“Billy called me yesterday, after we got back from your flower runs.”
Mia sipped at her wine, then put her elbows on the table, leaning close. “Is he okay?”
“Um, I think so. He’d just got out of surgery.”
“You never said that was happening.”
“I didn’t know. I mean, I knew he needed it, but he told us the wrong date so we wouldn’t be around when he had it.”
Mia said nothing for a moment, clearly turning it over in her mind and matching it to what she knew about my dysfunctional but loving family. “Let me guess, he was an arsehole about it, but actually he was trying to do the right thing?”
“That’s my brother, and yeah. He didn’t want me and Fran stressing about him, so he got it done on his own.”
“How do you feel about that?”
I traced my finger around the rim of my glass. “I hate that he still feels like we can’t handle him.”
“But?”
“He’s wrong,” I said. “When I left, Fran couldn’t handle him on her own, and I’ll always regret that it damaged them both so much, but I’m here now, and I’ve told him a thousand times I’ve got his back.”
“You think he doesn’t believe you?”
“No... I think he doesn’t know how.”
There was no one else on earth who’d understand what I meant, but she did. She laid her hand over mine and stretched across the table to kiss my cheek. “Fuck it. Let’s take tomorrow off too and go and see him.”
“He might be a dick.”
“Let him. What’s the worst that can happen?”
I was too cynical to answer that question without trashing our day, so I smiled and agreed to another ridiculous plan.
* * *
“You want to go to the tiki lounge? I don’t even know if it’s open.”
Mia wobbled precariously as she descended the steps of the market cross on the high street. “It’ll be open. It’s the weekend.”
“It’s Sunday night. That’s practically Monday.”
“Bollocks.” Mia collided softly with me, her eyes wide and misty with the bottle of cheap wine she’d put away. “I wanna dance.”
I was powerless to refuse her. As if I even wanted to. A late lunch had turned into a lazy afternoon of drinking and reminiscing about the good times we’d forgotten in our obsession with clinging onto the bad. I wasn’t as tipsy as her, but I was as close to happy as I could remember.
We wove our way down the high street towards the vintage cafe that moonlighted as a cocktail lounge at the weekends, and found it open, warm, and inviting with its bright colours and Eden Ahbez playing softly from a vinyl record player in the corner.
I got a beer and something fruity and frothy for Mia. Her face lit up like a summer’s day, and she ate the cherry from the top with the biggest smile I’d ever seen from her.
“You want to sit on the shark couch?”
“Sure.” I slipped an arm around her waist and half dragged her to the shark-adorned couch in the darkest corner of the bar. “It’s every man’s fantasy.”
“Knob.” She slapped my shoulder, but there was no menace there, just a softness I craved like my lungs craved air. Perhaps she was happy too.
We cuddled up on the couch, letting the mellow vibe of the bar merge with the buzzed contentment of too much food and booze. Without her hand tickling up and down my thigh, I might’ve fallen asleep, but her touch pushed that shit out of reach. I pulled her on top of me so she was straddling my waist, her rounded thighs covering the bulge in my cargo shorts. “You’re driving me crazy.”
She giggled. “I know. It’s fun. I still want to dance, though.”
“Later.” I wove my hand into the hair at the nape of her neck. “Kiss me first.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Mia
Knocking at my bedroom door woke me on Monday morning. I rolled over and threw a pillow across the room. “Piss off, Gus.”
“No,” he said. “I’m coming in, so put some fucking clothes on.”
Thankfully, I was still wearing underwear and the T-shirt I’d had on the day before, so I didn’t move when Gus barged in. “What do you want?”
“Um...to tell you the policewoman from the other night is downstairs? Are you kidding me, Mia? I already knocked five times and told you already.”
Shit. I sat up faster than my piña-colada-bruised head really wanted to. Vague memories of Gus calling my name filtered through the haze, but I’d honestly thought I’d been dreaming. “Fuck. How long has she been here?”
“Ten minutes. Why do you have a cocktail umbrella in your hair?”
I had no idea. The hours Luke and I had spent at the tiki lounge were a blur. Beyond rum-fuelled dancing and a cocooning sensation that we’d always be so blissfully happy, I could barely recall a thing. The only clue that we’d stumbled home to my bed together was a stray black sock on my bedroom floor.
Warmth and fondness warred with the hefty dose of reality waiting for me downstairs. I shooed Gus out, scrambled for some clean clothes, and fudged myself presentable before venturing down to the living room.
The policewoman—Rebecca—stood to greet me. “Sorry to barge in unannounced. My preliminary enquires didn’t take as long as I thought, and I wanted to go over a few things with you.”
“Wow.” I took a seat in an armchair. “I only saw you on Friday. I thought it would be a few weeks before we spoke again, if nothing else happened.”
“Has it?”
I shook my head. “All quiet.”
“That’s good.” Rebecca pulled some papers out of a folder, angling them so neither Gus or I could see them. “Perhaps we are looking at something random then, or that the incidents you’ve reported are unconnected to each other.”
Gus’s brows drew together. “What makes you think that?”
“Well, I’ve spoken to various agencies and I can’t find any obvious record of Mia’s ex-partner harassing anyone else, and as far as I can tell with the reach I have, he’s still in France and hasn’t recently travelled. That’s not to say he didn’t send the packages you reported, but it’s unlikely he was here on Friday night, or the week before when the car appeared to be following Mr. Daley.”
Appeared to be. I fought the urge to roll my eyes. Was she taking the piss? Luke was the least dramatic person in the whole world—romance aside, obviously—did she really think he’d imagined a car stalking his every move, then gunning towards him at fifty miles an hour? “So what do I do? Just wait for something else to happen?”