Nick was right. That was all Maddie had been able to think since she had seen him a few days ago, the thought tumbling around her brain and rolling through her heart like a wave that ebbed and flowed but never left. Nick was right. Posy was right. Even her father was right. She liked Peter.

Scratch that. She loved him. He was a permanent shadow at the back of her mind, a torture on her emotions who could make her weep with laughter and heartache alike. Peter, from whom she always seemed to want more. Before she had known him, she had wanted to be his friend. Once they were friends, she had wanted to get even closer. Now that she had, it still wasn't enough. She wanted to be the only one he had eyes for. The person he loved as much as she loved him. Most of all, she wanted to know if that was what he wanted too.

There was no point delaying the inevitable. But it could wait until after breakfast.

Her attention returned to her beans on toast and she sliced it up with her knife and fork, the thick brown juice oozing between the segments of lukewarm bread. Every time she went to take a mouthful, something distracted her inside her own head and her hand ended up halfway to her mouth, never quite completing its journey.

For a few minutes now, the kitchen had been free of voices other than those on the Saturday morning radio, a comforting murmur of breakfast accompaniment from Radio 4. It was the only channel her father could stomach, though he was known to occasionally indulge in a little Radio 3. Right now, Saturday Live was coming to a close but after an hour of listening, Maddie wasn't sure she had heard a single word and judging by the intensity of her father's focus on his phone, she was sure the same could be said of him.

She sighed. Louder than she had meant to: she hadn't really meant to sigh at all but with so much going on in her brain, she needed to expel a little extra air. At the sound, her father put down his phone and pushed his glasses up, wrapping one hand around his glass of orange juice.

"Everything ok, ttal?" he asked, his head tilted to one side, balancing on the fine line between concern and curiosity. "You look very solemn."

"Just thinking," she said, piercing a few stray baked beans with her fork and chewing them for a few seconds too long until they lost their flavour and their texture made her tongue uncomfortable.

"You seem to have been doing a lot of that lately," he said, turning his phone over to stop its screen notifications from stealing his attention away from his daughter. "Is something going on?"

"Just got a lot to think about," she said. Not exactly true. Every thought led back to Peter.

"Anything I can help with?"

"Not really." She smiled up at her father, lifting her eyes from the newspaper at her elbow. "Thanks though."

Jung-min gave her the kind of sad smile that he wore when he recognised the limits of his power as a father. "Any time, ttal."

They fell into mutual silence for a few more minutes, addressing their stomachs and minds, before Maddie spoke again. Her food had still hardly been touched.

"What would you do if I told you I was pregnant?" she asked, and her father's head snapped up - that word was always guaranteed to get his attention, the single father to a daughter.

"Do we need to talk?" he asked, treading carefully with his words. Maddie tapped the paper, an article about a spike in teen pregnancy.

"Nope," she said. "Just wondering."

Jung-min leant back and scratched the nape of his neck. "I don't know," he said, answering the original question. "You're an adult and you're responsible. You're young, but you could probably raise a child." He mulled it over for a second. "I would support whatever you decided, I suppose, but I really would rather you live a little more before you become a mother."

Maddie nodded slowly. She was stalling and she knew it, making benign conversation when she was supposed to be arranging to meet Peter.

"Are you sure nothing's going on, Maddie? I like to think you could tell me if there is."

"Why would something be going on?" The question alone, along with the tone in which she asked it, was a red flag. Jung-min glanced around the table before his gaze returned to Maddie.

"Well, you seem down and you've hardly touched your breakfast, and now you're talking about being pregnant. I have reason to be a little concerned, ttal." He clasped his hands together on the table and his eyebrows knitted together. Temperamental wasn't a word he used to describe his daughter, not something he had to deal with often, and he wasn't well schooled in dealing with the crises that young adulthood threw at Maddie.

"I'm fine," she said, though her body language and the way she sighed were less than convincing. He sighed too. He always struggled to tell when he should pursue a niggle and when he should let go.

He let it go. Replacing his frown with a smile, he asked, "Any plans for today?"

Maddie shrugged. "I'm seeing Peter," she said, though she had yet to ask if he was around.

"Oh?" Her father's lips twitched.

"What?"

"You've been seeing Peter a lot recently," he said, a grin in his voice.

"Yup." She pushed away her cold food.

"Are you seeing him?" There was a glint in his eye as he asked and rather than blow him off, Maddie just shrugged.

"I don't know."

"Ah," Jung-min said with a knowing infection to his voice. That one small admission explained a lot, and he knew better than to push it further. "Well, I'm heading into town later; I could give you a lift if you want?"

"That'd be nice, thanks," she said, a genuine smile glowing between her cheeks for the first time that morning. If there really was a wrong side of the bed, she had certainly found it when she had risen a couple of hours ago, stumbling out of sleep with a frown already etched into her features. She took out her phone and finally sent Peter a message.

Maddie stared at the solitary letter. She hated that letter more than any other in the alphabet. It stared back, sullen and noncommittal, and an angry swarm of butterflies stormed her stomach. The sooner this was over, the better.

*

At five past eleven, Maddie and her father parted ways in the car park with the promise of communication throughout the morning. She walked towards her fate under a sky that was insignificant in every way: pale, listless clouds floated above the town with neither the threat of rain nor the treat of sun.

By ten past, Maddie could see the façade of Twenty-One and, sitting at one of the rickety patio tables was Peter. His head was down, wrists resting on his knees as he stared at his phone, and he didn't lift his head until Maddie was a foot away.

He jumped when he saw her by his side, and gained his composure with a cough and a straightened back. "Hey," he said, tucking his phone into his pocket. Maddie's eyebrows pulled together as she sat down opposite him.

"You look nervous," she said in lieu of a proper greeting. "Something freaking you out?"

As though she wasn't guilty of the same.

"I always get nervous when someone says they want to talk," he said, letting out the smallest of dry laughs. "Especially someone I'm sleeping with."

Maddie winced. Those words twisted a knife in her gut, spoken far too nonchalantly to be a joke. But she bypassed the comment.

"Well, you can relax," she said, laying her bag at her feet. "I'm not pregnant or anything."

"Glad to hear that," Peter said, and he made an effort to look more comfortable in his seat. "So what's up?"

For days now, Maddie had been practising what to say, going over and over the conversation in her head and tormenting herself with all of Peter's hypothetical answers. Now, with him sitting before her in the flesh, she couldn't remember what she had decided to say.

"Mads? You ok?"

She nodded and cleared her throat. "I just, I want to understand where we stand," she said at last, stumbling over the words like inelegant hurdles. Peter's face scrunched up.

"What d'you mean?" he asked. "You're gonna have to clarify, Mads."

"I don't know what we are."

Plain and simple. The truth. As much as she had tried to sidestepped it and rationalise with herself, that was the long and short of it.

"I don't get it." Peter frowned at Maddie's hands. She was sure he wasn't that stupid. He, like her, was stalling.

"Are we dating? Are we just, I don't know, friends with benefits? What are we?" Clumsy words formed clumpy questions that fell out of her mouth with a thunk and Peter took in a deep breath.

"I don't know," he said, shrugging one shoulder. "Do we really need to put a label on it?"

For a moment, Maddie just looked at him before she gathered the energy to pursue the answers she wanted. "Well, yeah," she said, frowning a little and holding Peter's gaze for as long as she could. "Labels clarify things. They help me sort of my feelings."

"How?"

If he was playing dumb, forcing Maddie to show her hand, then it was working. With an exasperated sigh, she clasped her hand and continued.

"I need to know what we are, ok? Because if our label is fuck buddies then I'm going to need to deal with how much I like you and how you're always on my fucking mind whereas if we're dating then I can tell you that I love you, and it doesn't matter so much if sometimes all I can think about is the way you taste."

Peter looked a little dumbstruck, a wordless expression plastered across his face, and for the briefest of moments Maddie just wanted to reach out and slap him, if only to check that he was paying any attention at all.

"I don't know what we are," he said at last, feet fidgeting beneath the table, and the urge to slap him grew stronger. "I mean, whatever it is we're doing, it's good. Right? So why stop?"

Maddie clenched her jaw and calculated herself for a moment before letting the right words out. "I'm not saying stop," she said, her words a little quieter, "I'm just saying that whatever we are, we need to work on it because I'm not comfortable just having sex. Ok?"

"You're one of my best friends, Mads," Peter said, a hopeless look on his face, and the pain in her chest increased like a vice around her heart.

"Best friends don't just fuck and not talk about it, Peter. It's not normal. It stresses me out. I don't know what the fuck you're thinking ever." Blinking back tears that she cursed, she said, "I don't like not talking. Or, I guess, I like talking things through, and you and me, we're not talking about what matters."

"It doesn't matter," Peter said, still so casual with the way he spoke that Maddie wondered if she had just imagined the past few weeks. Maybe it was all in her head.

"Are you seeing someone else?" she asked.

"No."

"Do you want to?"

"No."

This wasn't a conversation to be having in public. Maddie realised that, but it was too late now. She couldn't just pause and resume later: she needed answers, even if getting them from Peter was harder than squeezing blood from a stone. "Did you mean it when you said you loved me?"

Peter's frown was instant. "When did I say that?"

The lump in Maddie's throat tripled in size and it took everything she had not to walk away right then, to swallow her tears. He didn't even remember something that she had been fixating on for weeks.

"At the party," she said, and he winced.

"Look, we were drunk. We were having sex," he said, as though that was enough to get him off the hook. "Calm down, Maddie. It's no big deal. You're making this a whole big thing."

"It is a whole big fucking thing, Peter."

He sighed again, long and slow. "It's just ... complicated."

"What?" The word came out more like a yell, garnering the unwanted attention of a few other outdoor patrons, and Maddie returned to a harsh whisper that was just as much of a red flag. "What is so fucking complicated?"

He didn't have an answer for that. For a couple of seconds he shifted in his seat and Maddie gritted her teeth to stop herself from crying. She half turned her head away from him, blinking more than she could get away with not being suspicious. Peter groaned.

"Just give it a rest, ok? We don't need to slap a label on our relationship. Not everything needs a label."

She slapped her hands down on the table and it shuddered on its three wonky legs, the salt shaker toppling over. "For God's sake, Peter, can you stop freaking out about labels? It would help us figure all this stuff out if we knew what we were."

He stiffened in his seat, his jaw set. "You're saying you're not comfortable, well, right now neither am I." he waved his hands around. "This, whatever this is ... look, I don't know, ok? And you clearly don't either so why are you making out like it's only my problem?"

Maddie was floored. She didn't have anything to say in response to that, no more words coming to mind. But it didn't matter, because Peter stood, his metal chair making an awful sound as it scraped back on the pavement.

"I don't have to deal with this," he muttered, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

"Peter."

"What?" He almost spat the word, still just inches from the table.

With every ounce of courage she had left, her supply almost empty now, she asked the one question she had kept at the back of her mind. "Were you still a virgin?"

His eyes darkened and he began to leave, though he wasn't quite gone before he said, "No."

That was the last nail in the coffin. Her jaw hanging slightly open, Maddie couldn't hold back her tears any longer and she stood, covering her nose and mouth with her hand to quieten the sobs that threatened to give her away in public.

Running to the car took two minutes. Realising she didn't have the spare key took another thirty seconds, and a further twenty to dig her phone out of her pocket and call her father.

"Hello?" He always answered as though the caller could be anyone, even though Maddie's face would have popped up on his screen.

The words wouldn't come out. When she wanted to ask where he was, of he could bring her the key, all she did was let out a sob.

"Maddie? Are you ok? Where are you? Has something happened?" The concern in his voice was palpable and as much as she wanted to assure him that he didn't need to worry, hearing just how much he cared in contrast with how little Peter seemed to, all she could do was let out a choked cry down the line.

"At the car," she said at last, her voice muffled as she tried not to let it show that she was sitting on the tarmac, tears streaming down her face, but a few strangers had thrown stolen glances her way already.

"Ok, just stay there, Maddie. I'm on my way."

*

Jung-min took four minutes and twenty-eight seconds to reach the car park and when he did, his fast walk morphed into a jog at the sorry sight that was his daughter. She picked herself up off the ground and when her father placed his hands on her shoulders, a fresh wave of tears rolled in. For a moment, he held her cheek against his shoulder before he pulled away and looked her in the eye.

"What happened?" he asked, a hundred more creases lining his face than usual. "Did something happen with Peter?"

When she nodded, her father gave a sympathetic sigh and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "I'm sorry, Mads."

As much as she wanted to say that it was fine, her usual response, she couldn't. Nothing about this situation was fine. If before she had been treading water in the deep end, then now the weeds were dragging her under as the waves pushed her down, and she didn't have the energy to fight anymore

"I'm too old to be crying over a boy," she murmured, and her father laughed a quiet laugh.

"I'm sorry, Mads, but you're never too old to cry when it comes to love. That's something you can only ever learn the hard way."

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For some reason when i try to add the picture version of the texts, it deletes the entire chapter so until i can figure that out, normal texts i'm afraid!