Blood Kisses, Amber Marshall-Nichols [summer reading list txt] 📗

through?” she asked.
“Umm, many,”
“So I’ll suffer through one of yours! Well, I wouldn’t even be suffering, you know me eager for the Goss!”
“Fine,” I mumbled. Lucy was now shimming on a beautiful yellow dress with straps that crossed over at the back, a corset that crossed over to make a shape of two butterflies’ wings, and floated out at the sides the perfect amount. “Whoa,” I breathed.
“Do you like it?”
“I love it Luc, how much?”
“Oh god,” she said.
“What?”
“I forgot that part, look at the tag will you?” I walked over and fumbled down the back of the dress for the label.
“Sixty,” I read aloud.
“I don’t like it,” Lucy lied and stepped forward to tug the dress off.
“Yes you do,”
“No, I don’t like the price, therefore, I don’t like it,”
“Don’t be silly, I’ll put some money towards it, you can’t not get that, seriously!” I pursued.
“No. And don’t do that,” she groaned.
“Do what?”
“You know the hell what, distracting me like that, just tell me, maybe you’ll feel better after!” She took one last glance in the mirror, sighed then untied the dress so it slid from her skinny body with ease. She didn’t sling it on the floor like the others, but carefully hung it up.
“Well...Toby DID asks me out,” A lump caught in my throat as I remembered his greedy earnest hands swept over my body before our fight.
“Oh no,” Lucy dropped the coat hanger to which the dress hung and whizzed to face me. “Anya I’m so sorry, and I sat there babbling about he and...”
“It’s not your fault,” I interrupted. Her pained expression suddenly made me laugh.
“What happened next?” she urged.
“Well we got interrupted by the, umm, new kid,”
“Josh!” she screeched. I nodded and passed her a pair of pale blue, three quarter, ripped jeans which she slid on to cover her chicken styled legs.
“What were you and Toby doing?” she said suspiciously.
“Nothing,” I said casually. Her eyes pierced my reflection in the mirror. “Well that’s not what Toby had planned,” I admitted.
“Ouch,”
“Double ouch,”
“This is off the point, but I’ve never asked before, how comes I can see your reflection?”
“Umm, I am solid Lucy,”
“Yeah but vampire books say...”
“Lucy, they’re books... fiction?”
“Oh right,”
“Only vampire authors write the truth,”
“Hey...” Lucy said after evaluating that statement. “You should do that,”
“Maybe,” I agreed solemnly.
“Anyway, what did josh want?”
“Directions, but I asked a favour of him,” She raised her near invisible brows at me. “Toby was having trouble fixing my mamma’s truck,” I explained.
“Ah, I bet he hated being booted from the job,”
“Totally, he must have given him a lecture in the car from what he said when Josh came back,”
“Came back? Who?” she said confused.
“Oh, I wasn’t done,” She let two hovering fingers glide along the lines of her lips as if to zip them clothes and I exhaled unnecessarily.
“Toby and I had a fight, he made a move, I told him to back off, then some stuff was... said,”
“Uh Oh,”
“Major Uh Oh,” She gulped and wriggled out of the jeans which landed on the ‘maybe’ pile.
“What did he say to you?”
“He told me I was a frigid bitch and a wretched, lame, excuse of a vampire basically,”
“GET OUT!” she shrilled.
“That’s what I told him,”
“Please tell me you had a good comeback?”
“I told him he only wanted to screw a vampire to succumb his opinion of self centred superiority, oh, and experience.”
“Your seriously said that?” I nodded. “He’s such a loser Anya, Good for you, you deserve better, and you’ll see... you’ll end up with the surf model equivalent,”
“Thanks,” I mumbled.
“But wait!” she gasped. “There’s more! Who came back Toby or Josh?”
“Josh came back alright, Toby came back too,”
“Oh did them...”
“Hit it off?”
“Yeah,”
“Yes, full blown punches,”
“You’re kidding?”
“I’m not. I had to step in,”
“Ouch,”
“That’s what they said,”
“You kicked some boy butt?”
“Girl power, woo!” I said sounding far more unenthused than I’d planned.
“I feel for them,” said Lucy and I couldn’t contain the bubble of giggles that escaped from me.
“Who made the first punch?”
“Josh,”
“Well that explains a lot,” she said as she tried to decide what to buy, and put on to wear.
“You took Toby’s side?”
“Of course,” I answered agitated she even had to ask. “Why wouldn’t I?” Lucy was careful...
“Because to be honest Lu, Toby’s been treating you like shit.”
“Well yeah but...”
“Josh seems so nice as well,”
“He’s an ass whole,”
“Okay, okay,” She raised her naked arms in defence. “How bad did you hurt them?”
“Thought your mum treated them?”
“Oh right yeah, well only Josh, he had a lot of broken ribs an,” she was definitely sympathetic which annoyed me.
“I pushed,”
“Harsh?”
“No, you weren’t there,”
“Point taken,” she mumbled. “Did you get to talk to Toby after?”
“Yeah, I had to bandage him up, but he didn’t say anything, much, he was feeling... ill,”
“Anya,” Lucy accused, I cringed knowing what she was going to ask. “Was he sober?”
“Are you done I’m really tired of this store,” I dodged.
“No Anya, I’m not done. You told me if he was drinking you’d leave him to it. Now tell me, was he hammered or not?”
“Maybe,”
“Shit Anya, don’t let him do this. Don’t be his doormat. You can’t just forgive him over and over again! You defended poor Josh against that alcoholic twat? What the hell! This was the last straw, you need to think about yourself, why did Josh even hit him?”
“Lucy, it’s up to me who I forgive,” I defended. “He hit him because he was getting too close to me, kind of like I’d hit this girl he was seeing.”
“You would?”
“Yeah, I god darn would,”
“Well still... don’t you think you should apologise to Josh?”
“I don’t think so,” I snapped.
“Your pride is going to bite you in the backside some day,”
“Yeah and I’ll just bite them,” I fumed.
“Hey don’t bite MY head off,” Lucy yelled. There was a tug on the curtain.
“Only cas you know I could,” I muttered.
“Excuse me,” Said a woman with the figure that quite matched that of a Russian doll- yet with blond hair as she peered around the curtain. “Could you keep the noise down please, the other customers would appreciate it if they didn’t have to listen to your bickering, as would I,” She smiled, and with the cheesy false grin was a display of classic lipstick tooth.
“Umm... whatever,” Lucy answered buttoning the last of the blouses she’d picked out.
“Okay, I’ll leave you two ladies alone now,’ She said it as though she was a mother about to drop her kid off for their first day of school and is watching their eagerness to get away and actually live four hours of a day without her. That was creepy. She also had this crappy, tacky American accent, gloomy colourless eyes that didn’t match her face, which was without a doubt, the colour of a watsit. She finally waddled away after an exaderated sigh and weird look to leave a foul stench of cheap perfume to linger over us. Lucy and I collapsed in giggles as soon as her peachy bum was out of sight and grabbed for the others hand as we lay back on the mountain of clothes.
“Oh what a day,”
“Shame tomorrow will be so sickish,”
“Back to school,” Lucy said acknowledging entirely what I meant just by the tone of my voice.
“Back to boys,”
“Ah hell, Josh is going to be there, I totally forgot,”
“Yup,”
“You really are in a pickle; you know what form he’s in?”
“No, but I could get mum to do some of her ‘it will be okay for you to tell me’ thing on the secretary and find out, but either way I’ll see him so...”
“I repeat you are in a prickle,”
“You mean pickle?”
“Well... you could be in a prickle, if you get pricked it hurts,”
“Well, I guess love prickles,” I said, pulling her to her feet again.
“For who... Josh or Toby?” she teased in an attempt to lighten the mood, wriggling her eyebrows at me likes the freaky kids off the Cadburys advert.
“Neither silly,” I grinned. “You know I swim in the other jar,”
“Pardon?”
“You know, other side of the fence, play for the other team,” I winked at her and jabbed one of her skinny ribs. Her eyes widened in surprise (I never usually said anything like that, so she was probably debating whether I was being serious or not). Before I could say ‘I’m joking Lu’ she shouted;
“HELP! My best friend is queer!” and I knew she’d realised I was kidding.
“Shh...” I hushed her by plastering one pale hand over her mouth. I laughed suddenly. “Or blobby’s gonna get us,” I felt her lips curve into a smile beneath my palm. “Now, let’s tidy up and pay so we can get out here,”

The store was pretty empty when we came out, which was surprising for a bank holiday Monday, but It meant the line was short so we got to the cashier pretty quick.
“Hey, is it just these?” the girl said taking the massive jam packed basket she’d described as ‘just’. Lucy nodded and the girl blew, and then popped a massive pink bubble of gum.
“How you going to pay for all this crap?” I asked her.
“Oh, I’ll manage... I’ve got student discount, divorced parents and I work, so long as it isn’t over £200 I’m fine, this will last me, besides some of it’s bound to fit you, so I can flog it to you,”
“Is that so?” I laughed. Lucy pulled her sun glasses from her eyes and said ‘Oh you know it,”. I watched each item be scanned after scan and as the price soared I ended up helping Lucy decide out of the items what NOT to buy. It looked like she’d just thrown everything she’d tried on in the basket, even the stuff that didn’t fit. As we sorted through the basket Lucy said “So what you going to do about all this mess with Toby then?”
“Toby,” the cashier’s hand; enclosed around the scanner thingy major, hovered over a blouse and her eyes sparkled like diamonds. “Toby Banks?”
“Yeah, do you know Trisha?” Lucy asked playfully but giving me a weird look out of the corner of her eye.
“No, I’m a friend of his girlfriends,” She said in followed by a ‘duh’ implied sigh.
“What girlfriend? He only just broke up with Trisha like four days ago!”
“Yeah, but he’d been hooking up with my friend Natalie... you know the rumour that went round saying he ditched her for someone else,?” she grinned. “My best friend was the girl,”
“It wasn’t me,” My voice cracked with the realisation of the twat Toby really had turned out to be, and my insides lurched at the self hatred I felt for the harshness I inflicted upon Josh.
“Sorry what?” the clerk chimed her eyes gleaming and her hair growing even bigger in order to hold new gossip.
“Come on Anya, lets go somewhere else,”
“Where?”
“Any place else,” She muttered and tugged on my arm in attempt to steer me away.
“Lucy don’t be ridiculous, just pay for the stuff that’s already been