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I lounged in the relaxing waters of the hot tub for a while and then left to go to my room before I ended up boiling myself alive. On my way up, I met Demetri going down. I still needed to talk to him, so I reached out my hand to stop him.

“We need to talk.”

“Okay,” he agreed and followed me up the stairs.

“I know what you did this morning. I don’t care what kind of excuse you gave to Callie, but I’m not buying it.”

“Are you talking about the kiss?”

“We. Did. Not. Kiss,” I said, emphasizing every word with a clap. “And if you ever try to cheat on Callie again, you’ll regret it,” I warned.

“Ooh, I’m so scared,” he laughed.

I had never felt so tempted to just slap someone right across the face. I was seething. Who did this guy think he was?

“You should be scared,” someone growled, smashing Demetri against the wall. A gasp of surprise escaped me at how fast that had happened.

Kevin was holding Demetri by his collar against the wall. His teeth were bared and he was obviously furious. Demetri just chuckled. This infuriated Kevin even more and he raised his fist to punch him.

“Hey, break it up,” Trey said quickly as he calmly stepped into the corridor where we were.

He got in between Kevin and Demetri, and tried to loosen Kevin’s hold on him. Kevin and Demetri were staring at each other. Kevin looked livid while Demetri just looked unbothered.

“Oh my god! Kevin what the hell are you doing?” Callie asked, running up the stairs. “Let go of him!”

Kevin didn’t budge and Demetri just sighed. “If you want to fight, then let’s go,” he said.

“Kevin, don’t fight with him,” Melissa said, trying to mediate the situation.

I was still standing in my spot, too shocked to move.

“But he…” Kevin started and then loosened his grip on Demetri.

“Demetri said he didn’t do anything to upset anyone on purpose!” Callie yelled at him. “He apologized, so can you just drop it, please?”

“I’ll apologize again, then, to your face, Elizabeth. I’m sorry for what happened this morning,” he said, suddenly feigning remorse.

I glared at him. I knew he wasn’t sorry. I looked over at Callie; her eyes were clouded with worry. I didn’t want to make her feel sad, so I decided to just suck it up and accept the ‘apology’.

“It’s fine. Just don’t do things like that so casually. People might misunderstand.”

He played around with his ring.

“Group hug?” Callie asked tentatively.

No-one moved.

“Or not,” she sighed.

“It’s almost twelve,” Kevin said, still glaring at Demetri. “We should get going soon.”

We nodded and dispersed quietly to our rooms. We packed in silence until Callie couldn’t bear it any more.

“Girls, say something.”

“Something,” Melissa joked and Callie threw a pillow at her.

“Demetri can be difficult sometimes, but he can be really amazing too. When I’m around him I can forget about… him.”

My heart softened when Callie said that. She knew what it was like to be heartbroken and she deserved to be happy. I didn’t want to be the one to take that away from her. And if Demetri made her happy, then as rude as he was, I’d let him be.

I crawled across the bed and threw my arms around her in a hug. “It’s okay, Cals,” I smiled. “Maybe in the future we’ll get to know each other better.”

Her eyes lit up and she smiled. “I’d really like that.”

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The tension had cooled down by the time we piled into the car. Callie had swapped seats with Trey and was now sitting at the back with Demetri, who had returned to his usual anti-social self. Trey had his arms around Melissa and they were watching a movie on her tablet.

Ashton got into the car at the last possible moment. He was also back to his cool self. It was as if nothing had changed. Kevin said something to him too low for me to hear and Ashton nodded once.

“Goodbye beach,” Callie waved sadly as we drove off on the six hour long journey back home.

“We can always come back again,” Kevin reminded her with a smile.

After four hours, Melissa and Trey had dozed off. I finally finished my book. I glanced at Ashton through the mirror. His eyes were closed, but I couldn’t tell if he was sleeping or not. I still wanted to talk to him about last night and clear up the misunderstanding from this morning.

We finally got back to town and Melissa, Callie, Trey and Demetri got out. They had left their cars at the car park, so they would drive home.

“Bye,” they waved and thanked Kevin for the trip.

By this time, Ashton had come back to life and was using his phone. I gathered up the courage to talk to him first.

“Ashton can we-”

He closed his eyes.

I scoffed. Was he going to be this childish right now?

Fine, then. Two could play at that game.

I got my stuff together as Kevin arrived at my house. “Thanks, Kev! Get home safely.” I said, giving him a small hug.

“No problem, Liz. Say hi to your parents for me.”

“I will. Tell yours hi too.”

He grinned. “See you at school.”

I waved as he drove off then and clambered into my house. The moment I sat down on the bed, the exhaustion hit me. I was so tired. I decided to just lie down for a minute or two. I woke up when my mom came in to call me down for dinner. I ate lethargically and then went right back to bed.

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