“I didn’t, actually. No one can stop you doing anything if you’re in arsehole mode. You think I’d put that on Gus?”
“I don’t know what you’d do, any more than you know me.”
It came out harsher than I’d intended, but Luke didn’t flinch. Just stared at me with a steady gaze that would’ve suited Gus better. “We can fix that, though, right? That we don’t know each other very well? I know I’m hard to get along with when I’m stuck in my own head, but I’m trying to be better.”
“And I’m trying not to be an arsehole, but I want to know why you’re talking about Gus like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you think you know something.”
“Something about wha—” Luke caught himself and shook his head. “Okay, you got me. I was putting the bins out when you left the other night. I saw you together and it made me think there was something going on between you. Is there?”
I thought back to when we’d left Mia’s last night, scrutinising the way Gus had meandered drunkenly down the drive, and the steadying arm I’d slid around his waist. Truthfully, it hadn’t been necessary. Gus was an adult who could handle a skinful, but given that we’d called time on hooking up, and I was missing him like fucking air, I’d done it anyway. I hadn’t considered how it would look to anyone watching. I hadn’t considered anyone except my own damn self and my poor aching heart. Bless.
Luke was still staring at me.
Back when I’d first rocked up in Rushmere, I might’ve glowered back, flipped him the bird, and stomped on by, but I didn’t want to be that dickhead anymore. I wanted us to be like Gus and Mia, easy, warm, and forgiving of age-old shit that didn’t matter. “Can I ask you something?”
Luke set his slab down. “Of course.”
“Did I sleepwalk when I was a kid?”
“Yup. Every night for two years until you started smoking weed. We didn’t make the connection at the time, but I figured it out when I was talking to someone about you offshore in Indonesia.”
“Indonesia?”
He nodded. “I was based there for a while after the earthquake in Sumatra.”
“Doing what?”
“Same as I did everywhere else. I put the fuel in the helicopters so they could fly their missions.”
“That was your job?”
“Yeah. It’s more complex than it sounds, but at the same time, pretty fucking simple.”
Nothing about Luke was ever simple, and I wanted to ask him more about the sleepwalking. But I didn’t want to explain to him that I needed to know how I’d ended up in Gus’s bed the night of the barbecue despite being sober as a judge. And I didn’t want him to stop talking when it was the most he’d told me about himself in the best part of a decade.
But it seemed Luke was done with my deflection regardless of my sweet intentions. He clasped a heavy arm on my good shoulder and squeezed. “Look, it doesn’t matter, okay? About you and Gus, I mean. It’s none of my business. Just... I don’t know. Be careful with him. Shit gets to him more than he’ll ever let you see.”
I needed to know more. I needed him to elaborate on every facet of Gus that he knew and I didn’t. But before I could take a breath, an official with a clipboard interrupted us. It took Luke’s attention from me for a full half hour, and by the time she’d moved on, so had we.
We fudged together a vintage display that vaguely resembled the images Mia posted to her Instagram. I mean, it still looked like two roofers had done it, but it wasn’t nearly as terrible as I’d imagined.
Luke seemed surprised too. “We might get away with it. You think she’ll notice you trod on the calla lilies?”
“Yes. But we’ve got cheap fizz from the bargain booze shop, so I’m sure she’ll forgive you.”
“It wasn’t me who trod on them.”
“Yeah, but it’s not me who goes to bed with her, so...”
“You can run, but you can’t hide, bro. She’ll get you eventually.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
I walked away from Luke to smoke, leaving him to deal with the first wave of people trickling into the fair. It had been a long time since I’d last shown my face at a Rushmere event, and I was already jumpy. In years gone by, I’d have been scouting the car park on the watch for unattended valuables, but I was a good boy these days.
At least, I was trying to be.
I found myself in the car park anyway. It was a five-minute walk from the green and already stuffed to the rafters. I wandered around, chain smoking and trying not to obsess over Gus.
I failed. Because I was obsessed with him, and it was a strange place to be. A frightening place, when I considered the fact that it meant absolutely nothing. He’d told me from the start that we couldn’t do all the shit we’d already done. That even a hundred years ago, or however long it had been, our lives were already too interwoven to deal with a casual hook-up.
But nothing we’d done felt casual. It hadn’t then, and it didn’t now. The way my heart sped up at the mere thought of him was the antonym of fucking casual.
I had to laugh at myself. If I didn’t, the ridiculous angst in my gut would spill out, and without my oldest bad habits for company, I wasn’t equipped to deal with that bullshit. I leant against the car park wall and finished my smoke, letting my gaze drift, hyper-focussing on random things to distract myself from the Gus bubble. A Range Rover was parked opposite in full sun, and movement on the backseat caught my eye. A copper-coloured dog came to the window and pressed its hot, panting face to the glass.
Glancing around, I stubbed my smoke out and approached it, scanning the car park for the owners. There were plenty of people
