off my wet Snoopy pants. I flung them outside the shed and they landed with a splat on the path. It would be all right.
‘Are you sure you want to?’ Smiling like Christmas had just arrived, he started wriggling out of his boxers.
‘Come on, quickly. Before I change my mind.’
I couldn’t have felt less in the mood than if he was measuring me up for my coffin.
‘Why do we have to be quick? We’ve got all night.’
‘Before I lose my nerve then,’ I laughed, and shuffled back underneath him. I didn’t want to think too much about it this time. I just wanted it done.
‘Ella, if you don’t want to . . .’
‘No I do, I do want to. Please. Come on.’
‘I haven’t got any condoms.’
‘I don’t care this time. Come on, please – quickly. Kiss me again.’
As we kissed, Max’s hands were in my hair, then at my neck, my side, around my hips and my bottom before one of them sneaked around the front. He was going ‘there’.
‘Kiss me again.’
I kept my eyes open. I wasn’t worried. This was Max and he loved me. I was safe in his arms. We both wanted this.
‘You smell so good.’
‘You do too,’ I said in breaths, even though the only thing I could smell was the intense spicy smell of the wooden shed. ‘Tell me you love me.’
His fingers were going deeper. ‘I love you so much, Ella. God, I want you.’ He un-clicked my sports bra and pulled it off. ‘I want you so badly.’
I held his head against my neck as my tears rolled down my cheeks into my ears. The necklace had slid down – the bear was resting on my sweaty shoulder, looking at me.
His tongue flicked inside my mouth. ‘I want you so much.’
I slid my hand into his hair and grabbed a tuft. Any second now, I’d want this too.
‘You’re gorgeous,’ he said. Silently, a dragon roared in my belly. Max wriggled about, positioning himself so every inch of his naked body was against some naked part of mine. ‘Kinda need you to open your legs a bit though, Ells,’ he laughed.
I was lying like a corpse. ‘Oh sorry.’
Oh God, this was it. We were actually going to do it. I wasn’t going to be scared. I grabbed on to his back. I looked up through the roof of the Wendy house, and through a crack in the wood I saw starlight. I drew up my knees. He was going to put it inside me. Any second now. The starlight grew blurry in my eyes.
I closed my eyes and found a memory. Fallon and me, dancing on rocks, laughing so hard about something. Max and Zane were pulling at branches in the woods – making a den. Corey was sitting on a pebble beach, trying to catch a fish with a stick and some string. We were best friends who danced, built dens, fished, had picnics and swam whole summers away. And we had the best big sister to look after us and tell us stories.
‘Who wants to hear my new story? I just finished it.’
‘Me! Me! Me! I do! I do!’
‘Right, get over here, then.’
There weren’t always five of us. Sometimes, it had been six.
Then I realised where we were. We were on the island – the sea had swallowed the land. I looked around. I was alone. They’d all gone. I was stuck there, forever screaming.
‘Ella?’
With a jolt of panic, I was wrenched back to now, back to the hard shed floor, Max’s heavy body on top of me, waiting for the pain I knew was coming.
‘Ella?’
I was panting. ‘Just do it, Max. Do it, please. I’m ready. I’m ready. I’m ready.’
But I wasn’t ready. I was crying. The only thing I was ready to do at that moment was vomit. And just as he pulled away from me, a thick surge raced up my throat.
‘Oh God,’ I managed to squeak, lunging for the open shed door as everything I’d eaten that day erupted from my mouth before I’d reached the nearest bush.
How to Kill a Moment, by Estella Grace Newhall.
For the next minute, the only sound was me yacking into a yucca. When I was done, I looked behind me. Max was sitting on an upturned flowerpot. Naked and embarrassed, just like Adam. And there was I. Naked and embarrassed, just like Eve. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’ll get our clothes.’ He stood up, snatched up his sodden boxers from the path and walked back towards the pool.
I followed him. ‘I feel better now.’
He turned around, his eyes as sad as I’d ever seen them, and grabbed his trousers from a bronze giraffe’s ear, scrabbling them on. A plastic sachet fell out of his back pocket. I picked it up, but before I could look at it, he snatched it away.
‘What was that?’
He stashed the packet back in his jeans. ‘Condoms.’
‘I thought you said you didn’t have any?’
He didn’t answer.
‘I hate that I keep doing this to you.’
‘All you had to say was no!’ he yelled. ‘Have I ever pressured you? Why do you even lead me down the road if you can’t go there?’
‘I thought it would be OK this time.’
‘You thought that last time. And the time before that. And every time, we end up like this – having a massive barney.’ He trailed off and scratched his head on both sides, like he was trying to scratch his brain out. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’
He was so angry. He’d never been this angry before. I saw what I was doing to him, his strange fury, and I hated myself even more. I started gathering up my clothes. It wasn’t until I’d laced my trainers and he was sitting on the edge of the pool with a roll-up that he spoke again.
‘I Googled it,’ he said, reaching for my hand. ‘Genophobia. It’s a proper thing.’
I sat down next to him on the edge of the pool. ‘Is there a cure?’
He rubbed his mouth and reached for my hand. ‘Don’t think so.’
‘We’ll be OK though, won’t we?’
He surrounded me in a hug. ‘Yeah. ’Course we will.’
‘Did you talk to anyone about it?’
