Tam: I’m not humouring you. And nothing is fine until I get to tell you that to your face
Bhodi doesn’t reply. Or read the message. But again, I let it go and focus on my work until he comes back online a while later.
By then, I’ve smashed through my orders and I’m climbing in the van to make the penultimate deliveries of the year. Bhodi still doesn’t reply, but with a couple of hours to go until he comes home, I can live with that.
I make my rounds. Go home and put the finishing touches to the gifts I’ll deliver tomorrow. Then I wait by the window with Rudy, tracking every sweep of light on the road outside. Every rumble of an engine and every daft skip in my heart as I crane my neck to look for Bhodi. I wait and wait and wait for him.
But he doesn’t come home.
Nineteen
TAM
For all the calm I’ve fostered while I’ve worked the night away, it dissolves like salt in water when three a.m. rolls around and Bhodi’s still not home.
Chill. He’s worked late before.
Sound logic, but it’s lost on me as irrational dread grips my heart and I pace my house like a lunatic.
Something’s wrong.
I have zero evidence except the darkened annex and the empty spot on the pavement where Bhodi’s car should be, but I’m so convinced it’s true I barely last another hour before I’m dashing outside to my van.
Sans boots, of course, and the return of the frost is the shock I need to stop me in my tracks.
“Fuck.” I press my fist to my chest and take a deep breath, utilising every tool I possess. But the fear in my heart remains and I do the only thing I can think of. I call Sab and garble athim before he’s even awake, a messy torrent of French and English even he has trouble understanding.
“Whoa.” His voice catches like he’s swallowed glass. “What’s wrong?”
I say it all again.
I think.
I fixate on the rustling at Sab’s end as if it can drown out the panic rising in me. The raw feeling I haven’t faced head-on in years. I can’t remember the last time my little brother had to talk me down from the ledge.
Bet he can, though, and I let flashbacks pound my brain with every weak moment I’ve ever had. Because that’s super helpful right now.
“Take a breath,” Sab orders. More awake. “Then go back in your house and call Bhodi instead of me.”
“What if he doesn’t answer?”
“Then you’ll know he’s driving or working, and either fucking way, he’ll be home soon.”
He’s right. I know he is. Bhodi’s shifts have run over before. By longer than this. But with so much unsaid between us, everything feels different.
Ifeel different. “Je l'aime.”I love him.
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because I knowyou. And I’ve never seen you as content and happy as you are around him—” Sab yawns and runs out of words.
Guilt threatens the anxiety still gripping me. He’s sleeping in a shitty Travelodge after packing his stuff into storage, and I want him here with me. With Esme. But it’s not happeninganytime soon—if ever—and I have to accept that. “I’m sorry I woke you up. Go back to sleep.”
“Tell me you love me and promise you won’t drive while you’re this wired.”
“I love you.”
