I step closer, my shoulders tense. “I'm sober. I live at home. I do whatever she tells me to do, like coming on this bleeding family holiday. Isn't that enough?”
“The holiday is hardly a hardship, dickhead. And drinking was a symptom, remember? Not the cause,” she adds.
“I fucking hate when you're smarter than me.” I point my bottle at her.
“I'm not. Nowhere close. There's a reason all I can do is post videos of myself and flog athleisure wear to people who will never actually wear it to work out. Ha! Like me!”
“We'll have words about that attitude later, missy, but I suppose right now I’d better go face the music, fight the dragon, enter the torture chamber, whatever.” I add hand gestures to every word.
“Ma does love you,” my sister says. It's so unlike her to say something like that it gives me pause. I look at her, waiting for eye contact or just some kind of clarification from her side, but she's back typing away on her phone.
“Yeah, yeah. Tough love,” I mutter.
“Loveistough, it’s what makes it last, I guess,” she says with only the briefest look up. “Now piss off, ya melter, I've got hundreds of DMs to work through.”
“Tough love you too,” I call out and jog home, taking the opposite path to Jenna.
Chapter Eleven
Marty
“Ma! I'm back,” I call out. I want to get this over and done with.
“Aiden!” Mum walks through the double doors from our pool and terrace. She’s wearing a floaty sort of dress over her swimwear and a wide-brimmed hat that all but drowns her small features. While quite a bit shorter than Maeve, Mum has the same slim figure and long hair, although it's the dark shade of brown mine is. “How was the gym? Did you stretch?”
“Fine, and yes,” I say, walking to the fridge to get another bottle of water.
“Breakfast is out on the terrace. I managed to save three rashers of bacon from your father’s greedy fingers.”
“Where is Da?” I turn my back on her, busying myself making a coffee.
“Just finishing up after a shower.” She reaches for a mug. “Shall I make you that?”
“No, Ma, it’s fine. I can do it,” I say.
“Your father said you had a great ride. I’m so glad you’re here and able to do that with him,” she says, but I don’t reply.
As I push a button and listen to the coffee machine whir into life, I wonder, not for the first time, why her smile, her questions, her heartfelt concern for me aggravates me so much.
“I’m not sure why you had to go to the gym as well,” she continues. I close my eyes. “Your father said you covered a lot of ground, and you need your rest, and I’d ordered breakfast specially, and... ”
“I wanted to go,” I say through gritted teeth.
“I know but it would have been nice if we’d all eaten together,” she says, unperturbed.
“We had dinner together last night.”
“The prodigal son returns,” Dad says, walking into the room wearing swim shorts and a T-shirt. He has a newspaper under his arm and his hair is still damp from the shower. Giving me a quick wink, he reaches for an apple from the fruit bowl. It is funny how he can say whatever he wants to me – often much worse things than my mother says - and it doesn’t come close to irritating me in the same visceral way.
“Want a coffee, Da?” I ask, hoping his arrival will end my mother’s line of questioning.
“No, thanks,” he says, walking to the fridge and grabbing a beer.
“But before dinner, Aiden,” Mum says, edging closer to me. “You still didn’t really explain where you were all yesterday afternoon.”
I pull the cup out from the coffee machine and walk away, heading towards Dad now that I see him sitting at the table on the terrace. I hear my mother’s footsteps behind me as I finally respond. “Ma, I need to be able to do things by myself sometimes. You can’t expect us to spend all day every day together this week.”
“I don't mind you doing your own thing while we're here. I just worry...”
