Lime and Soda ✓

twenty - unite

Bea tactically ushers Jules and Elliot inside ahead of us. At least, it would be tactful if it weren't for her stage whispers that we could hear quite clearly – 'Hurry up, Julia, Violet wants some alone time to talk to her boyfriend' 'Stop hanging around, Elliot, you can text that girl from inside the house'. I flush a deep maroon, probably the same colour as the socks Mum gave me two Christmases ago, and mutter, though I'm not sure who to, 'He's not my boyfriend.' I don't think anyone hears me.

After the front door has shut behind us and we're left alone on the front path, Jay raises his eyes to mine. 'You didn't text.'

'Neither did you.'

'I- I was waiting. For you to text first.'

'I was waiting for you to text first.'

'Oh.'

'Yup.'

Silence.

'Do you want to, um, come in?' I say eventually, after we've been stood there for several days.

He looks at me, like I'm a mathematical equation he's trying to work out and keeps getting wrong. 'Sure.'

We make it up to the spare room without incident; for once my family have decided to stay out of the way and let me get on with it. I offer up a silent prayer to the gods and shut the door with a click behind us.

Jay perches himself on the end of the bed, looking more uncomfortable than I've ever seen him. I wish I knew what had gone wrong between us, but he doesn't seem any more able to enlighten me than I am.

'So,' he says, several years later.

'So.'

'God, Violet, this is killing me. Why can't we talk anymore?'

'I don't know.'

He almost growls with frustration. 'Are you mad with me?'

I consider this. 'I'm not sure. Are you?'

'Not anymore. I thought we'd got over that. We both agreed that what happened between you and Ross was nothing.'

'Yeah, but I'm not sure what happened between you and Sophia was.' I study the carpet intently. There's a stain there I haven't seen before. It looks like orange juice.

'What?' Jay explodes. 'Are you joking, Vi?'

'Does it look like I'm joking?' I've memorised the exact shape of the stain now. I could take an exam on it. I wonder if we have any carpet cleaner downstairs.

'Why would you get upset by that? I was just angry, you know that. You know it doesn't mean anything.'

'Do I?' I look up now, look straight at him. He flinches. 'How do I know that, Jay? You get upset if I go off kissing other people, fine. Which, for the record, I didn't even do. He kissed me.'

'I know that-' Jay begins, but I cut him off.

'But you can't expect me to not get upset when you do the exact same thing to me. And you can't say she kissed you first, because I was right there. I saw what happened.'

He's quiet for a long time. I've blown it, I think. He's going to get up and leave.

'I-,' he says. Clears his throat. Looks at me. 'I didn't think of it like that.'

'I know you didn't.' Another thought occurs to me. 'And how do I know we're not allowed to kiss other people if you're not my boyfriend? It's not like we're exclusive.'

He heaves an enormous sigh. The walls blow away.

'Also,' I say. Might as well carry on if I'm on a roll, right? 'I can't work out which of us you actually like, but what you're doing is pretty shitty to the one you don't. I don't like Sophia, but I wouldn't want to be her right now. You just kiss her and then throw her away when it suits you, and quite frankly, it's disgusting.'