lust for life • james cook - skins

22 - cook

"Cook! Would you mind not lighting that in here?" Katie groans as I spark a joint beside her.

"Calm down, Kit Kat," I chuckle, the spliff balancing between my lips. "Freds, crank down that window there, would you?"

We're all heaped into Emily and Katie's family car, heading to the nearest beach, which is about an hour's drive.

Emily just recently got her novice, so she's driving. Naomi is in the passenger seat next to her. Katie took ages getting ready, so she got shoved in the very back, beside me. JJ, Freddie, Pandora and Eve are squashed together in the back seats.

Unfortunately, there are no seats in the very back, so Katie and I are perched atop some uncomfortable bags, Katie gripping for dear life onto the headrest in front of her.

"Don't understand why you couldn't have driven," she mutters, craning her neck to see out the front windows.

"Because I'm not going to drive under the influence, babes, am I?" I smile at her, puffing out smoke. "I'm responsible, me."

"Right, Cook, responsible," she rolls her eyes at me, a small smile tugging at her lips.

"You know, there's a window back here," I nod my head at the rear window behind us.

"I'm trying to get away from that stench," Katie wrinkles her nose at me, her neck still craned.

"What are you on about?" I laugh, blowing out my cloud of smoke in the opposite direction of where Katie is sitting. "What stench?"

"Weed," Katie whines. "It's vile."

"You're vile," I retort. "I swear I've seen you toking on multiple different joints on multiple different occasions."

"Must've been Emily," Katie giggles, shoving me with her foot.

I shove her back, smiling. I seem to have shoved her too hard, as she loses her balance and falls sideways into the pile of beach gear that's crammed in beside us. A half-closed bag falls on top of her, spilling its contents of suncream and water bottles onto her head.

"Cook!" She shrieks, flinging a bottle of suncream at my head.

Emily swerved violently. "Fucking hell, Katie!" She shouts, glaring at the pair of us through the mirror. "Stop yelling! You almost made me crash the car!"

"It was Cook!" Katie protests, fixing her hair as she straightens herself up.

"Cook, your scream has gotten awfully high-pitched," Naomi comments sarcastically, poking her head around the passenger seat to smirk at me.

"Yeah, need to lay off the joints, methinks," I laugh, holding up the half-finished spliff.

Eve cranes her neck to look at me. "Can I've a puff?"

"Go ahead," I smile, handing her the joint. "You and Freds can finish it off."

"Thanks, Cook," Freddie says as he rolls down the window even more.

"How much longer?" Pandora asks Emily, her face pressed against the other window, her breath leaving a condensation cloud on the glass.

"Not long," Emily answers back, her eyes on the road.

"I bags sitting in the front on the way home," I shout, receiving a groan of protest from Naomi.

"Toddler," she mutters, and I grin at her.

"Snooze, you lose," I shrug.

Summer has been going well, so far. Everyone has been taking turns in letting me stay at their houses. I've made up with Freddie, there's no weird tension between us anymore. It's almost as if as soon as Effy left, everything's gone back to normal.