Page 2 of The Home Grown
“Which guy?” she asks.
“It doesn’t matter. I probably won’t hear from him,” I say, layering in the self-doubt before I can stop myself.
I can’t help it. I don’t remember the last time someone asked for my number. And someone who looked as good as he did? Probably never. This sort of thing doesn’t happen to me.
“Come on,” Kathryn says. “You can tell me.” She pauses, then widens her eyes. “I guess it was one of Greg’s friends, I suppose … and I reckon it’s someone he doesn’t see all that often, because you’ve met most of his friends before.”
Kathryn did all the invites for her and Greg’s engagement party; she’ll know every single guy who was there last night.
She tilts her head as if a visual parade of Greg’s friends rolls through her mind. She’s probably trying to deduce who, if any, would ask me out. But, aside from him, there’s no one else I would have given my number to.
Crap.
“Forget it,” I say.
“Why are you so reluctant to tell me?” she asks.
“I just—” I cut my words off, not wanting to admit that I’m scared of her judgement. Her ridicule. Because I’ve heard it before…
But Kathryn narrows her eyes in a lightbulb moment. “Is it someone you’ve met before and were interested in but haven’t told me?”
I exhale.
“We’re not doing this,” I say. “Quit it.”
I reach for a pillow from the head of the bed and fling it toward her, but she bats it away.
“El—”
“Shush,” I say. “No more questions.”
Kathrynpurses her lips.
“Fine. But I’ll ask Greg later,” Kathryn says. “See if anyone’s said anything to him.”
I turn away from the bedroom, grabbing one of the boxes stacked on the landing labelled ‘Eleanor’, before returning to the spare room and setting it down on the bed.
I’m half-expecting Kathryn to launch back into the fifty questions, but she’s busy again, her nose buried in the book she’s validating and I’ve never been so relieved.
“Will I need my year nine maths homework?” she asks, flicking through a workbook before tossing it back into the box.
“Why did you keep any of that stuff?”
She shrugs and tosses the book toward the recycling pile. “I honestly have no idea. I probably thought I’d need to reflect on linear equations while I fix someone’s broken nail.”
“If you’ve got no immediate or future need for it—bin,” I say.
Kathryn grimaces. “Savage.”
“All I’m saying is there’s a good reason all this stuff has been untouched in the loft for years. Don’t you think we’d have noticed by now if there was something we needed … or something we’d misplaced?”
“True,” she says, pulling out odd bits of paper from the bottom of her box. She flicks through the pages before scrunching her nose. “Ugh. Year Ten science.”
She tosses it toward the recycling too, before dipping out to grab another box from her stack.
I can’t help myself. Once I’m sure she’s gone, I reach for my phone, checking the screen on the off-chance he’s texted.
Still nothing.
