Page 112 of Spearcrest Knight

The party is in the old building behind the Arboretum, an old red brick building with long, narrow windows. It used to be an indoor botanical garden of sorts, but was replaced by the newer, more glamorous Greenhouse.

When we arrive, the party is well underway, music blaring and the room bright with ever-changing colours. Pink and blue, orange and green, purple and yellow. Strings of Christmas lights dangle around the windows, filling my mind with soft flashbacks of Christmas Eve.

Zachary and I walk over to the trestle tables on which the booze is stacked. I grab two beers and hand one to Zachary, but he shakes his head with a grimace.

“Isn’t there some good wine somewhere?” he asks snootily, peering at the bottles.

“Uh… champ?”

“Pass me the bottle.”

Bottles in hand, we amble around the room, both sweeping the room with our eyes. I can tell the exact moment when Zachary spots Theodora because his stance stiffens and his body language somehow becomes ten times more arrogant and aloof.

“Wanna go say hello?” I call out over the blaring music.

“I won’t give her the satisfaction. She can come and say hello first.”

“You two are so weird.”

I don’t hear his reply, because my eyes finally fall on Sophie.

She’s standing by a window, framed by rainbow drops of light, talking to Araminta from my Biology class. She looks… well, she looks incredible, of course. She’s wearing a black dress with a white lace collar, black fishnet tights and boots. Her hair is tied in a simple ponytail and the only accessory she has is the dark red lipstick she’s wearing, making her mouth look the colour of crushed cherries.

There’s something edgy about the whole outfit, a sort of grunge-goth glamour that’s completely at odds with her usual crisp uniform and collection of big grandpa sweaters. But all I can think about is kissing that crushed cherries mouth, ripping through those fishnets and wrapping that long ponytail around my hand.

I’m walking towards her before I even realise I am. Luckily, Zachary catches me by the arm and pulls me behind the cover of a pillar.

“What’s your plan?”

I blink at him. “Plan? What plan?”

“Exactly. Shouldn’t you have a plan?”

“What kind of plan?”

“I don’t know. What are you going to say to her?”

I stare at Zachary and take a deep sip of beer, thinking hard. “Probably I’m gonna say hi.”

“Right. And then?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you want from her? What’s the intended outcome here?”

I peer around the pillar, at Sophie’s soft, heavy hair, at her long legs in the fishnet tights, her crimson mouth. I want her so bad I can barely formulate a coherent thought.

I turn back to Zachary and yell, a little too loud over the music, “I wanna dance with her. I wanna hold her and kiss her. And I wanna touch her legs through her tights. I want to go down on her and make her come.”

Zachary’s face twists into a grimace. “That’s too much information, Ev.”

I shrug. “You asked.”

“I meant realistically.Realistically, what is the intended outcome?”

“Realistically, I’d settle for her not hating me for five seconds.”

Zachary nods. “Alright, so you know what you have to do, then.”

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