Candy [MCCARTNEY]

EIGHT

"LOVE YOU, TOO"

✞

The party wasn't at John's place, but a friend of a friend's. 

None of my own friends (except George) had been invited that I knew of. I was sure if they had been, I'd have heard about it. I was hard pressed trying to get through a school day without hearing of something Stu Sutcliffe had done the weekend before.

Mum had unwillingly dropped me off at the house, under the pretense this was some 'little school girl sleep over'. No alcohol. No drugs. No boys in my sleeping space. I agreed, scrunching up my nose at her motherly assumptions that she could ever fathom I, her precious baby-doll, would so much as glance at a teenage boy.

It's also safe to say she didn't enjoy my outfit.

George told me that only John's close inner-circle friends would be staying the night, and that since I was George's friend and my Mum would kill both of us if she knew we were drinking, I was included. I really had to collect my composure at the idea of spending the night with John and his friends, who I definitely didn't fit in with.

When we rolled up to the driveway, Mum's knuckles gripped the wheel and she craned her neck to make out anything going on through the tinted windows. It was eight o'clock and the music drifting from the house was loud and obnoxious. Even to me.

"Must be the wrong place. Doesn't sound like Simon and Garfunkel, eh?" I joked, attempting to liven up the car's dead silence.

"This is it?" She asked, not even looking at me. "This looks like a bloody nightclub, Rebecca."

I unbuckled my seat belt. "What? No it doesn't. I'll see you—"

"Are there parents inside?"

Typical. "Probably. Stay in the car, okay."

Mum stopped unbuckling her own seat belt at that. "I'm not so sure about this. Let me walk you to the door."

At that moment, George emerged from the house and I swore he was almost glittering like gold. He had probably been watching out for me from the windows and immediately recognised my 'protective, hesitant parent' situation.

I pushed open the car door, smiling at him as he came closer, "see? George is here! Good, pure, little George."

"Hey!" He called, waving, stopping beside me at the car door. "You alright?"

My Mum waved back, appearing to be lulled into a state of security. I leaned over to kiss her cheek while she examined George's clearly mature demeanour and slid out of the car.

"He's not sleeping over, is he?" She asked.

"No way. Ew, Mum. It's just going to be a bunch of girls."

"I''ll come get you in the morning."

"Not too early – I'll call you when I'm ready," I restated for what felt like the hundredth time.

We watched her turn the car around and leave, her eyes flickering back over to George and I who waved, like a pair of munchkins.