Page 24 of Almost Ours

“Do you reckon we could take him?” Brooke asks, cracking her knuckles.

“What?” I’m aghast, glancing at her hands. “As in like… attack him?”

She shrugs again. “Well, there are three of us.”

Abi starts to laugh.

“My mother would sense it from Louth and appear here before I’d even thrown the first punch.”

“Your mum’s in Louth?”

“My mum is everywhere when I’m doing something I shouldn’t be.”

I hold up a hand before this derails further. "Okay, realistically, none of us are fighting anyone tonight. What's the actual plan? Are we going to look at him menacingly from a distance, or—"

"I want to walk past him holding both your hands," Abi stretches out her spine, determination taking over her features, "looking like I have never once thought about him. And that he was wrong when he said I look like a dementor in this poncho."

Brooke studies the poncho. “You do look a bit like a dementor.”

Abi gapes at her. “Are you siding with a cheating, lying, scumbag of a man?”

“No. You look lovely.” Brooke winces. “...In a dementor sort of way.”

“This is outrageous.”

“Look, I’m not saying it to offend you. I’m saying it because it objectively does make you look like a Dementor.”

I burst out laughing. It's unfortunate, but Brooke is telling the truth. The black plastic poncho drapes from Abi's shoulders in long, flowing folds, making her look less like a first-year university student and more like she's about to glide through Hogwarts.

Abi hangs her head dramatically. “I thought you two were going to be my new best friends.”

Brooke looks stricken. “We can still be your best friends.”

Abi peeks up through her eyelashes. “Even if I resemble one of Voldemort's minions?”

Brooke nods earnestly. “I’ll slap some glasses on, whack a scar to my head, and you can call me Potter.”

Abi bursts into laughter. "Okay. Fine. I'm leaning into it. I'm a Dementor tonight. Everyone who wronged me is about to feel very, very cold."

I lightly fist-bump the air. “That’s the spirit.”

Turning sharply on her heel, Abi reaches for the door handle and yanks it open. The noise crashing back over us. "If he says one word to me—"

“I’ll bite his ankles off,” Brooke menacingly threatens.

“I’ll throat punch him,” I tack on.

“I genuinely love you both,” Abi shouts over the music, towing us both back into the crowd by our wrists. “Best friends in minutes.”

We push back into the thick of it, trying not to laugh that somewhere out there in the strobing lights is a boy who has no idea he's about to be glided past by a furious, glamorous Dementor and her two entirely unqualified henchwomen. Abi's chin is up. Brooke's arranging her face into a menacing scowl, and I’m just kind of plodding along with them.

Abi has her shoulders back, poncho billowing behind her like a cape, and Brooke and I fall into step on either side of her.

"There," she hisses suddenly, nails digging into my arm. "Blue shirt. By the bar. Don't look." Both Brooke and I turn to look. "I SAID DON'T—"

"Sorry!" Brooke whips her head back around.

“You looked directly at him, Brooke."