Sophie
March, Zachary and I agree to cancel our sessions for a couple of weeks since we both have mock exams, so I’m a little surprised when he walks up to me outside the exam hall after our Lit exam.
“Is this your last exam?” he asks.
We’ve never really had a proper conversation outside the context of our tutoring sessions. I answer with a slight frown. “No, I have Maths tomorrow.”
He nods. “No exams Friday, then?”
“No.”
“There’s a post-exam party on Thursday night in the old building behind the Arboretum. Everyone’s going before we break up for half-term. You should come.”
I stare at him.
“And bring Audrey and Araminta,” he adds.
He’s about to walk away when I point out, perhaps a little belatedly, the obvious issue at hand. “I’m a prefect, Zachary.”
He smiles courteously. “Then you’ll be in good company. All the other prefects are also coming, the head boy and head girl too.”
And then he walks away. I stare after him for a few minutes, completely taken aback. This is technically speaking the second time this year I’ve been invited to a party, by a Young King no less.
I shoulder my backpack and go to my next class, and don’t think about the invitation again until the next day. I’m sitting in the common room, eating a slice of buttered toast while rereading my list of equations and formulas for the hundredth time. The sky outside is still dark, and all the lamps are on in the common room, making the morning feel like the evening.
Audrey plops down next to me on the couch, startling me. “So? Are we going to the party tomorrow?”
“What party?” I ask absent-mindedly.
“The post-exam party. Come on, it’s right after the mocks, just before our week off, and all the prefects are going, so it’s not like you’re going to get in trouble. We’ve never been to a single party together—I wasn’t even there for the last one. But you had fun, right? Please come.”
I stare at her with a mouth full of toast. I swallow and take a deep sip of coffee. Then I finally admit, “Last party was fun but mistakes were made.”
Audrey rolls her eyes and laughs. “That’s on you, though. Just come with me and the girls, we’ll have a drink and chat and relax and dance a little. Then, when we feel too tired or bored, we’ll head back to the dorms. Simple as that. No mistakes need to be made this time.”
I nod slowly. “I’ll think about it.”
Audrey springs forward to hug me with a noise of triumph. “Yes! I’m so excited! Do you have something to wear?”
It’s pretty obvious that, as far as she’s concerned, I’m going to the party. I give her an unimpressed look, but she responds by widening her delighted smile.
“Do you?”
“…I have a dress.”
“Is it cute?”
I shrug. “It’s cute enough. I’ll ask Araminta to do my makeup.”
“Can I curl your hair?”
“You can try, but the curls will never keep.”
“Alright, alright, I’ll see what I can do. I can’t believe we’re going to a party together, I’m genuinely so excited. It’s like we’re going on a first date!”
Her excitement is contagious, and I can’t help but laugh. “Are we going to make out and everything?”
She sighs. “I miss Axel so much, I very much might.”
“I thought you two met up over Christmas holidays?”
“That was almost three months ago, Sophie!”
I smirk at her. “He must have been pretty good if he’s got you in your feelings this soon.”
She leans closer, her mouth almost touching my cheek. “Let’s just say he’s a skilled linguist, and I don’t just mean because he can speak several languages.”
I shove her face away. “You disgust me.”
She stands up and grabs her bag from the side table she left it on. “Good luck not thinking about that during your Maths exam!”
“You perv!” I call after her.
She turns to blow me a kiss and then disappears out of the door. Her shameless words tug at my mind later during the Maths exam. Tragically, the intrusive thoughts don’t revolve around Axel and Audrey’s amorous adventures. Instead, my mind is stuck remembering how skilled a linguist Evan unfortunately is.
That’s definitely not a thought I need to be having right now—not in the middle of a Maths exam. So I throw the thought firmly out of my head and bury myself in the comforting difficulty of trigonometry and kinetics.
Evan
my room after swim practice to find Leo gone and Zachary sitting in the chair by the window, thumbing through my newly-annotated copy of Persuasion. He’s wearing black jeans and a black turtleneck sweater—his most festive outfit. I unwrap my towel from around my neck and throw it on the back of my desk chair, then glare at Zachary.
“I’m not going to that stupid party.”
He doesn’t look up from the book. “Why not?”
“Because—because I’m not in the mood. Those exams were stressful as fuck.”
“You don’t say,” he murmurs, peering closer at a page in my book. “You misspelt the word naval.”
“Navel?”
“No, naval, as in naval officer, as in the navy. Doubt Captain Wentworth made his fortune inspecting belly buttons.”
I roll my eyes and grab my book out of his hand to shove it under my pillow. “Shouldn’t you be at the party glaring at Theodora from afar or something?”
He smiles. “Shouldn’t you be at the party, acting excruciatingly awkward towards Sophie?”
My mind flashes an image of the peace garden party, Sophie’s hand fisting in my T-shirt, her disdainful gaze, our first kiss. I sigh. “As if Sophie would be caught dead at another party.”
“Well,” Zachary says, standing with a sigh. “Thought you might prefer to catch her alive, but whatever. If you’re not coming then I’ll be off.”
I grab his arm as he tries to go past me, and shove my face in his. “Are you saying she’s going to be there?”
“I can tell you’re not interested,” Zachary says, shoving my face away from his. “I’ll see myself out.”
“How is that possible? Sophie probably—Sophie doesn’t even like parties.”
“Because you’ve invited her to so many parties, right?”
I glare at Zachary, but he stares back steadily. “As if she’d ever say yes to me.”
“I don’t blame her, to be honest,” Zachary says, glancing down at his nails. “You’re annoyingly whiny. Still, I’ll tell her you say hi.”
He shakes my hand off his arm and walks over to the door.
“Wait!” I shout, yanking off my loose T-shirt.
Zachary leans against the doorway, watching me dispassionately as I stumble around the room, kicking off my shorts, yanking clothes out from the back of my drawers, splashing cologne on. When I’m done dressing I stand to peer into the small square mirror by the door.
“Should I brush my hair?”
“You can, but I’m leaving regardless.”
“Alright, fine! I’ll leave it. Fuck me, I’m nervous. Do I look good?”
“You look like you committed a crime and you’re terrified of getting caught.”
“You mean nervous? I look nervous because I am!”
“You’re rich and good-looking—what’s there to be nervous about?”
I can tell Zachary doesn’t mean that, but I still shake my head in melancholy. “If only that was enough.”
The party is in the old building behind the Arboretum, an old red brick building with long, narrow windows. It used to be an indoor botanical garden of sorts, but was replaced by the newer, more glamorous Greenhouse.
When we arrive, the party is well underway, music blaring and the room bright with ever-changing colours. Pink and blue, orange and green, purple and yellow. Strings of Christmas lights dangle around the windows, filling my mind with soft flashbacks of Christmas Eve.
Zachary and I walk over to the trestle tables on which the booze is stacked. I grab two beers and hand one to Zachary, but he shakes his head with a grimace.
“Isn’t there some good wine somewhere?” he asks snootily, peering at the bottles.
“Uh… champ?”
“Pass me the bottle.”
Bottles in hand, we amble around the room, both sweeping the room with our eyes. I can tell the exact moment when Zachary spots Theodora because his stance stiffens and his body language somehow becomes ten times more arrogant and aloof.
“Wanna go say hello?” I call out over the blaring music.
“I won’t give her the satisfaction. She can come and say hello first.”
“You two are so weird.”
I don’t hear his reply, because my eyes finally fall on Sophie.
She’s standing by a window, framed by rainbow drops of light, talking to Araminta from my Biology class. She looks… well, she looks incredible, of course. She’s wearing a black dress with a white lace collar, black fishnet tights and boots. Her hair is tied in a simple ponytail and the only accessory she has is the dark red lipstick she’s wearing, making her mouth look the colour of crushed cherries.
There’s something edgy about the whole outfit, a sort of grunge-goth glamour that’s completely at odds with her usual crisp uniform and collection of big grandpa sweaters. But all I can think about is kissing that crushed cherries mouth, ripping through those fishnets and wrapping that long ponytail around my hand.
I’m walking towards her before I even realise I am. Luckily, Zachary catches me by the arm and pulls me behind the cover of a pillar.
“What’s your plan?”
I blink at him. “Plan? What plan?”
“Exactly. Shouldn’t you have a plan?”
“What kind of plan?”
“I don’t know. What are you going to say to her?”
I stare at Zachary and take a deep sip of beer, thinking hard. “Probably I’m gonna say hi.”
“Right. And then?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you want from her? What’s the intended outcome here?”
I peer around the pillar, at Sophie’s soft, heavy hair, at her long legs in the fishnet tights, her crimson mouth. I want her so bad I can barely formulate a coherent thought.
I turn back to Zachary and yell, a little too loud over the music, “I wanna dance with her. I wanna hold her and kiss her. And I wanna touch her legs through her tights. I want to go down on her and make her come.”
Zachary’s face twists into a grimace. “That’s too much information, Ev.”
I shrug. “You asked.”
“I meant realistically. Realistically, what is the intended outcome?”
“Realistically, I’d settle for her not hating me for five seconds.”
Zachary nods. “Alright, so you know what you have to do, then.”
“Obviously I don’t. I never do, with Sophie.”
“You could start with the obvious. You know: be nice? Be polite? Don’t say or do anything rude or mean?”
“Obviously.”
“If it was that obvious then you wouldn’t have made her lose her job then humiliated her in front of everyone she hates.”
I choke on the sip of beer I’m halfway through swallowing. “Zach!”
He shrugs without so much as a hint of contrition. “I’m not lying, am I?”
“No, you’re not, but fuck me, man, you’re not exactly filling me with confidence either.”
“I’ll tell you who doesn’t need confidence,” Zachary says, glancing around the pillar. “Percival Bainbridge.”
“What do you mean?”
I poke my head around the pillar to follow Zachary’s gaze.
He’s right. Percival Bainbridge doesn’t need confidence. He’s walked right up to Araminta and Sophie and handed them drinks in blue plastic cups. To my surprise, Sophie takes her cup with a smile. All three of them tap their cups together before drinking.
Percy isn’t someone I know well, but he’s a decent enough guy. His family are landed gentry in the UK, not filthy rich but not poor by any means. Although Percy isn’t the most handsome guy in the year group by far, he makes up for his plain looks with a great track record and some impressive sporting achievements under his belt.
He’s the kind of guy who would never harm a fly, but right now he might be a serial baby killer for all I hate him. I watch him, speechless with a mixture of shock and envy, as he talks to Sophie and Araminta with seemingly complete ease.
He says something to Sophie and winks at her, and she laughs. Not a smirk, not a mocking snigger. Actual laughter.
Percy and Sophie are about the same height, and with her dark hair and his short crop of light blond hair, they look like a picture-perfect social media couple.
I glare at Zachary. “How on earth does Percy know Sophie?”
“They’re both prefects. Looks like you missed your chance.”
More prefects are walking up to Sophie and Araminta and Percy, and the group of them stand there, chatting and drinking.
“Come on,” Zachary says, grabbing my arm. “You can try speaking to her later.”
He drags me away and we end up joining Iakov and Séverin and some guys from the rugby team. Iakov is drinking straight vodka, which means he’s looking to get obliterated. Sev is doing a one-person roast of the outfit Anaïs, his fiancée has chosen to wear at this party, which gives him an excuse to keep staring at her.
We play some drinking games. As I drink, the alcohol makes me both more relaxed and less able to resist the urge to go back to Sophie. I’m stumbling tipsily on my way to get some more drinks when I spot her again. This time, she’s standing with Audrey, dancing while they sing along to the song. Audrey’s arm is around Sophie’s waist, and Sophie’s arm is around Audrey’s neck. They are dancing cheek-to-cheek, clearly both as tipsy as I feel.
My steps slow to a stop.
The easy intimacy between Sophie and her friends, the shameless affection they openly display, is hypnotic. Araminta dances through the crowd, wraps herself around Audrey and Sophie. They dance together and laugh. Araminta raises her phone for a selfie, her and Audrey sandwiching Sophie’s face with kisses as they pose.
They laugh and break apart as the song ends, then they stand to talk. Audrey plays with the silky length of Sophie’s ponytail as Araminta shows everyone the pictures she’s just taken.
The whole scene, in the pink and purple lights, is surreal, like a waking dream. A terrible sadness falls on me like a weight.
I could have been this close to Sophie.
I could have been dancing with her, holding her by her waist, posing for photos with my cheek against her cheek, lacing my fingers through hers. I could have been receiving her smiles, making her laugh. Her friendship, her affection, her love, is a treasure I once held and tossed carelessly away.
For a social pariah, Sophie never seems to lack company. I can’t find a moment to catch her alone. Then I get distracted trying to break up a spat between Theodora and Zachary, who are going for each other’s throats like a wealthy couple in a bitter and vicious divorce.
I walk Zachary to an open window so he can catch some fresh air. I’m on my way to go find some water for him when I’m intercepted by Luca.
The last time I saw him was that night in London, but the less time I spend with him the more I realise how much happier I am away from him. He’s wearing tailored black pants and a crisp white shirt, his outrageous Rolex shining on his wrist. His bone-pale hair is slicked back, making him look like some storybook villain.
At his side is my ex, Giselle, flushed from too much drink and dressed head to toe in white. I’m surprised to see them together. Luca’s already been there with her—he had to, since I dated her first—and it’s not like him to spend time with girls he’s already had.
“Where are you off to in such a hurry, Evan?” Luca asks in his lazy drawl. “Looking for someone?”
I narrow my eyes at him. Before I can say anything, Giselle jumps in with all the grace of a brick.
“Probably Sophie Sutton, as always. You’d think you’d get over her after finally ticking her off your list.” She gives a dramatic sigh and shakes her head at me. “Poor girl sex must be like crack to you.”
My stomach churns and my hands clench into fists. Giselle was always a bit annoyed with the special attention I paid Sophie, no matter how cruel and vicious it was. We broke up over it, and I can’t believe she’s still not over it. No, actually I can believe it.
“I suppose poor girls need to put in a lot more effort since they have literally nothing but their cunts to offer,” Luca pipes in, his grin shark-like, his eyes cold. “I’m starting to understand this fascination of yours, Evan. Who knows, I might give it a try myself.” Bile burns in my throat. I slowly shake my head at Luca, hoping he’ll heed my silent warning. But his grin widens. “Isn’t Sophie applying to the Ivy Leagues? That’s costly business. I bet if I offer to pay for her university tuition, she’d let me do anything to her. Get my father to name a bursary after her and I bet she’d even let me fuck her up the arse.”
My vision goes blood-red. My thoughts go dark, the light blown out in my brain. The next thing I know I’m on the floor stradling Luca, smashing my fist over and over again in his smug face.
“You vile, disgusting piece of shit. You’re never going to speak about Sophie this way ever again. I don’t care how much fucking money your shady fucking father has, I will fucking break every bone in your body if I ever hear her name in your mouth again.”
Luca is pretty strong, and far more athletic than he looks. I know for a fact he’s a fencing champion. But he’s no match for my strength—he doesn’t even bother throwing up his arms. He takes my punches and I don’t stop until my fist is slick with his blood, until his face is purple mush.
When I’m done, I grab him by his shirt. The snowy fabric is stained with blood. His chest rises and falls quickly. His breathing is a wet wheeze.
Pulling his face to mine, I speak low and clear. “I’m only going to say this once so listen well. Stay the fuck away from Sophie.”
I throw him away from me and stand. My entire body is shaking. My forehead is slick with sweat. A circle of shocked onlookers have formed around us. I spot the other Young Kings. Zach and Sev’s eyes are wide with shock. Iakov’s expression is blank, almost bored. He’s still sipping his vodka.
Not a single one of them made a move to help Luca while I beat him up.
None of them move to help him as I walk away.
