A Is for Apple by Kate Johnson Page B

us!”
    “Well…” I began, and ran out of things to say. “Evie, I love your shoes.”
    “Nice try.”
    I scrunched up my nose. “I didn’t—well, I mean…I—Luke, help me out here!”
    “It’s okay,” he said. “She hasn’t let me meet her parents yet either.”
    “How long has this been going on?” Evie demanded.
    “Your parents are over there,” Ella said.
    “Well, a couple of—of weeks,” I fabricated. “Not really long at all.” I stamped on Luke’s foot again.
    “But how did you meet?” Evie asked.
    “They’re coming right over,” Ella said.
    “I—well, at work,” I said.
    “I just started at Ace,” Luke said. “Sophie’s been showing me the ropes.”
    “Bet that’s not all she’s been—” Ella muttered under her breath, then her face brightened. “Hi! Sophie, your parents…”
    I spun around and froze, grinning like a corpse.
    “Hi, Mum, Dad.”
    For a few seconds we all looked at each other, and then Ella tugged a disgruntled Evie away to the bar.
    “Sophie,” my mum hugged me and left a lipstick mark on my cheek, “you look so—” she looked me over. “Did it rain?”
    Luke laughed softly.
    “I took your advice and wore sun cream,” I said, “and look where it got me.”
    “Better white than skin cancer,” my dad said.
    Hmm.
    They were both looking at Luke, and Luke was looking at me.
    I took a deep breath.
    “Mum, Dad, this is Luke,” I said, then squeezed my eyes shut and added in a tiny voice, “my boyfriend.”
    There was a pause, then I opened my eyes a tiny crack to see Luke shaking hands with my dad, who said, “I think we met before. Didn’t you come calling for Sophie once?”
    Luke nodded. “We weren’t really together then.”
    “I should hope not,” my mum said. “I’d be a bit pissed off with Sophie if she hadn’t told us back then.”
    I winced. My parents can be kind of full throttle sometimes. You have to get used to them. Like caviar.
    Only I still can’t eat caviar.
    “Well, we haven’t really told anyone,” Luke said, putting his arm around me. “It’s still kind of new.”
    God bless him.
    “So do you work with Sophie?” Mum asked, and we spent the next ten minutes happily lying to my parents and draining our drinks—at least, I did—until Tom bounced up and said hello to Luke.
    “Oh, yeah,” I said into the silence, “and Tom knows.”
    “I don’t know anything,” Tom said cheerfully.
    “I like your hair,” my mum told him. It was flattened in the centre and then twisted into spikes around his hairline, like the Statue of Liberty (damn, I hadn’t seen that while I was there).
    “You look like the Millennium Dome,” I said, and Tom rolled his eyes.
    “Oh, great. Your girlfriend’s so charming,” he said to Luke, who grinned and squeezed my shoulders. “I never had a big sister to tell me stuff like that. I’m so glad I’ve got you, Soph.”
    “You’re the little brother I never wanted.”
    “Cheers.” He took a swig of my nearly empty drink, then pointed to the cellar steps. “We’re on in a couple of minutes, if you’re coming down.”
    “Maybe, maybe not.” I looked at my parents. “You go down, I want to get another drink.”
    “There’s a bar downstairs,” my mother said, but I shook my head.
    “This’ll be less crowded. Go on, get to the front, I know you can’t see over people’s heads,” I teased, and she rolled her eyes but went off into the cellar bar with my dad.
    I turned to Luke and blew out a sigh of relief.
    “Never, ever make me do that again.”
    “Why? I thought that went okay.”
    “Yes, but we didn’t say one true word to them. I’ll have forgotten it all by tomorrow.”
    “Remind me why you work for SO17?”
    “Because you wanted to shag me,” I said, moving closer and looking up at him.
    “Oh, yeah. Well, it worked. Sophie?”
    “Mmm?” I could feel the heat of his body through his T-shirt.
    “Fuck me senseless when we get home.”
    If we made it that