My soul screamsyes, but the responsible parent I’ve learned to be takes more persuading. And whatever Galen’s message means, the fear of getting ahead of myself is so visceral I nearly choke on it.
Stop.
Believe him and go from there.
I’m on the floor in the bathroom doorway while Esme flings bubbles around. Some hit my phone screen. I wipe it on my leg as a news notification pops up, but I swipe it away without reading it and open Galen’s message instead, studying it with more concentration than I ever did our FlingIt thread.
I feel likeIwrote it. Like he plucked the words from my soul and fired them back at me.
It makes me wonder again if I’m reaching too hard, but I’m pulled out of that spiral by the front door opening and my brother’s heavy boots on the stairs.
Tam breaches the landing, his face folded in an expression I don’t recognise.
I frown. “Qu’est-ce qui ne va pas?”
What’s wrong?
My brother runs his gaze over me, through me—intome, the way only he can. “How long have you been up?”
“A while. Why? And what are you doing here, anyway?”
“What do you think I’m doing here? I’m not fitting a four-kilo capon in my oven and you know it.”
“So…?”
“So we’re having Christmas on Cosmic Avenue this year. I already told Rudy he can sleep on your stupid head.”
As Tam speaks, the canine demon blasts through his legs and tears into the bathroom like a cartoon handbag with twigs for legs.
Esme laughs and laughs and laughs, and I suppose it’s worth it for having to cook Christmas dinner in my own kitchen when it’s far more fun to mess up Tam’s.
I give my phone screen one last stare and shut it down, abandoning it to heave myself from the floor. “Watch her while I get dressed?”
Tam eyes my phone. “Who were you talking to?”
“No one.”
“You had WhatsApp open.”
“I was reading an old message.”
“From who?”
I’m halfway to my bedroom. I stop on the landing and rotate to face my brother. “Why are you all up in my business? You think I’m tapping up a dealer?”
Tam’s frown turns to a glower he doesn’t mean. “No. You’ve just been so fucking emo lately I don’t know what’s going on with you.”
“Nothing’s going on with me that you don’t already know about.”
I’ve told him some stuff about me and Galen. Not everything. Just that we were close, and then we suddenly weren’t, and I fucking hate it. It’s hard to hide from Tam when I’ve needed him enough to spend five nights out of the last seven kipping on hiscouch. He doesn’t know I saw Galen in ASDA, though. And I’m happy to keep it that way.
I retreat to my bedroom, grateful Tam went through my shit while I was working so much and washed my clothes. Grateful I have him when I so very nearly lost him forever.
With that on my mind as much as Galen and his earth-tilting message, I go back to the bathroom and watch Tam lift Esme from the bath and wrap her in a fluffy towel I’ve never seen before. “Is that from the magic box?”
Tam glances over his shoulder. “Figured she should have at least one thing she can’t eat. Hey, did you have the TV on yet today?”
“Only YouTube Kids. Why?”
