SUGAR RUSH, HOXTON, 9:33 P.M.
• • •
Caspar walked to the bar and Phoebe leaned back in their booth, watching him. He was taller and wirier than George. She liked how his jeans hung. George’s jeans used to cling to his rugby-player haunches—gross. Lara had kept saying how fit George was, as if she was looking for anything positive to say about him. And although Phoebe knew it was true she also knew, deep down, that she’d never liked the way George’s bulky body felt on top of her—had never felt her insides dip when she looked at him. But the knottiness behind her belly button, right now, wasn’t that how you were meant to feel? She’d noticed people recognize Caspar, and it had gone to her head like the Aperol spritzes.
She checked her phone while she waited—five missed calls. Three were from the Gloucester Terrace landline, one from her father’s mobile, and one from a foreign-looking number. She couldn’t be bothered to listen to the voicemails. Her mother always waffled for ages, and she wouldn’t be able to hear in the bar anyway. It was probably one of her parents’ dumb questions about their own house: “Phoebe, have you seen the Sellotape?” “Phoebs, did you throw away our moldy taramasalata?” She sniggered to herself, rearranging her face into an approximation of sober and sultry as Caspar walked back from the bar, and then ruined it by laughing as he put down their drinks.
“What’s so funny?” he asked, putting his arm round her shoulders as if it belonged there.
“Nothing, just my family. They’re annoyed I didn’t stay for dinner.”
“Ah. Is your dad going to hate me forever?”
They looked at each other for a long, slow-motion second, and then she was tasting his unfamiliar, Aperol-laced mouth, her hands reaching up to the back of his head and neck, and she knew they’d never make it to the party.