“Why does everything you want to watch have a photo of a man in sunglasses or a random moored boat on a misty dock?” I say, looking up at the screen.
Lucas laughs. “And why has everything you want to watch never been released at the cinema?”
“Mm-mm.” I shake my head, swallowing a mouthful of drink. “Not true.”
“Is,” says Lucas, leg bent on the sofa, wrist resting on his knee, remote in his other hand. “Case in point, The Leading Man.”
I laugh. “You only ever bring that one up. Plus, Thandie Newton was in that, and you love her.”
“Well, she was dicked over with that one. A movie starring Bon Jovi—”
“Jon Bon Jovi.”
“And all he does is hide in the streets like a shit Columbo, shagging people’s wives.”
“Sounds like a dream, to be honest,” I say. “You’ve sold it to me. Let’s watch it again.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“Twice was enough,” Lucas laughs, then selects a film with Tom Cruise, and before he can say anything, I am shaking my head.
“No,” I say.
“Fucking hell, we’re going to be here all day.”
Eliot pokes his head around the door, leaning against the white, glossed frame, a smile on his face. He looks at me from under dark lashes, then the TV screen above the fireplace, and says, “And why is there not a Jon Bon Jovi movie playing on that screen?”
Lucas turns at the sound of his brother’s voice and says, “Because I’d like to watch something that was released this decade, El.” Lucas and Eliot have grown closer again since Eliot’s divorce and he moved back in with Lucas and their parents for a while a couple of years ago, before he went to work with his friend Mark, in Canada. And while I’m not sure it’s what it used to be when we were kids, it’s nice to see them together again, around the house, laughing, stupid in-jokes and brotherly piss-taking.
Eliot looks at me and smiles. He lifts his chin. “Did you ever see U-571?”
I tut. “Of course. He played Pete Emmett finely.”
“Lieutenant Pete Emmett, I think you’ll find,” corrects Eliot, and I laugh. “Okay, how about Pucked? Did you see that?”
“Pucked? No?”
“Sounds fucked,” Lucas mumbles beside me, and when I turn to look at him, he’s staring at the television screen, straight-ahead, eyes narrowed in concentration as if he said nothing at all.
“Yep,” says Eliot folding his arms. “He’s the lead. Plays the bad boy. Hair’s wild and all rock star-y. Totally your sort of thing.”
“Seriously?” I laugh. “And I haven’t seen it?”
“Seems not,” laughs Eliot. “Call yourself a fan, Emmie.”
“Well, I guess I know what I’m ordering on Amazon when I get home—oh!” I turn to Lucas, beside me on the sofa. “Unless it’s on Netflix.”
“Nope,” says Lucas, still not looking away from the screen. “No results for… Pucked.” He says “Pucked” as if he’s making fun of it, as if he doesn’t quite believe that’s its name, but he doesn’t smile.
“It might be under National Lampoon—” starts Eliot, before Lucas looks at him, shrugs, and says, “No results.” Then turns back to the screen. Eliot raises his eyebrows at me, and I smile, stifle laughter behind the blanket over my knees. It reminds me of the times Lucas would get in a mood, and Eliot and I would share secret awkward smiles, wondering which girl had dumped him this week, or what menial thing Jean had pulled him up on: dirty towels in the bathroom, an A grade instead of an A-plus.
“Well, I suppose I’ll be making tracks now,” Eliot says, pushing off from the doorframe. “You kids have fun.”
“Making tracks,” I repeat, and Eliot laughs, folding his arms. Rosie is right. Eliot does have really nice arms. She used my phone to scroll through his Instagram last week. “Fit,” she’d said, scrolling. “Super fit. Hot. So goddamn tall.”
“What?” asks Eliot. “Is that so nineties too?”
“Making tracks.” I nod. “A bit.”
“See you then, mate,” cuts in Lucas with a wave and a tight, closemouthed smile, his eyes widening for a second as if to say, “We’re actually really busy here, sort of in the middle of something.” “Enjoy your dinner,” he carries on. “Say hi to Ana for us.”
Eliot smiles, amused. “I’m not going with Ana, actually, but… thanks.” Then he nods at me. “Have a good evening, Ozzy—I mean Emmie.”
Moments later, as I am drinking my cocktail, I realize Lucas is staring at me, eyes burning into me.
“What?”
He gives a tight shrug. “El was a bit… overfriendly.”
“Was he?” I laugh. My ears burn as they always do, preblush, and I’m glad my hair is long enough now to hide them. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, joking about with you, stampeding in on our conversation, going on about Bon Jovi being in all those films and ha-ha, you haven’t seen that one, oh dear, Emmie, maybe we should watch it together sometime…”
“Jon Bon Jovi.” I nudge him. “And he wasn’t being overfriendly, he was just being Eliot, he was being—”
“Emmie, my brother has barely spoken to you in years and suddenly you’re what, best mates?”
It would be obvious to anyone with even a single drunken, dancing brain cell that he’s jealous. Lucas would get like this sometimes, and admittedly, so did I. Territorial in our friendship, especially if one of us made a new friend. “I’ve heard a lot about this Fox. You trading me up?” Lucas’s jealousy is partly protective, though, I think, and with Eliot, I understand why.
“We’re just catching up,” I say. “And to be fair, I haven’t really seen that much of him. Yes, he gave me a lift today from Marie’s, but only because the taxi didn’t show up and I knew you were at work—” That was the lie I had told Lucas, about what happened after leaving Marie’s party, and he’d annoyedly told me to call him next time.
“And he took you to your dad’s too.”
I look at him. I’d told Luke about Marv on the journey up from Calais, when he picked me up from the ferry. I hadn’t said anything about Eliot being the one that took me.
Lucas nods once. “So, I’m right.”
“Did he tell you?”
“No. He canceled suit shopping, and I couldn’t get hold of you. And after that”—he points at the doorway, and then to me—“I guessed.”
I feel oddly attacked. As if I’m being accused of something. My cheeks are burning now, as well as my ears, and my shoulders are tense, up by the side of my face. “But what does it matter?” I say. “He offered. He knew about the cards and he knew how much it was playing on my mind, and—I said yes. So I didn’t have to go alone.” What I want to say is, “Well, you didn’t offer, did you, like you would have done once upon a time? You haven’t been over once in seven months, to see where I work those ten-hour shifts, the burns on my fingers, to see how much I’ve changed the sweltering, dusty room I live in since I moved in. To go to the pub with me, the beach for a day, wander around my little town, like we do yours.”