“No reason. Did you eat?”
“No—”
Tam moves past me with Esme and I’m cut off by her flicking a last handful of fig-scented bubbles in my face.
She’s dressed by the time I get to her room, and Tam’s in motion again, carrying her downstairs.
Bemused, I follow and discover he really has brought Christmas to my house. Produce and presents fill every surface of the kitchen, and smack bang in the middle lie a thousand croissants from the bakery and the obnoxiously huge chicken I’d banked on making his life difficult, not mine. Honestly, I’m not sure it’ll fit in my oven either. Or how three blokes and Esme will get anywhere close to eating the whole thing.
Which puts Galen on my mind again.
I know he likes chicken and that he’s not going home to Kerry to spend Christmas with his family. That he’s working. Like Bhodi.
Do they have Christmas dinner at fire stations?
I have no clue, and I regret a lot of things about the last few months, but perhaps what gnaws at me most is that I spent somuch time just gazing at him like he wasn’t real when I could’ve been learning more about him.
Tam’s scowling into my fridge as if it stubbed his toe. I tell myself avoiding whatever that’s about is why I retrace my steps and sneak back upstairs to fetch my phone. Why I open Galen’s message again, study those words, and try and find some of my own. Should it matter he hasn’t been online since last night? That the time stamp makes me think of FlingIt and every night I lay there and wondered if he was gone for good or busy fucking other people?
My heart knows none of those things have been true for as long as I’ve known him. I don’t need a message to tell me that. But that 5 a.m. time stamp…it bothers me, a weird foreboding flickering in my gut, and it’s abruptly so fucking clear to me what I need to say to him.
I tap out a message, second-guessing every word a thing of the past.
Sab:You were never just a hookup to me. And I miss you too. Come find me when you’re ready x
I hit send, and it should feel strange that I’m the one offering him reassurance—I don’t even know why I’m doing it. But it feels right to parrot the words he whispered to me in the aftermath of the fryer fire at Hollymist Hall, and for the first time since I met him, the part of me I’ve never truly accepted…it settles.
It finds a home.
I pocket my phone and go downstairs. Tam has Esme sitting on the counter and wrapping bacon round chestnuts, something sticky already smeared on her face. I swear I hear the radio, but it cuts out as I venture into the kitchen and Tam looks shifty enough for me to assume he got spooked by some metal-head shit.
Years ago, we kept the CDs our parents left behind when they relocated to France. I move around Tam and slip one into the oldcontraption that’s made its way to the kitchen since Galen was here. It’s old jazz music, which I could do without any day of the year, but Esme likes it, and Tam used to once upon a time.
I flick a stray piece of bacon at him. “What’s up with you? Slayer creep out of the radio and get you?”
The bacon hits Tam’s chest and falls to the floor. Rudy hoovers it up and my brother doesn’t look up from his phone.
“That Bhodi?” I try again. “When’s he back?”
Tam finally gives me his attention. “He was supposed to be done by twelve, but that’s not happening.”
“Everyone off sick again?”
Tam’s phone buzzes. He glances at it, a divot growing between his brows. Then he looks at me—reallylooks at me. “Are you and Galen really done?”
Fuck. I keep forgetting I haven’t kept him entirely in the loop. “Um…I thought so, but then I saw him the other day, and he messaged me last night, so I think we might—what? Why is your face doing that?”
Tam takes a breath, all the while his phone keeps buzzing, and scoops Esme from the counter.
He carries her into the living room, searching for the TV remote while I trail after him, consternation threatening the fragile hope I woke up to, my patience evaporating.
“Why are you being so fucking weird?”
Tam finds the remote and sets Esme on her favourite beanbag to eat the mini apple pie he’s snuck her.
Then he comes to me, his expression as serious as I’ve ever seen it. “Was Galen working when you spoke to him last night?”
“I didn’t speak to him. I was asleep.”
