The Loneliness of Distant Beings

Chapter Twelve

Domingo sends me the details about his band and I spend two days thinking about whether I will go or not, while basically knowing the whole time that I will. So on the night itself I rock up at Emme's quarters and ask her to go there with me. Even though we're legal now I'm pretty sure her mum isn't going to be that keen on the idea of us going to a bar, so we tell her we're going to look at Huxley-3 for a while and, I mean, it's what everyone is doing at the moment so she doesn't even seem a little bit surprised.

Because of the whole Huxley-3 thing and the fact that everyone is in View it's pretty much dead at this bar when we get there, so we get an iced tea and sit around talking and all the while I am looking at the stage where they are setting up for the band and wondering about Dom.

I tell Emme about Ezra kissing me almost like I would tell her about some annoying thing at work or something that happened to someone else.

'Oh dude, you don't even know how lucky you are,' is what she says in response.

'Didn't you even hear the story?' I ask her. 'He basically attacked me.'

'It sounds hot.'

'Then I didn't tell it right.'

'He's a passionate guy.'

'I don't know, Em. I think of the two of us you lucked out.'

'You're crazy. Ezra's a total fox. You have no idea how good you've got it.'

I give her a look. 'Do you remember how he was to me when I came back after I was ill last year? Or do you have selective amnesia?'

'OK,' she concedes. 'He was a little insensitive.'

'Calling somebody a nutjob is more than a little insensitive.'

'Oh Seren, your cup is always half empty! It could be worse, you could have got Leon.'

'Em, Leon's OK.'

She's already shaking her head. 'He's so weird. I swear, he is TERRIFIED of me. He won't come near me. He's a million miles from throwing me up against a wall to make out.'

I laugh. 'He's all right; man, just give him a chance to get used to it.'

She rolls her eyes, throws a coaster at me. 'So what are we doing here? Whose band is this?'

'Just this guy I know.'

'From work?'

'Yeah. No.'

She frowns. 'You're being weird.'

And yeah, I don't tell her anything about Dom, I don't tell her that actually half the reason I brought her here is because I didn't trust myself to come alone, because I know that one word from him is all it would take right now for me to be gone, so gone. And this is when I see him, going up the steps to the stage two at a time and walking around checking things, smiling at someone who's setting up, then seeing me over the guy's shoulder.

'Hey,' he says, arriving and sliding in next to me. 'You're here.'

'This is Emme,' I say, and I point at her across the table and watch him shake her hand while her face is all What the Heck Is This.

'Glad you came,' he says, and then to me, quiet but not that quiet, 'It . . . um . . . it was weird the other day. I was going to come over and say hi but it just seemed like maybe . . . '

I smile and shrug it off. 'It's cool. We were both . . . you know . . . busy, so . . . '

He's nodding. 'Exactly. Right. We were busy.' He smiles, looks relieved. 'And you've been OK?'