Loveless(25)

‘You could have just said no to hanging out tonight,’ I pointed out.

‘No I couldn’t,’ said Pip, ‘because then she’d win.’

Jason and I stayed silent for a moment.

Then I said, ‘She’s been giving me some advice about stuff.’

Pip frowned. ‘Advice? About what?’

‘Well … you know I was feeling kind of bad about, like …’ God. This stuff was always so awkward to talk about. ‘You remember at the prom afterparty I was feeling really down about not having kissed anyone, and … you know. Rooney’s been helping me try and put myself out there a bit.’

Pip and Jason stared at me.

‘What?’ Pip shook her head in disbelief. ‘You don’t – Why is she making you do that? You don’t have to do that shit … just – God. You need to just go at your own pace, man. Why is she making you? … What? Is she trying to persuade you to start getting with people at bars? That’s fine if she wants to do that, but that’s not who you are.’

‘She’s not making me do anything! She’s just helping me open up to people a bit, and, like … take chances.’

‘But you shouldn’t have to force this stuff! That’s not who you are,’ she repeated, frowning.

‘Well, what if that’s who I want to be?’ I snapped back. I felt immediately bad about it. Pip and I never argued.

Pip shut her mouth. She didn’t seem to have an answer for that.

Eventually she said, ‘I don’t like Rooney because she’s disrupting the dynamics of our friendship group. And she’s very annoying to me specifically.’

I didn’t even bother to answer her.

Jason was flattening his hair awkwardly. ‘Uh … It’s good that you’ve made a friend, though, Georgia.’

‘Yeah,’ I said.

I felt my phone buzz in my bag and withdrew it to take a look.

Rooney Bach

I’m at the bar!

Hey maybe we could hook you up with someone tonight …

I sent her a thumbs-up emoji.





Rooney had managed to bagsy an entire table for us in John’s bar, which deserved a medal, because it was heaving. The bar was a tiny basement area in college, super old and very hot. I could practically feel people’s sweat in the air as we squeezed through the crowd to get to the table.

Rooney had dressed up for the night: jumpsuit, heels, hair curled into loose waves. She probably had other plans after hanging out with us at the very childish hour of 9 p.m. And while she had been waiting for us, she seemed to have befriended a large group of people sitting at the next table.

‘Darlings,’ said Rooney in a fake posh drawl as we all sat down, turning away from her new friends. ‘You all look so nice.’ She looked directly at Pip. ‘So stripes are your thing, Felipa?’

Pip narrowed her eyes at the use of her unshortened name. ‘Have you been Facebook-stalking me?’

‘Instagram, actually. I enjoyed the photo of you dressed up as a crayon for Halloween.’

This earned a smug smile from Pip. ‘You scrolled very far back then.’

We had to suffer several minutes of irritating banter between Pip and Rooney before Jason and I could even contribute to the conversation. In that time, I did some people-watching, looking around the room at our fellow students. There were people on a regular night out, some dressed up and others just in their college sweatshirts and jeans. There were people in fancy dress – a lot, actually, but it was still Freshers’ Week, so that made sense.

‘So how did you all become friends?’ asked Rooney.

‘School,’ I said. ‘And we all went to the same youth theatre group.’

‘Oh my God, that’s right! You’re all theatre kids! I forgot!’ Rooney’s face lit up. ‘This is amazing. We can all go to the welcome meeting together next week!’

‘It’s sad about your society getting shut down,’ Jason said.

‘Yeah! Shakespeare Soc. I was so set on joining it, but … it just doesn’t exist any more. Surely that’s some sort of crime against Britain.’

‘So you like Shakespeare?’ asked Pip. She sounded sceptical, almost.

Rooney nodded. ‘Yeah! Love it. Do you?’

Pip nodded back. ‘Yeah. I’ve been in a few at school.’

‘Same. I was in Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado, Comedy of Errors, and Hamlet at school.’

‘We did Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest.’

‘So I have more experience?’ Rooney said, and the curl of her lips was unmissable. It was like she was starting a fight.

Pip’s jaw twitched.

‘I guess,’ she said.

I caught eyes with Jason over the table, and the way his eyes widened told me that I wasn’t imagining this. Jason could tell what was going on too.

Here they were, Rooney and Pip, two very different sorts of chaotic energy colliding before my very eyes. I felt overwhelmed.

‘So, are you and Georgia, like, best friends now?’ asked Pip with a weak chuckle.

I was about to protest being dragged into whatever this was, when Rooney replied instead.

‘I’d say we’re pretty good friends already,’ said Rooney, smiling and looking at me. ‘Right?’