'I said don't touch me!'
He stands up.
'Go away, Toby.' I just want to be alone.
His face has glazed over now. It looks like a block of ice. 'If that's what you want.'
'Yes, it is. I want you to go away.' I'm being cruel, I know I am, but now I've started I can't stop. It's like the hole that is reopening in my chest, ripping its way apart, is being passed on to him. Just a little bit. If I give that pain to someone else, maybe I won't have to feel it quite so much.
I'm despicable.
It didn't have to be like this, says a voice in my head. If you'd have just told him at the start. Why didn't you?
I know the answer. Because I'm weak.
When I look up again, he's ten metres away from me already, picking his way around the side of the building, through the overgrown brambles and the stray pieces of litter. He doesn't look back, offer to take me home. Why would he?
I don't know how much time passes before I hear another voice calling me.
'Maya?' This voice is softer, more gentle. 'Are you there?'
I know that this voice won't ask me for things I can't give. This makes me uncurl myself and look up at my new visitor.
Noah.
He doesn't say anything at first. He just slides down the fire escape door until he's sitting next to me. He makes sure not to touch me, and he doesn't ask me if I'm okay. I appreciate him for that.
What he does say, after a few minutes of silence, is 'It bloody stinks down here.'
A dry chuckle escapes me. 'Guilty.'
He doesn't seem to care about the remnants of my night in the corner beside us. His eyes search mine, not in an intrusive, probing way like Toby's, like he wants me to tell him all my secrets, but in a way that makes me feel like he knows them all already, and either way he doesn't care. His eyes are a clear, light brown, flecked with gold. I'd never noticed.
'Is everyone waiting?' I ask.
He shakes his head. 'I said I'd get you home. Issy disappeared with some guy, and I'm pretty sure Sadie and Jude went back to halls hours ago, so there weren't that many of us left.' He doesn't mention Toby.
We sit in silence for another few minutes. Eventually he says, 'I'd love to sit here all night with you, but there's a bit of pavement that's going right up my arse.'
I snort. 'Right. Let's go.'
He stands up before me, holds out his hand. I take it and heave myself to my feet, nearly pulling him down again. The movement brings on a fresh wave of nausea and I stumble back to my corner. Noah gives me a wide berth until I've finished, then he chucks a battered plastic bottle of water in my direction.
'Thanks,' I mutter, rinsing my mouth out and tugging my hair up into a topknot in case it happens again.
'I'm not going to make a joke about how you can't handle your drink, because you'll probably punch me.'
'You're not wrong.'
As we stumble through the debris coating the ground behind the bar and head back towards the road, the harbour comes into view, and beyond it, the sea; it mirrors that peculiar pinky-grey of the sky just before sunrise.
'Actually, I don't really want to go home,' I say. 'Want to go to the beach?'
'Don't we have class at nine?' says Noah.
fourteen
Start from the beginning
