Page 31 of Do You Ship It

Max laughs, which makes me scowl. I drag my head up enough to shoot him a glower from beneath my arm, but he cracks a smirk to himself and shakes his head. I lie back down, but keep scowling.

Jake pats my arm. ‘Guess you’ll just have to keep watching to get that sweet, sweet Silversmith content. Even if they’renotendgame.’

‘Says you,’ Max argues, but it’s playful, and sounds like a debate they’ve hashed out plenty of times before.

Jake laughs – loudly, a little brashly, and it’s enough to make me pick my head up to peer at him, a bit confused because it doesn’t sound like his usual laugh, and a bit hurt that there’s obviously somehystericalin-joke between them I’m missing.

‘You crack me up,’ he tells Max through loud guffaws, and pats me again to say, ‘Isn’t he hilarious?’

‘Uh …’

Wait, amIin on the joke? Did I miss something?

But Max also looks startled, catching my eye and obviously as out of the loop as I am, and I find myself giving him a shrug in this strange moment of solidarity between us when faced with Jake’s sudden weirdness.

Jake sighs, recovering himself, seeming to catch the mood and realize we’re not all rolling around in fits of laughter. He runs a hand back through his hair and leans forward a bit to reply properly to Max.

‘Oh come on, you’re telling me you’ve got two insanely powerful characters withhugeties to destiny, a half-elf of noble birth with blood magick, and an elf warrior, a man of the people, with fated magick granted to him by the gods, and they’renotgoing to end up together? Moonsilver all the way.’

‘Why’s it called Moonsilver?’ I ask.

‘Spoilers,’ says Max.

‘Next episode, actually. Do you guys want to stay to watch it? It’s the last one of the first season …’ Jake looks between us and I sit up properly now, under his gaze. I pull my dress back into place, laying it neatly around my knees. He smiles, hopeful, and turns to Max. ‘I don’t think Mum and Dad will mind if you guys stay for tea – maybe I can convince them to let us order some pizza, or something?’

Max shrugs, looking so annoyinglyaffablethat itsets my teeth on edge. Is he pretending to be friendly towards me, just like I am with him? ‘I don’t mind. I don’t want to intrude or anything.’

YOU ARE, I want to scream.YOU ARE INTRUDING! On this evening, on this potential romance, on all of it!

But now they’re both looking at me, and thankfully a more rational bit of my brain takes over. I reach for my phone to check the time, and bite my lip. ‘I’m not sure … It’s going to be really late getting the bus back home …’ And I don’t dare call Mum or Dad to ask them to come pick me up, but I can’t mentionthatin front of Max. I don’t need him knowing every horrible, nasty bit of my life.

Last time I stayed out too late I missed the bus home and rang for a lift, Dad came to collect me and said it was no problem. Then I heard Mum snapping at him because it was encouraging me to be irresponsible and we should both know better. The time before that, Mum had picked me up and Dad toldherthat I had exams to revise for and she clearly didn’t care about the impact on my schoolwork as much as she cared about being ‘the cool mum’.

Jake, of course, knows this, and he knows what I’m not saying, because his face creases in sympathy and he reaches over to give my hand a brief, wonderfullittle squeeze before he says, ‘Well, you could drop Cerys home, couldn’t you, Max?’

I cringe just as Max glances my way, and my cheeks flame; I’m sure he caught that.

‘She’s only over by the garden centre,’ Jake’s telling him. ‘It’s not that far out the way. You’re that side of town anyway, aren’t you?’

He cannot be serious. A car ride, alone, withMax? I would rather deal with my parents! It’s a half-hour drive!Thirty minutes, when we barely filled three last week with small talk before Jake came upstairs with the toasties. What would I even talk to Max about for that long?

‘Really,’ I fumble to say, ‘you don’t have to, it’s okay. I can figure something out. We can just leave the finale until next week, or –’

‘No way!’ Jake crows, laughing. He scoots over on the bed to wrap his arm around me and give me a playful shake, and I can’t even freak out at the fact we’re pressed together from shoulder to hip, that his leg is bumping against mine or that he’s pulled me against him. Oh, the irony, that this is the moment I decide to have what feels like an out-of-body experience, watching this nightmare unfold in real time. ‘There’s no way I’m letting you go straight from the season finale into the next one. It ruins the whole dramatic effect!’

‘It’s alright,’ Max says quietly, in his low voice, the words even and measured, his gaze somewhere near my knees. ‘I don’t mind, Cerys. And Jake’s right – the finale is the kind of episode that needs breathing room before you dive into the next one.’

I’m not so convinced – I haven’t exactly been sucked wholeheartedly into the show so far, and I’m not sure how much that will change in the space of a single hour-long episode. But they’re both waiting, bothexpectingme to agree, and I don’t really know how to decline without making things weird.

‘Come on, Cer! For me?’ Jake wheedles, tugging me closer. ‘Please?’

And it’s more time with Jake, isn’t it? Wasn’t that the goal here?

So I swallow, my mouth dry, and say, ‘Sure. Awesome. Thanks, Max. Sounds good.’

CHAPTER 13

Jake nips downstairs to ask his parents – home from work, now – if we can stay and order some pizzas for dinner and, rather than waste any precious forced small talk on Max, I duck out under the pretence of calling my mum to let her know.

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