Free Entangled by Cat Clarke Page B

Carefully, quietly, I stood up and backed towards the door, keeping my eyes on Ethan with every step. When I got to the door, I paused for a second, readying myself. I reached for the door handle and turned it. And then I was suddenly overwhelmed by a blast of pure panic. My heart slammed in my chest, and I felt hot and cold and shaky and weird. I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. There wasn’t enough air in the room. I thought I was dying.
    My stomach flipped. I ran to the bathroom and puked in the toilet, coughing and spluttering and choking. And then I lay down on the cold floor and cried. I didn’t know what was happening to me. I didn’t know how I felt about anything any more – why hadn’t I been able to leave? I didn’t want to be here …
    … did I?
    Eventually I dragged myself out of the bathroom and onto the bed. Crawled under the duvet and lay watching Ethan, trying to ignore the bitter taste at the back of my throat. After a while, Ethan stirred. He raised his head, put his hands up to his face and rubbed his eyes. He turned towards me and blinked.
    ‘You’re still here,’ he said. I couldn’t tell if he was pleased or disappointed. Maybe both.
    ‘Where else would I be?’
    He nodded towards the door.
    ‘What’s out there?’ I asked.
    ‘Everything.’
    Christ! All this Man of Mystery crap is really starting to grate.
    ‘Grace, why didn’t you leave? What are you afraid of?’
    I thought for a moment. ‘Everything.’
    It’s true.

    Ethan sat a little while longer, saying nothing. I felt my eyelids get heavier and heavier, until I couldn’t resist. Sleep came. I don’t remember any dreams as such, just a few random images that I can’t piece together. Dad’s funeral in the rain. Sal sitting on a park bench, holding hands with a shadowy someone. And Devon, looking like he hadn’t slept in a week – sad and worried, slouched in an uncomfortable-looking chair.

    Nat called me two days after we met. I’d been kicking myself for not getting his number, and starting to doubt that he’d ever call. Maybe I’d been a bit full on? Not full on enough? I’d spent most of my time staring at my phone, willing it to ring. Picturing Nat taking a deep breath before punching the numbers into his phone. I was desperate for a distraction from my craptastic life – anything I could lay my hands on. And I was definitely more than a little bit keen to lay my hands on Nat. When he finally did ring, I was not quite as cool as I wanted to be. We chatted for a bit, with me saying things so stupid I had to physically restrain myself from whacking the phone against my head. Still, I managed to pin him down to go out for a drink that night.
    That first night I thought I had no chance. He was friendly and sweet and funny, but in a brotherly sort of way. But I wasn’t after a brother, or a friend. I really wanted him. Somehow, in just a few days, he’d transformed from ‘sort of hot’ into ‘Hottie McHotterson, fittest boy in the history of the world – EVER’ in my mind.
    At one point in the evening, Nat even went so far as to say he had a friend he thought would be perfect for me. And here was me thinking that I couldn’t have made it any more obvious how I felt. Well, not without jumping the poor boy in the middle of the pub. And I don’t think the rest of the clientele would have been best pleased about that. Looking back, I’m not sure if I would have gone after him quite so determinedly if it hadn’t been for all the crap I’d been going through. I mean, I probably would have still been interested, but I would have tried to maintain at least a nugget of dignity. No boy is worth looking like a fool for.
    We said goodbye at the bus stop. He really was my bus-stop boy. We hugged, and I was just about to turn and leave when I thought, ‘Fuck it,’ and decided to take the bull by the horns/the boy by the balls.
    ‘Listen, Nat, I’ve been dropping hints all night, and I’m not sure if you