Circuit City

Chapter 6

"Who wants to participate in the competition?" The raucous voice of the heavily set host boomed out over the dim-lit square as he swirled on stage, dramatically pointing at a member in the audience. "You!"

Feeling someone tug at the sleeve of my right arm, I turned away from the stage to see Kamerine standing in front of me with an expectant look on her face. "Are you going to drink that?" She pointed at my half-full bottle of beer that I'd been holding for the last thirty minutes. Not wanting to go the bathroom later I shook my head.

"No, you can take it."

She kissed me on the cheek, the strong smell of alcohol lingering a couple of seconds after she stepped back and took a long sip of my beer. "I love how it has just gone colder because of the weather." She grinned and waved the bottle at me, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. 

Small flakes of snow adorned her brown furry hat and my eyes followed another single that sailed slowly through the air and landed softly on the blue tips of her hair. Behind her were Dawnett and Jai engulfed in a kiss that had lasted for five whole minutes, counting from the second the first flakes had started to fall. Holwen and R.G stood beside them, looking at the competition that was being hosted on the stage, both drinking every so often from their bottles of beer.

A loud crash behind me caused me to do a statled jump. Looking over my shoulders, my eyes landed on my old bottle that Kamerine had just emptied and thrown into a bin. I looked back up at her as she turned towards the rest of our group, "Does anyone wants to go to the bathroom before Dawnett's grand love starts playing on stage?"

"Hey!" Jai let go of Dawnett with a mock hurt expression and she laughed, raising her hand.

"I do!"

"Yeah so do I," Holwen announced, looking at Dawnett who was patting Jai's chest reassuringly. Jai also raised his hand and together they went off to find the nearest bathroom. R.G and I stayed back, holding the spot for them for when they'd come back. I rubbed my arm to try and distribute some warmth over the thin material.

R.G cleared his throat, then took a step closer. "Okay sorry, I wasn't telling the truth before."

My head tilted to the side as I looked up at him in confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"About last time," he clarified. "The reason I didn't stop kissing you was because I didn't want to."

I swayed on my heel and looked back towards the stage where a band had now begun playing, not quite sure where he was going with this. "I had actually wanted to do that for a while," R.G confessed next to me.

I almost got a whiplash from how fast my head turned towards him.

 "Uh..," I shook my head, frowning as I tried to melt the information he had just dropped on me. This shouldn't have come like a surprise, knowing how he was with girls- a year of knowing him taught me enough about his dating style, or lack of. Not that it should be such a big deal at this age, the college years were the years of experimenting, not for settling down. But I didn't want to experiment and I wasn't interested in dating R.G either for that matter.

"I'm not saying that I like you that way, Suri!" His eyes widened slightly when he saw my reaction and he waved his hands frantically in front of him. "You're cute so of course I wanted to kiss you, just to try and see how it felt. But I'm not trying to date you."

"Okay..." I mumbled and stuffed my cold hands in my pockets, not sure if I was relieved or offended by his revelation. Maybe a bit of both. I looked over my shoulders and scanned the crowd behind me to see if I could spot Jai or Holwen since they were the tallest. When I didn't, I turned back to R.G. "Glad to get that out of the way. But whatever the case was, I didn't like it so let's keep everything," I gestured awkwardly between us,"...platonic. "