Free Remix by Non Pratt

has done today has been leading to this moment with Tom.
    Now it’s here, I’m no longer so sure why I thought it was my place to stop it.
    Tom broke her heart before, but who’s to say he’ll do it again? Maybe he made a mistake? Maybe he’s been regretting it all summer and now he’s finally got a chance to make things right?
    Maybe I’m not thinking about Tom when I say that.
    Go home, brain, you’re drunk
.
    Tomorrow, when I’m sober, when I know how to use my indoor voice, I will tell Kaz I’m sorry and I will mean it.
KAZ
    Tom hands me back Ruby’s phone. The battery is at thirty-seven per cent and I make a mental note to remind her to take it to the charging tent tomorrow.
    “Stu found it. I thought you’d rather I was the one who brought it back.” He smiles and brushes a bit of floating ash off my cheek with the back of his fingers.
    “I should head back.” I half-turn towards my tent, but Tom lays a hand on my shoulder.
    “Wait.”
    When I turn back there’s no mistaking his expression.
    “Yes?” My voice might be light, but the look I’m giving him is so heavily loaded I can barely lift my lashes.
    There’s a second in which he swallows and I expect his gaze to dart away, for him to remember that we (presumably) broke up for a reason.
    Tom doesn’t move an inch. “Let’s go somewhere for a bit. Just you and me.”
    We make our way towards Three-Tree Field, pausing to cross the main track. Even though it’s past midnight, late arrivals are still tramping down from the car park, rucksacks on, ground mats rolled under their arms as they carry crates of beer and carrier bags. Mostly it’s the older crowd – people who have driven here from their day jobs – and the conversations I catch seem to be focused on whether there’s space to pitch their tents. I don’t think there’s anywhere left unless they’re prepared to camp up a tree. When I make this joke to Tom, he huffs a laugh at me.
    The smell of roast pork and popcorn, candyfloss and hot chips engulfs us as we pass the food vans lining a track marked WEST WALK , fading into the night as the track peters out on the far side of the site. There’s a choice between turning towards Tom’s camp, or turning away.
    It’s Tom who decides, each step he takes pulling us away from the noise of the campsite and up a slope that starts off gentle before taking a savage turn up into a copse of trees. There’s no one here and we let the hill get the better of us as soon as we’re beyond the first of the trees. My hands are shaking. Every part of me is consumed by energy, my skin buzzing with suppressed excitement like it’s opening night and I’m singing the solo.
    “So what exactly are we doing here, Tom?” I look up at the sky, at the trees near by and then, finally, at Tom, who shrugs. The setting might be romantic, but the boy isn’t. After all, this is Tom. The person who thought an umbrella was a suitable Valentine’s gift “because we’re having a wet February”.
    “I just know it’s been good seeing you,” he says. “I didn’t know how much I’d missed this –
us
– until I saw you.”
    And there it is: the gulf between the way I feel about him and the way he feels about me. I’ve missed him every second of every day since we broke up.
    And yet…
    He misses me
.
    Tom reaches out for a hug and I go with it, putting my arms around him, resting my face on his shoulder and finally,
finally
letting myself breathe in the smell of him. A moment longer and I’ll pull away, break the contact.
    It feels good, standing here on the balls of my feet, my nose pressed into the material of his top.
    A second later he kisses me on the cheek.
    I kiss his cheek in return.
    He kisses me again, not on the safe skin on the apple of my cheek, but in the no-man’s-land towards my lips.
    I turn my face closer and kiss him in the same place, my lips soft, the touch a little lingering, and when I pull back, I don’t turn my face any further,