Free Black Rabbit Summer by Kevin Brooks

Raymond. I thought he’d look back at me as he left, maybe say a few words, or wave goodbye. But he didn’t. He just ducked down through the doorway and disappeared into the night.
    I listened to him following Eric and Pauly down the bank, their fading footsteps stumbling through the darkness, then I turned my attention to Nic. She’d shuffled away from the wall and was sitting in front of me now – her legs crossed, her face glowing palely in the candlelight, her eyes fixed steadily on mine.
    ‘So,’ she said quietly, ‘here we are again.’
    ‘Yeah…’
    ‘Just the two of us.’
    I wiped sweat from my forehead.
    She took off her shoes and smiled at me. ‘Hot, isn’t it?’

Five
    Everything was kind of OK for a while. Me and Nic just sat there talking about stuff – Paris, Stella, school, college – and it didn’t feel too awkward or anything. We were both a bit drunk, I suppose, and a bit whacked out from the dope, and Nic kept taking quick little sips from the bottle of tequila that Pauly had left behind, so I’m not sure if either of us really knew what we were talking about. But it didn’t seem to matter. In fact, the way Nicole was jabbering away – spewing out words like a machine gun – I hardly had to say anything at all. So I didn’t. I just sat there, watching her as she talked – staring at her mouth, her moving lips… the candlelit colours shimmering on her skin. The more I stared, the more vivid the colours became, and as they grew brighter and brighter, the darkness of the den seemed to close in all around us. It was a nice feeling, like sitting in a bubble of light, and there was something about it that made me feel I was inside something alive. It was as if the den had some kind of primitive consciousness, and now that the others had gone, it was adjusting its size to make us feel cosier.
    ‘Are you all right?’ Nicole said suddenly.
    I blinked. ‘What?’
    ‘Your eyes… they look really spacey.’
    ‘Spacey?’
    ‘Yeah,’ she smiled. ‘Like big black saucers.’
    ‘Must be the drink,’ I said.
    Nic laughed. ‘You never could handle it, could you?’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    She smiled. ‘You always used to get like this at a den party.’
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘All dreamy and stupid… like you’re living in a different world.’
    ‘Dreamy and stupid?’ I said.
    She laughed again. ‘Stupid in a nice way.’
    ‘So you’re saying I’m stupidly nice, is that it?’
    ‘Yeah,’ she said, looking into my eyes, ‘but mostly just nice.’
    Everything seemed to change then. The atmosphere, the heat, the silence… it was all suddenly different. Heavier, stiller, more intense. I could taste the dark sweetness of Nic’s perfume in the air. I could feel the sweat oozing from my skin.
    ‘What happened to us, Pete?’ Nicole said quietly.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘You know… me and you, everything we did, everything we had… I mean, how come we ended up so far apart?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ I shrugged. ‘Things change, I suppose…’
    ‘They never changed for me.’
    She was leaning in close to me now, staring so intently into my eyes that I had to look away for a moment. I didn’t really believe what she was saying, and I knew she didn’t believe it either – she knew as well as I did that we had both changed – but as she moved a little closer to me, and I felt her hand on my thigh… well, I couldn’t have cared less about the truth just then.
    ‘Do you remember that time in the bathroom?’ she said softly.
    I looked up at her. ‘The party at your cousin’s place?’
    ‘Yeah.’ She smiled. ‘We came pretty close then, didn’t we?’
    I nodded, my mouth suddenly dry.
    She said, ‘Do you think we would have done it if her parents hadn’t come back?’
    ‘Maybe…’
    She moved her hand on my thigh. ‘It doesn’t seem right…’
    ‘What?’
    ‘That we never got round to it.’
    I was feeling incredibly strange now – my heart was thudding, my