Page 13 of Do You Ship It

Jake nips downstairs to ask his parents – home from work, now – if we can stay and order some pizzas for dinner and, rather than waste any precious forced small talk on Max, I duck out under the pretence of calling my mum to let her know.

I do drop both her and Dad a text just to say I’ll be home late (who even knows if Dad will be there – he shouldn’t be, but I wouldn’t want to put money on it these days), and I tell them I have a lift and won’t need dinner.

But mostly, I hide out in the bathroom until I hear Jake running back upstairs.

I return to my spot in his bedroom, grimacing at a hairpin that’s become lodged awkwardly and painfully in my hair after my dramatic flop on to the bed a few minutes ago. My whole scalp hurts, actually. I don’t think this is a hairstyle that’s meant to be worn for such long periods of time – or if it is, I’m just not used to it.

‘What’s up?’ Jake asks, noticing.

‘My hair,’ I say, then laugh because I don’t think he’ll understand. I roll my eyes and try to explain anyway, and Jake nods solemnly.

‘Ah, yes.’ He tosses his own head, as if shaking out a long mane of hair. ‘I, too, know the struggle. Beauty is pain, my dear Cerys, and how we both struggle. It is simply not easy, to look as lovely as we do.’

My face warms and my stomach fizzes, but I’m all-too-aware of the interloper, dampening the opportunity for further flirting. Jake notices me glance over at Max, and adds, ‘Alas, our tall, dark, not-at- all -handsome companion knows not of these pains, does he?’

‘Cheeky bugger,’ Max mutters, flipping him off, and even I crack a smile at that.

Now he points it out, though, I guess Max does have the whole tall, dark thing going for him … And while he’s not conventionally handsome, not with that long hair, he’s … Well, he’s not exactly bad looking, I suppose. Really, I think, it’s not fair that someone that annoying and judgemental shouldn’t look as ugly as they are on the inside. Max’s full lips and dark eyes framed with thick lashes are anything but .

He’s a little shorter than Jake, but broader, more … filled-out, sort of, and his white school shirt is undone a couple of buttons at the top, showing the rope chain of a necklace. Is it the same one he wore with his cosplay? Is it fandom-related, or something else, maybe more sentimental?

Aware that I’m staring, I tear my eyes away.

I feel too awkward to engage in the banter now – too awkward to flirt with Jake in front of Max, and I don’t know Max well enough to poke fun at him without it coming off as mean – so instead I start taking my hair down, holding the hairpins between my teeth so I don’t have to speak. The boys turn to talking about Alfie the goalkeeper and his frenetic relationship with his girlfriend; apparently, there’s yet more drama there.

Jake and I would never be like that.

Whatever Max is saying, he cuts himself off mid-sentence – and mid-eyeroll, too – when he catches sight of me and turns his gaze more fully on me before letting out a loud, sputtering laugh he tries to hide behind a cough.

He fails miserably, blushing.

I sit up, indignant, and take the pins out of my mouth.

‘What? What is it?’ I scowl, but he’s still laughing, and when I turn to Jake his eyes blow wide and he lets out a snort, too, before making a show of hiding me from view so he won’t laugh. I scramble for my phone and swipe on to the camera to see, and –

Oh, crap.

My hair is a mess . A huge, puffy cloud of pale blonde sticking out around my head in uneven bumps and not-quite curls, so voluminous it stands out several inches – except for the extremely stubborn flat section on the very top where I’d slicked it down with heaps of product this morning. I look totally ridiculous. I watch in the screen as my cheeks turn a bright, almost glowing shade of pink beneath all my freckles and the make-up I tried to cover them with.

Jake’s seen me a bit sweaty after an intense PE class, with some spots or on a bad hair day, but this is …

This is straight up hot mess – easy on the hot.

Taking a page out of Jake’s book and opting for a joke so they can’t tell how truly mortified I am, I whinge, ‘You’re both horrible, the pair of you. Rascals .’

Jake laughs even harder at that, giving my leg a nudge and saying, ‘See, you’re getting into the OWAR spirit! I knew you would! Ah, Max, I take it back – we are the hot, handsome ones here, it seems, not poor Cerys.’

Max, meanwhile, sketches a sort of sat-down bow, head inclined low, and drawls, ‘Here to service your rebellions and mischief alike, fair lady.’

God, he is such a dork.

I settle for just rolling my eyes at him and pull my frizzy mass of hair back into a rough, looser ponytail.

I redirect the conversation with Jake to the almost-abandoned group chat with our old school friends, where there are half-hearted plans to organize a cinema trip. I assume everyone’s just busy with college these days and that’s why we don’t talk as much. The longer the silences stretch, the more awkward I am to reach out to any of them. It’s not as if they’ve reached out to me, either. I do miss them, but I can’t tell how much of that is because I actually just miss the extra opportunities to hang out with Jake …

But he shrugs and says, ‘I’m not sure if I’m going to bother with the cinema, to be honest.’

‘What? Why not?’

‘I don’t know. I just don’t speak to anyone except you that much anymore …’

I can only stare, horrified, because, while he’s right, I can’t wrap my head around his blasé attitude. He doesn’t even sound like he cares .

‘But … But they’re our friends.’

‘Yeah, I’m not saying otherwise, it’s just … you know …’

He shrugs, a resigned but mild expression on his face, and Mum’s words about drifting apart ring in my mind again.

‘No,’ I tell him, an edge to my voice. ‘I don’t know.’

Jake seems almost happy to distance himself from them, to let that distance just happen, and …

What if I’m next?

What if he decides to drift apart from me, too? It’s already started happening, our lengthy Discord chats the only saving grace for how infrequently he texts me these days. And I know we’ve had these couple of Wednesday after-school hangouts, but with Max tagging along, what if that’s not Jake wanting to include his new friend so much as trying to exclude me?

After the pizzas arrive, I resume my previous position on the bed as Jake queues up the final episode. But I can’t stop my brain from worrying – if Jake fades out the gang from school, we’ll have one less anchor in our friendship … unless that’s intentional, too? On the flip side, I can suddenly hear Daphne and the girls telling me that Jake isn’t trying to push me out completely, only out of the friendzone , and that this can only be good for proving to him how perfect we’d be together. If he sees me as less of a friend …

If he sees me as less of a friend , I think, determination pushing out the weird mix of grief and worry and sadness in my stomach, maybe he will start to see me as more of a girlfriend?

The alternative really doesn’t bear thinking about.

The finale of season one is essentially a montage of main characters establishing that they are on various, semi-connected quests to defeat the evil rulers and seek out the long-lost Eldritch King who’s rumoured to bring peace back to the land.

It ends with a scene that has both boys cheering: a hard-done-by yet conventionally attractive young man in the capitol, cursed (or blessed, depending on how you look at it) with fated magick and with a great destiny ahead of him, is forced to flee the palace guards and runs right into the path of the bedraggled redhead man with broken glasses, Rogdan, leader of the rebellious Rascals, a ragtag bunch of people and creatures causing mischief and mayhem to disrupt the evil royal family.

Rogdan grasps the young man by the shoulder, after lecturing him on the wider plot of the series while a montage of the other characters on their quests plays out. And then, just before the credits roll, he asks in a gruff voice, ‘ So … Be ye a Rascal, Roach? ’

I let out an audible ‘ Ohhh! ’ at finally hearing the line from our T-shirts. It does pack a punch. And I do feel excited to see how things go next, and how Roach joining the Rascals will change the dynamics on the show.

‘So? Worth the watch?’ Jake asks, scooting a bit closer to beam at me. His blue eyes twinkle, the light off the TV reflecting in them and his glasses. His hand is placed just behind my back and I can’t help but think that if I leaned over just a little , it’d put our faces very, very near together.

I risk placing my hand over his on the bed as I enthuse, ‘ So worth it! That was brilliant!’

I still don’t know that I could explain the plot very well, or why this Eldritch King is so important, but I can see how people are so drawn to the characters. And the artwork and design is mesmerizing .

I’m genuinely looking forward to watching more.

I’m even a bit disappointed that I missed out on that special-effects panel Jake mentioned at the convention, and say as much. In Discord, it’s easier to take a minute to think through anything I say about the show so I don’t sound like an idiot or accidentally offend his love for OWAR, but I don’t want Jake to mistake my quietness now for being fake.

Even if it did sort of, kind of, actually start out that way.

And even if I’ll probably spend hours talking about it with him on Discord later.

Jake grins. ‘See? Did you really think I’d lead you astray, all those times I said you should watch it?’

‘Better late than never, though, right?’

‘Oh, always.’ He winks, and butterflies flutter in my stomach even as he pulls his hand from underneath mine, turning to look as Max stands up, stretching his arms above his head. His shirt rises, revealing a sliver of lean stomach beneath. He drops his arms with a groan, then grabs his blazer where it’s slung over the back of the gaming chair.

‘Are you leaving?’ Jake says, looking as dismayed as I feel; I file that look away to tell the girls about tomorrow, sure it must mean something. ‘Already? But … You can’t go now! I mean, we haven’t even grilled Cerys yet about her favourite parts of the season.’

Max scoffs, glancing my way only briefly before replying, ‘Please, I think we both know the answer to that. That tower scene was a pivotal moment for the newbie over here. But yeah, I’ve gotta get going – it’s already nine o’clock, mate, and I’ve got that maths homework due in for second period tomorrow I never got around to finishing.’

‘ Still? We’ve had that since Monday!’ Jake tsks . ‘D’you want to just borrow mine? You can give it back to me in class.’

‘Nah, I need to get my head around these differentials. I’ve only got a couple of problems left to work through.’

‘And they’re due tomorrow?’ I say, and return Max the favour of not looking at him when I talk about him, instead laughing as I push Jake gently in the shoulder. ‘This one’s a serial procrastinator, too; you’re as bad as each other! Either that or he’s just a terrible influence.’

‘The worst ,’ Jake croons, his eyes and smile full of mischief and shared memories of the two of us bunking off class, or scrabbling to swap homework answers at the last minute. My cheeks turn a bit warm under the intensity of his gaze.

I want to whisper, ‘Rascal,’ like it’s a private joke – which it is, in a way – and then lean in, imagining how he’d lift a hand to cradle my cheek and we’d stare into each other’s eyes for another long moment before he finally kissed me …

But there’s Max, making a racket as he takes his car keys out of his blazer pocket and asks for my address so he can plug it into the maps on his phone, robbing us of the moment.

Regretful, I peel away from Jake, but after he walks us to the door I throw my arms around him for a quick hug.

‘See you soon?’ I ask, hopeful, terrified, remembering how he didn’t care if he didn’t see the group from school.

‘Couldn’t get rid of me if you tried, Cer.’

Oh, I hope not. I really, really hope not.

I linger just a beat longer, before I have to turn and go after Max.