“How do you feel about that?”
I traced my finger around the rim of my glass. “I hate that he still feels like we can’thandle him.”
“But?”
“He’s wrong,” I said. “When I left, Francouldn’thandle him on her own, and I’ll always regret that it damaged them both so much, but I’m here now, and I’ve told him a thousand times I’ve got his back.”
“You think he doesn’t believe you?”
“No... I think he doesn’t know how.”
There was no one else on earth who’d understand what I meant, but she did. Shelaid her hand over mine and stretched across the table to kiss my cheek. “Fuck it. Let’s take tomorrow off too and go and see him.”
“He might be a dick.”
“Let him. What’s the worst that can happen?”
I was too cynical to answer that question without trashing our day, so I smiled and agreed to another ridiculous plan.
“You want to go to the tiki lounge? I don’t even know if it’sopen.”
Mia wobbled precariously as she descended the steps of the market cross on the high street. “It’ll be open. It’s the weekend.”
“It’s Sunday night. That’s practically Monday.”
“Bollocks.” Mia collided softly with me, her eyes wide and misty with the bottle of cheap wine she’d put away. “I wanna dance.”
I was powerless to refuse her. As if I even wanted to. A late lunch hadturned into a lazy afternoon of drinking and reminiscing about the good times we’d forgotten in our obsession with clinging onto the bad. I wasn’t as tipsy as her, but I was as close to happy as I could remember.
We wove our way down the high street towards the vintage cafe that moonlighted as a cocktail lounge at the weekends, and found it open, warm, and inviting with its bright coloursand Eden Ahbez playing softly from a vinyl record player in the corner.
I got a beer and something fruity and frothy for Mia. Her face lit up like a summer’s day, and she ate the cherry from the top with the biggest smile I’d ever seen from her.
“You want to sit on the shark couch?”
“Sure.” I slipped an arm around her waist and half dragged her to the shark-adorned couch in the darkestcorner of the bar. “It’s every man’s fantasy.”
“Knob.” She slapped my shoulder, but there was no menace there, just a softness I craved like my lungs craved air. Perhaps she was happy too.
We cuddled up on the couch, letting the mellow vibe of the bar merge with the buzzed contentment of too much food and booze. Without her hand tickling up and down my thigh, I might’ve fallen asleep,but her touch pushed that shit out of reach. I pulled her on top of me so she was straddling my waist, her rounded thighs covering the bulge in my cargo shorts. “You’re driving me crazy.”
She giggled. “I know. It’s fun. I still want to dance, though.”
“Later.” I wove my hand into the hair at the nape of her neck. “Kiss me first.”
