“Holy fuck, Pi. How is that good news? What happened? Shit. You seemed fine last night. I don’t get it.” I have too many questions, and words are falling out of my mouth without me thinking them through or waiting for answers.
“Okay, so you know about two weeks ago we had that big fight. She went to stay at her mum’s, and she said she’d be back last week, only she never came back. The wedding was the first time I’ve seen her since then. She only agreed to go with me because she didn’t want everyone asking me awkward questions all evening. She said she’d been thinking through some stuff and . . . we want different things. Apparently, I don’t behave like a normal twenty-five-year-old guy.”
“What the actual fuck? You’re literally one of the most mature, well-rounded people I know,” I say, offended on his behalf. “You have a mortgage, and a dog, and you drive a Honda Civic. A white one!”
“That’s what she said. I’m . . . too ‘old’ for her. She wants to travel and see the world and party and fuck strangers, and I want to go on walks and look at castles and have a nice pint of ale in a cosy little pub. Abs, I want to settle down and start a family. Like . . . not right now, but you know, soonish. I want to get married and have kids, and loads more dogs. I want an orchard where I can grow loads of apples and press them and have fresh juice in the morning. Chickens! I want chickens. Maybe even a goat.”
“Mate.” I don’t know what else to say, so I just rub his back between his shoulder blades.
Part of me feels that at twenty-three I’m too young to empathise with him, but fuck, I want those things too. Not the goats, or the chickens, and maybe not even the kids. An orchard would be pretty sweet, though. As would finding someone who loved me enough to spend the rest of forever by my side.
Lando’s stupid face flashes through my mind at this thought, and I have to physically shake it from my head. “Why didn’t you tell me last week that Georgia never came home?”
He shrugs. Trekkie thumps his two front paws on the grass to get Pi’s attention, but he’s too busy staring at the horizon.
I pick the ball up and lob it as far as I can without the blue plastic ball-shooter thingy. It goes pretty far, to be fair.
“I just felt that if I said it out loud, it’d be admitting defeat. I knew it was coming. Known for a while, I guess.”
“Do you think there’s another guy?” I ask, though I’m really not sure if that’s something I should ask.
Pi shrugs again. “Who knows? No? I don’t think so. Maybe she genuinely wants to go out and sow her wild oats. Maybe she just needs to fuck it out of her system.”
“Would you take her back?”
Pi doesn’t answer me, doesn’t even shrug his shoulders, but I already know the answer to that question—yes, unequivocally and without hesitation. Pi loves unconditionally and with his whole heart. He’s too good for Georgia. In fact, he’s too good for anyone.
“Still not seeing how this is good news.”
“Well, it means we can hang out more now. You’re stuck with me, unforch. Sucks to be you.” It’s so typical of Pi to mask every emotion with humour. Though it’s better than getting angry, I suppose.
I drape my arm over his shoulder. “Actually, that is good news. I was getting pretty tired of being your third wheel. So this is why you got so shit-faced yesterday?”
“Mate, I was fucking cooked. She told me right after the speeches, so I necked two bottles of Prosecco. So . . .” He dodges out from under my arm to look me straight in the eyes for once. “What happened between you and Lando? We noticed both of you were missing from the party, and when you weren’t in the car on the way home, I thought you might have been up to your old tricks. Tell me everything.” Pi obviously reads the sternness on my face. “Or are we still not talking about Lando?”
“We’re still not talking about him,” I say.
“Sure.” Pi flings the tennis ball into the distance again.
“Where did you barf? Last night when you got sick, where were you?”
“Oh mate, it went everywhere. In the bushes, all over the lawn, in this water feature that had some weird statue of a torso with no head or arms but massive tits and a fanny.”
I knew exactly where Pi had been sick. Lando once told me his father bought that sculpture for a cool quarter of a million as an investment piece. “Good work.”
8
Monday 3rd May 2027
Lando
“What’s this?”
Amy has called me over to her desk in the corner of the big open-plan office space. There’s an envelope next to her keyboard with“Orlando”scribbled on the front. I go to pick it up, but she holds up a hand. Instead, she picks it up and hands it to me, as though that teeny amount of control was worth the humiliation.
I tear it open, scan the text, and I’m still confused.
“Huh?”
