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I’m extremely conscious of how close Ava is. I inexplicably do that pre-teen move of stretching my arm across the back of the sofa, my hand hanging somewhere near her ear. She lets out a quiet snort when she notices, and then we put our drinks to our mouths in perfect unison and she laughs again, and everything in me wants to pull her against me, feel her soft warmth, breathe in her vanilla perfume and shampoo and whatever pheromone she gives off that turns me into something not unlike a caveman. But the woman’s like a cat; you have to let her come to you.
She inches closer, and then her head is on my shoulder, and I don’t know if she’s just sleepy and drunk and in need of comfort, but I’ll give it if she wants it. Whatever the reason, I’m thankful we’re facing away from the rest of the party, because Julien would rip into me for the rest of time if he could see the expression on my face right now.
‘What did Max want to talk to you about?’ I ask, one hand clutching my glass at my lap, the other tracing circles on her bare shoulder and feeling her skin fleck with goosebumps at my touch.
‘Oh,’ she says, lifting her head. I miss the weight of it the second she sits up. ‘He was telling me how he’s been offered this amazing work opportunity for next year. He seems excited. More excited than I’ve seen him in a while, actually. He really deserves it.’
She looks over at him, mid-conversation in the kitchen with Julien and some of the people from Josie’s gallery, and smiles toherself.
‘I like seeing how much you love your brother.’
‘Is that weird?’ She meets my gaze, blue eyes blinking slowly, tipsily, smile still rippling across her face. ‘Don’t you love your siblings?’
‘Of course. But I’ve always been kind of jealous of them.’ I don’t let myself think too hard about how true that is. ‘It felt like they were bound together somehow. I bet it’s the same for you and Max.’
Something passes across her expression but it’s gone before I can place it. I don’t want to bring the mood down, so I don’t mention that there’s something almost mournful in the way Ava looks at Max too, like she loves him so much it makes her sad, like she wishes he were here when he’s already standing right in front of her.
‘I do love him. A lot.’ As if his ears are burning, Max’s head whips around and his eyes narrow into slits as he sees us sitting so close. He doesn’t strike me as the possessive brother type, but you never know, so I shift away slightly. Ava rolls her eyes and he smiles, breaking the façade. He puts his thumb and index finger to his mouth a few times, asking if we want to go out and smoke, and Ava shakes her head. As a small group of them leaves, she adds, ‘Although I wish he didn’t smoke weed.’
‘Ava, where are you?’ Josie calls from the dining table. ‘I need you on my team!’
‘Can’t we play over here?’ Ava asks.
And with that, everyone agrees there’s more space by the sofa, so we set up Articulate on the coffee table and settle into our positions around it. I offer up my spot but no one takes it, and Ava slides down to sit on the floor between my feet, leaning against the sofa.
‘By the way, you’re not on my team,’ she says lightly, pattingmy knee. ‘I don’t want you distracting me.’
After Josie’s first turn—which proves she and Ava must have some secret code, because the latter guesses the right answers with single-word clues almost every time—I lean into Ava’s ear.
‘I didn’t know Articulate cards had braille on them.’
‘They don’t.’ She looks up at me and smiles, one of those unrepentant ones that knock me out for a second. ‘Josie once mentioned she wished she could play, so Alina got them made for her birthday last year.’
Okay, that’s romantic. They’re cute.
At least, they’re cute until it’s Alina’s team’s turn and Josie hurls outrageous insults and distractions her way to get her to lose.
‘The first president of the United States! Who was it?’
‘Denzel Washington!’ Rory frantically guesses, and we descend into hysterics that only worsen when he asks, ‘Was that wrong?’
The game is pandemonium, and as the night goes on the volume and drunkenness increase in parallel, with about half the group continuing to take it seriously, and the other half either finding new ways to cheat or doing their own thing entirely. I’m convinced Ava and Josie’s neighbours must hate them, until I’m informed that the person who just handed me a shot of sambuca lives next door.
‘We’re heading back out for a smoke, do you guys wanna come?’ Max sets his hands on my shoulders from behind the sofa but directs his question mostly at Ava.
She waves a hand to say no and in the process knocks a drink off the table, missing Sage but entirely covering herself. I can tell it’s going to happen before it does, but my own reflexes have beendulled by aforementioned sambuca, so I’m not much help.
‘Oh my god, I’m so sorry,’ Sage says.
‘It’s fine, it wasn’t your fault,’ Ava replies easily, swaying a little as she gets up, using my knees as support. ‘I wanted to get changed anyway.’
She heads to her room and I join in with my team’s round. But then everyone gets into an argument about whether “cricket” should be accepted as an answer when the real answer was “cricketer”, so I take it as an opportunity to get up to go to the bathroom. Someone’s in there already, so I knock at Ava’s bedroom door and wait for her to answer.
When she opens it, she’s no longer in the green dress. Instead, she’s wearing a baggy t-shirt over a pair of extremely short shorts.
She catches my eyes dropping to her thighs and says, ‘I didn’t think about whether this outfit was appropriate for polite company.’
‘Since when have you cared about being polite?’ I lean against the doorframe in what I hope she sees as a sexy way, and not the reality, which is that it’s helpful to have something to support my own weight. I can’t tell yet if I’m more drunk on her presence or the alcohol.
