“Wren and Indie. My parents like him but they never talk of anything long term the way they do with Hugo’s girlfriend.”
My big brother and Louisa will be engaged within six months, I can feel it. Spencer and Indie are getting married in the winter.
“Could be worse. He could be a pimp.”
Reid frowns, his eyes snapping between the road and me in a double take that makes me laugh.
“I’m kidding. Though, that would be worse.”
“What goes on in that mind of yours?”
“I’m not sure I understand it half the time.”
“What are you looking for? What do you want?” He pulls into his drive before he turns to me.
“I want my friends and family to be happy.”
“What do you want for you?”
“The same, I guess.” Sighing, I look out of the window and over to the room in his house I often see him in. “I want to fall in love—proper love. The kind that consumes you, you know?”
There it is. I’m not madly in love with Liam. I was when I was younger, and now I’m desperately searching for it again.
“I know the one,” he says, his voice rough.
I’ve never seen him with a girlfriend. I’ve also never looked that hard. He has friends apparently, and I’ve never seen him with them.
“You’re not consumed by Liam?”
Closing my eyes, I shake my head. My stomach is heavy with guilt. I shouldn’t keep getting back together with him knowing that I’m not in love with him.
“I’m being so unfair.”
He unbuckles his seatbelt and twists to face me fully. “You’re trying, and you can’t fault that. Sometimes a relationship will never work no matter how much effort you put in. There’s no shame in walking away, and there’s no shame in getting help.”
“Help? Like couple therapy?”
He opens his car door. “If he’s who makes you happy.”
“What makes you happy?” I ask.
He raises his eyebrow. “Happiness is… I’m working on it.”
I don’t really know him, but I feel like I understand him in this moment. It hits me like a tidal wave and makes my pulse thump.
Reid and I are both a little lost.
Four
Reid
The girl who is always smiling, always larger than life, isn’t truly happy.
I have the strongest urge to march over to her house and fix that.
The manuscript in front of me might as well be written in Mandarin.
She’s interrupted my day, and I know I won’t be able to get back on track. All I can think about is her walking around, feeling like something is missing and trying to figure it out. I can sympathise. I haven’t been happy for a long time. I haven’t felt true happiness, ever. There have been good moments, of course, but I’ve never felt content.
Well, I think I was reasonably close when my parents took my sister and me to Disney World when I was six. The point is, Mila and I have more in common than I thought.
I should force myself to focus. The deadline is looming, and Leonard is expecting this back soon. I’m still only halfway.
Dropping the pages on my desk, I grab my mug and get up. Maybe another coffee and a thirty minute break will help get me back on track.
Is she really going to take the bus to uni?
All right, she’s not a child, and the bus is perfectly safe… but my car is safer.
Inhaling deeply, I jab my finger into the button of the coffee machine, and it begins grinding beans. She doesn’t need a babysitter. She’s a grown woman. She turned twenty-one last month. I saw from the window as her friends brought presents.
Jason is right; I need a girlfriend.
He knows exactly how I feel about Mila. He saw her for the first time when we ran into her, Wren, and Indie in a bar. Now I get much less shit about wanting her… or pining for her like a ‘fucking pussy’, as he likes to put it.
The machine pours the perfect mug of coffee, and I take it to the living room.
When my parents moved out, I redecorated. Now there are bookcases everywhere, as well as large lamps made from old telescopes. There’s a TV screen that is probably too big for the room, and soft, brown leather sofas that belong in a man cave where older men sit around smoking cigars.
I sit on the sofa and put the coffee on the coffee table. The legs of it are parts from an old printing press.
Books have been my escape for a very long time now. When I was ten, I found my nan on the floor of her kitchen during a sleepover. She was dead, had been for a while, and that was confirmed by the paramedics when they arrived. I didn’t speak for weeks after that. My uncle brought me a book. An old, battered copy of Lord of the Flies.
I started talking when I finished it. After that, I read everything I could get my hands on. Words are my therapy. I read even harder when history repeated itself.
There’s a knock at my door as I’m about to turn the TV on for some mindless entertainment. That usually restarts my brain, but I have a feeling nothing will do that today. I’ve had too much Mila time.
I open the front door, and Jason throws something at me. I catch it just in time and look down at a black tub of protein powder. “What are you trying to tell me, Jace?”
He walks past, inviting himself in, as always. “I have a spare hour and thought I’d drop in. You finished that manuscript yet?”
We walk into my living room. “Not yet. Why do I need protein powder?”
I exercise most days, at the gym and home. I have a lot of pent up energy more than anything else, but I’m not heavily into fitness and growing muscles.
Jason is a personal trainer at the local gym. It’s actually where we met. He lifts weights and looks like he should be on the front of fitness magazines. He’s the sporty type, and I’m the book type. We don’t have a lot in common, but he’s a good friend.
“You have great shape and definition now, but if you want the girl, we’re going to make her salivate when—”
“Let me stop you right there. It’s almost killed me to get to this point. Mila’s boyfriend doesn’t work out.” That much is clear from seeing him this morning. He’s not overweight, but there was absolutely no definition under his T-shirt.
Jason sighs and takes a swig from something green in his bottle.
Dark skin covers thick muscles. His biceps bulge.
I place the protein on the table, picturing it still sealed in six months’ time, collecting dust. I pick up my coffee.
“What’s going on?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing. How do you live across the road from her and get anything done?”
I sit down and kick my feet up on the table. “Today, I’m not getting anything done.”
“You should give her a job—work experience or something like that. Get to know her and wait until she falls for you. She’s studying English, right? No doubt the nerdy type is for her. You’ll be well in, bro.”
“Thank you for that.”
He drops down on the sofa. “Know what I do when I like a woman?”
“Have sex with her on a treadmill?”
He deadpans. “You should try it.”