‘You could put your hands like this,’ he says. He gently takes my hands in his hands, lifts them up, and puts them around his neck. It feels a bit like we’re actors in a play, following directions—at least, that’s what I tell myself, until our eyes meet, and then everything inside me is aflame.

‘Is it working?’ I say, willing myself back into a cold and clinical state. I need to become a statue—unmoving, emotionless, safe. ‘Are they looking at us?’

Jesse glances to his left, and then back at me.

‘They’re looking,’ he says.

‘Okay. What next?’ I am trying to sound casual. Bored, even. To show him this is nothing to me. Standing here, with my hands around his neck, inches from his face, his arms around my waist, my breathing rapid, this is nothing. It has to be nothing.

‘We could…’ He pauses. ‘I could…’ He trails off again. His composure has slipped, and he’s lost his nerve. He seems almost shy.

‘You could?’ I prompt him. My heart is racing.

He clears his throat. ‘I could kiss you,’ he says quietly, looking at me intently, waiting for my reaction.

I wonder if he is thinking of what I am thinking of—when he kissed me at Gretel’s party, and what happened after. He must be. It’s unavoidable. My mind touches on the memory and skitters away, the jab of pain it brings still there, bright and sharp as ever. But I don’t want to think of it, not right now. I don’t have the capacity to think of it. I can’t hold that alongside everything else going on in my mind and body. I just want to be in this moment, for once.

‘You could kiss me,’ I say back to him, nodding. My tone is light, but my voice hitches a little.

‘Just to help Tristan and Kendra,’ he says. ‘So there’s no confusion. Or doubts. Kendra probably needs that certainty.’

He runs his fingertips up and down my back, very gently, almost absentmindedly, and I have to close my eyes for a second, to catch my breath. I’m only wearing a thin top, and my skin is alive to every part of his touch.

‘She does, she does need that certainty I think,’ I say, desperately trying to make my voice sound normal, natural, unaffected by his hands on me, unaffected by what he is proposing. ‘And Tristan needs the closure of seeing me kiss someone else,’ I add.

‘He definitely does,’ Jesse says, nodding.

I nod back. ‘Good. We’re agreed. On kissing.’

‘Yes,’ he says.