“Maybe invite your new neighbour.”
Jake snapped his head round to see Zack looking over towards her field.
Her field.
The field that should’ve been his.
“Nope.”
Zack shook his head. “That’s not how we do things round here…”
The lecture was cut short with the ringing of Zack’s phone.
Jake listened in as Zack answered, the expression on his cousin’s face telling him exactly how they’d be spending the next few hours.
“We’ll be there in fifteen. See you at the car park, west face.”
“Call out?” Jake knew the answer already.
Zack nodded, putting his phone away. “I’ll never understand why people go out in this. Landslide on the west face of Bleak Tor. Looks like your barn roof won’t be the only thing we’ll be climbing today.”
“So,”Scott Maynard sat down, his large hand wrapped around a pint pot. “Have we worked out why the fuck someone would go climbing up a mountain wearing shorts in February?” He was still dripping slightly, a couple of bar towels wrapped around his shoulders.
Jake was trying desperately not to look at the bar. He stared at Scott like he’d just grown a second head with a unicorn’s horn on it, or a penis, which was probably more apt for his cousin.
“Most people are at least three slices of bread, a packet of ham and two sausage rolls short of a picnic.” Jake was not going to look at the bar. There was no way his eyes were going to land over there. Not at all.
Zack clutched his pint like it was the holy grail. “Shorts. In February. And the weather was only ever forecast to be fucking freezing with a side of really cold rain. It wasn’t like we were having freak sunshine and it suddenly turned. I swear some people are too thick to live.”
“To be fair, Jake’s gone rock climbing in shorts in February before now.” Scott eyed him from over his glass. “Which totally proves his point.”
Jake still did not look over at the bar.
“Jake knows exactly how to climb in February in shorts and not fall and sprain his ankle.” Jake had no issue talking about himself in the third person. “And it was a warm February.”
“He has a point.” Alex, the third Maynard brother, sat down next to him. “It was something stupid, like fourteen degrees.”
No one disagreed with Alex. Mainly because he was usually right.
“How did we all end up on call out?” Alex stared at Scott, who was partly responsible for the rota for the search and rescue team. “Who fucked that one up?”
Scott yawned and rubbed his beard. “Keren. She’s planning something. Somehow she managed to find the rota and change it.”
Zack scowled, draining his pint. “It’ll be something that means we’re all on babysitting duty.”
“By all, you mean the two of you?” Alex looked smug. “Some of us aren’t being sicked up on..”
Jake grinned, still managing to not look at the bar. He was one of two single Maynards left. Zack and Scott were both married with baby daughters, and Rayah, Jake's sister, was married with a baby on the way. Alex was still single – maybe. He tended to be so stoic, Jake wasn't entirely sure. All Jake was sure of was that Alex seemed less likely to notice women lately, except for sizing them up in the way all cops did, categorizing potential law breakers. This made him too boring for the town gossips, and too inadvertently insulting to be a proper wingman.
“Not long until Jonny’ll be being sicked up on again.” Zack looked delighted. “When’s Rayah due?”
Rayah was Jake’s long-suffering sister and currently pregnant. Jonny was her husband, and best friend of Zack. He already had three children from his first marriage, and Jake remembered him bragging about his sleepless nights being behind him.
“She's got a ways to go. The way she was whining the other day, it'll be a couple years – or maybe just feel like it.” Jake smirked and caught movement at the bar from the corner of his eye.
Scott stood up. “I’m not in the mood for this tonight.” His attention was straight at the bar.
“Why? What’s she doing now?” Jake didn’t turn his head. He didn’t want to see her; didn’t want to acknowledge she existed.
