“What are you looking so smug about?” I croaked, rubbing my eyes and wondering how long I had been asleep for.
“Who doesn’t love finding a girl in their bed?”
I rolled onto my side, mirroring Adam by resting my head on my hand, even matching his cocky little smile.
“Well, there’s a first time for everything,” I teased, watching his expression morph into something darker, his eyes ablaze with incredulous wonder.
“Is that so?” he declared, shifting upward; those words were all I needed to know that I was in trouble, serious trouble.
“Adam. Don’t,” I warned, holding up my hands in surrender as I tried to roll away from him and make an escape from the bed. But he was too fast, snaring my wrists in his hands and pinning me to the mattress, as he straddled me, imprisoning me with his jean-clad thighs at my hips. I was babbling between laughter, pleas, and outrage as he held my wrists and used them to slap my hands against my cheek in a series of annoying taps that made me blink.
“Stop hitting yourself, Ellie.” Slap-slap-slap ...
“Doooooon’t,” I pleaded, twisting my head aside. “Get off me, you idiot.” And to my surprise, he let go. I wasn’t free. He was just bored from that form of torture and instead moved to the next round.
“Has living in the city made you less ticklish?” Adam asked, his expression serious as if what he was asking was an interesting question.
Oh God, I knew where this was going; I had suffered the same fate at the hands of this boy a million times before.
I clenched my jaw. “Don’t,” I bit out, glancing up to see the twinkle of mischief in his dark eyes; he loved every minute of this.
“Don’t what?” he asked, looking authentically perplexed by my words, apart from the little smirk that tilted the side of his mouth.
I never tore my burning eyes from his; it was a silent warning, one I was trying to channel all my rage into, but he didn’t seem worried, not in the slightest.
“Don’t do this?” he asked, before digging his fingers into my ribcage. I instantly recoiled and screamed.
“No, Adam, stop, please, stop,” I begged, but all that did was earn me another assault onto the opposite side, twisting me into a ball of agonised sensation that had me laughing, crying, and gasping in a fit of agony.
“Ah, so you are still ticklish.” He laughed, enjoying my despair.
“Yes, YES! Now, please, stop.” I wrestled with his hands, pushing them away and eventually linking my fingers with his holding me prisoner. I fought to gather the air into my lungs. Adam was breathless too; I could feel his frame vibrating from laughter and I so wanted to lash out and wipe that cocky smile from his face.
“Enough,” I breathed out.
“Or what? You’ll get big bad boy Rory to beat me up?” Adam laughed, but it didn’t elicit the same response from me. If anything, it jarred me. With all the lead-up and angst of coming back home I had completely forgotten about my little white lie about Rory and how amazing our date had been. I had even forgotten to come up with a worthy excuse for not bringing him: he was killed in a freak goal-post-snapping accident, his head got taken clean off by the centre bounce. Believe me, I had fantasised about all the possibilities, but as I looked into Adam’s questioning brown eyes above me I could feel my defences coming down. Besides, I had been keeping enough secrets as it were.
“What’s wrong?” Adam asked, gently letting my fingers unlace from his but still unmoving until I answered the question.
I breathed in, summoning the courage of admission, and then blurted it out.
“Rory is a dick, okay? A big fat dick,” I exclaimed. There, I had said it. I should have felt like a weight had lifted off me, but considering there was a literal weight on top of me in the shape of Adam Henderson, the words uttered didn’t have the same kind of freeing effect. Neither did the humour spread across Adam’s face.
“Thanks, Ellie, but I really don’t need to know about your personal life,” he joked.
My brows lowered, until the penny dropped. “Oh, you’re gross; no, I meant he’s a dick, not … Oh, shut up and get off me.” I slapped at his legs and to my surprise he actually moved, allowing me to scoot up into a sitting position, pressing my back against the bedhead.
Adam sat on the edge of the bed; my toes touched the side of his jeans ever so lightly but I could still feel the heat from him. It was strangely comforting.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Adam asked in all seriousness. He was looking down at the doona, picking at a frayed thread as if it were the most fascinating thing in the world. The casual little act made me feel calm.
“The date was a disaster,” I confessed. I didn’t even know why I was telling him this; the reality was mortifying.
Adam stayed silent, as if urging me to continue, so I did. I relayed the fast car, the square-tip Italian leather shoes, the custom-designed suit, his insistence in ordering from the menu for me.
“Oh, so he set feminism back about fifty years then.”
I smiled. “That’s exactly what I’d thought.” Once again our minds were in sync, I thought affectionately, momentarily making me feel happy until I inevitably had to finish the story with the rather mortifying admission about the mistaken text.
