“Can I stay here while you guys get their stuff?” They all went into a frenzy of concerned nodding, but as Win took a step back, the offer of keeping Sophie company yet to make it as far as words, Sophie shook her head. “I’d like to talk to Ryan.”
Once they’d gone, Ryan turned to look at her with a familiar wariness, like she was about to confirm his suspicions that the world was out to get him. Back at the amusements Win might have said that winning wasn’t in his nature, but Ryan was a strong contender for that undesirable prize of who hurt the most.
“What?”
“I just wanted to say sorry. For how it’s been with us – since she left, and maybe before too.” Sophie searched his expression, a cliff face on which she was trying to find purchase. “I might have got a few things wrong about you.”
“A few.” Something in him shifted, like he wanted her to make the climb. “But she was your best mate and I didn’t treat her well—”
“She didn’t treat you well, either.”
All he did was shrug, like that was something he could forgive more easily than he could forgive himself.
“Maybe not,” he said. “Maybe she had her reasons. I thought I knew what those were, but I’m as good at getting things wrong as you are.”
Sophie turned to look out at the sea, the way she had with Win on the beach before she read her letter, thinking of all the things everyone else had said just now, what Freya had been trying to say with all of this.
“I think Freya got a lot of things wrong as well,” she said, tucking her hair back behind her ear from where the breeze was trying to blow it across her lips. “But I think she got us right.”
“What do you mean?”
Sophie looked at him once more, tried to see him beyond the filter of all the things she thought she knew.
“I think Freya might actually have figured out what we need. Not then, but now.” Sophie took her hand from her pocket and held it out. “We can’t start over, but I think we could build on what we’ve got a little better than before.”
Ryan looked at her for a long moment, eyes narrowed to nothing against the sun, before he reached out to shake on it – his clasp firm without being too tight. Like he knew he needed to be careful.
“I think we could.”
RYAN
Ryan had been sitting on an ever-swelling bladder for the last half hour of the journey. Before Win even put the handbrake on outside Lucas’s house, he thumped the back of Sophie’s seat and demanded she get out.
“I need a piss.”
Lucas showed no such urgency. As Ryan danced a desperate jig on the pavement, Lucas snuggled a sleepy Sunny on the backseat, the two of them making promises to see each other the next day…
Ryan rapped a knuckle on the window and threatened to piss on Lucas’s door if he didn’t get a shift on. If they were seeing each other tomorrow, they didn’t need to drag out their goodbyes now, did they?
Lucas’s home wasn’t so different to Ryan’s. Cosier and cleaner, mind, with a stairwell of family pictures that Ryan would have nosied a bit if he hadn’t been sprinting up the stairs and heading for the sweet release of the second door on the right. The place was empty, but Lucas had warned him that his uncle would be sleeping off his nightshift and not to flush.
One swift pass round the bathroom – taps free from the crust of limescale, and more toiletries than crowded the tills at TK Maxx – and Ryan sauntered back on out, taking his time as he studied the pictures down the stairs.
“Are you even in any of these?” Ryan said when he got to the bottom, where Lucas was standing in the door through to the lounge, dead phone transferred from pocket to hand and looking no more lively.
“Not on the stairs. There’s a couple in the lounge.”
Ryan thought back to when he’d lived in his cousin’s house – how he’d never felt like he’d ever be able to call it home – and wondered whether it was like that for Lucas. Probably not. He didn’t have Kellan as a cousin for a start.
Ryan stopped on the doormat, not sure he actually wanted to leave. Back home all he had to look forward to was revision he had no intention of doing and questions from Mam about why he’d run off.
“Lucas?” It was the first time he’d called him anything other than Big T and they both took a second to acknowledge that. “It’s been all right, hanging out with you today.”
“Says the guy who’s done nothing but take the piss out of me.”
But he held out his fist for a tap and stepped a bit closer, half a head taller and twice as wide. Twice as soft, too.
Ryan tapped his fist. It felt more like a welcome than a goodbye.
As Ryan started to say, “See you ar—” someone knocked on the door, making him jump half out of his skin.
Since he was closest, Ryan reached for the handle, not needing to know which of the girls it was to start gloating.
“Guess I’m not the only one with a weak—”
Not one of the girls.
LUCAS
For one second, Lucas had exactly zero idea of what was happening. All he knew was that Ryan had opened the door and was now trying very hard to shut it again.
He failed.
Whoever was on the other side managed to force it open to launch themselves into Lucas’s front hall.
Kellan.
“Get the fuck back here!”
So much for not waking his uncle.
Ryan had made for the stairs, but Kellan was on him, pulling him back down so the two of them toppled back into the hall in a heap of elbows and fists, crashing into the radiator with a clang.
Whatever fight he’d broken up last night was nothing compared to this: Kellan’s punches caught the side of Ryan’s head, each one short and savage enough to make Lucas wince.
He might have sworn not to get into any more fights, but it was better to break a promise than stand by and watch Kellan break Ryan’s skull.
Hauling Kellan away was ten times harder than when it had been Ryan. He might not be all that big, but most of him was muscle, and he was intent on using all of it to inflict as much damage as he possibly could. Not just on Ryan, but on anything he could reach – by the time Lucas managed to push Kellan back towards the door and get between them, the hall was a warzone of a toppled vase of fake flowers, a cracked frame knocked from the wall and a scattering of the little figurines that had been lined up along the shelf above the radiator.
The hall filled with ragged breathing and animosity as Kellan glared past Lucas to where Ryan had pulled himself upright on the stairs.
“What’s he doing here?” Kellan said, voice low and dangerous.
Lucas hadn’t a clue where to start. This was not how he’d planned on having this conversation. Truth was, he’d not necessarily planned on having it at all – had hoped there might be some workaround that meant he got to stay in Kellan’s good graces until after Ryan was forgiven and the whole thing was forgotten.
He’d underestimated the situation.
“Look. Me and Ryan have been out with some friends—”
“I’m your fucking friend, Big T. Me. Without me you wouldn’t have any mates at all.” Kellan’s anger landed as hard as one of those punches.