Page 122 of Almost Ours

Joshua:

I’d like to consider myself someone who doesn’t get flustered very easily. I wouldn’t say it’s because I’m level-headed, but because my general response to anything stressful is to go very quiet and hope everyone stops looking at me until I’ve worked out what the fuck I’m supposed to do. It’s served me well enough over the years, even if every therapist I’ve ever had would probably argue that shutting down in the face of adversity isn’t technically a coping mechanism.

I think the events of tonight would be enough to send even the most strait-laced of men absolutely round the bend.

Abi has been pacing the living-room, trying to coax the condom out. She flits from hysterically laughing, to swearing to crying.

Ruby is standing close to me. I’m still reeling from her face being tilted towards mine, her fingers twisted into the front of my hoodie and the fact we basically kissed.

Even now, with Abi shrieking about her vagina and Ruby’s eyes darting across the scene, I keep finding myself wanting to reach for her hand again.

“Well?” Brooke asks, hands on hips. “Is anything happening?”

“No,” Abi hisses. “It hasn’t.”

“Abi, you need to calm down,” Ruby firmly instructs.

She’s had enough wine that some of her words are slightly softened, but her voice is steady, coaxing, calm. Even in this absolute shitshow, she’s somehow become the person everyone has turned to.

“I do not need to calm down! I need to get the condom out!” Abi’s face is flushed red and a bead of sweat is sliding down her temple. Just looking at her is making me feel hot.

Ruby moves closer to her. “Have you really thoroughly stuck your fingers in there? I mean gone hell for leather? As far in as you can go?”

“Oh, fucking hell,” Ewan groans, burying his head in his hands.

“Yes!” Abi wails. “I can feel it in there! I just can’t reach it! What if it travels to my bloodstream? What if it gets to my heart and kills me?! They’ll have to tell my mum I died via a condom! What am I going to do?”

“Have you googled it?” Brooke asks.

“No! I haven’t fucking googled it!”

“Well, maybe we should?”

“All I wanted,” Ewan is saying, “is to come home and play PlayStation. That’s honestly all I wanted.”

All I wanted was another five seconds before the front door opened but now isn’t really the time to point that out.

“Brooke. Google it,” Ruby commands, looking at the phone still clutched in Brooke’s hand. “There has to be something online telling us what to do.”

“I think I’m going to faint!” Abi screams.

“What position was he even putting you in for this to happen?” Brooke asks as she starts typing.

“I’m going to faint. Or throw up. Or just die. That’s it. I’m going to die! I think I might have a panic attack—”

Ruby grabs the glass of water from the coffee table and throws it straight into Abi’s face. “Pull yourself together! It is a condom. You are not pushing out a baby. We will get it out of you!”

There’s a brief, shocked silence while Abi stands in front of us dripping wet. Ewan’s mouth has fallen open, Brooke has stopped typing altogether, and Ruby is still gripping the empty glass while breathing a little too hard from the force she used to throw it.

God. She’s so fucking hot.

Shit. There is something fundamentally wrong with me.

Abi slowly wipes the water from her eyelashes. “Did you just throw water at me?”

“You were hysterical!”

“You’ve made me wet!”