t w e n t y - f i v e

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this is the second of today's double update so please make sure you didn't miss chapter 24!

The sky is still a rich shade blue, not a cloud in sight, though there seems to be a little more depth to it as the time creeps closer to night. We're all full after a picnic-style supper over a campfire, which is still crackling now. The nine of us are spread out around the flames, not so close that the heat adds to the waning rays of the sun, staring at the sky as Sam points out a bald eagle that soars overhead with a caw.

He's an expert on the nature of Bishop, California, where we're sleeping tonight. We're a few hours from Death Valley, a few hours from the stifling heat of the lowest point in the USA, and there's at least a hint of a breeze here. I'm perfectly content lying here, Arjun on one side and Young-mi on the other, as Sam plays his guitar and points out flycatchers and nuthatches and jays.

I can smell the hot wood and the flickering flames, and the hoppy scent of beer; I can hear the pop of the fire and the twitter of birdsong and Arjun's contented humming when he recognises the song Sam's playing. It's still hot, not so bad that I feel the need to get back in the shower or seek out a river, but hot enough that I don't want to do much else other than lie out in the heat.

My shirt's still off. I had to fight the urge to cover myself when everyone congregated to eat and hang out, and it feels good. No-one seems to care. Arjun's eyes momentarily lingered on my scarred side but he didn't say anything and neither did I, and now he's shirtless beside me.

I can cope a little better now, since my shower. I think I was in desperate need of that release: it's been a while since I last had sex, and I think my body was rebelling. It's weird to think that for fifteen years of my life, it never bothered me, but as soon as I lost my virginity, it became a big deal. Lily and I slept together at least once a week for almost a year; same with George and me.

Now it's been well over a month. Six weeks, I reckon. I know it's not that long, but I'm a boy of habit, and one thing this trip doesn't allow much of is alone time. That shower was long overdue, and for now, it has taken the edge off my painful longing for Arjun.

I still want him. I still desperately ache to hold him and touch him and kiss him and more, but I can keep my feelings in check. I need to, for my own sanity; for the safety of my heart.

"Want one?" he asks, sitting up on his elbows with a beer in his hand. Sam has a whole cooler full of cans and everyone is sipping ice-cold beer except me. I should probably say no, considering it was lunchtime before I got over last night's drinking, but I reason that that was vodka. I'm not used to vodka; I am very used to beer.

"Sure," I say, taking the condensation-dripping can. It cracks open with a satisfying hiss and the first chilled sip is heavenly.

"Let's play a game," Young-mi says. Sam stops playing the guitar.

"What kind of game?"

"I don't know. I don't know games. But it will be fun; we are all here," she says. Shading her eyes, she looks at me and asks, "You know any games?"

"Not really. Except, like, Monopoly. But that's not much of a quick, fun, nine-person game."

A quiet laugh goes around the group.

"Never Have I Ever," Carrie says after a moment.

That's a dangerous game. Not that I've done much, nor have I done anything I'm ashamed of – at least, that's what I think now. That will all change if someone says that they've never masturbated to the thought of someone else on this trip, because I have definitely done that, and it wouldn't take a genius to figure out who was the object of my thoughts.

"What is it?" Young-mi asks.

Carrie explains the rules and Young-mi grins like a kid. Adedayo rolls his eyes and lets out a dry laugh; Brannan awkwardly chuckles and says he has never done anything. Klara gets a wicked glint in her eyes and Kristin tuts at her. Sam just laughs and rubs his hands together.

"So, basically," Klara says, "you drink if you have done something, but you don't have to if you don't want to admit something. But if it is your turn to say something you've never done, you have to tell the truth. Everyone agree?"

Everyone nods. I suddenly feel a little nervous. I should be drunker for this kind of game, but I guess that's kind of the point. All it is, really, is a way to find out the darkest – well, most sexual, let's be honest – secrets of the people around you. I don't have dark sexual secrets.

"Ok, I'll start," Carrie says, holding up her beer. "Never have I ever kissed a girl."

Everyone except Kristin and Young-mi drinks. Young-mi rolls her eyes and says, "I wish I kissed a girl."

"Your time will come," Klara says, pointing her beer at Young-mi. "And my time is now. Umm ... never have I ever slept with a guy."

Carrie, Kristin, Sam and I are the only ones to drink. I try not to let surprise register on my face when Sam swigs from his beer, but he grins anyway and says, "I'll warn you now, there's not a lot I haven't done. Y'all are about to learn some home truths about Uncle Sam, so I hope none of y'all are prudes."

I laugh and grin and he leans across our awkward circle to tap his can against mine. It's Kristin's turn and she looks like she's struggling to come up with something to say, and I wonder if she's done a lot or a little.

"Ok, hmm, never have I ever slept with my best friend," she says, giving her sister a pointed look. Klara guffaws and sips her drink, and I do too. We're the only ones to drink. I think maybe I will end up getting drunk tonight if this is how the rest of the evening's going to go. Maybe that's a good thing. Hair of the dog and all that.

Sam purses his lips and clucks his tongue. "Never have I ever ... gone to work, or school, hungover."

Everybody, except him, drinks. Everybody laughs. I've only done it once, but once is enough for this game. George and I had stayed up late on his birthday, drinking and having fun and not thinking about the fact that it was a Sunday night and we had to be at school at nine a.m. the next morning. I fared better than him, at least – he threw up in the school loos at lunch and convinced the nurse he had food poisoning, so she sent him home.

"My turn?" Young-mi asks. "I haven't done anything!" She giggles and drinks as she thinks. "Um, I have never ever ... had sex in public."

Fuck. I have to drink again and my cheeks colour and Arjun looks at me with one eyebrow raised, a grin in his eyes. Sam and Klara drink too, but all eyes are on me.

Klara beams and cries out, "I think March is the black horse of this contest! You're a little bit dirty, aren't you?"

"No! Not really," I say. "It's not like I had sex in a bar or anything."

"Go on, spill the beans," Arjun says, nudging me in that sensitive spot between my hips and ribs. "Where'd you do it?"

"On a beach," I say. "In my defence, we had a pop-up tent and it was a horrible day, so we were the only ones there. I think, anyway."

"Dirty bastard," Arjun says as he laughs. "I think I had you pegged wrong. And now it's your turn. What haven't you done?"

"Never have I ever sent nudes," I say, my go-to answer for this game.

Sam, Klara and Adedayo drink instantly; Carrie drinks a moment later as though she forgot, and Kristin follows suit with a blush. I imagine this is a risky and embarrassing game to play with your twin, but Klara is pretty open about everything she's done.

It's Arjun's turn. He's only had one drink so far, for being hungover at school. I crave his answers, as though each one is an extra insight into him, an extra detail for me to crave.

"Never have I ever had an STI," he says. For once, I don't drink. Sam and Klara do, though, and Kristin gasps. I'm guessing she didn't know that nugget of information about her sister.

"Just a little chlamydia," Klara says.

"Hey, snap!" Sam cries. They laugh and clink their beers as though they're talking about discovering a mutual friend, rather than a mutual sexually transmitted infection.

By the time Adedayo and Brannan have gone, and Carrie and Klara have had a second go, I've had two more drinks, five down already. Arjun's still only on two, and I can't help but wonder what he has done. After each go, I wait for him to drink, and he keeps not drinking.

Most of us drink when Kristin says she has never bought a sex toy, except for Brannan and Arjun. When Sam says he has never cheated on someone he's seeing, no-one drinks, until Adedayo says, "Wait, does it count if it was an accident?"

Carrie pulls a face. "Can you even accidentally cheat?"

"Well, I broke up with her – at least, I thought I had – but I don't think she got the message, because then she went crazy on me for cheating on her a week later. As far as I'm aware, I wasn't cheating, but I was accused of it," he says. Carrie's disgust melts and she laughs, and she tells him to drink anyway.

Young-mi may not have done much but she keeps drinking between goes so she's on her second beer, a slightly looser smile on her lips when she says, "I have never ever had sex-related injury."

A series of groans go around the circle and six of the nine drink. Me included. I feel Arjun's eyes on me – he doesn't drink – but I'm not about to tell the whole group any of my embarrassing stories.

It's my turn again, and I drink as I think. My first can is nearly done; Sam throws me a second without question. I pull my legs up and rest my elbows on my knees and say, "Never have I ever had a threesome."

Klara and Sam drink. I think they must be tied for how much they've done and how much they've drunk, and each time they're the only ones to have done something, they clink beers and laugh a little harder.

Arjun comes after me, tapping his nails on his can when he tells us that he has never ever walked in on someone having sex. I don't drink to that – I'm careful at home, staying far away from my parents' bedroom or closed doors at parties.

The sky is getting darker and darker as the sun sets, and it makes the game a little easier when we're not staring at each other in full light. A hazy shade of twilight takes over the blue, the campfire our only source of light. The campsite is quiet, only a few other tents set up across an acre or so of land, far enough from us that I'm not too worried a bunch of strangers are hearing all of our darkest secrets.

It's not so dark that I don't catch the cheeky glint in Adedayo's dark eyes when he says, slowly, "Never have I ever ... masturbated on this trip."

Fuck. I mean, we have been away for a full week. It's not unreasonable to have felt the need. But it's not something I want to admit to. But I enjoy the integrity of the game, so I drink, and I'm not alone. In fact, Adedayo and Brannan are the only ones who don't drink.

Next to me, Arjun takes a sip, and my head fills with a hundred throbbing images, and I wish I had a cushion to pull over my lap. It's going to be obvious and awkward if I grab my t-shirt now but I know those stirrings so I bunch it in my lap to hide my semi, and I hope no-one's paying too much attention to me.

Brannan is next. He's only had a couple of drinks so far, and that makes more sense when he says, "Never have I ever had sex."

I drink. So do Sam, Klara, Kristin, Adedayo, and Carrie.

Young-mi doesn't. Neither does Arjun.

My skin flushes hot and cold, a strange sensation coursing through me when I realise that he has never had sex. My stupid tipsy eyes are staring at him and he stares right back, tilting his head at me as if to challenge me. Fucking hell, he can probably read my thoughts; he can probably hear the clattering of my heart beating out of my chest at the thought that though he had a girlfriend for over a year, he never slept with her.

My head shouldn't be in this much of a spin but it is and it takes an age for me to blink and shake off my surprise. His eyes are slightly narrowed behind his glasses, his gaze fixed on me as though he's trying to figure me out.

"Are you judging me?" he asks.

"No! No, god, no. Sorry, I was just surprised," I say, my rambling words tripping over each other. "You said you were with your girlfriend for so long."

He shrugs one shoulder. "Yeah. Well, it never happened," he says. He swigs his drink, finishing off his can, and he catches the replacement that Sam throws to him.

Shit, I think I've annoyed him. Obviously, it's no big deal that he's a virgin. I just wasn't expecting it, and for some reason it's given me a strange sliver of hope. Hope that has no place in my heart, but hope that I can't banish. It lodges itself there like a shard of glass, one that I can't pull out without shredding my skin.

We move on, laughing and stumbling our way through more rounds and confessions, but there's a new electricity beneath my skin, a new sense of longing. This doesn't help my crush, nor does it help how Arjun's eyes always go to me when it's time to drink, how he prods me for information each time I do. My chest is on fire, flames licking my heart to replace the fading campfire. Maybe it's just the three beers I've drunk. Yeah. I'm gonna blame the beers.

They've definitely had an effect, evidenced by the way I lose my balance when I stand to pee, and I fall across Arjun's lap. He grunts when my elbow crashes into his stomach, and he quietly laughs when he helps me to my feet, his arms strong around me.

"I think it might be bedtime," he says, making sure I'm steady.

"I'm not wasted, I just can't balance," I say, "and I really have to pee."

"Reckon you can make it to the loos?"

I can just about make out the building, a hundred metres or so away from where we've set up camp. "Yes," I say. Arjun gives me a look.

"I need the loo anyway," he says, "might as well make sure you get there in one piece."

We head off. He catches my wrist each time I veer off or lose my footing and when we're far enough from our group that we can't hear their voices anymore, I say, "Are you mad at me?"

Arjun stops. "Why on earth would I be mad at you?"

"You thought I was judging you for being a virgin," I say. My filter doesn't work nearly as well when I've had a drink or three; there's no skirting around. "I wasn't, I promise."

Arjun laughs and shakes his head at me. "I wasn't mad at you," he says. "I was teasing you, because you were looking at me so gormlessly, like you'd never heard something so wild in your life as a nineteen-year-old virgin."

"I'm sorry. I was just surprised. I figured you and Taylor, you know, you were together so long..."

"Nope. I mean, yeah, we were together for ages, but she's the only person I've ever been with and we never slept together." He pulls my elbow to steer me away from a tree stump that I don't even see until it's almost too late.

He said person. Not girl. Person.

"Did you want to?" I ask.

He gives me a half-hearted shrug. "Yeah, I guess. I mean, I wanted to but she didn't at first, so we didn't. After a while, we stopped talking about it and then eventually, we were only staying together to avoid an awkward scene. It wasn't on the cards for us."

When we make it to the loos, I head straight for a stall when he goes to the urinal and when we head out, Arjun says, "Can I ask a question now?"

"Ok..."

"What was your sex-related injury?"

A laugh bursts out of me. "No."

"Did you break your dick?"

"No, thank fuck," I say.

"Fall off the bed?"

"I'm not telling."

He's laughing now, eyes crinkling and sparkling. My beers have gone to my head, probably aided by the remnants of last night, and I can't walk in a straight line. I manage to sidestep a tree before it breaks my nose and I just about catch myself when I trip over a stray tent peg.

"You're such a liability," Arjun says as he kicks away the tent peg and hooks his arm through mine to keep me on track. I'm well aware that neither of us are wearing more than shorts, that our bare arms are linked, our bare sides inches apart. I can feel his body heat radiating off him and I just want to hug him, to feel his naked chest against mine.

We're still a way away from the group. Arjun slows his pace. He walks faster than me and it's a struggle to stay upright until he matches my gait.

"Was it dyspraxia related?" he asks.

"What?"

"Your sex injury."

"Arjun. I told you, I'm not telling. It's awkward."

"Come on," he says with a laugh. "If I guess, will you confirm? Did it involve a broken bone?"

"One did, actually," I say. It's not the one I was thinking of.

"Well, now you have to tell me."

That one isn't as embarrassing, and maybe it'll sate his urge for my awkward stories. "Lily and I skipped our Wednesday Games lesson to go back to hers and things got a bit earnest, and somehow she headbutted me. Broke my nose." I touch the slight bump in the bridge of my nose.

"Oh, shit." Arjun guffaws. He touches my nose and I try not to shiver at the feel of the soft pad of his fingertip. "How'd you explain that?"

"I had to tell my parents the truth. Dad works at my school so I couldn't lie and say it happened in Games, because he could see that I'd signed out after lunch. He thought it was hilarious and said it was karma."

"I like the sound of your dad."

"He's pretty awesome," I say, "but that didn't make it any less horribly awkward to have to tell him that my girlfriend broke my nose during sex. When I pulled a muscle a few weeks later, I kept it to myself."

"That's amazing," Arjun mutters. "Horribly, awkwardly amazing. God, that must have been so awkward."

"Just a bit. God knows why I didn't just lie and say I walked into a door or something." I can't help but shake my head at myself. Dumb, honest fifteen-year-old me with my dented pride and my broken nose. "I think he would've put two and two together though, if he'd seen the bruise on Lily's forehead."

"Fuck." He stops in the middle of the path, and I realise he's wheezing with laughter. "Oh my God, March."

"She told her dad she was hit by a netball – if he'd found out we skipped school to have sex in his house, I would not be here right now."

"And yet," Arjun says, once he straightens up and wipes his eyes, "that's not the sex injury you were referring to in the game."

Screw this guy and his good memory.

"What happened?"

I say nothing. He pokes me in the side and I yelp but I can't leap away from him, our arms still linked.

"You don't want to know."

"I really do," he says.

"You don't. It involves a, um, wandering condom, and a boyfriend with sharp fingernails."

His gasp is loud enough to alert our group that we're on our way back and they all look up and I bet my face is red enough to act as a beacon.

"Oh my god. What happened?"

"Surely that's enough information?" I say with a groan, covering my burning cheeks with one hand. "You can put two and two together: everything was going well until his condom came off in me and he definitely didn't think to clip his nails before he went searching for it."

"Fucking hell."

"Yeah. Felt like fucking hell. A tip: if you're gonna stick your finger in someone's arsehole, don't have talons for fingernails."

He's wheezing again, almost bent double laughing. "Oh, god, I'm so sorry. I know it's not funny but ... oh, god, it's fucking hilarious. I'll keep that in mind." He holds up his hand, showing off his smooth, elegant nails. "I don't think these could do much damage."

I can't help it. I take his hand; I run my fingertip over his nails and relish in the feel of his palm. "No, I think they'd be ok," I say, trying to keep myself from exploding at the contact, the conversation, everything about this situation.

I want to just do it, to throw my arms around his neck and kiss him, to pull him down to my level and press my lips to his. But we've been drinking, and everyone's watching us. Maybe if we were sober and alone, I'd do it. Maybe next time, I will. I just have to know. I need to know. Next time we're alone and he's so tactile, I'll do it. Maybe next time. But not now.

For now, we return to the dying fire and we slip back into the conversation, and I act like I'm not mad about this boy. 

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it may seem as though this story has been going on forever but this is the halfway point! i have fifty chapters planned out since i realised there was no way i could wrap up the trip and its aftermath in forty. i hope that's alright with you guys!