Distracted By You: Book 1 in The Exeter Running Girls Series, стр. 20
We also covered favourite tv and my running.
“You love it that much?” Tye asked from his position lying back on my bed.
“If I could have done a degree in running, I would have.” I was lying on my front close by, propped up on my elbows and desperately resisting the urge to touch him.
“Why not P.E?”
“Only so many options. Like teaching which I’m not interested in.”
“I like the gym, but I prefer sprinting to the long distance.”
“No stamina?” I teased, with a sideways smile.
“I have stamina when it matters,” he waggled his eyebrows, making me laugh. He pushed his sleeves up past his elbows and I saw the same flash of ink on his skin again.
“Is that one of your tattoos?” I angled my head to get a better look but could see nothing beyond a fleck.
“One of them, yeah,” he lifted the sleeve a little more, revealing a string of words wrapped around his elbow and disappearing up his bicep underneath the t-shirt.
“How many do you have?”
“A fair few,” he dropped the sleeve back to his elbow and I tried not to look too disappointed.
“You’re not sure how many you have?”
“They blend together a bit. About five.”
My imagination went into haywire, thinking of all the places he might have tattoos, I scrounged desperately for another topic.
“What’s the time?” I looked round in search of my clock. “It’s two in the morning.”
“I should get going,” Tye climbed off the bed and I followed. Discovering the time had made me realise just how tired I was, yet I still longed for him to stay.
He put his shoes back on and straightened up in time to see me dump the few bottles we had been through in the bin. After his beer, Tye had switched to my stack of Fanta.
“I think you’ve emptied my fridge.”
“Next time, we’ll go to mine. I’ll be sure to stock up on toffee apple cider.” He smirked and opened the door, leaving quickly. “See you.”
“Bye.”
The door was shut, and I was alone again.
So just friends. That had been made abundantly clear, as though it had been hammered home with a large mallet and I was the tiny nail. Yet, what a great night it had been.
Chapter 7
“What did you say?” I asked my mum down the phone, sitting suddenly down on a bench outside the campus auditorium building.
“We’re selling the house.”
“What do you mean you’re selling it?” They couldn’t sell the house. That just… NO. What about mine and Rosie’s rooms? We had grown up in that house. It was our home.
“Neither of us want to live there anymore, sweetheart, it has so many memories and neither of us can afford the mortgage on our own. It’s for the best,” her voice was frustratingly calm considering how much I felt like a tornado had been whipped up inside of me.
“The best?” I tried to keep my voice low as I dug into my backpack for a pen, yet it was seething with rage so the words practically came out like a hissing snake. “What about all our stuff?”
“Your dad and I will divide up our thing.”
“What about my things?” I quickly started drawing ladybugs on my hand, etching the black pen hard onto my skin.
“Well, you’re at university now, so we can store your other things. You’re always welcome home with me, sweetheart. I’ll get a place with two bedrooms.”
It didn’t help. I still felt like I was being wiped from their lives, along with someone else.
“And Rosie’s stuff?” I seethed down the phone, looking around to make sure no one was taking notice of me, but all the students were too busy running to lectures. “What about her room?”
“It’s probably time to let go of some of it.”
What? They were going to delete her out of our lives. Her life was not something that could be erased with a backspace button. My heartbeat was pumping fast around my body, so loud I could hear it pounding in my ears.
“Can’t we think about this a little more?”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but it really is the only option. We’ve been talking about it for the last couple of months. The for-sale sign has gone up today.”
I couldn’t bear to listen to her voice anymore. I was so tempted to scream down the phone.
“I’ve got to go, mum. Another lecture.”
“Okay, sweetie, I’ll ring you tomorrow. Love you.”
I ended the call without replying and looked down at my left hand. Around the newly drawn ladybugs my skin was red from the pressure I had inflicted.
My phone pinged in my hand.
FANCY COMING OVER TO MINE TONIGHT? T
I paused before replying, sitting further back on the bench and hitting my head against the wall behind me.
One of the last days I had seen Rosie she had been with Kyle. It was at the pub my mum and dad owned. I was twelve and doing homework sat in one of the wood-panelled booths when she and Kyle had walked in, both pink and sweating slightly from a walk along the river. They were holding hands, gushing about their walk and what a lovely day it was.
Rosie had my hair, yet it didn’t look as strange on her as it did me. Instead of grey eyes, she had bright green, like emeralds shining in sun light. It wasn’t hard to see why Kyle had liked her so much.
I felt the familiar ache develop in my chest as I began to draw a new ladybug on my hand. I missed her so much. After completing the