Curve Ball by Charlotte Stein

familiar: timid little mousy Judy, and Steven seeing how far he can push things, how far he can take things, before I break just like my brother. He certainly pushed things to the limit down there in front of the bar.
    Or did he? Maybe that was just a taster – the warm-up before the big challenge. Because that’s what it looks like to me, now. Like he saw a challenge, and couldn’t resist going for it. In fact, that idea makes so much sense I’m momentarily giddy with it – I almost blurt it out to him right there in front of polite little Kimberley and the brother who almost definitely believes I’m still a virgin.
    ‘So that’s why you buried your face neck-deep in my vagina!’ I want to cry out, like I’m suddenly Miss Marple and he’s the master criminal.
    Only much weirder and more sex-based than that.
    Lucky, really, that I manage to restrain myself. Instead of shouting bizarre accusations that don’t make any sense, I nibble on a bread stick and stew inwardly, while they continue with this conversation about nothing that actually matters.
    God, if only Jason knew.
    I don’t think he’d be laughing it up with Steven about Gran chasing them around the living room with a frying pan if he did. He once went deathly pale when a high school boyfriend accidentally brushed my bottom with his coat, so I doubt he’d be happy and carefree about this.
    Especially after Steven has turned the conversation on to other things.
    Namely:
    ‘I just wanted to impress the 17 girls I was dating.’
    And all right, he doesn’t say 17 . But everyone knows that Steven is a revolving door of women, which is bad on a number of levels, here. The first level is that Jason is never going to like the idea of a revolving door of women being anywhere near me. And the second level is that the door is probably not going to be near me for long, because it’s already swung around to the next 17 girls.
    Any way you look at this whole situation, I am totally screwed.
    ‘My favourite of your many conquests is always and forever Melanie Martin.’
    ‘Meeee-laaaanie,’ Steven says. He even closes his eyes in memory of Melanie’s flawless face – those pouty lips, those blue eyes, that raven hair! It’s really no wonder I spent that summer trying to apply Clairol Number 47 to my own dull brown mess. ‘Man, she was a peach.’
    Ugh, does he have to talk about fruit, now?
    I’m already aware that I’m a mouldy potato, Steven, all right? You don’t have to start talking about other women to convince me that five minutes ago was just some terrible mistake. I get it. A blind, feeble monkey would get it, by this point.
    And yet still, he continues.
    ‘Or what about Donna Lincoln?’
    Ah, Donna Lincoln. I once found him making out with her in my Dad’s shed, right smack in the middle of me feeling like I was totally over any crush I’d ever had on him. I’d just started college, and was full of adult, college sorts of things. He was still a laddish loser, working at the local swimming pool, drifting from this to that.
    Whereas I … Well. I was refined, and intelligent, and classy. I didn’t have time for men like him, in their silly T-shirts with their ridiculous hairdos and their terrible taste in anything.
    And then I’d seen him with someone else, and eaten my own heart out like it had a honey centre. I’d chomped on that fucker until there was nothing left – or at least, I’d assumed there was nothing left, at the time. But apparently it’s grown back in the intervening years, fatter and fuller and more prone to him than ever.
    And worst … I suspect he knows. I think he knew. He waited until the perfect time, and then he struck like a cobra. Now I’m just as much a mess than ever, only it’s even more painful than it was before. How can it not be? This time I’ve had a little taste of him, a little hint of what it could be like, before he snatches it away with things like this:
    ‘Dear, dear Donna. She had legs up