Eighteen Kisses Read Online Free PDF Page A

even watching the TV, I was just lying there, getting angrier and angrier by the second. I stared at the Nirvana flag on his ceiling, thinking about how annoying this was. I’m a fairly tolerant person and not very many things irritate me. However, there are four things that make me particularly angry:
    Mum barging into my room without knocking. She hasn’t ever caught me doing anything, but it’s the principle of it.
    Discrimination. Of any kind. It really bugs me.
    Bad Thin Lizzy covers. I once heard a terrible cover of ‘The Boys are Back in Town’ at a music festival and felt sickfor days. Just because it’s a good song doesn’t mean you have to cover it. Listen to it, appreciate it, don’t rip it to shreds.
    Nick’s sulky moods. I’m especially annoyed when he gets into one just before I have to do something important.
    We’d been having a silent fight for the past hour – after I’d told him I was going to Dublin for two weeks. It’s not as if I’d told him the full story though. I knew it was crazy. We’d been going out for almost eight months, yet something had stopped me from sharing everything that had happened to me over the last year – communicating with the spirit of Beth Cullen and now Kayla Edwards, and how I was going to help with a Garda operation. I knew everything about him: how he’d cried for three straight days after his gran died, how he was going to be a sound engineer even though his dad said he had to go to university, and how he’d graffitied the wall beside Clancy’s pub, but then swore to Joe that it wasn’t him. And yet, he didn’t know one of the most important things about me …
    I sighed. I totally trusted Nick to keep a secret. And I loved him, I really did, but he wasn’t as open-minded as Colin. He was pretty sceptical actually. I used to be too, so I got that. But if I told him the truth now he’d think I was crazy. Certifiably insane. And I didn’t want him to think that – there was no need for him to know just yet anyway. The Gardai had told me not to tell anyone and I’d already told two people. Two was enough, a nice even number that was relatively easy to control.
    ‘You promised,’ he said suddenly. ‘You said you’d come to my gig next week.’
    I sat up on the bed, rested my back against the wooden headboard and sighed.
    ‘I really need to take this work experience,’ I said. ‘You know they review one unsigned act every month; if I work there, then there’s a good chance they’ll listen to my CD.’ I regretted saying it as soon as I had. It sounded like I valued the slight possibility of getting a review more than going to his guaranteed headline show. Which wasn’t true. But I couldn’t tell him the truth – I would lose him. I would lose him over something I couldn’t explain.
    ‘But you promised you’d come on Thursday; it’s our first headline gig and you know what a big deal it is to me.’
    ‘Yes, I know,’ I said. ‘But I can’t miss this opportunity, Nick. It’s
Electric
magazine.’
    ‘You didn’t even tell me you’d applied.’ He looked hurt, which made me feel even worse.
    ‘I didn’t think I’d get it,’ I said.
    The lies were stacking up now. It had become so easy.
    ‘I’m going to miss you,’ he said. He kissed me on the cheek. I tried not to smile, but I wasn’t capable, my anger was steadily dwindling. I could feel a shift in the air, that moment when you know somebody isn’t mad at you any more. I was relieved. I hated fighting with him.
    ‘I’ll miss you too,’ I said, lying back down beside him.
    ‘Then don’t go,’ he said, kissing me on the neck, right on my heart-shaped freckle. He always did it, and it always made me feel safe.
    ‘I have to,’ I said.
    ‘Well, in that case, I better give you this today.’ He turned round and opened his bedside locker and, to my surprise,took out a red box with a little bow on it. I wasn’t expecting any presents. He didn’t say anything, just handed