Remix. Part 21

Lauren waves her phone at the girls in the queue behind us, who all agree, then she asks the same of a pa.s.sing boy, who barely glances at the phone, but tells both of them to come and find him in Three-Tree Field.

"You're outvoted, Ruby."

I open my mouth to explain, but what's the point? Lauren doesn't listen and when she's with her, neither does Kaz.

We move round a corner of the queue that snakes around the barriers and I can see the band sitting at the table. The drummer looks bored, the guitarist is smiling at everyone, but he turns away briefly to ma.s.sage his jaw. The ba.s.sist next to him says something and they both laugh and look along to the end of the table where Adam Wexler is holding a bra handed to him by a fan. It takes a second for me to realize that it was the one she was actually wearing as security gently guide her away. "That's for you to remember me by!" she shouts, before trying to lift her top an act stopped before it starts by the female security guard, who looks like she's done this a million times before.

Every stupid daydream I had about meeting the man I worship seems even stupider now I'm actually here.

KAZ.

Lauren shakes her head as the girl at the front is led away and looks at Ruby. "You're not going to do that, are you?" Ruby just stares at her until Lauren carries on the conversation herself. "The way Lee was talking it sounded like me and Kaz might have to restrain you."

"Just try it." It's clear Ruby's not joking. It's equally clear that she's not talking about anything to do with Adam Wexler, either.

Lauren gives a little frown before turning back to me. The queue moves forward, jiggling us all around so that by the time we've stopped, Ruby's behind us.

I'm actually quite relieved.

RUBY.

Awesome. Now I can't even see the b.l.o.o.d.y band behind those two vertically gifted freaks.

I get my phone out for something to do and discover that Lee's sent me a photo of him and Owen and Parvati grinning at the camera, looking very sweaty and very happy. See how friends share! To stop myself telling him to f.u.c.k off, I scroll back through my camera roll, deleting some of the c.r.a.pper pictures until I catch one I didn't know I had on there. I tap back, trying to place when it was taken.

Last night. I can only a.s.sume my phone dropped out of my pocket and Stu was the one to find it. I wish he hadn't.

There's a series of them. The most recent is a selfie of Stu, with him looking broodily into the camera. He's smiling at something, which only makes sense when you scroll back one.

Him again. This time with a girl, identifiable as Stella by her pink hair, since the rest of her face is attached to Stu's in a full-on snog.

The one before is not of Stu. It's of me, running away, Kaz just coming into the frame as she chases after me.

I force myself to scroll back to the photo of him and Stella and I stare at it, until it stops meaning anything, until it's nothing but a set of pixels on a screen. But it isn't. It's a pain in my chest that won't go away.

He probably thought that was what my reaction in the Grundiiz crowd was about until he saw me later, over there, by the boards, next to that row of Little John tour posters. At that point he must have realized there was no way I'd seen this picture, or I'd never have touched him. He'd let me humiliate myself, knowing it would only get worse when I found this photo on my phone.

I hate him.

Or something. I'm so knotted up that I'm not sure what I feel.

If we were alone, I would show Kaz and she would tell me he's not worth the megabytes the pictures take up on my phone. Maybe I would find the words to tell her something close to the truth. That he is worth something to me, even if I don't know what.

But Lauren.

So I do something stupid. I text the picture to Stu. I know I shouldn't, but the number's there in my head. I stab out the words Thanks, f.u.c.khead and press send, regretting it immediately.

At the front of the queue, Lauren and Kaz have worked themselves into a frenzy of giggles and the first guy to sign their card looks as if he doubts their sanity. They move on, but I haven't anything to sign.

"Was I meant to pick up a card?" I ask.

"You were." It's the drummer, whose name I have temporarily forgotten.

"What's the point of a signed card?" I ask and he shrugs, looking bored. "Can you sign this, instead?"

I pull off my belt and hand it to him. It's a canvas one, yellow, plain. The drummer shrugs again, looking marginally less bored, and signs the belt with his black marker pen.

I push the belt along to the ba.s.sist, who doesn't comment, and then the guitarist, who does, his rictus grin still in place.

"Not signed a belt before."

"You have now," I say, thinking that there must be something wrong with me Adam Wexler isn't actually the only person I worship in this band. I love all of them, one way or another. I can't move on because Lauren and Kaz are still with Adam Wexler and I see Lauren shove Kaz forwards so she's leaning over the table next to him, posing for a photo. He's smiling and polite, the perfect rock star in all his glory. Moving in close, he says something to Kaz and I see her blush a shade deeper.

Curiosity flickers in me, but the flame's extinguished when my phone goes and I see Stu's reply.

f.u.c.khead. s.h.i.thead. Call me what you like. Doesn't change the fact that you want me...

The words are loaded with so much self-satisfaction that I feel sick and I dully step forwards, pushing my belt towards Adam Wexler for signing.

"I can't use this." I look up sharply, but he's turned away to someone behind him to ask if he could have a black pen for signing my belt instead of the gold one he's been using. When he turns back to me I feel a vague quiver of excitement.

Wexler is as s.e.xy in the flesh as he is on the posters taped to my wall. His eyes are Photoshop-filter blue and it's hard not to imagine what kind of gorgeous mess I'd make by running my fingers through his hair. The long-sleeved top he's wearing might hide that new tattoo of his, but it does nothing to disguise the shape of his body beneath.

I hadn't realized I was holding my breath.

"Cheer up, love. Whatever it is can't be that bad." He crooks his mouth in the half-smile I've seen accompany every Gold'ntone interview, but the impact is lost in my indignation. There's nothing more patronizing than the whole "cheer up, love" sentiment.

"Oh, really?" I wave my phone at him. "How would you feel if your ex took a photo ON YOUR PHONE of them snogging someone else?"

Wexler frowns and catches the phone to actually look at what I'm showing him.

"I suppose I'd feel like snogging someone else in retaliation." The look accompanying these words gives me all sorts of very wrong thoughts. Then he turns to take the pen from whichever a.s.sistant has found one and signs my belt before flipping it over and writing something the full length of it something that's hard to read upside-down.

"Good luck getting your own back," he says with a wink. "You know where to find me."

As I wander off in a bit of a daze, I open my arms wide to read the message on my belt.

WHEN A KISS BECOMES A KNIFE TO THE HEART YOU KNOW YOU WERE IN LOVE.

It's a lyric from one of their most famous songs. I quickly flip the belt over and thread it back through my shorts before I can dwell on what it says. Stupid rock-star musicians think they know the answer to everything. They know nothing.

23 * INTERLUDE

KAZ.

Ruby does not seem as excited by meeting Adam Wexler as I expected. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that she must have gone into shock. I think I have after he whispered in my ear.

It should be illegal for a man to smell that good.

"So what did he say?" Lauren asks Ruby as she threads her belt back onto her shorts. It looks good adorned with all the Gold'ntone signatures. Very cool. Very Ruby.

"Not much." Ruby looks up with a distracted smile.

She is definitely in shock.

"An anti-climax?" I suggest and she nods, smiling a little more as if she's grateful for me finding the answer.

"Well, not for me," Lauren says, shaking her head. "I didn't believe anyone could be that fit in real life."

Ruby grins. I think it's the first time Lauren's had that reaction if nothing else, Wexler's improved Ruby's mood. "Yeah, he is quite hot."

"Totally falls in the 'would' category, right?" I say.

"The very definition of said category. In fact, I think he's the king of it." She's warming up even further and the grin stays for longer this time.

"What's this category?" Lauren asks.

I explain. "People you'd have s.e.x with at the drop of a hat."

"Or their pants," says Ruby and this time it's Lauren who smiles.

I doubt Lauren would be smiling if she knew that the only person who really makes my "would" category is her boyfriend. And that I have. I try and bundle this unwelcome thought back into the locked compartment inside my head where I've been keeping it for most of the afternoon. Then I force myself to listen to what the other two are talking about.

"... how many people do you reckon Wexler's already dropped his pants for though?" Lauren is saying.

"Don't care so long as he drops them for me," Ruby replies.

"I couldn't." Lauren pulls a face. "If I'm having s.e.x with someone, I'd like to feel it was because it means something."

This time my thoughts don't so much cast a shadow as suck the sun right out of the sky.

If I'm having s.e.x with someone...

Having. Present tense.

If there was one thing that made last night ever so slightly less awful it was that Tom and I should always have been each other's first. This is the first time it's occurred to me that I might not have been his.

RUBY.

Kaz has gone very quiet, but Lauren's still talking and I switch stations from concentrating on Kaz's radio silence to Lauren's blithering. "... suppose you'd know practice makes perfect, right?"

The look Lauren gives me is annoyingly smug. She is either thinking about a) me, which is both rude and unlikely she couldn't care less about anything I've done unless it's connected to ... b) Stu.

It's not the first time she's fished for a soundbite on the subject of Stu, but I refuse to give one. Lauren can think what she likes. I don't know whether she's heard the rumours of his studliness that reigned before I got together with him, or the gossip that swept in afterwards. The only people who know the truth of what happened in between are me and Stu.

Even Kaz only knows the edited highlights. She doesn't know that the first time I slept with him was so c.r.a.p that I went to the bathroom afterwards and cried. Stu found me in there.

"What's wrong?" he asked, sliding onto the floor next to me, our backs against the bathtub. "Tell me."

"That wasn't great. For me." It'd been uncomfortable and tense and I felt like I'd been raked with sandpaper. I wasn't even sure if he'd actually finished, or just given up because I'd said "Ow" one too many times. It's not that it was my first: I'd done it a couple of times with my last boyfriend and it had been fine. Something I'd thought would get better when I found the right person. That person was supposed to be Stu, who sent my stomach into spasms when he kissed me. Who reduced my thoughts to gibberish when he ran his fingers across my skin. The thought of whom was enough for me to...

Reality hadn't measured up to expectation.

"It wasn't great for me either." My mouth twisted with misery at his words. "Look at me." His eyes were wide and serious, but his lips tugged into a small smile. "But it's just bad s.e.x. That's all. Nothing to worry about."

"I don't want it to be bad." And I couldn't stop myself from crying. I felt like such a child. It wasn't supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be like on the Internet or in films.

"Listen. I've had some great s.e.x. And some rubbish s.e.x. And some so-so s.e.x."

"All right, you tart," I muttered, not sure how I felt about him saying this.

"I am a tart." He smiled at my expression. "So I know what I'm talking about. Great s.e.x isn't something magical. It's a skill you learn, not a talent you're born with. Why d'you think I needed so much practice?"