I lay on Joe's sofa and listened to the unfamiliar sounds of his house as they played out around me. The pipes groaned. The wind shook the glass in the windowpanes. Leaves pattering against the roof. An owl hooted. Cara and Scott, who had returned from the study saying it 'gave him the creeps,' slept a few metres away, the former snoring on every breath, the latter dreaming softly. I was glad Scott had missed the performance at the piano. He wouldn't have understood. Would have mocked the moment. Cheapened it somehow. I liked that it was precious. Not even Cara had seen. It was ours.

I wanted it to stay that way.

I tried to sleep but my mind was alive. I ran over the events of the party again, wondering how Joe's indifferent invitation had led to the terrifying, inexplicable fire now in my stomach. I couldn't sleep for wanting him. He couldn't leave the room without looking at me in pain.

I tried to logic the feelings away. This is what he does. How many other girls have sat in this house and felt this fire? He told me he'd only been with two people, but there were many more he'd enchanted. I'd heard the stories. I'd seen more than one girl with red eyes in the corridor, their friend's arm around their shoulders as they talked in low voices. 'Joe...'. Sometimes they said it, sometimes they didn't. But I always knew.

I also knew how close he'd been to Ingrid, and how quickly he'd discarded her. I wanted to be wary. To run away before the fire turned inwards and swallowed me up. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't forget the way he looked at me.

Even if we went our separate ways, I'd always remember it. The darkness, the streetlight, the dock. Him close to me. His eyes on mine. His lips...

I rolled over, trying to get comfortable on my make-shift sofa/bed. The smell of old fabric hit me as I moved, but it wasn't unpleasant. It smelt like a home. Like years of memories. I squinted my eyes to make out shapes in the darkness. A turntable sat on the dresser, bookshelves lining the walls, the baby grand piano in the corner of the room. If I ignored the flat screen TV, I could imagine myself in a different time. I could feel it. See it. A simpler existence where I spent my days walking in the sprawling beauty outside and my evenings beside this huge fireplace, reading a book, my feet curled up in Joe's lap. I wanted it. Me, him, and nothing else.

You don't even know this boy...

And yet, somehow, I did.

I thought about all of my previous 'attempts'. All the times I'd looked for happiness in someone else. I tried to find the connection I'd seen in films and read about in books. The relationship I'd heard in the lyrics of a thousand songs. I realised somewhere along the way that it was always the same. The same story repeated, maybe since the day the first poet marked the first piece of paper with ink. I'd started to believe it wasn't real. Maybe it was just a fantasy, designed to make life easier. But that night with Joe, I felt what might have been the start of it.

I was too afraid to let myself believe it, but hope was brushing me with its fingers, warning me it would soon take hold.

I wanted to float in the feeling. To stay in it as long as possible. Bottle it up and box it behind glass and label it with a plaque so that future generations could look at it and understand what I'd found that night.

Dramatic, Cara would say.

But I knew I couldn't protect it forever. As soon as other people knew about it, it would become real. Maybe it wouldn't survive observation. Maybe it wouldn't survive when night turned to day. Would he still want me the same way in the morning, when the harsh light swept the magic away and we were left bare-faced and open?

***

When I woke the next day, my stomach churning with alcohol, I was greeted by a pair of unfamiliar voices in the kitchen. The room materialised around me, its unfamiliar quirks jolting me until I remembered where I was. I remembered who was upstairs. Remembered what had happened the night before.

Joe...

I sat up, wide awake, tuning into the conversation floating in from the next room. I had heard his name. Someone was talking about him. Someone whose voice I recognised.

Ingrid...

"Did anything happen?"

Silence. Ingrid must have replied with a look, because her friend started to laugh.

"Oh my god, he ignored you all night and you still hooked up with him? Are you serious?"

"More like he tried to ignore me all night but I still hooked up with him. He can't resist."

"Did you sleep with him?"

My stomach tensed. I wanted to rip my ears off. Run away. But I couldn't move. I couldn't process what I was hearing. I let the word wash through me, frozen in place. Helpless, waiting to be destroyed.

"No." Thank God. "But we did do stuff, if you know what I mean?"

"Of course I know what you mean. No need for details."

"I mean, he was quite drunk...But he obviously wanted to."

"But... he was with that other girl? You told me? At the end of the night."

"Oh well. You snooze you lose, I suppose."

Her friend sighed, giving me the impression that this was a regular occurrence.

"It's me and Joe," Ingrid said. I could hear the shrug in her voice. "You know how it works. We can't stay away from each other."

Joe...

It took me a few seconds to understand.

The truth, so crystal clear, laid out for me to absorb, somehow refused to sink in.

Ingrid and Joe...

This wasn't supposed to happen.

I pressed my hand to my mouth, a wave of nausea passing over me. My neck flushed hot, my crop top stuck to my back.

I tried to keep my composure. The only thing worse than finding out Joe hooked up with Ingrid would be throwing up all over his floor and having to tell him. Having to watch him clean it up, or worse, having to clean it up myself while he goes off with Ingrid to some corner of his massive house.

I hated him.

But I didn't.

I was numb.

Scott sat up, his bleary eyes full of anger. I knew without asking that he'd overheard Ingrid's conversation. He scrambled under the blankets of his armchair, finding a bottle of water and throwing it to me.

I opened it up and swallowed the cold liquid, my body easing to its normal temperature.

If Scott was smug, he didn't show it. He waited, watching me the way a mother watches a child waking up from an operation.

Would it be tears? Total breakdown? The silence of humiliation? I could almost hear him wondering.

I wondered myself for a minute, then chose composure.

"We need to go."

Scott nodded. No need to explain. He threw me his hoody and I put it on while he picked up my bag. He knew the drill. Cara was still asleep. She would wait for Tom. No time to get her. We had to leave. To see Joe would be fatal. If what we had was going to die, I wanted it to be with dignity. Not hungover downstairs in his house with Ingrid a metre away.

Scott and I slung our bags over our shoulders and snuck through the hallway fast. We didn't want to draw attention to ourselves, so we kept quiet. When we reached the stairs, I looked away. A shiver ran down my spine, thinking he was in his room, sleeping. Close enough to touch, but not close enough to hold. And to think he'd brushed past me on the same stairs only twelve hours earlier. The ghosts were already there.

Time to run.

Scott opened the front door and we stepped outside. The morning was flush with the promise. Salt from the sea drifted over the fields, the countryside birds singing as seagulls squawked from afar. It could have been a perfect day, but I was shell-shocked, my eyes adjusting, my mind still in the trenches.

I rubbed my eyes and put up my hood, smothering myself in Scott's smell. I felt too good to believe the alcohol had left my system. I was still drunk, my thoughts cushioned by the vodka still swimming in my head. It would all hit me later, I knew it would. But I chose to concentrate on the steps I was taking, the warmth of Scott's hoody, the pale sun rising with growing heat.

I'm a dead woman walking.

It will only hurt me if I stop.

"On a scale of one to ten?" Scott asked as we walked towards the bus stop. "How devastated are we right now?" I wrapped myself in my own arms, listening to the distant call of a wood pigeon.

"Probably four," I said. "Disappointed, but life isn't over."

Scott said nothing. I ignored the concern in his eyes. It wasn't the answer he wanted. He thought I was being delusional. Soft. Silly and cliché, like the girls that cried over Joe in the corridor. Maybe I was. It was hard to tell, but the further from Joe's house we got, the lighter my chest started to feel.

It's not over, something inside me said, you know it isn't over.

"I'm not shocked by what happened," Scott sighed. "But it still sucks. I thought you'd want to confront Joe, though. Make him squirm a bit. That would have been fun to watch."

I shrugged, Ingrid-style.

"He doesn't owe me anything. "

"Doesn't he? You disappeared for ages..."

I looked at him, surprised.

"What?" he grinned. "You thought we didn't notice?"

"Okay, yeah we disappeared. We had a nice time. But it's not like we promised each other anything..."

Except with our eyes. Except with our bodies. Except with our mouths.

"He led you on." Scott shook his head. "He made you think you were special..."

I stopped walking, looking Scott in the eyes. He flicked his fringe away with innocence.

"Maybe I am special." I challenged him. "Does one mistake make it all a lie?"

He flushed red, sinking his hands in his pockets.

"I know what guys like him do," Scott insisted. "Don't fall for it."

"You don't know him, Scott."

"Don't I? Come on, Bea..."

"Come on, what?"

"You're not a stupid girl. Why are you acting like one?"

I started walking again, loose stones crunching under my feet. I looked out to the fields, watching a pair of crows landing in the golden corn.

Nothing can hurt me as long as I stay here. Outside. In the sunshine and the peace. Nothing can hurt me...

"Sure, I get it," Scott continued, walking fast to keep up. "I understand not being angry. It's not worth your energy. But that doesn't mean you should give him a second chance."

I snorted.

"What?"

Ulterior motive, much?

"Nothing."

"I know you, Billie. Don't forgive him. He doesn't deserve it."

I stopped again, this time letting him see my irritation.

"Who are you to decide what he does and doesn't deserve? It's not up to you, Scott. I need to think and then I will make my mind up. No one else is going to make it up for me."

"Look, getting with someone else on the first night isn't exactly Romeo and Juliet, is it?"

"Neither is a quick fumble in your sister's bed after two bottles of champagne."

Scott's jaw dropped like I'd slapped him. His mouth moved in silence as he struggled for a response.

Nice, Billie. Now, you've done it.

"Scott, I didn't mean it."

"It's fine."

It was anything but fine. Scott didn't bother trying to hide that. But before I could apologise, we were interrupted by a shout that made the birds nesting in the trees flutter their wings in distaste.

"Guys!"

We spun around, watching as a distant figure pelted down the country lane toward us.

"There you go," Scott grinned. "Here comes your backup."

We waited on the road until Cara drew level with us, her bag swinging from her back, her braids swinging around her face.

"What the hell are you two doing?" she panted. "Sneaking off without me."

"You were asleep. We thought you'd wait for Tom."

"Screw Tom." She batted an invisible version of him away. "I need to know what's going on. Why did you bail?"

I looked at Scott and he looked at me, neither of us willing to say it.

"Joe and Ingrid?" she said, her eyes fixed on the ground.

"You know?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"Joe told me."

"What?"

"He came downstairs and woke me up. He was looking for you, all frantic. He looked like he was in shock. Like he'd seen a ghost or something. He was so desperate to find you..."

She looked me in the eyes, conveying Joe's feelings in her expression.

"He told me what happened. Look, I wasn't the guy's biggest fan at first, but I think he was genuinely sorry."

She gets it.

"What did you say to him?"

"That I didn't know where you were. Then Ingrid overheard our conversation, and they started arguing. I escaped while he was distracted."

Scott shook his head as I wrestled with what it all meant. Whatever they had done was physical. An act between two bodies. I knew from my own experience how little that could mean. He wanted me in the morning. He wanted to apologise and explain. We hadn't started anything yet, but he felt like he owed me something. He had Ingrid in the palm of his hand, but it was me he wanted to reach for.

Still, the idea of them together hurt. Had he kissed her the way he kissed me? Given her the same look? Held her? Did he enjoy what happened between them? Should I be angry? Could girls take advantage of boys the way boys took advantage of girls?

Most importantly, did it mean he didn't care, or was it just a mistake, a road bump? An accident that he felt ashamed about, the same way I felt when I woke up next to Scott, knowing what I'd done wasn't who I wanted to be.

Could I be his exception?

The girl that changes it all?

Cara read my face and smiled.

"I sense trouble," she said. "This saga isn't over, is it?"

Scott rolled his eyes.

"It should be," he grumbled.

"Cheer up, Scott. Maybe if you get some action soon, you won't be so grumpy about other people hooking up."

I laughed as Scott shook his head, concealing a smile behind his long hair.

"Hate you two," he muttered.

"Love us." Cara corrected him. "So. Hungover breakfast at Grandma Amma's?" She looked at me and I nodded. "Scott?"

He sighed, keeping his eyes fixed to the ground as we resumed walking.

"Come on, Scotty. I know you can't resist homecooked food by Amma..."

"Fine, " he conceded. "Maybe she can talk some sense into Bea."

I said nothing. I knew any doubt he had would be proved wrong. I knew it even though it was madness. What happened didn't erase it all. It didn't erase the look he gave me when he left to go to bed. It didn't erase the way our eyes met as he played the piano, his hands telling me stories through the melody.

Cara was right. It wasn't over. I still wanted him. I didn't know if I would ever stop.

A breeze tickled my face and told me, something's coming, just wait and I decided to listen. Good or bad I was going to see this through. I had to know. Had to know him. Had to know his attention on me again. Had to be his focus. Had to feel this one out.

How it might end didn't matter. No amount of ugliness could taint the beauty of how it had begun.