Awake

FORTY EIGHT

Jake and I jumped back to the virtual world together – landing in the narrow alley tucked behind the coffee shop where he worked. He'd clearly chosen this place to conceal his shard fragment because it was invisible from the road and the back entrance to the store. It was also tiny – nothing except an extremely small gap between the painted brick wall and the side of a huge industrial bin.

This gap was even smaller when both Jake and I suddenly appeared within it. Very close together.

"Oof!" I exclaimed inelegantly – jammed between Jake and the bricks – "I think I just lost a kidney – I think one of my kidneys was just crushed into non-existence. I'm dying. I think I'm dying." I attempted to squeeze past Jake and out into the relative freedom of the alley. He seemed to be determined to be resolutely unhelpful in this endeavour.

"You're being dramatic," he said.

"Dying!" I exclaimed, finally squirming past him and into the alley. I turned towards him: he was still standing between the bin and the wall.

I tucked my hair behind my ears nervously. "Phew. That was a near death experience."

He was looking at me in an odd way; staring directly into my eyes – in a way that made me feel strangely stripped bare, uncomfortable. I cleared my throat and looked around the alleyway slightly desperately.

"There's graffiti here!" I said. "That's graffiti. What does it say? Hm." I moved closer to read it, noticed that the movement brought me nearer Jake, and stopped. "Can't read it," I said. I hitched my satchel more firmly over my shoulder and cleared my throat again. "I need to go. I'm meeting Aiden and Lily for brunch. Here. So ... Goodbye. For now. Yep."

"Anna ..." Jake began.

"Running late!" I said – my voice slightly higher than normal. "I'm going to have a shower first. So I'm running late."

I jogged backwards, waving at him – accidentally hit a bin, nearly tripped over, then turned and strode off towards the road – leaving him behind.

In the few minutes it took me to walk the rest of the way home, I mentally flayed myself for being such a socially awkward idiot. What's wrong with me?

My family were out – probably doing something wholesome and awful like a bike ride along the beach – and I'd forgotten my keys (again). I walked around the side of the house to open the back door.

Then I realised there was a body in the hammock.

I stifled a scream, torn between leaping forwards to perform CPR and the desire to run away. Then I recognised the body. More specifically, Aiden's body. Aiden's living body. He grinned up at me as I sat abruptly in a deck-chair: all feeling gone from my legs. "You complete and utter jerk," I said. "My nerves."

"Your nerves?" he said. "Christ."

"I thought you were a robber," I moaned, still attempting to calm my breathing.

"A robber napping in your hammock?"

"Yes!" I rallied. "He might be tired after setting ... setting death traps all through my house. Death traps and stealing things – and kidnapping Aphra Behn."

"This Aphra Behn?" He shifted, and I saw that he was holding my traitorous dog in his lap. She was asleep, and drooling on his chinos.

"Shame!" I exclaimed, "Shame on you Aphra – you are fired. You are no longer a guard dog. Demotion!" she opened an eye, yawned at me pointedly, then went back to sleep. "Urgh," I said. "It's rude to sleep in people's hammocks, Aiden."

"It's your hammock, though," he said.

I walked to the back door and opened it with an expert jiggle and shove. "Your point?"

He stood up – displacing a grumpy Aphra Behn – and followed me inside.

"Are you sleeping with someone?" he asked abruptly.

I turned around, choked, tripped over the threshold of the door, and laughed at the same time. "W- what? What? What?"

He nodded at the bag I was grasping between us like a shield.

"You weren't here last night. I came around. Your parents think you're at Lily's." He stepped closer to me and I turned on my heel and walked abruptly to my room to put my bag away – too flustered to do anything else. "You weren't at Lily's," he called after me, following me down the hall.

I dropped my bag on the lounge in my room. "I'm not sleeping with anyone." I told him, feeling heat creep up my cheeks. "Not that it's any of your business."

He perched on the armrest, crossing his arms and staring at me. "Don't be ridiculous. It's my business."

I tucked my hair behind my ears furiously, trying to ignore the way the sunlight caught his eyes – making them light up in a way I'd always thought was offensively pretty. "Personal," I said, still too caught off balance to form coherent sentences.

"Are you seeing someone?" he asked. I noticed that his cheeks were slightly red, too. "Not sleeping with them, but seeing someone."

"Uh ... Yes." The second the words slipped out of my mouth – I regretted them. This was a mammoth lie. A mammoth lie that I'd have to keep inventing – a mammoth lie that Lily and Aiden would interrogate me on with the ruthless efficiency of private detectives; or medieval torturers. It was also the perfect lie. The perfect excuse for the nights I was missing – for times I've been out of contact. If only I could pull it off.

Aiden looked up into my eyes abruptly, startled. As though this was this was the last answer he'd been expecting. "You have a boyfriend?"

"I mean, no – um. We're ... it's new. A new thing," I said. "A new – not official – it's a thing. That's not official."

He crossed his arms, and sat up. A line formed between his eyebrows, and the corners of his mouth pulled down. "You're staying nights with a guy who you're not 'official' with."

I straightened, offended by his disapproving tone. "Hypocrisy!" I exclaimed. "Double standards. Possibly sexism. Definitely double standards and great hypocrisy Sir One-night-stand-a-lot."

"You're not like me, though, Anna. You're not like me, and that's good."

"What? What does that even mean?" I snapped. "You're perfectly fine – there's nothing wrong with – you know, sleeping with lots of people. Not that I'm – but I mean that ... we don't live in the nineteenth century– sex can be, um – not serious." I immediately felt embarrassed by this statement, but decided to stand by it. "Anyway," I said. "It's not at that stage – just yet, not that you needed to know that – at all, because too much information and all that."

He was frowning at me. "You're being weird."

"No. I'm not. Being weird. You're being weird," I said, weirdly.

He reached out and grabbed my arm. "Anna," he said, pulling me closer and causing me to inelegantly half-trip on a pillow on the floor. He steadied me, and placed a hand along the side of my face, the tips of his long fingers resting in the hollow of my temple. I was ridiculously aware of their light pressure on my skin; the heat of his palm curved under my chin. "I know this is bad timing," he said, "bad timing, stupid timing – but I want you to know, before it's too late –"

A knock at the door cut him off.

I looked in the direction of the sound – then back at him. His face was very close. His eyes searched my face – then closed, resignedly. "Answer the fucking door," he said, his hand dropping away from me.

I left my room too fast – everything inside me confused, disjointed – walked down the hall, and opened the door. Lily was on the other side, her hair windswept and her lipstick impeccable – as always. "Coffee time!" she exclaimed.

I nodded.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"Oh, um. Yep. Great. I'm great," I replied.

"Anna ...." she began.

Aiden strolled out of my bedroom. "She's just groggy because she's been out all night with her boyfriend," he said.

"Her what?"