I blushed, turned away quickly and looked back at the twins.
“Oooh, looks like he’s totally into you,” one said, leaning in with a conspiratorial smile.
The other one leaned in too, also lowering her voice to an almost-whisper. “Totally.”
I shook my head, and then hung it a little.
“What?” They moved closer to me.
“I can’t say,” I whispered. “Not here anyway.”
They looked over my shoulder and then overly loudly announced it. “We’re just going to the loo.” They stood up and one of them held their hand out for me.
“Want to come?” they asked, and one of them winked at me.
“Okay, sure.” I stood up and they immediately laced arms with me and marched me across the sand. They stopped as soon as we were out of Noah’s earshot.
“Tell us, what’s the vibe?” they asked.
“The vibe?”
“Yeah, with you and Noah?”
“Uh . . . I’m not sure,” I confessed.
“Tell us everything,” they said, at the same time again.
Hang on, was I having girl talk? Was this what it looked like? All those nights I’d missed sleepovers at my friends’ houses because I was in the hospital, was this it? If it was, I was going to go with it.
“It’s embarrassing,” I said.
“Babe, you can tell us.”
“Anything,” the other echoed.
“Well, earlier today, I thought he wanted to kiss me, but I don’t know, maybe I misinterpreted it, so I leaned in and tried to kiss him, but he kind of pulled away.”
“Harsh!” they chorused.
“What, you never told us that.” I turned when I heard a familiar voice. Zamantha and Lila were walking towards us with drinks in their hands.
I introduced everybody and soon we were all talking. I explained every single detail of the incident to them, and each one asked me for more and more details and posed more questions. The five of us did an entire post-mortem on the event, and when I was done, they stood there looking at me.
“I think he’s into you,” Zamantha concluded. “He sounded jealous when we were talking about you kissing Klaw!”
“Whoooaaa!” The twins held their hands up and blinked at me. “You kissed Klaw. The Klaw?”
“Only with a teeny bit of tongue,” Zamantha quickly added, and laughed.
The twins looked at each other and then back at me. “We’d take teeny tongue.”
“That’s what I said.” Lila echoed their sentiments and soon we were all laughing.
“We need to go to another party now,” Zamantha said. “You want to come?”
I looked around and then back to them. “I kind of like the beach.”
Zamantha and Lila took their phones out. “Cool, exchange numbers then?”
They looked up at me and I pulled my phone out and we swapped numbers. They gave me a hug goodbye and made me promise to tell them if anything happened with Noah and me. I slipped my phone back into my bag. It felt heavier, filled with another two numbers. I turned back to the twins, who now looked like they were in deep discussion.
“What?”
“Well, we think there’s only one thing to do now,” one said.
“What?” I said again.
“Go and find out from Noah. You wait here!” They both started walking off.
“Wait! No! You can’t.” I flushed with embarrassment. I couldn’t watch this. This was crazy. What were they going to do, walk up there and ask Noah if he was into me? And how was that going to work? Last time I was at school, if the boy liked you, he chased you on the playground or threw a ball at your head.
Do you like me?
Do you like me like me?
But I was sure things had changed since then, I just wasn’t sure what they’d changed to. I covered my eyes and looked away. I had no idea how any of this worked and I couldn’t bear to watch. This was all just so. . . .
I couldn’t stop the smile that swept across my face. Yes, this was wildly embarrassing but this was also something I’d never done before. I’d only ever dreamed of doing this kind of stuff from my hospital bed. Going to parties, being cool, talking to guys, flirting, hanging with my girlfriends. All of those were things I’d never done, and now, I was doing them. Regardless of how this turned out, what truly mortifying consequences this had, I was finally doing it.
“Sooooo.” The twins slid up to me again, after what felt like hours chatting to Noah.
“What did he say?” I could hardly contain my excitement and I knew that I sounded about twelve