Page 67 of Oleander

I didn’t, but I said yes anyway.

“Truthfully, I much prefer my own company. Glad to be back in the old mausoleum.” There was a pause. “You’ll be calling to ask about Cas, I suppose?”

The sound of his name felt like a warm breath on my neck.

“Um, eh, no, I wasn’t,” I said but I immediately regretted it. I did want to ask about him. Of course, I did. It just wasn’t the reason I’d called. I tried to decide how embarrassing it would be to ask about him. Had Gideon spoken with him? Did he know about my drunken call the night of my birthday?

“I actually have something here for you that he asked me to give you,” Gideon said.

Everything in me drew up sharp. I couldn’t breathe. “He...you do?”

Gideon let out a little chuckle. “Yes, head on up whenever you can.”

I wanted to drop the receiver and bolt right up there. Cycle my new bike as fast as I could. Instead, I took a breath and said as calmly as I could, why I’d called, “Actually, I wanted to ask a favour.”

“Anything I can do, young Jude, you know you need only ask.”

“Well, Mocks are coming up – they start on the 19th– and I just wondered if you wouldn’t mind me coming up to use the library for the next few weeks. Probably every night. It’s just here is a little—”

I hadn’t finished speaking before he dramatically explained that he was mortally offended that I should think I had to ask. He’d given permission for me to use it months earlier and hadn’t rescinded it. He’d even bought books for there that I’d recommended. I wasalwayswelcome at Deveraux.

I thanked him and told him I’d come the following day after school.

The entire day, my stomach leapt and lurched as though I were on a boat amid a stormy sea. I’d barely been able to sleep the night prior. Cas had given me a gift. He had bought me a birthday present. Then I thought about Gideon’sexactwords as he’d spoken them:I have something here that he asked me to give you.

Maybe it wasn’t a gift. Maybe it was something I’d loaned him or left behind in his room. Had he given it to Gideon before or after my drunken phone call? The phone call which over the last few weeks had come back to me in terrible little fragments of misery.

I hate you.

I hate you.

I hate you for leaving me with this.

After my party at Alfie’s, Ellie had been grounded. And since she spent Christmas in France with her Dad’s family, I hadn’t seen her (except via a video call) since that day. That morning.

I’d spent the days after the incident waiting for Ellie’s parents to call Beth and tell them everything that had happened: how we’d been drinking and I’d been sick and Ellie and I had stayed together and how we’d likely slept in the same bed, maybe even had sex. But it never happened.

It turned out Ellie told her mum I’d gotten really upset about my parents and the baby and begged her to stay with me, which she’d done because she cared about me. She’d apologised and taken her punishment and pleaded with her mum not to tell Beth because Beth, too, had been through a lot.

It worked.

The longer I went without seeing Ellie in the flesh, the more distance that came between me and her and it – the sex – the more it faded from my memory. Inside, I felt exactly the same as I had before it. What lingered was those feelings of guiltand shame; anytime I gave them the floor, they crept into the spotlight and refused to leave the stage.

Ellie had come into first period that morning looking bright with happiness and like I alone was the source of it all. She waited until we were in the corridor to tug me into a doorway, reaching up to kiss the underside of my jaw.

“I missed you soooo much,” she whispered, edging her lips toward my mouth.

“Me too,” I replied, closing my eyes.

“Guess what? I’m only grounded until after exams.”

Her parents had originally told her it was for the entire term.

“Amazing.”

She nodded, a shy, tempting look coming over her eyes. She took my hands and leaned up to whisper into my ear. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Me too,” I said again.