“I can’t picture you as a gangster.”
Tam snorts. “Good.”
“Does that mean you weren’t one?”
“It means I wasn’t much of one.”
He’s smiling again, so I can’t tell if he’s joking. And I decide it doesn’t matter. I like this version of Tam. Who he was ten years ago is only as important as he wants it to be.
“How’s Sab?”
I turn my head as I ask the question. He mirrors the action and it brings us face to face, intimately close on the compact sofa bed. “I think he’s gay.”
It’s the last thing I expect him to say. And I’ve learned with Tam, to give him a minute to define what he means.
“Sab’s as into men as I am,” Tam elaborates. “But he’s never explored it. Every time I think he’s going to, he ends up in a relationship that blows up in his face.”
“Like this one?”
Tam purses his lips and takes an inhale through his nose. “I don’t like saying bad things about Esme’s mum.”
“It’s not a crime to not like someone.”
“You can tell I don’t like her?”
I want to reach for Tam so bad my fingers twitch. So I do it, smoothing the divot between his brows without comment.
He smiles a little, and I’m so here for that, even though it’s fleeting before his expression sobers again. “Charmaine’s not good for Sab. I always thought she got pregnant on purpose, so she had something to hold over him. Or a backup plan if whatever she was really gunning for didn’t work out.”
“What do you think now?”
“I think she’s a toxic bitch—a toxicperson—who cheated on my brother. And I feel like a cunt for being relieved she did because I want him away from her.”
“You’d be more of a cunt if you didn’t want him away from something that’s bad for him.”
Tam nods, slowly. “That’s how I knew from the start she didn’t care about him. Sab had a coke habit way back when. It’s how he ended up at the church. He’s been clean years, but it’s still not okay to rack up lines on the coffee table around him, you know?”
“She did that?”
“A few months back. Her and her mates piled into the house for a mad one. Didn’t give a fuck that he was right here with the baby.”
“That’s awful.”
“Yup.” Tam sighs and pushes his hair back with his good hand. “Like, I couldn’t do that to a stranger. Toyou, the split second we met, and Sab…he’s got his faults, but he’s the best brother I could ever have. It makes no fucking sense to me that she can’t love him how he deserves.”
“Would he want that from her if she did?”
“I don’t know. Sab’s not like me. He needs more than a hookup. But he always picks shockers to invest in.”
“What about you? What’s your track record like?”
“Recently?” Tam gives me a shameless once-over. “Impeccable. But I’ve fucked up too, plenty of times. The dude I was riding away from the night of the accident slept with my boss.”
“Ouch.”
Tam shrugs it off. “I got over it pretty quick. I had other things on my mind. What about you? I know this other bloke messed with your head, but what was your life like before that?”
“Probably a lot like Sab’s, minus the blow habit and babies.” The wind whistles outside, gusting snow against the windowpanes, reminding me that I still haven’t figured out the log burner. “Are you cold?”
