Sam shrugged, and Eddie appeared behind him, her wild strawberry-blonde hair blowing in the wind. “I made him come,” she said. “We’ve got something to tellyou.”
“You couldn’t havecalled?”
Sam snorted. “Right. Like you ever pick up the phone thesedays.”
More guilt lanced Dylan’s veins. Was his behaviour towards Sam and Eddie really so different to what he’d accused Angelo of? “Sorry. Shitty week. You comingin?”
Apparently they were. Dylan led them to the kitchen, avoiding the living room where they’d spent their last encounter in Dylan’s flat?—naked and entwined on the couch, Dylan fucking Eddie from behind while she went to town on Sam’s cock. The recollection had excited him way back when, but he wasn’t in the mood for a trip down memorylane.
He went to the fridge and retrieved the milk, giving it a safety sniff before he risked boiling the kettle. “I’d offer you a beer, but the smell of it would probably have me puking on yourshoes.”
“Hanging?”
Eddie’s gaze was concerned, but it was Sam’s stare that made Dylan squirm. He turned his back on them and filled the kettle at the sink. “I’m dying. Getting blotto on a school night is always a badidea.”
“Must’ve been a heavy night,” Sam said. “You looktraumatised.”
The word was so fitting that Dylan laughed, the sound unnaturally loud in the quiet kitchen. “Something like that. But I don’t want to talk about it.” He faced them again. “You said you had something to tell me. If you’re pregnant, I’m not playing godfather. I hatekids.”
Eddie cringed. “Pregnant? Are youserious?”
“I’ll take that as a nothen.”
“And then some.” Sam slid onto a stool at the breakfast bar, looking like he’d always been there, which he pretty much had until Dylan had wimped out on that friendship too. “We’d have to see each other to get pregnant, and Eddie’s been on tour for amonth.”
Fuck. Dylan dumped the kettle on its stand and flicked the switch. “I’m sorry, I forgot. I’m such a shit friend. Dude, you should’ve calledme.”
Sam rolled his eyes. Another man would’ve repeated the fact that hehadcalled Dylan, over and over, but Sam had little patience for conversations that went in circles. He pulled Eddie close and buried his face in her hair, leaving Dylan for her to dealwith.
“We’re moving,” Eddiesaid.
“Okay.” Dylan had expected this. Sam and Eddie had lived in Sam’s crappy studio flat while she’d finished uni, but it was far too small to accommodate them long term. “Are you going to rent in Vauxhall or try furtherout?”
Eddie disentangled herself from Sam, and they exchanged a glance. “Actually, we’re going to move to Warsaw with Artur. I scored a place in the Polish National Orchestra. A first chair. It’s at the back, butstill.”
Dylan didn’t know jack about orchestra hierarchy, but he knew how hard Eddie had worked to reach the top of her game in London, closing out her time at Goldsmiths University as leader of their prestigious orchestra. “Wow. That’sawesome.”
“Really?” Eddie bit her lip. “You don’t have your awesome faceon.”
Dylan abandoned the kettle and claimed his own stool at the counter, his legs wobbling as he sank down. “Sorry. I’m just a bit shocked. I’d figured that you’d be on the move when you graduated, but Poland?Damn.”
“It’s been a long time coming,” Sam said. “Pops wants to take that bloody urn home, and he wants to show me where he came from before he’s toofrail.”
Dylan’s heart constricted. Sam’s grandparents werehisfamily?—he still mourned Sam’s wonderful grandmother?—and the thought of losing his grandfather too... shit. He couldn’t bear it. “Artur’s okay, though, right? There’s nothing you’re not tellingme?”
“He’s fine,” Sam said. “Just aware of his own mortality. But it’s more than that for me. I want to do something with my life while Eddie’s tearing the world up with her violin, and I can’t do that flipping eggs inVauxhall.”
“But you do it so well,” Dylan retorted with a ghost of a grin he didn’t really mean. “Vauxhall won’t be the same withoutyou.”
“It’ll be all right. That bakery opened by the river last summer and turned the whole borough on its head. Can’t move for hipsters sitting on the pavement with their fucking sourdough sconesnow.”
Dylan laughed. “I know the owners of that place. At least, I usedto.”
“Meet ’em down the sex club didyou?”
“Notquite.”
Sam shook his head. “I don’t want toknow.”
