26 | screw friendship

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CHAPTER 26

Long chapter incoming - make sure you've

got lots of time and snacks :)

A powerful gust of wind greeted us as we made our way out of the door.

I looked over to Cora for what was supposed to be a split second, but found myself transfixed by the way tendrils of her hair danced over her forehead.

"What is it?" She asked, moving a curl out of the way self consciously.

"Nothing." I shook my head and forced my eyes away from her face.

They ended up on the landscape in front of me instead, pleased by what there was to be seen.

Although we were still quite far away from sea and sand, we had walked for long enough to have the ground change underneath our feet from hard concrete to irregular cobblestones.

The journey so far had been mostly on the same terrain, so I turned to warn Cora about the next uphill stretch.

I found that her eyes were already on me when my head spun to face hers, and I was eerily faced by the realisation of what it must feel like for her when I do it.

It was nice.

Actually, screw that. Nice didn't even come close.

It was like being looked at in a way that you knew stretched a little deeper than what the eyes could see.

Than what everyone else could see.

A warmth spread through me, but I ignored it in favour of getting my next sentence out. "Just so you know, we're going to be walking uphill for a little bit."

She nodded, but I could see hesitancy swirling around in her eyes. "How long is a little bit?"

I paused, thinking. We had been fast up until now so assuming we sustained that it wouldn't take much longer. "A little under twenty minutes, probably."

She looked forward for a moment, staring at the spaces between the cobbles and the overgrown grass before her eyes returned to me.

I had been expecting her to tell me that she was tired, and wanted to wait a bit before we tackled Cornwall's landscape all over again.

So she almost knocked me on my arse with the dimpled smile she gave me, grabbing my hand and pulling me forward. "Let's go."

While she charged ahead with me in tow, I had time to think about what had been brought to the forefront of my mind.

Cora seemed different.

And I wasn't sure why that was, but I had noticed it since this morning.

When I stood at the door asking her to come to me and she did, with barely even a moment's hesitation, I sensed a shift.

I was trying not to read into it too much for fear of getting my hopes up, but as I looked at her now and she made eye contact with me, I could've sworn that the gleam in her eyes wasn't there because of the scenery around us.

Twenty minutes in we were both panting together, but I smiled with satisfaction once I heard the rustle of grass under my feet.

We had made it to the top of the hill that gave us what in my opinion, was one of the best views in Cornwall.

I heard Cora gasp from next to me and I knew I had achieved what I wanted to achieve. "Gabe, it's beautiful. Look!"

I knew what I would be seeing from countless visits here as a child, but there was no way I could say no to her when she sounded like that.

My eyes danced over the skyline, an almost crayon-like reenactment of how we thought of a typical sunrise. Each colour had been intensified until it was a distant version of itself, going all the way from the electric blue of the sky to the neon yellow of the sun that framed it.

My gaze moved down to the part I knew she was most excited about, the area where the expanse of sea met the grains of sand.

We had picked a time when the water was tame, so the sight was surprisingly calming.

It truly was beautiful, and in that moment it felt like I was enjoying it through a fresh pair of eyes.

There was a childlike happiness lighting up Cora's face when I looked at it, and I couldn't help the way my chest expanded at the thought that I had put it there.

"How about we go down to the beach now?" I said, watching for her reaction.

She clapped her hands together and I could see her bouncing on the balls of her feet.

Raw excitement was thrumming through Cora's every action, and I had never known it could be quite so endearing until then.

"Okay." She said, but her voice came out in something closer to a squeal.

I chuckled. "Let's go—"

I was cut off by the sound of heavy footsteps and Cora's voice laced with laughter. "Hurry up. Last one down has to buy the other ice cream!"

She had started running down the hill, and I knew amusement was written all over my face.

If I tried hard enough I could probably overtake her even with the head start, but I would never even consider it.

Instead I increased my pace to a light jog, arriving on the sand moments after Cora.

She giggled, and it somehow trumped conch shells, the waves crashing on the shore and the sand crunching under my feet as the best sound that entered my ears that day.

Christ. When did I get so whipped?

"I think you owe me an ice cream." She said playfully, but her chest was heaving with the exertion that running had required.

I nodded slowly, but I'm pretty sure she could see the way the amusement on my face was shifting to desire. "Sure. But I want something in return."

Her breathing changed and I had to suppress a groan when those lips parted slightly of their own accord.

I sure felt like an addict. Withdrawal symptoms and all.

I had missed that mouth, and the urge to crash mine to it was growing harder to resist every second.

My restraint broke when she looked up at me from under her long lashes, voice nothing more than a heavy pant. "What do you want in return?"

I groaned. "You."

My hands found the back of her neck as I tilted her head towards mine, capturing her lips in a kiss that was so perfectly us.

There was a hesitancy at first, as if she was scared to give in, but she melted into my mouth with a whimper and began to reciprocate.

Fireworks.

With the bangs and the flashes of light. All of it.

I didn't care how cheesy it sounded, that was the only thing I could think of to describe what we were doing.

The way her body was pressing against mine and I could feel her nails digging through the leather of my jacket.

The way our mouths met, all soft lips and hot breaths and muffled sounds.

I hated air. And the fact that I had to come up for it.

If it was my choice, I would never leave Cora's lips. Set up shop right from her cupid's bow.

See? Addict.

Our breathing slowed while we stared at each other.

Although our lips had separated, the rest of our bodies were still joined. One of my hands was sitting on the nape of her neck, while the other had buried itself in her curls.

I had messed them up even more than the wind, but the satisfaction of knowing I had marked her in some way beat out any guilt that I might have felt.

And as I followed the trail of her eyes which were focused on my hair, I knew she had done the same thing to me.

"Candyfloss." I smiled.

She fought her own smile the way she always did when I called her that, trying to play down how much she liked it.

Her bottom lip found its way between her teeth and she nibbled on it, a big red sign that she was beginning to overthink things.

Not if I had anything to do with it.

I took my finger and brought it to her mouth, freeing her lip from the hold of her teeth.

I didn't even bother to hide my satisfaction when I saw that it was swollen slightly from what I had done to it, just ran my thumb along it admiringly.

"Gabe." She said quietly, continuing when I nodded in response. "I've been thinking."

I couldn't tell whether that was a good or bad thing based on the way she was looking at me, so I decided just to wait it out.

"I don't want to be friends." She said.

My head reeled back upon hearing that, and I took a closer look at the expression on her face.

Was she saying what I thought she was saying?

"Cora, if you end this sentence with "I wanna be best friends, I'm kissing it out of you."

My anxiety began to fade when she looked at me and burst into laughter.

The kind that had her keeling over, her hands either on her stomach or wiping tears from her eyes.

She recovered slowly, face growing serious when she finished the rest of her sentence. "I can't just be your friend, I don't know what I was thinking. I want to kiss you whenever I want, and not have to correct your mum when she calls me your girlfriend. We can take it slow—"

"No." I shook my head.

"No?" She repeated, face falling right in front of me.

"No. We've done enough taking it slow." I finished, and her eyes widened as she registered my words.

Her face lit up moments before my mouth crashed to hers for the second time that day, and I knew that there wasn't anything better than that.

Kissing my girl and knowing that's exactly what she was to me.

My girl.

Her soft lips were like quicksand to mine and I wanted nothing more than to fall into them, but I had things I needed to get off my chest first.

"I want you to know that I've never thought of you as just a friend." I used my finger to raise her head until her eyes met mine. "Not once. You've always been more than that to me, gorgeous."

"And as for taking it slow, we won't rush into things, I like you too much for that. But we need to go a heck-of-a-lot faster than we have been so far. We have a lot of catching up to do." I smiled.

I waited until she nodded before I put it all out there. "We're going on a date once we're back in London."

Her eyes flickered with an emotion I'd never seen in them before as she looked at me. "Okay."

"Okay?" I repeated, smiling a smile that I knew brought my dimples out. What had seemed too good to be true before now was all happening at once, and it was almost too much to take in.

"Okay." Cora grinned, confirming it, and I had to physically stop myself from fist pumping the air.

She started to walk away from me, turning around to explain when she sensed my confusion. There was a gleam in her eyes as she said, "I see an ice cream place over there. Hurry up, slow poke."

"I'll show you a slow poke." I replied, coming up behind her and swiftly carrying her onto my back.

"Gabe. Put me down!" She squealed as soon as I started making my way towards the shop.

"No can do, sorry." I said, tickling the parts of her legs that weren't covered by shorts and enjoying the way she writhed above me.

Her laughter filled my ears as I walked a path on the sand and stopped in front of the ice cream place.

I realised that I hadn't put her down yet even though we'd made it to our destination, and thought about what that said about me.

Now that I had her, I didn't know if I'd ever be able to let go.

- - - -

Cora took a lick of the vanilla ice cream she had bought, groaning in satisfaction when the taste flooded her mouth.

I looked down at what I'd gotten myself, a scoop of cookie dough in a small white tub.

"Why did you get a cone instead of a tub?" I asked, watching the way her fingers had wrapped around the patterned wafer.

Her brows raised as if the answer was obvious. "Ice cream tastes better when it's in a cone."

I smiled. "Sure."

Her mouth fell open slightly at my response. "You don't believe me?"

My shoulders moved with a shrug. "I could lie..."

She shook her head in exasperation. "I'll show you."

She got up from her seat, walking around to grab my hand and lead me back to the counter we had ordered from, flattening her palms against the glass that showcased open tubs of different ice creams.

A spotty faced teenage boy that I hadn't seen before was now manning the counter, and I watched his eyes hone in on Cora.

I might as well have been a ghost, because he was pretending I wasn't standing right next to her. "What can I do for you today?" He said. No prizes for guessing who he directed it to.

"Can we get a cone please?" Cora asked sweetly.

The boy looked like his interest had been piqued. "With nothing in it?"

"Yep." She told him, fingers drumming against the glass.

He handed her an empty cone, hands lingering on hers a little too long for my liking. "There you go."

I couldn't help the way I steered Cora away from the counter and out of the door, deciding that I didn't like the thought of him sneaking peeks at her while we ate inside.

When we were a sufficient distance from the shop I sat down on the sand, patting the space next to me for her to sit in.

Once she had, she leaned over me and took the spoon that had been perched in my ice cream. She scooped the cookie dough into the cone we had been given, handing it back to me to watch my reaction.

I was surprised to find that she was right. It actually did taste better with a cone.

Maybe it was the childishness of a cone, or the difference in temperature between cold ice cream and warm wafer, but it was far more enjoyable than it was in a tub.

My face must have betrayed me because she noticed my reaction and gloated playfully. "Told you."

I played it down even though it was futile. She already knew she'd won.

At some point during the time we spent finishing off our icecreams, she had ended up with a dash of it on her lip.

I pointed to it, alerting her. "You've got a little something."

She moved to wipe it off with her finger but I stopped her, my eyes lighting with mischief. "Let me."

I leaned in and licked it off her bottom lip, unable to resist the urge to tug it within my teeth a little.

When I moved back and returned to my place, a smirk fell onto my lips. "All done."

I had been expecting the usual shock she wore whenever I did things like that, so was floored when the only thing I saw swirling in her eyes was intense and scorching.

She liked it. Damn.

I adjusted the way I was sitting, thinking about everything other than the fact that she was in front of me.

"If you could only listen to three songs for the rest of your life, what would they be?" She asked about two minutes later, providing a welcome distraction.

I turned my body so that I could see her face fully, wanting to see how it changed when I answered. "That's a good question."

A really good question, actually. One that I needed more time to think about, so I stalled. "You first."

"Okay." She bit her lip. "This is hard. There are so many that I could say.

My eyebrows raised slightly. I had assumed that it was something she had been thinking about for a while. "Did you not know before you asked me?"

She shook her head. "Nope, I thought of it just now. I don't know what it is about you that makes me think of music."

I smiled. I felt the same way.

That thought sparked an idea in my head. "How about we change the question up a little since that one's so hard to answer. What's a song that reminds you of me?"

"Ooh, I like that one." She said, and I could almost hear the cogs turning in her head as she thought it over.

"I've got it." She revealed, eyes meeting mine. "Paradise by Bazzi."

I had heard it a couple times before, at least enough to wonder if she was trying to tell me something with that choice.

There was also the potential that she just chose it because it was a good song — the kind that had you feeling the lyrics running through your body like blood and putting it on maximum volume because it deserved nothing less.

"Nice. My turn." I said, barely even having to think about it. I knew exactly which song reminded me the most of Cora because I couldn't listen to it without thinking about her. "Snap out of it. Arctic Monkeys."

Even if she hadn't come to my house wearing the cover art of the album that song was from, I would've known she knew it just by the way she was looking at me.

That fire had relit in her eyes and she was waiting in anticipation.

Wanting. Waiting. Wanting.

It was a vicious cycle.

The same one that I had to go through for so long, pretending that it didn't hurt when she reduced whatever we had between us to just a friendship.

I thought I'd leave her like that for a bit, show her firsthand how crazy it made you to want what you couldn't have, and pulled her up off the sand.

Something that sounded eerily like a fanfare filled my ears, and I looked up to see what was causing the commotion.

The little boy that lived within me had been put almost fully to sleep because I associated him with too many difficult memories, but I could feel him waking back up as I realised what it was.

A puppet show had set up shop at the furthest corner of the beach, and was slowly gathering attention as it geared up to begin.

Cora's eyes were on the display when I looked over at her, and when our eyes met some kind of unspoken agreement passed between us. We all but ran towards it, wanting to make it there before they started.

We got there just in time, feet coming to a rest when two puppets appeared within the frame, introducing themselves as 'Punch and Judy'.

I looked at the sea of heads, noticing that the crowd was mostly made up of energetic children. There was also the occasional adult, either the parent of one of those children who had been dragged along, or just somebody embracing the child in themselves, like Cora and I.

The show was loud, flashy and fast paced, full of jabs the puppets directed at each other, a seemingly never ending supply of props and corny jokes designed to involve the audience.

They reminded me of the kind Dad used to tell me and although it was probably just wishful thinking, I liked to imagine that he was speaking to me through them, every bad punchline delivered to make me laugh in spite of myself.

My attention was brought back onto the show when Punch did something that I forgot happened with most puppet shows, having not been to one in about fifteen years.

He singled me out.

"Ladies, gentlemen and kids, I think it's time we got a few of you involved." Punch said, eliciting whoops from the audience and Judy, who was next to him. "Let's see..."

I knew it was a puppet and there was somebody else in control, but I could've sworn his eyes moved to look at me and Cora. "Let's have you two at the back!"

Cora and I shared a look, and the apprehension on her face was doing a pretty good job of portraying how I felt.

It was Judy's turn to speak, and she began to coax us up to the stand. "Come on. Don't be shy!"

We made our way up to them, stopping in front of the red and white striped cardboard. There were golden trimmings that edged alongside it, and it reminded me of a circus.

I sure wish I was a tightrope walker right about now, actually. I would rather that than embarrass myself in front of the people here. For all I knew, one of them was friends with Mum and would go straight to tell her. She would never let me live it down.

"Judy and I have been married for thirty years, would ya believe it?" Punch the puppet whispered to me, and I feigned interest. Cora and I had been split between Punch and Judy, and she was also being whispered to a little way away from me.

The puppet somehow noticed my shift in attention, doing that creepy thing where its eyes followed mine over to Cora and Judy, and leaned in closer. "I know Judy and I are always fighting, but I really do love her. Have you ever been in love?"

My eyes had been on Punch while he said that but moved to Cora of their own accord when he finished, noticing that she'd turned to look at me at exactly the same time.

I wondered if Judy had asked her the same thing.

I placed my attention back onto the show and whispered my truth to a stuffed puppet manned by somebody I didn't even know. Why I did I have no idea, but it felt good to get it out. "I've never been in love. But I'm starting to think I'm almost there."

Since that question was hushed and said only for me to hear, Punch got me to do some things that would involve the audience more. I lost count of the number of props I was made to juggle or throw to Cora, ridiculously thankful when some other people took our place.

We started to walk away from the show and back to the main area of the beach, only pausing when I got the urge to lace my fingers in hers.

I rationalised it by telling myself that I could stop her from slipping away by keeping her touching me, but I'd be lying if I said I was doing it just because of her. Her hand in mine was equally just to remind me that she was there, warding off the loneliness that I hadn't stopped feeling since Dad died.

"That was crazy." Cora said once we had stopped moving, with a smile that stretched to her eyes until they were lighter than I'd ever seen them. "Why did they go for us?"

I shrugged. "You tell me."

"You're worse at juggling than I am." She giggled, and I couldn't help but join in with her laughter.

"I think it's best for everyone if I stick to basketball." I agreed, amusement filtering into my voice.

Her laughter stopped when she gasped softly, turning her head away from me. I immediately followed her gaze to see what had caught her attention.

There was a large booth just off the edge of the sand that was covered in a strange mix of deep blue and purple, and upon closer look I noticed a sign above it that read 'Mysta's mysteries'.

"Gabe look." Cora said excitedly, tugging on the leather of my jacket. "Let's go get our fortunes told."

I had never believed in those things, and felt that they had always seemed a little sketchy.

Regardless, I was starting to think that I would say yes to anything Cora asked me.

At least that was the only explanation for why I nodded my head, letting her use our laced hands to guide me forward and past the entryway.

I didn't know it then, but our 'fortunes' were a hell of a lot more complicated than I could've ever imagined.

I'm so happy they're finally together it was actually painful to keep them apart :(

But both of them have come such a long way and the next chapter is the last stage (hint: almost all secrets are finally coming out)

Thank you for 7K and stay tuned for the next update - apart from this one and their first kiss, it's probably the most important chapter!