I wasn’t used to competing for a boy’s attention. Especially not with girls who looked like Francesca—who was basically my opposite.
