Kara: You’re killing me here, kid. Call me back.
He deleted that one.
Jason: You know, when you ring someone four times in the dead of night without sending a text to explain why, they might wake up the next morning and see the missed calls and think you were having a cat-induced asthma attack and they slept through it and left you to die in the wilds of Scotland. And then they might call their annoying sister to check on your welfare and be ruthlessly mocked. Learn to text, you fucking donkey dick.
Will laughed out loud at that one and hit Call.
Jase answered on the sixth ring, probably because he was busy pleating a bolt of silk or something fancy like that. “Yeah?” he barked. His usual greeting, so Will didn’t take it personally.
“You know I hate texting. Sorry.” Writing stuff down took so long, and anyway, Will was bad at waiting for answers. If he didn’t get a reply within three minutes, he’d wander away from his phone and forget the entire conversation.
“Yes, fine, you’re forgiven.” Jase sighed. “What’s up, anyway? Cats getting to you? Grandma getting to you? Abbie getting to you?”
“Abbie,” Will agreed.
“Oh. Really? Is she making fun of your teeth again? Because they’re honestly not that white.”
“Oh no, it’s nothing like that. Actually, it’s—well, I had decided, since it’s been a couple of years since the divorce and she seems happy now, and since I’m done with Captain X, and whatnot, which is kind of like fate, timing-wise…” Will realised he was rambling. He tended to do that when nervous. The media training hadn’t helped, but luckily, the press had found him charming.
Jase had never found him charming, though, so Will decided to cut to the chase.
“I’ve decided it’s time to find out if I have a shot with Abbie. So I’ve got a plan. I’m going to spend a year making her fall in love with me. Or trying to, anyway. That’s enough time, right? And I’m thinking of this Christmas as a kind of pre-season. A warm-up. I’m trying to, you know, flirt with her. Or whatever. Just to see if I can make her think of me that way, because I know she doesn’t think of me that way. But she could, right? Well, I hope she could. But I don’t know how last night went—she seemed kind of irritated, but then she always seems irritated, so…”
Will drifted off, trying to parse the air of vague amusement and impatience and uncertainty he’d picked up from her last night. The twins and Will had been best friends forever, like the three musketeers or something—but Abbie was always harder to read, and his feelings complicated the issue. Right now, for example, he couldn’t decide if the slight unease in his stomach was just nerves, or if it was because his plan was all wrong somehow.
Which was why he needed Jase.
“Hey,” Will nudged. “You there? You’re not saying anything. This is usually the part where you say something.” He got out of bed, the wooden floorboards cool against his bare feet. He needed to pace. If he didn’t get the nervous energy out via his legs, more of it would escape via his mouth. The phone in his hand remained silent, and he wondered if he’d accidentally cut off the call while speaking. He did that sometimes. Bloody touchscreens.
But then, finally, Jase spoke. “Yeah, I’m—I’m here,” he said, his voice all choked. “Sorry. Just kind of stuck on the part where you apparently want to have a shot with Abbie?”
Will paused mid-pace and blinked at the flowery wallpaper in front of him. This room, like every room in Ms. Tricia’s house, was wonderfully, distractingly bright. “Oh. Er … Did you not know that I’m in love with her? I always kind of assumed you knew.”
“You’re—you—what?” Jase rasped. “Bloody hell, Will. You assumed I knew? You think I knew that—I mean—well.” There was a pause, and a slight, considering cough. “Well, yeah, maybe I thought you had a thing for her, at one point. But I decided I was imagining it, because, Will, you never said! And you always say. And that was years ago, and—and she got married. To that dickhead. And you didn’t say shit. What the fuck, Will?”
Will shrugged, opened the curtains, and smiled out at the bare, frost-kissed trees and snow-cloud skies. Then he remembered that Jase couldn’t see him and explained. “I don’t know. I was being subtle. And patient.”
“Subtle,” Jase repeated, “and patient.” His voice dripped with scepticism. Will could practically feel it sliding out of the phone.
“Fine,” he admitted, “I was shy. I didn’t have much confidence when we were young. And I didn’t want to fuck up the family.” He still wasn’t sure if Jase—if any of the Farrells—understood what family felt like for Will. Before they’d moved in next door and been effortlessly absorbed into their new neighbours’ lives, Will and his mum had had no one but each other for ten fucking years. They’d struggled alone. They’d suffered alone. They’d survived his father alone.
And then they’d met Patricia Farrell and her daughter, Danielle, and all of Danielle’s children. And when they were hungry, Danielle had come ’round with extra food she happened to have cooked. And when Ms. Tricia saw Will walking himself home from school because Mum was out working one of her two jobs, she’d said, “Well, that’s no good. You might as well take the bus with us, boy.” And when Dad had come sniffing around one night, drunk as always and furious with his wife for finally leaving, Danielle had come outside in her dressing gown, holding a kettle like a weapon, and said, “The police have been called. And if you don’t leave before they arrive, I will personally bash your brains out. That’s a promise.”
Mum and Danielle had been best friends after that.
And Will had been one of the Farrells. All of a sudden, he’d had access to a house where there was always an adult around, and that adult was always sober. He’d had boys to play with who didn’t point out the holes in his shoes. He’d had a mother who, for the first time in years, smiled more than she cried.
And he’d had Abbie. He’d always had Abbie. And he’d always wanted more of her.
“You didn’t want to fuck up the family?” Jase echoed, incredulous. “I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean, because there is definitely nothing you could do to make you any less family to us.” Like all Farrells, he said this incandescently brilliant thing very quickly, in a very bored voice, and moved immediately on. “So what you’re trying to tell me, William, is that you’ve been into Abbie this whole time? You’ve been running around, starring in soaps, and sleeping with supermodels—”
“It was one supermodel, and she was a very nice, very persuasive woman.”
“—winning Sexiest Arse Alive, and my sister’s been running around getting married, and the whole time you’ve been in love with her, and you just … haven’t … done anything about it?”