Grace
I ignore the throbbing in my head as much as I can until I finally get to the front of the line at Pixie Cups and order myself a skinny latte with a shot of hangover cure. I wish I was able to make the shot myself, that way I wouldn't have to drag myself out of bed, but every time I've tried, I've ended up failing at it. There are just some kinds of pixie magic I'm not good at, apparently.
"Here you go," the pixie behind the counter says brightly. "That'll be four twenty, please."
"Card please," I say, holding up my phone. I press my thumb to the unlock button, only for nothing to happen. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I must not have plugged my phone in properly last night when I got in, and now it's dead. "I'm really sorry, let me check if I have any cash."
I know I don't, but I have no clue what else to say in this situation. I dig my hand in my pocket even as I do.
"Let me get it," a familiar voice says.
I spin around, pressing my hand to my head as a wave of dizziness joins the rest of the hangover. "Henry."
He flashes me a friendly smile. "I'll have a Berry Blast with a hangover shot, and whatever Grace had."
The shop owner nods and changes the price on the screen.
Before I can even protest, Henry touches his phone to the reader.
"Thanks," I say.
He shrugs. "Call it self-preservation. I've heard you say that you can't function without caffeine on multiple occasions."
"But you can, apparently." I wince, realising I'm talking too loud.
He chuckles. "I had coffee before I left the flat. I like my drinks fancy when I come to a coffee shop." He hands me my drink, our fingers brushing against one another as I take it and reminding me that we almost kissed last night.
Maybe. I think that's what that was. Though maybe he thinks it was something different. It's not like I can ask and remind him of that.
I take a sip of my drink, almost instantly feeling better. Pixie magic really can be the best. I need to learn how to make this myself.
Henry grabs his drink. "Want to sit?"
I nod without thinking. This wasn't my plan, but I don't want this moment to end, even if I'm not entirely sure what this moment is.
We make our way to the table at the back and sit down. Our knees brush against one another, and it's impossible to ignore how close together this puts us.
"How are you feeling?" he asks.
I raise an eyebrow.
"What? The truce is still on, there's no ulterior motive," he promises.
"I know. I guess I just didn't realise we were that kind of friends."
Hurt flits over his face, but he covers it quickly. "I guess we can be any type of friends that we want to be."
"I do like that idea," I admit.
"So, how are you?" He takes a drink.
I sigh. "I've been better. Yesterday sucked. And the hangover is not letting me forget it." I take another sip of my drink. "And now my phone is dead and I didn't think to check I charged it, and I can just tell it's going to be one of those days."
"Ah, yeah, I know the ones you mean. At least there won't be practice for a few more days so you can still avoid Zara."
"True." Though it means I'm not going to see him either.
I push that thought aside. I don't know where this is coming from and it needs to stop now. We may have been having fun with our pixie dust war, but that doesn't mean anything.
Necessarily.
"So, I guess I did want to know what the rules of ending the truce are," he muses. "Does it end the moment we both arrive at practice?"
"Is that what you're thinking about?"
"I'm trying to distract you," he admits. "Did it work?"
"Not really." Though I appreciate the effort, it makes me feel like he cares. "But yes. The moment practice starts, all pixie curses are fair game."
"Excellent. I have a good one, I think you're going to like it," he promises.
I let out a small laugh, surprising myself. "I look forward to it." And that's actually true. "But wow, I hate losing."
"Show me a cheerleader who likes it," he mutters.
"How did you get into it? Cheering, I mean. I can't imagine it helped you much with girls. Though maybe that's not an issue."
He snorts. "I can't tell if you're backtracking on what you're saying, or if you're fishing to get me to tell you my sexuality."
"I don't know. Does that help?"
He chuckles. "A bit. I like girls." He holds my gaze as if trying to say something more than that. "But yeah, I'll admit that cheer squad didn't really help with that at first."
"So why did you do it?"
"Because for a start, not every teenage boy is always motivated by sex."
I let out a laugh. "All right, that's fair."
He plays with the straw of his drink. "Before my dad left us, he was really focused on what I was supposed to be doing. He insisted that I did some kind of sport, but he didn't think it through enough to tell me which I could and couldn't do. So I signed up for cheer squad as a bit of an f-you to him making me do something I didn't want to. Turns out, I liked it. Maybe it was all the girls in short skirts."
I roll my eyes. "You're well aware that we have shorts on underneath."
"And yet you don't just wear those culotte things you practise in sometimes."
"Ah, so you do know what culottes are."
"I wasn't born under a rock, Grace," he says. "So yeah, even after he left, I stuck it out because I wanted to. I wasn't actually going to sign up to the Sapphire Sparks at first, I thought it was time to put it behind me, but then I thought about it and realised that I've had a lot of fun cheering over the past five years, and I didn't want that to end."
"That's nice," I say.
"Yeah, it is. This is the best team I've been part of. Maybe it's because everyone really does want to be there. No pushy parents and all that."
"I hadn't thought of it that way." I finish off my drink, feeling the effects of my hangover completely slip away. This place really is magic.
"What about you, what got you into cheer?"
"Oh, same, really. Wanting to punish my gender-stereotyping father."
He snorts. "Somehow, I don't believe you."
"That's fair. It was actually my mum. She wanted me to continue ballet, but I just wasn't that good at it."
"I find that hard to believe, I've seen you. I don't think I've ever seen anyone as graceful as you."
"Well, I have to live up to the name," I quip, but mostly to hide the blush glowing on my cheeks. "I was fine at ballet, I just didn't like all the rules."
"There are rules for cheer too," he points out. "And pixie dust wars."
I smile at the last part. "It's not the same. I can't explain it, but I feel so much more free when I'm cheering than when I was doing ballet."
"Probably all the yelling."
I snort. "Yeah, that's it."
"You'd look cute in a tutu though," he muses.
"I do look cute in a tutu."
"You have one?"
I smile. "Of course. It's neon orange. Krissi and I went to a UV-themed club night last term. We had leg warmers and put neon paint on our faces."
"Now that I'd have loved to see." He takes a sip of his drink.
"There are photos," I respond, picking up my dead phone. "Or not."
"Hard to get used to not having it, isn't it?"
I nod. "Everything's on it. I guess that's my excuse for skipping all my lectures and hiding out in my room all day."
"That's not very responsible of you."
"Nope. But we're students," I remind him. "We're not supposed to be responsible."
"In which case, maybe we should have ordered tequila shots instead of hangover cures."
I wrinkle my nose. "I think I drank enough last night, thanks."
A weird energy hangs between us at my mention of the night before.
For a moment, I think he's going to say something about it, but instead, he just takes a sip of his drink and looks anywhere but at me.
At least that confirms what I thought I knew. The near-kiss was a near-kiss, it wasn't just in my imagination.
Though it doesn't tell me anything about how he feels about the situation. Maybe that's for the best though. This way, we can ignore it, and things will get back to normal. I was only even thinking about kissing him because I was upset and he was being nice.
At least, that's what I'm telling myself. It has nothing to do with any of the reasons Krissi keeps suggesting.
"Speaking of lectures, I should get going," he says, checking his watch. "Don't want to be late to French history."
"You're studying history?" Surprise comes through my voice, mostly because I've never thought to ask him.
"French. But they make us do a history module."
"Oh."
"You're doing Biochemistry, right?"
I nod. "So I probably shouldn't skip my lectures."
"Probably not. But no one would blame you if you did today." He gets to his feet.
"Thanks for the coffee," I say. "I guess you really did come through for me."
"And I'd do it again, Grace."
There are so many things I want to say, but I don't have the words for it. "I'll see you at practice?" I ask instead.
"Yep. And it'll be a free-for-all from the moment it starts." He grins.
"Sounds fun." And that's not even a lie. It does sound good. Far better than it should. But I'm going to choose not to dwell on that too much.
He waves and heads out of the coffee shop, leaving me alone to decide what to do with my day.
And how to switch off the way I'm feeling.