Tonight the crowd is mostly old enough to know better, and yet here we are: a bunch of high school leavers too afraid to admit we’re not ready for adulthood and more terrified still to leave our safe little town for the big, bad world.

Before Elijah, I would have given anything to get out of this place. Afterwards, I’m thanking my lucky stars for the job security that comes with being the pie shop owner’s daughter, because it means I don’t have to face what all my school colleagues are going through; where they should study, where they should live, and that all-important period of self-discovery you go through after you’re given the weighty title of being an “adult”.

Thanks to my mother and father’s dreaming, my future is securely mapped out for me. I’ll work in the diner until I’m too old to remember the recipes, I’ll more than likely still be cleaning up after my kid brother until he’s forty, and then I’ll die alone with a thousand cats who won’t hesitate to eat me once the kitty chow runs out, and all without ever having left Sugartown.

I should be more upset about my future prospects being so bleak but I just can’t seem to give a crap these days.

Holly groans, “Would you at least try to look like you’re having fun, please?”

“But I’m not having fun, Hols. I’m watching a bunch of bogan dickheads chugging beer-bongs while avoiding watching you be mauled by your boyfriend. No offense, Coop.”

The boyfriend in question is Cooper Ryan, the hot bartender that Holly got lucky with at the Sugartown Hotel a few weeks back—and he’s recently become a permanent fixture in my best friend’s life which is fine by me because he’s sweet, he treats her right and he gives me Holly-free time enough to wallow in my misery. He swings his head out from the hollow of her neck and smiles at me. “None taken. I do maul. I should really cut back but I’m just a stupid, beer-chugging dickhead unable to resist her charms.”

“Well, they say awareness is the first step.” I smile back, but it’s as weak and horribly disingenuous as they always are lately.

“Aww, Cooooop.” Holly reaches up on tiptoes to kiss him. “Do you have any idea how much I want to tie you up and screw your brains out when you say things like that?”

“I have some idea,” he mutters into her ear.

I roll my eyes. “Would you two get a room, already? You’re making the other bogans nauseas.”

“Ha! Now you know what it was like when you and Eli-” Holly begins but her eyes double in size as she realises she almost named ‘he who shall not be named’. “Shit, Ana, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Hols. I’m going to go grab a drink. Why don’t you two go grab a room, or the backseat of Coop’s car, or any other semi secluded place to … um … get busy, and I’ll meet you back here in fifteen?” I tease, but I’m only half joking about the sex. At least if they get it out of their system now, we won’t be run off the road because Holly decides she’d rather jump on Coop’s gearstick than get us home in one piece.

“Ana?” Holly starts.

I shrug her off with a wave. “I’m fine Hols, just thirsty.”

“I love you my little slutsky!” she yells, just loud enough to draw the attention of everyone around us, in true Holly fashion.

I laugh and make my way over to the bonfire, which oddly enough is where the eskies with all the combustible liquor are. Because nothing says inconspicuous like an illegal twenty-foot bonfire that can be seen from space. Idiots.

I pull out a bottle of Stella Artois and think of Elijah. I wonder where he is and if he’s thinking of me, too. Earlier, I saw Nicole and her evil minions, so at least I know he’s not fucking her up against a wall somewhere. My heart thuds against my chest as I think back to that night. A part of me hates him so much for making me witness that because never in a million years would I wish the same fate upon him. I love him too much, which makes me think that, despite his declaration, he didn’t love me at all.

I flip the bottle cap off my beer and take a long hearty swig, which almost comes straight back up when I open my eyes and see Scott standing before me.

“Hey, Blondie. Rough night?”

“And it just got worse.”

“Ouch.” He raises his own beer in a toast and gives me that stupid half-smile that used to turn me to complete mush but now kind of makes me want to punch him in the face. “You really know how to wound a guy.”

“So I’ve heard.”

He reaches into the nearest esky and pulls out two more Stellas. “You wanna take a walk with me?”

“Why would I do that, Scott?”

He shrugs. “Payback for drinking all my beer?”

“Sorry, I didn’t know it was yours,” I mutter, as I avoid meeting his eyes. Though I despise him, his eyes are still kind of pretty to look at. In fact, all of him is pretty to look at. Not as pretty as Elijah, but pretty, none the less.

Annnnnd now I know I’ve had too much to drink.

I run a mental tally in my head—one vodka and cranberry at Holly’s house and one and a half beers since we arrived. It’s not much, but it’s enough for a lightweight like me. Still, I’m in a reckless, poisonous mood, so despite the buzz I have going, I feel like it’s not enough.

Weirdly, Scott must pick up on that because he says, “Come on, I have some hard stuff in the car and you look like you could use a stiff drink.”

“What kind of hard stuff?”

“Tequila.”

“To-kill-ya! Awesome! Lead the way.”

Scott smiles, stuffs two beers in the pocket of his hoody and walks me over to his giant, dual cab, fifty-thousand dollar Toyota HiLux—which is just what every idiotic nineteen-year-old needs to be driving, especially when there’s alcohol involved—and fishes out the bottle of tequila before handing it to me. I’m so relieved I could kiss him, but I’ll settle instead for not punching him in the face.

Scott leads us to a small ravine, far enough away so we can no longer hear the noise of the party. He slides down the small embankment and sits on a patch of soft grass. I follow suit, though my descent is a little more awkward and I end up stumbling a few steps before backing up and plonking myself down next to him. We’re looking at nothing but row upon row of cut cane fields and there’s no other light but the moon—and yes, I am here with the McDoucheNozzle that basically told the whole town I was a giant slut, but it’s peaceful and Scott always was good at distracting me from reality.

I twist the cap off the tequila and take a hearty sip. It burns like nothing else going down but once it’s finally settled the warmth spreads through my tummy and it feels sort of nice, so I take another.

“Easy, tiger.” He takes the bottle from me and swallows back some of the contents. It must go down the wrong way, because he coughs and splutters and beats at his chest like a gorilla. “Holy shit that hurt, I now know why you call it to-kill-ya.”

“Don’t tell me you’re a virgin, Scott?”

He turns to me with his brow raised and an incredulous look upon his face. “You do know I went out with Nicole for a whole six weeks, don’t you?”

“Not the kind of virgin I was talking about, but thanks for the painful reminder of the fact you ditched me for boob-a-skank,” I say, and snatch the bottle back.

“Yeah, well, I was an idiot.”

“No argument there.”

“So, what’s the deal with you and gigantor?”

“Who?” I feign innocence, or ignorance—I can’t remember which, because I’m drunk, remember?

“You know, prison-tattooed, scary-arse gigantic motherfucker?”

“Oh, that gigantor.” I shake my head and sigh. “No deal. We broke up, he fucked Nicole and broke my heart.”

Scott raises the bottle and says, “To fucked up exes!”

“To home-wrecking sluts!” I salute as I take a swig.

Scott takes back the bottle and waves it in the air. “To wankers who don’t know a good thing when they have it.”

I snatch it back and say, “And to arseholes who break your heart,” before shooting him a dirty look and taking a long pull from the neck of the bottle.

By now my head is swimming. I’m pretty sure my fifteen minutes is up and I know I should get back to the party so Holly doesn’t worry, but I don’t feel like making the trek. I don’t feel like doing much of anything, actually, so I lie back on the grass and stare up at the stars.

“I like your to-kill-ya, Scott.” I hope he doesn’t notice how much I just slurred that sentence, and then I wonder why I care whether he knows I’m blind drunk or not. This fucker broke my heart, too. Granted, not as badly as Elijah, but he still did it. My inebriated brain at least has the sense to tell me that I didn’t love Scott like I love Elijah, and that just pisses me off and hurts my heart all over again. So I tell my heart to shut up by pulling Scott down beside me and pressing my mouth to his with a brutal, messy kiss.

It doesn’t take him long to catch up. In fact, within seconds he’s pawing at me and pulling me on top of him. His hand skims up under my shirt and palms my boobs. For half a second I close my eyes and pretend it’s Elijah’s hand. There’s one very noticeable difference though: either Elijah possesses some innate, supernatural ability to instinctively know how to please women or he’s had an awful, awful lot of practise, because Scott’s hand pushing and prodding at my boobs feels more like a breast exam than anything Elijah ever did.

I go with it, though, because it feels better than thinking about how miserable I am, thinking about how much I miss him, and thinking about the fact that, although it’s been a month, the pain hasn’t lessened any and I don’t expect it will.

Scott’s mouth covers mine with a sloppy insistent kiss, and suddenly I want to gag. He’s rock hard, pushing his hips into mine with bruising force, holding my hips down against him with one hand and my head with his other. I yank away, gulping in air as I raise myself up to a sitting position, but Scott’s stronger and he pulls me back down on top of him and then effortlessly rolls us so that I’m pinned to the ground by his body. I’m starting to see what a horrible idea coming out here with him was. I’m also beginning to realise just how much I must hate myself at this moment in my life to have absolutely no regard for my own safety or self-preservation. In fact, if Dharma had of walked up to me wielding a cute smile and a bottle of spirits, I likely would have tagged along behind him, too.