Read Online A Kiss in the Dark by Cat Clarke - Free Book Online Page A

be the first one to get in touch. I had
some
pride, at least. I’d bought them the gig tickets – the least they could do was say thank you. I hadn’t skated since my first date with Kate. Suddenly it didn’t seem like something I wanted to spend my time doing. I wasn’t running nearly as much as I used to, either. I didn’t really want to spend my time doing anything apart from thinking about, seeing or talking to Kate. A lot of the time I ended up lying on my bed listening to the mortifyingly cheesy playlist I’d created the day after our first date.
    Jamie eventually managed to drag me out of the house to go for a walk the day before he headed back to Aberdeen. Said it was time I stopped moping around being all emo. I think he thought my date had gone horribly wrong so he felt sorry for me. He wasn’t to know I was spending all my time daydreaming. Remembering that kiss. Imagining future kisses. It would never occur to him that I would be that lame. Mind you, it would never have occurred to me either. I was learning new things about myself every day and quite a few were things I would never want another human being to know about.
    I tried to pay attention to Jamie’s stories aboutuniversity life and how
amazing
it was as he huffed and puffed his way up Arthur’s Seat. He’d have been able to run up that hill a couple of months before – he clearly wasn’t getting much exercise. As usual, he was juggling a couple of different girls, but reckoned one of them was a keeper – ‘the kind of girl I could bring home for a weekend’. Of course that got me thinking about Kate. She was the kind of girl I could bring home for a weekend. Except she lived in Edinburgh, so it would be a bit weird to bring her home for a weekend. And she was a girl, so I’d probably have some explaining to do to my parents first. And
I
was a girl so I’d have some explaining to do to Kate as well.
    We didn’t hang around at the top of the hill; the wind was like having ice-cold daggers plunged into your ears. Jamie took a picture of us with his phone, both of us with our hats pulled down as far as they’d go. He posted it straight on Facebook: ‘Bonding with little sis up a big fucking hill’. Jamie likes to document his whole life online. It must make it harder to juggle all those different girls without them finding out about each other.
    All the way home I kept thinking about that photo being on Facebook. Not worrying, exactly. But it made me uneasy. Jamie had a
lot
of friends. And what if one of them was friends with someone whoknew Kate? And what if she happened to be with them when they went on Facebook and saw a picture of me?
Little sis
.
    By the time we got home the thinking had morphed into full-on paranoia. I asked Jamie to delete the picture, saying I looked crap, but he said no and pulled my beanie down over my eyes. Then I practically begged him to delete it and he told me to stop being so vain because it didn’t suit me, and besides we both looked good in the picture (good genes, he said). I stormed off to my room and slammed the door and I could hear him laughing and telling Mum.
    It would be fine. I was almost sure of it. Edinburgh’s not
that
small. I’d have to be extremely unlucky for Kate to somehow miraculously see that picture. I’d just have to cross my fingers and hope that it didn’t happen. And be more careful in future. There was too much at stake.
    *
    I saw Kate the day she got back. Neither of us wanted to wait a minute longer than we had to. I arrived at the cafe ten minutes early. We only had an hour before she had to head home for her piano lesson. I thought it was a bit much that she had to have a lesson the day she got back.
    When she walked in the door I literally breatheda sigh of relief. The longest week of my life was over. Finally. It was incredible to see her face light up as if she felt exactly the same way. She rushed towards me and the strap of her bag caught on the handle of a