She rallied. “Just because his family has money, that doesn’t make them good people. We don’t know why he’s had to remove himself from them.”
“Absolutely. I get that, but there’s something not right here, Fred, I think he’s playing you.”
“I disagree.” Fred pulled her shoulders back.
“I don’t know how you can’t see it.” Ryan raised his arms in exasperation.
“You always do this!” Fred rounded on him. He was touching a nerve, but she wasn’t about to back down. “You always think you’re the only person who can see people’s ‘true colors.’ ” She made air quotes around the words and deepened her voice to mimic his.
“What are you talking about? You haven’t known me for twenty years.”
“Seventeen. And I remember.” She blurted it out, before she had time to think better of it.
“What exactly do you remember?” he demanded.
Her mind conjured pictures from the past: late September sun dappling the water; the green paint of the boat peeling back to reveal the red underneath; the look of bemused horror on Ryan’s face when she’d kissed him. But she couldn’t tell him that. Instead, she opted for a different truth, the truth she had used to excuse herself from his vicinity ever after.
“That we were best friends untilyoudecided that I had a problem with your mates, and cut me off,” she said. It wasn’t a lie.
“No, you did have a problem with my mates, andIdidn’t want to have to choose between you and them, butyoumade me. What was I supposed to do? I would have chosen you over any of them, but you were weird that whole year, you pushed me away. And when we did hang out, all you talked about was getting the fuck out of Pine Bluff. It felt like I’d lost you either way.”
The tinge of sadness in his voice tugged at her heart.
“You are misremembering how that story went,” said Fred. She was surprised that it still hurt, that what had been monumental for her meant so little to him that he didn’t even recall it. “And your mates were thugs,” she snapped.
It was true, they were bullish and crass, but that wasn’twhy she’d been “weird”; her weirdness derived from nursing a broken heart and not being able to talk to her best friend about it. Because he was the one who’d broken it—not that he remembered doing it!
“Maybe so, but I never cut you off,” Ryan said. “You did that all by yourself.”
“Okay.” Mina held her hands up in surrender. “This has descended into…I don’t exactly know what, but I don’t want to be in the middle of your weird-arse historic dramas. I’m going to take my lunch break.” She grabbed her coat and bag from under the counter and made a quick exit, twisting theOpensign around toClosedon her way out.
They were quiet for a moment; both had folded their arms tightly across their chests.
“Listen, I get that Warren rubs you up the wrong way,” said Fred, placatingly.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t like him,” said Ryan, in a calm voice. “And that’s all there is to it.”
Fred took a deep breath. “And I’m sorry, but I don’t care whether you like him or not.” She’d worked too hard to restore her autonomy to allow any man to pressure her into their way of thinking, even Ryan.
Ryan looked at the ground as she snapped her laptop shut, grabbed her stuff and left the shop.
Fred huffed her way out of the crowded little arcade and back onto the high street. A light fluttering of snow was causing much excitement. There was a queue for the grotto down the side of Frost Hardware, and she waved to Marthaas she passed. The market was loud and colorful, and she found herself wandering along to the Hallow-Hart hut to see her mum.
“Hey, darling.” Bella smiled when she saw her. She was just finishing up serving a customer who had bought four boxes of crackers.
Fred let herself in through the back and came to sit on the stool next to her mum, behind the counter.
“Everything all right?” Bella asked.
Fred grimaced as she pulled out her laptop and set it on the counter. “I had a fight with Ryan,” she mumbled.
“Blimey, it’s just like the old days!”
“We didn’t fight that much, did we?”
Bella pondered for a moment. “No, but he always knew how to get under your skin. He was never afraid to tell you things that you might not want to hear, while the rest of us tiptoed around you.”
“Was I that bad?”
