Read Chocolate Box Girls: Bittersweet for Free Online Page A

or lonely as I do right now, and it would be good, so good, to hold someone close.
    But the person I want to hold close is
not
Honey.
    I pull back abruptly, and my ex-girlfriend laughs, tugging the beanie hat I always wear down over myface, turning the whole thing into a joke.
    ‘Hey, you can’t blame a girl for trying,’ she says, flopping down on to a rock a safe distance away. ‘I guess you really are missing Cherry – how else could you resist me? Better tell her, Shay. Stuff the emails and texts, be direct. Paint it in three-foot-high letters along the playing-field fence at school … do SOMETHING!’
    ‘Well, I wrote her a song …’
    ‘Is that what you were playing before?’ she asks. ‘Nice one. Mopey, but nice. Why don’t you put it online and send her the link? Declare your love for all to see? She’d fall for that, I bet!’
    ‘You think?’
    ‘I think,’ Honey says. ‘Play it again and I’ll film it for you and email it over. You can do whatever you like with it then.’
    She perches on the rock, fiddling with her mobile, while I pick up the guitar and strum some chords. Then I start to play properly, and I forget that Honey is watching, filming. I put everything into the music … my heart, my soul, my feelings for Cherry.
    I lose myself and find myself again.
    And then the song is over, and the music lets go of me and I focus again, seeing Honey, the mobile, the empty beach, the sunset fading into darkness. Nothing is different. My life is still in ruins and mygirlfriend hates me, and I am hanging out for the second time in a week with my ex, which really, seriously, cannot be a good thing.
    Honey puts away her mobile, stands up.
    ‘I’m not a total bitch, you know,’ she says quietly. ‘I’ve tried telling Cherry that nothing happened on Monday. I swore there was no funny business, but she didn’t believe me. Why do people never believe me?’
    I can think of a few reasons, but I say nothing. Honey is a magnet for trouble, but she has a sweet side too and right now she is trying to do something useful, something to fix up the mess the two of us have created between us.
    ‘I’ll load this on to my laptop and email it over to you,’ she says. ‘I hope you can patch things up. Really. And I hope your dad has a personality transplant and works out that he has two talented sons, not just one. It sucks about Wrecked Rekords.’
    ‘It does,’ I say. ‘Thanks for trying to help.’
    She pauses, the wind catching her hair. ‘You really love her, don’t you?’ she says. ‘Cherry. That’s cute. Really. Don’t mess it up.’
    She turns away, and I am almost certain I can see the glint of tears in her eyes.

I sleep late on Friday, and as I’m scrambling into my school clothes, my mobile rings: Finch.
    ‘Hello, mate,’ I say. ‘How’s life in the big city?’
    ‘Pretty dull compared to the dramas going on down your way,’ he responds coolly. ‘I was speaking to Skye last night. I never had you down as a love-cheat. What are you playing at, Shay?’
    I sigh. How could I forget that Finch and Skye were an item? They were practically joined at the hip all summer. Looks like I just lost another friend.
    ‘It wasn’t like that,’ I tell him. ‘Seriously.’
    ‘So what was it like?’
    I talk to Finch and the whole story spills out: Honey threatening to run away, Cherry calling at just the wrong moment, how trying to help turned into a disaster. I tell him about the awkward moment in the school canteen when Cherry saw her stepsister’s thank-you hug and got the wrong idea, how the school grapevine took it and blew it out of all proportion, turned me into a lying love-rat.
    ‘There was really nothing in it?’ Finch checks. ‘What a mess. Mate, you’d better set the record straight quick because right now you are not popular with the Tanberry-Costello family.’
    ‘Tell me about it,’ I say. ‘I’m not popular with anyone lately. It sucks.’
    ‘Gotta go, mate,’ Finch