Popped

by Elizabeth Stevens

  Paige:

  As mustard.

  Bash:

  How fucken old are you?

  Paige:

  I’m retro.

  Bash:

  You keep telling yourself that, princess.

  Paige:

  I will. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get naked before I come get you.

  The teasing had the desired effect.

  Bash:

  Bold wardrobe choice. I like it.

  Paige:

  I don’t plan it to be an ongoing thing.

  Bash:

  Boo.

  Paige:

  I know. My bad.

  Paige:

  I really shouldn’t tease you

  That also had the desired effect.

  Bash:

  Go on. Tease me, princess ;)

  There was something I absolutely loved about him saying that to me.

  I mean, I knew without a doubt he wanted to have sex with me. But when he said that, it made it sound like he wasn’t in a rush. It made me feel like we’d got past the point where it was all physical for him. And I realised it had been there since the night we’d gone to IT, since I’d relaxed a little and not tried to live up to the fantasy.

  “Maybe he’s falling for the real Paige after all?” I smiled to myself as I got changed.

  A momentary feeling of unease swept over me, but I pushed it aside.

  My plan was working; I was going to win the bet and pop a school full of fragile male egos. Whatever Bash fell for wasn’t really real. I was being the girl I needed to be for him to fall for me.

  “Aren’t I?”

  I shook off the dark alley direction my thoughts were headed and reminded myself to just enjoy getting Bash to fall in love with me.

  Since Mum had an out of hours client to deal with, she wasn’t home by quarter to seven. So, I sent her a text so she knew I was leaving and letting her know what I was planning.

  I arrived at the address Bash had sent me a little after seven and walked up the front path as nervous as hell. Why? I had no idea. But my mouth was dry, my hands were clammy, and my heart raced. Suddenly, my whole theory about being relaxed seemed incredibly stupid. What was Bash’s family going to think of me when they saw me? I looked like I’d gone to absolutely no effort. Namely because I hadn’t, which was suddenly the absolute worst thing I’d ever done.

  I rang the doorbell and swallowed hard.

  I heard some indistinguishable yelling and a couple of thuds from inside.

  As the door opened, I heard a, “…two weirdos,” and then Bash was nodding at me. “Hey.”

  “Let her in. Let her in!” a female voice said excitedly.

  Bash sighed heavily and held the door open wider. “I’m not allowed out of the house until she’s met you.” There was nothing apologetic about his tone, he was just annoyed about it.

  Which made me grin like mad. “Of course.”

  I walked in and saw a woman about mum’s age standing behind Bash, and a boy who was obviously younger but quite possibly taller than me standing on the stairs.

  The boy – had to be Leo – looked just like Rufio had described; he was a mini Bash. All black hair and pale blue eyes. I didn’t remember much about fourteen-year-old boys – having never really paid attention to typical male stages of development – but he seemed tall and he was gangly like he’d used all his energy growing upwards and still had to fill out.

  Bash’s mum was taller than Leo but shorter than Bash. She had dark brown hair and cheeky brown eyes I recognised as Bash’s even if they were a different colour.

  “So, this is the girl who’s been stealing my Bash on all my off nights?” his mum chuckled as she walked towards me.

  “Mum,” Bash hissed, then rolled his eyes. “Mum, Paige. Paige, my mum Claire.”

  Claire held her hand out and I shook it.

  “Nice to meet you, Claire. I’m sorry if I’ve…” I looked at him and tried not to laugh, “been stealing Bash.”

  Bash frowned and I heard Leo snort.

  Claire waved her hand at me. “Eh. It’s all good. Boy spends so much time looking after Leo when I’m working, I can’t complain if he wants some time off when I’m home.”

  I nodded. “What… Ah, what do you do?”

  “Surgeon,” she answered with a smile. “At the RAH. All hours, but keeps these boys fed.”

  I looked at them both and didn’t doubt it. I also wondered about Bash’s dad, but I didn’t think it polite to bring it up.

  “That sounds stressful,” was all I could think to say.

  “It can be. But Bash has pulled far more than his fair share.”

  “I help,” Leo said, coming down a step.

  Bash nodded. “You sure do. Leo, you haven’t officially met Paige.”

  Leo shook his head. “I’ve seen her at school, though. She’s head prefect,” he told Claire.

  Claire looked at me in some surprise and I didn’t know if I should be insulted or whether it was just a commentary on the sort of girl she expected Bash to be spending time around. “Really? That’s why your name was familiar.”

  I looked to her in question, but it was Leo who answered, “Bash has been talking about you all week–”

  “I have not,” Bash interjected, but Leo wouldn’t be deterred.

  “–He said he was going to have the next page of my graphic novel finished, but he’s been drawing you instead.”

  “I have…not,” Bash muttered angrily.

  I barely hid a laugh behind an explosive cough. “I saw some of those.”

  “He showed you his sketch books?” Claire asked as though it was something unheard of.

  I nodded. “I particularly like the dragon.”

  I took my eyes off Claire’s look of wonder as Leo caught my attention. At my words, he’d brightened somewhat and it was weird looking at him and being able to picture Bash with those expressions. Not that Bash would ever be excited like that, I’m sure.

  “See?” Leo said to Bash. “I told you that was better.”

  Bash nodded, but I didn’t think he was actually agreeing. “Uh-huh. Sure did. You’ve met her. Can we go now?” he asked, looking between Claire and Leo.

  Claire nodded and we shared a conspiratorial smile. “Yes. By all means.” She paused and her smile turned cheeky. “Unless Paige wants to stay for dinner?”

  Bash grabbed some keys off the hall table beside me and took my hand quickly. “We’re fine. Thanks.”

  “Bye, Paige. Nice to meet you!” Claire called as Bash dragged me out of the house.

  “Bye!” I laughed, having just enough time to wave at her before she closed the door, still smiling widely.

  “Your mum’s sweet,” I told him.

  He shrugged. “She’s my mum.”

  “Leo seems great.”

  “He is.”

  I laughed and he finally stopped at the passenger door of my car to look at me.

  “What?” he asked.

  I couldn’t wipe the amused grin off my face. “It didn’t go that badly.”

  Bash rolled his eyes. “It could have not gone at all.”

  “What was so wrong with it? Jendo and Rufio have met your family, haven’t they?”

  “That’s different, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?” I teased.

  Bash huffed a deep sigh. “Yes.”

  “And why is that? I thought we were just hanging out?”

  “We are.”

  “So why is it different?” I asked as I unlocked the car.

  He opened the door and paused before he answered, with one foot in the car, “Because I don’t dream about bending either of them over until they scream my name. Happy?” he muttered then got into the car and closed the door quickly.

  I was happy. Very happy. Because, while I was certain what he’d said wasn’t a lie, that pause made me think it wasn’t quite the whole truth.
r />   I was smiling as I got into the car, but I didn’t call him up on it. This time.

  Chapter 15: Bash

  Leo had developed a very annoying habit in the previous twenty-four hours. One that made me feel rather inclined to forget about how much I actually liked the little dweeb.

  “Paige and Ba-ash, sitting in a tree!” he sang for the six millionth time that day.

  “I will murder you,” I warned him, pointing at him because that was quite clearly a measure of how serious I was being.

  “K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”

  “Karma is a bitch, Leonard Baker. I’ll remember this when you get your first girlfriend!”

  “Ooh, is Paige your girlfriend?” he sang.

  I huffed and prayed for patience. “No. She’s just a…friend.”

  “That you see ALL the time.”

  I wasn’t going to go into the nitty gritty details here about how I was in the midst of trying to win a bet to pop her cherry. There were some things my little brother didn’t need to know, even if I was planning ahead and trying to remember how best to clean blood out of Mum’s nice cream carpets.

  “I don’t see her ALL the time,” was the best counter I could come up with.

  “First comes love, then comes marriage–”

  “Okay. Slow your horses–”

  “The comes baby–”

  “MUM!” I yelled over him.

  “WHAT?” she yelled back – as a single parent of two what I would term rambunctious boys, our mother was a no-nonsense, practical woman.

  “How would you feel if you only had one child?”

  “Oh, are you joining the army, Bash?” she asked pleasantly as she came in and leant on the doorframe.

  Leo snorted and I glared at the both of them.

  “I’m just concerned Leonard here might have a little accident.”

  Mum nodded, her arms folded. “You’re such a good big brother, worried about his welfare.”

  I glared at her harder and she laughed.

  “Do not blame me if you can’t handle some teasing from your brother because you brought a girl home. You like reminding me you’re eighteen and an adult now.” She leant forwards a little, one of her cocky smirks on her face. “Adults don’t run to Mummy when their little brother’s teasing them.”

  “What happened to ‘you’ll always be my little boy’?”

  “My little boy went and grew up and said he was the one who did the protecting now.”

  “I thought nothing would ever change it?”

  “Mum loves me better!” Leo sang.

  “Shut up,” told him.

  Mum just laughed. “I don’t know. Never happy, are you? Bloody teenagers. Treat you like my child, you complain. Treat you like an adult, you complain. Just can’t win.”

  “I don’t want to be an adult,” Leo said proudly.

  “Sensible,” Mum told him while I said, “Suck up.”

  Mum looked between us. “If you didn’t want Leo to tease you, you shouldn’t have got yourself a girlfriend.”

  I blinked. “I don’t have a girlfriend!”

  “Really?” Mum asked, giving me her ‘you want to think about that’ look. It was the one I’d seen a lot, usually after she asked who’d eaten all the lollies in the house and, more recently, where I’d been the night before.

  I nodded. “We’re just friends. Can I not have a girl who’s a friend?”

  “Of course, you can–”

  “Thank you.”

  “–I just happened to see the way you lit up when the doorbell rang and watched how quickly you jumped up to see her yesterday,” she teased, dropping into her baby-voice.

  I rolled my eyes. “So now I can’t like seeing my friends?”

  “Sebastian.”

  Uh-oh. Nothing good ever came after my full name.

  Mum sighed before she continued, very carefully, “I try very hard not to think about what you get up to in your personal time. But please don’t let me think I’ve raised an idiot. If you don’t feel any more for her than friendship, I’ll say no more. But you check that and you don’t lead that poor girl on and break her heart, you hear?”

  “Yeah, Bash,” Leo said and I looked at him.

  “You met her once and you’re on her side?”

  Leo drew himself up indignantly. “I see her at least once a week in Chapel.”

  “And that means you know her?”

  “I know her enough to know she’s nice.”

  I huffed and didn’t even bother wondering why this was happening. I’d known this sort of thing would happen if Paige picked me up. But in the interests of all that emotional bonding bullshit, I’d decided it was worth the risk. Now I doubted all the emotional bonding in the world could make it worth it.

  The night before hadn’t gone past a few kisses. We’d been in public for starters and then Mum had messaged to tell me she’d been called in and asked if I could come home to be with Leo. So, there hadn’t been time to try to foster anything in the car after. Which was a shame because the Princess-mobile seemed roomier than my little Astina and I was interested to see just how roomy it was. But I wasn’t about to let Paige meet these two buttholes two days in a row and derail my plans.

  I had literally two weeks until the formal now to pop her cherry and maintain my reputation – not that Jendo or Rufio had a decent answer yet to how I was supposed to pass it on to Mr Trombone if I failed. I so didn’t need Mum fuelling a fire I’d already accidentally lit.

  Did I enjoy hanging out with Paige? Yes.

  Did I enjoy it more than just satisfying some primal sexual instinct? Yes.

  Did that mean it had to be something serious? No.

  We could be two people who liked spending time together that would hopefully eventually culminate in a home run, some horizontal refreshment, coitus. As far as I could tell, she wanted it as much as I did. And if I happened to win a bet just because we both got what we wanted, that didn’t mean I was just using her. Did it?

  Annoyed with everything now, I huffed, “She’s very nice. But that doesn’t mean we’re romantically involved. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to shower.” I nodded perfunctorily and stormed out of the room.

  “You don’t make this much effort for Jendo or Roof,” Mum called.

  I actually had a mini tantrum on the stairs, complete with shaken fists and jumping up and down. But I was calm when I replied, “They’ll be there, too.”

  “Of course, they will,” Mum yelled.

  Instead of saying something I might regret Leo hearing, I let them giggle as I continued stomping up to my room.

  I knew Mum and Leo loved me and I knew they were perfectly entitled to give me shit about girls. Had it been Leo, it would have been Mum and me dishing it out and Leo stomping up to his room like a five-year-old who’s been told he can’t have any more cake. I just wished they wouldn’t stir the pot.

  I didn’t need to start believing I could have more with Paige. Quite aside from the fact I had a singular goal in mind, now was not the time to go weak. Mum was in the midst of picking up as many shifts as was humanly possible without a total meltdown, and Leo was finally worry free. Now was not the time to fancy myself falling in love and being pathetic.

  Because if I got her in bed, there was no way Paige would stick around after. No way was she going to want to be with a guy who seduced her just to win a bet. Unless…

  “She doesn’t have to know…?” I wondered as I jumped in the shower.

  I mean, there were only three of us who knew about the bet. If I won, life went on. Paige wouldn’t have to know. We could just go on the same way we had been indefinitely.

  A flutter of excitement rippled through my chest until I realised what the hell I was doing.

  “Get a fucking grip, Baker,” I muttered to myself, sticking my head under the water.

  Paige might have been more than a means to an end now, but that didn’t mean I was losin
g my heart to her. It just meant I wasn’t used to hanging out with a girl. I was confusing lust and companionship with something more. That was all.

  “Yeah. You keep telling yourself that,” I grumbled.

  I finished showering and got dressed.

  Paige had invited the boys and me to Freya’s eighteenth. Well, Freya had invited us once she caught wind that Paige and I were hanging out. Not that it was a secret. The whole Common Room knew and seemed to have rather a perversely amused interest into where it was going.

  By the time I thundered back downstairs, still in a foul mood but mainly one of my own making, Leo was already in his pyjamas watching movies. He was by no means planning to go to bed anytime soon, the Bakers just had a somewhat unhealthy obsession with pyjamas and would quite honestly thrive in a world where they were considered normal attire.

  “I’m off. Supposed to get the boys like fifteen minutes ago,” I called.

  “No worries,” Leo replied, pausing the movie. “You know I didn’t mean it, Bash?”

  I nodded. “I know, man.”

  “Paige is nice. I wouldn’t mind if she was around more.”

  I licked my lip, but let myself say, “Me either. But that’s not up to me.” Not really.

  “Why not?”

  I shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

  “Mum says when two people love each other, complications are just little road bumps.”

  Yeah, and look where that had got her. Safer to just not fall in love in the first place.

  “We’re too young to fall in love, Leo. Okay? Paige and I…we’re just seeing what happens.”

  Leo frowned. “Is that just code for you’re fuck buddies?”

  I looked around to see if Mum was about, but thankfully she wasn’t. “Dude! Language.”

  “You say it all the time!”

  “Only if I don’t know you can hear me! Jesus. How do you even know what that is?”

  Leo’s frown was somewhat condescending now. “I’m fourteen, not an idiot. I know how to work the internet.”

  I nodded, remembering that four years was not really the gap it seemed. “Fair play. Just don’t go saying that shit around Mum. Okay?”