Page 12 of Do You Ship It
When Wednesday rolls around, I once again have a panic about my outfit – I can’t bring myself to wear the fandom tee again and risk a full-on eyeroll from Max this time. I forgo Daphne’s assistance with my make-up this week, promising I’ll try the look again soon but not sure I have the confidence for it right now, and instead make a dash for the bus with her calling after me, ‘Good luck! Go get your man, Cerys! Morning debrief at Costa with the girls tomorrow!’
I turn around long enough to grin and wave, already looking forward to it, glad that the free-period coffees sound like a staple in the calendar, one I’m firmly included in.
October has arrived with brisk winds, even if the sun is still bright and warm. The leaves haven’t turned yet, and there’s a summery feeling still clinging to things. Today, my outfit is the same blue, floaty sundress I wore to the convention a couple of weeks ago, but layered with a woolly jumper and paired with trainers instead of sandals.
Maybe it’s not quite the weather for a sundress, but I’ve had to compensate for Max third-wheeling again by putting a bit more effort into my look. My hair is piled into a bun, slicked back with some serum that Nikita lent me and held in place by about a thousand hairpins. It’s making my head ache after being so stiffly in place all day, but when I catch sight of myself in the reflection off the bus window, I don’t dare mess with it. It does look really good. Sophisticated. Older.
Like someone who knows how to flirt with boys and signal to her best friend that she’d very much like for him to kiss her, thank you.
This time, when I get to Jake’s house, I notice Max’s car parked skew-whiff once more on the pavement. Ginny’s car is there too, but only because she doesn’t take it to uni with her; Jake’s planning to use it to practise driving, much to her chagrin.
‘Thomas never had to share his car,’ was her argument, according to Jake, to which their mum had replied, ‘Yes, but Thomas had moved out and graduated uni by the time you were learning to drive. Your car is sat here doing nothing, and since your father and I pay the insurance, you can share it with Jake while he’s learning and you’re at uni.’
Mum and Dad have both said they’ll take me out to learn in one of their cars since I got my provisional this summer, but that hasn’t happened yet. It’s another fight I’ve avoided causing between them, sure that somehow they’ll use it to find another way to be at each other’s throats and ruin the whole experience anyway.
I cast a glare at Max’s car, annoyed – jealous – then steel myself and go knock at the front door. There are voices on the other side, laughter about something, and then it swings open to reveal Jake. He’s in his school shirt and a pair of grey tracksuit bottoms, beaming at me but already moving back inside.
‘Alright, Cerys? Ready for another round of your favourite show?’
I laugh. ‘Don’t you know it! Fangirl official, right?’
He doesn’t send me upstairs like last week, so I follow him to the open-plan kitchen/diner to help as he starts making snacks. Toasties, again, of course.
‘Sometimes I think if we cut you in half, you’d bleed melted cheese.’
Jake snorts. ‘That is weirdly morbid. And also, absolutely true.’
‘Sooo,’ I sing-song. ‘How’s school?’
‘School’s fiiiine,’ he sings back, a smile resting gently on his lips as he pulls slices of bread out of the packet to butter. I set the kettle on to boil and lean on my forearms on the island in the centre of the kitchen, across from Jake.
I study the easy slope of his narrow shoulders, the lean definition in his arms that’s appeared since the end of our last school year. He must’ve had a haircut since last week, because his sandy-blonde locks are neater and shorter than when I saw him last, and as immaculately styled as if he’d only recently done it, rather than spent the day out at college. There’s a fingerprint on his metal-frame glasses, right in the middle of the lens, and I reach out to pull them from his face.
Jake jolts a bit, but doesn’t question me when I clean his glasses on the fabric of my dress, scrutinizing them to make sure they’re properly clean before I hand them back. Then, I course-correct, and place them gently back on his face, letting my fingertips softly graze against his cheeks. It could be passed off as just friendly, an accidental touch, but at the same time it feels almost recklessly bold, especially when I let my hands stay there just a second too long and smile as I say, ‘There. You’re perfect.’
His bright blue eyes blink rapidly – maybe just testing the clean lenses, or, hopefully, reading into my gesture for what it really is – then he flashes a smile my way. ‘What would I do without you, Cer?’
‘I really don’t know.’
‘So, how’s school with yoooou?’ he asks then, drawing the word out brightly. It annoyingly interrupts the intensity of the moment we just had going on, but I suppose being hauled in for an impassioned kiss across the kitchen counter is a bit much to hope for.
I give him a more detailed answer than he offered me, although I suppose I am already fully up to date on his football drama, and Jake’s always preferred chatting about his mates and his hobbies than his classes anyway. ‘It’s pretty good. My lessons are all okay – history’s a slog, but that’s mainly because we get so much homework. And , I think I’m officially part of the group now.’
‘With Evie from school and whatsherface, the Bridgerton girl?’
I giggle. ‘ Daphne . Yes, that lot. We have Thursday morning debriefs now.’
It’s only after I blurt it out that I realize what I’ve said, and blush. Jake is too busy carefully layering slices of cheese to notice, at least, so he just asks, ‘Debriefs? That sounds very intense. What about?’
‘Oh, um. Just. You know, how college is going and stuff.’
Mostly stuff.
Mostly him .
‘This sounds like when my mum puts a “weekly audit” meeting in her work calendar, but she’s actually at spin class.’ He glances up at me with twinkling eyes. ‘Dad’s been taking the mickey since she let that slip. She asked him to take the bins out the other night and he said, “Sorry, I’m currently busy with my weekly audit” – you can imagine she was not impressed, so obviously we’ve all started doing it now.’
Even though I laugh, the story leaves my chest feeling a bit tight.
‘I wish my parents would joke around like that instead of … whatever the hell it is they’re doing these days,’ I confess. The kitchen is quiet but for the bubbling of the kettle, almost finished, and the scrape of the butter knife in Jake’s hand.
He pauses, not quite meeting my eye before he says, ‘Maybe you should sign them up to clown school for their Christmas present. Nothing says “shut up” like a mouth full of coloured cloths that just won’t stop coming!’
My laugh is hollow, but we both pretend not to notice. And I try not to miss the Jake who talked to me more openly, more deeply, in Discord on Sunday night. But that’s okay, I tell myself; I know he cares, and now I know he is capable of that sort of heart-to-heart, however awkward he might find it in person, it only makes him more endearing.
The kettle finishes boiling and I find the mugs. I pull down my usual ‘JUST DANDY’ mug and my mood shifts instantly, like it’s a cursed object.
I could take it back. It’s petty, maybe, but it’ll be a victory. I’ll be making a point .
But Max is Jake’s new friend, close enough that Jake wants to include him in our weekly hangouts, so I suck it up to prove that I am a good person, a compassionate future girlfriend, and I get Ginny’s swearing pug mug out for myself.
Look at me, taking the moral high ground.
I am – and I’m sure Jake will see it any day now – such a catch.
This week, I sit a bit further up on the bed, closer to Jake but not quite next to him, and not near enough to the headboard that I might be tempted to relax into it; lying down on his bed with him feels a bit too nerve-wracking, even if we didn’t have our third-wheel to deal with. Instead, I sit with my skirt arranged prettily around me and my legs stretched out, crossed at the ankle, and prop myself back on my hand.
It’s not very comfortable, admittedly, but that’s beside the point.
Luckily, I don’t have to exchange much small talk with Max beyond a ‘hello’ because Jake immediately queues up the next episode for us all to start watching, and the show takes over. I can’t believe how into it they both are – Jake is bright-eyed and smiling as he watches, even mouthing along to parts of the show, and Max leans forward intently, his eyes focused entirely on the screen. They both cry out at some apparent betrayal, both cheer at the appearance of a ragged, withered-looking man with stringy red hair turning grey and a broken pair of glasses, and they both wait for my reactions to certain moments with bated breath.
Mostly, it’s whenever Lady di Silver and her guard are on screen, though they aren’t doing very much. For a good chunk of one episode, all they’re doing is riding horseback down a road and discussing politics, which is nowhere near as entrancing as the scene in the bedroom – even if they are sharing a horse, and cosied up together.
Actually, most of the two episodes is politics and characters swapping ancient myths and legends about the long-lost Eldritch King who will bring the realm back to rights, and it’s lots of dark, moody scenes in taverns and dramatic, foreboding one-liners that make the boys positively vibrate with excitement, but go right over my head.
By the end of it, when Jake sits up to pause before episode seven – the season finale – plays, I flop back on the bed with a groan of despair, throwing my arm over my head.
‘I thought you said there would be lots of characters to love this week,’ I grumble.
Max laughs, which makes me scowl. I drag my head up enough to shoot him a glower from beneath my arm, but he cracks a smirk to himself and shakes his head. I lie back down, but keep scowling.
Jake pats my arm. ‘Guess you’ll just have to keep watching to get that sweet, sweet Silversmith content. Even if they’re not endgame.’
‘Says you,’ Max argues, but it’s playful, and sounds like a debate they’ve hashed out plenty of times before.
Jake laughs – loudly, a little brashly, and it’s enough to make me pick my head up to peer at him, a bit confused because it doesn’t sound like his usual laugh, and a bit hurt that there’s obviously some hysterical in-joke between them I’m missing.
‘You crack me up,’ he tells Max through loud guffaws, and pats me again to say, ‘Isn’t he hilarious?’
‘Uh …’
Wait, am I in on the joke? Did I miss something?
But Max also looks startled, catching my eye and obviously as out of the loop as I am, and I find myself giving him a shrug in this strange moment of solidarity between us when faced with Jake’s sudden weirdness.
Jake sighs, recovering himself, seeming to catch the mood and realize we’re not all rolling around in fits of laughter. He runs a hand back through his hair and leans forward a bit to reply properly to Max.
‘Oh come on, you’re telling me you’ve got two insanely powerful characters with huge ties to destiny, a half-elf of noble birth with blood magick, and an elf warrior, a man of the people, with fated magick granted to him by the gods, and they’re not going to end up together? Moonsilver all the way.’
‘Why’s it called Moonsilver?’ I ask.
‘Spoilers,’ says Max.
‘Next episode, actually. Do you guys want to stay to watch it? It’s the last one of the first season …’ Jake looks between us and I sit up properly now, under his gaze. I pull my dress back into place, laying it neatly around my knees. He smiles, hopeful, and turns to Max. ‘I don’t think Mum and Dad will mind if you guys stay for tea – maybe I can convince them to let us order some pizza, or something?’
Max shrugs, looking so annoyingly affable that it sets my teeth on edge. Is he pretending to be friendly towards me, just like I am with him? ‘I don’t mind. I don’t want to intrude or anything.’
YOU ARE , I want to scream. YOU ARE INTRUDING! On this evening, on this potential romance, on all of it!
But now they’re both looking at me, and thankfully a more rational bit of my brain takes over. I reach for my phone to check the time, and bite my lip. ‘I’m not sure … It’s going to be really late getting the bus back home …’ And I don’t dare call Mum or Dad to ask them to come pick me up, but I can’t mention that in front of Max. I don’t need him knowing every horrible, nasty bit of my life.
Last time I stayed out too late I missed the bus home and rang for a lift, Dad came to collect me and said it was no problem. Then I heard Mum snapping at him because it was encouraging me to be irresponsible and we should both know better. The time before that, Mum had picked me up and Dad told her that I had exams to revise for and she clearly didn’t care about the impact on my schoolwork as much as she cared about being ‘the cool mum’.
Jake, of course, knows this, and he knows what I’m not saying, because his face creases in sympathy and he reaches over to give my hand a brief, wonderful little squeeze before he says, ‘Well, you could drop Cerys home, couldn’t you, Max?’
I cringe just as Max glances my way, and my cheeks flame; I’m sure he caught that.
‘She’s only over by the garden centre,’ Jake’s telling him. ‘It’s not that far out the way. You’re that side of town anyway, aren’t you?’
He cannot be serious. A car ride, alone, with Max ? I would rather deal with my parents! It’s a half-hour drive! Thirty minutes , when we barely filled three last week with small talk before Jake came upstairs with the toasties. What would I even talk to Max about for that long?
‘Really,’ I fumble to say, ‘you don’t have to, it’s okay. I can figure something out. We can just leave the finale until next week, or –’
‘No way!’ Jake crows, laughing. He scoots over on the bed to wrap his arm around me and give me a playful shake, and I can’t even freak out at the fact we’re pressed together from shoulder to hip, that his leg is bumping against mine or that he’s pulled me against him. Oh, the irony, that this is the moment I decide to have what feels like an out-of-body experience, watching this nightmare unfold in real time. ‘There’s no way I’m letting you go straight from the season finale into the next one. It ruins the whole dramatic effect!’
‘It’s alright,’ Max says quietly, in his low voice, the words even and measured, his gaze somewhere near my knees. ‘I don’t mind, Cerys. And Jake’s right – the finale is the kind of episode that needs breathing room before you dive into the next one.’
I’m not so convinced – I haven’t exactly been sucked wholeheartedly into the show so far, and I’m not sure how much that will change in the space of a single hour-long episode. But they’re both waiting, both expecting me to agree, and I don’t really know how to decline without making things weird.
‘Come on, Cer! For me?’ Jake wheedles, tugging me closer. ‘Please?’
And it’s more time with Jake, isn’t it? Wasn’t that the goal here?
So I swallow, my mouth dry, and say, ‘Sure. Awesome. Thanks, Max. Sounds good.’