Beautiful Broken Things(Beautiful Broken Things #1)(10)

‘Hey!’ I said. ‘I’m done with Service.’

‘How did it go?’

‘Oh, fine. How was last night? Is Suzanne still with you?’

‘It was good. No, she left about an hour ago.’

‘Did you have fun?’

‘Yeah! More when we first got there and we were getting drunk and stuff. But she kind of disappeared after an hour or so. I still had fun though.’

‘What do you mean, disappeared?’ I stopped at the traffic lights, tapping the button with my fingers, watching the light change.

‘She went off with Chris, this guy from the sixth form.’

‘She left you on your own?’

‘Oh no, I was with Lev and Maya.’ Levina and Maya were, before Suzanne at least, Rosie’s closest friends from school. ‘And Ollie was hanging around a bit.’

‘Oh, was he now?’ I said, raising my eyebrows even though she couldn’t see me. ‘I hope you told him to get lost.’

There was a silence.

‘Rosie!’ I scolded.

‘I’d had a lot to drink, OK?’ she said, defensive. ‘And it was kind of nice to have him being all interested for once. Anyway, that’s not what I was going to tell you.’

‘I think you getting off with your sort-of ex is worth talking about,’ I said, stepping around an unnecessarily large pram that a harassed-looking woman had pushed directly into my path.

‘Oh please. He’s hardly an ex. When I have an ex worth talking about I hope I’ll have done more than kiss him. Anyway. When we were drinking, before she went with Chris, me and Suze talked a lot and she –’ she paused dramatically – ‘has had sex.’

‘Really?’ I tried to figure out what I should do with my voice. Should I be surprised? Impressed? Was I either of these things?

‘With more than one guy.’

‘Wow,’ I said, and then felt ridiculous. I sounded like a twelve-year-old.

‘I know!’ Rosie said, making me feel better. ‘I’m not sure she’d have told me if we hadn’t had tequila.’

‘You had tequila?’ I was surprised now. When we drank, it was usually alcopops and fruit ciders, or syrupy sweet shots that tasted mostly of sugar. Straight spirits were still too much for me.

‘Yes, and it was disgusting. I almost threw up.’ She paused. ‘I actually kind of did. Anyway! She was a lot more chatty after that; usually she’s quite guarded.’

‘Did she tell you why she lives with Sarah?’ I asked.

‘No, I didn’t ask.’

That would have been the first thing out of my mouth. ‘Why not?’

‘Because we were talking about sex, Caddy!’

‘All right, sorry. So, how many guys?’

‘Two.’

‘Oh, when you said more than one guy I thought you were going to say it was five or something.’

‘No, she’s not like that.’

I thought of all the girls I knew who’d had sex. There were the girls at my school, like Olivia, who wore their skirts as short as humanly possible and snuck cigarettes outside the school gates and did everything they could to prove they weren’t private girls’ school clichés, seemingly unaware they were ticking every clichéd box. I only knew two girls my age who weren’t virgins and didn’t fit that same mould: Allison, who’d been with her boyfriend Sammy for almost two years, and Chessy, my cousin, who was also in a long-term relationship.

‘Did you get the losing-virginity story?’ I asked, trying to decide which category Suzanne would fit into.

‘No, we’re not that close, and she wasn’t that drunk. She did say she’s never had a proper boyfriend though.’

I squinted into the empty space in front of me, trying to revise my categorizations to make them fit.

‘I can hear you being judgemental,’ Rosie said suddenly, and I had to laugh.

‘I was just thinking about Chessy.’

‘You don’t have to be “I-love-you-forever” in love to have sex, you know,’ Rosie said, her voice annoyingly preachy, as if this was something I didn’t already know. ‘Sometimes liking a guy is enough. And sometimes you just want to get it over with.’

‘So Suzanne got it over with twice?’ I snarked, surprising myself. Maybe I really was judgemental. Or jealous. I’d had to set myself a goal to even try to have sex, and she’d already been there done that with two different guys.

‘Caddy! Don’t make me wish I hadn’t told you.’

‘As if you wouldn’t tell me,’ I laughed. ‘So, anyway.’ It seemed like a good time to change the subject. ‘Where did you leave things with Ollie?’

‘Nowhere, it was just a silly drunk thing. Hey, want to come over for dinner? Mum’s making enchiladas, and we can watch crappy TV.’

‘I can’t tonight. Seeing my gran, remember?’

‘Oh.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Mum wants to take me to a talk at the Dome. It’s on feminism. Want to come? There might be tickets left.’

‘Um. No, thanks.’ As far as I was concerned, I got enough of that at school. ‘I guess I’ll see you next weekend?’