One small step

Chapter five; Some wild British party

Saturday arrived much quicker than any of us expected. Church was over a lot quicker than usual, and before I knew it, me, Shay, Tammy and Taylor were in my room putting on our new dresses, doing make-up and hair, and just being girls.

“Alright, should I go for green or purple?” asked Shay as she tried to decide what eye shadow to wear.

“Go purple. It brings out your eyes” responded Tammy.

“Yeah, like there’s going to be any chance that anybody will see them with her boyfriend all over her?” I said. This sparked one of our usual debates over the level of PDA Shay and Chad always gave.

My phone then began to ring, and I almost missed it jamming to the tunes of Minaj, but if I ignored Dylan even once, shit was going down.

“Mhhhhm, speaking of public displays of affection, how are you and your lover boy doing?” said Taylor, directing a wink at me. I gave her a slightly less-than-polite hand gesture before answering the phone.

“Yo, this is Cassie, speak now”

“Dude, where are you guys? Do you realise how much convincing it took to get Chad to let the girls leave to get ready at yours? Most of that convincing came from me. If you’re all late, it’s on my head.”

I laughed. Chad was getting really obsessed with the perfectness of this party. The girls had been telling me how much of a dictator he had turned into when they were helping him set up.

“Listen, tell Mugabe we will get there when we get there. We were planning on being fashionably late. I don’t want to hear another word on the matter, goodbye” and I hung up before he could respond.

“Tut tut, Cassie,” said Shay, shaking her head, “that’s not going to get you a kiss at midnight now, is it?” She narrowly managed to avoid the pillow I aimed at her head.

For the past few days, the amount of relationship jokes about me and Dylan had skyrocketed. They even had Cian coming to me and asking me if it was true we were going to let him ride an elephant at the wedding. The truth was, there really wasn’t anything there. At least, nothing that I was aware of. He was my closest friend on this side of the ocean, and that’s how things were going to be. Or, at least, that’s what I kept telling myself.

No, that’s all there is to the story. But my friends seemed to think otherwise.

We were all dressed, ready and an hour late for the party. Everything was going to plan. After finally separating my dad from his nature show to give us a lift, we were on our way out the door. Before I could get out, however, Derrek grabbed me by my arm and pulled me aside.

“Listen, I want you to be careful, okay?” he said to me, with a worried look in his eyes. I rolled my eyes. He always gave me the same speech every time I was going out to a party. He is the exact definition of a protective older brother.

“Yeah Derrek, I know. Don’t get pregnant, stay away from drugs and alcohol, all the usual stuff. I’ve got it.” I turned to walk away, but he held tighter.

“I’m serious Cass. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

I turned to look at him. Ever since that dinner, there hasn’t really been anything to worry about. I honestly thought that I had just imagined everything I had seen, but now I was starting to re-think that.

“Derrek, is there something you wanna talk about?” I asked him, with a concerned look. He looked directly at me for a few seconds, before shaking his head and pushing me out the door.

“Nah, don’t worry about it, I just want to make sure my only sister comes back in one piece.”

I still didn’t buy his story, but my dad was honking his horn and the girls were shouting for me to get in the car with them, so I decided this conversation was going to have to be continued later on.