Twenty-One Night Stand ✓

2 / finger painting

"Why do I feel like you guys have some kind of private joke?" she asked, frowning at her friends. She tucked her hair behind her ears and stared at Nick. "Come on, spill the beans."

"The beans are yours to spill," Nick said. He threw another couple of raspberries into his mouth, his eyes boring a hole in Maddie's. "Come on, Maddie. You told us yourself. The famous twenty-first birthday!" He grinned and his eyebrows danced at her once again, his lips twitching. "Don't you have a ... prior arrangement? A pact, of some regard?"

It was only then that Maddie realised what he was saying, and her jaw dropped an inch. "I can't believe you remember that," she said, her voice little more than a surprised whisper. She hadn't exactly remembered until he had jogged her memory. It had, after all, been two years since she had drunkenly confessed to her then new housemates that she had arranged to sleep with her best friend if either of them had yet to lose their virginity by the age of twenty-one. That is, the best friend with whom she hadn't had a proper conversation for months.

"Do you really think I'd forget that you - you, of all people, my innocent flower - agreed to fuck your best friend?" His face fell, his eyes suddenly darkening. "Wait ... are you guys still friends? You and, what was his name - Paul, was it?"

"Peter," Maddie corrected automatically. "Yeah, we are," she said, playing with a frayed thread of her gown, "but it's not exactly the same as it was five years ago. I've hardly seen him since starting uni."

Posy raised a finger, pointing it at her friend. "To be fair," she said, "that's probably a good thing. I mean, it's probably far less awkward to sleep with him with three years of distance, else it'd probably just be amusing."

Maddie just shook her head. "I doubt he still wants to do it. I doubt he even remembers." She refilled her glass and passed the bottle to Nick, who promptly topped up his lowering supply of wine. "He's probably not even a virgin anymore."

"But you are." Posy's blunt statement fell out into the open and Maddie couldn't deny it. She was still eligible for the pact that she was now slightly regretting. Five years ago, things had been different. A lot had been different. For starters, she had seen Peter almost every day and sure, she had loved him in some way, but she still wasn't a hundred percent sure what kind of way that was: she didn't exactly have anything against which she could qualify it. He had been her best friend, and best friends love each other. But now it had been years since they had last had a meal together, their interactions almost solely based around their phones. While she had head up north for university, living it up in Manchester, Peter had gone in the exact opposite direction to study in Surrey.

"I guess," Maddie said, though it was more than a guess. She had never even kissed anyone, unless she counted that one time her lips had been targeted by a rather drunk Posy, which she didn't. If she was being completely honest with herself, she had always wondered if maybe that honour would have gone to Peter, in the years gone by, but that time had slipped through her fingers.

As though reading her mind, her phone buzzed twice with a Facebook message from Peter. Two pairs of eyes were trained on her as she opened it, a third message immediately popping up.