“Did you ask Sophie to call the wedding off?”
“No, but—”
“Did you tell her fiancé to be a self-satisfied smug arsehole?”
“No. But, Stuart, you don’t—”
“Did you do such a terrible job satisfying Rowan that she asked her sister to runaway bride to spite you?”
“I know how to satisfy a woman,” I retort, offended.
“Then how,” he continues, “have you, personally, ruined this event for us?”
“I…”
“Or is your god complex showing again? Does everything that happens in the world revolve around you, or is it only the bad ones?”
“I do not have a god complex!”
“No, you have a saviour one.” Somehow, Stuart manages to look down his nose at me, despite being two steps lower and about half a foot shorter. “Go and get some therapy, Angus. And in the meantime, stop blaming yourself for things that are out of your control, come back to the kitchen and get ridiculously, obnoxiously drunk with your family.”
“You really don’t blame me?”
Stuart smacks his head. “There isn’t enough wine in the world for this.”
“Did someone say wine?” Ross sticks his head around the bottom of the stairs.
“Aye, I’m parched.” Mason says from around the corner.
“Maybe if you hadn’t wasted an entire bottle on the kitchen table, you wouldn’t be,” Jonathan shouts from the kitchen.
“Does a man get no privacy in this house?” I ask, exasperated.
“Not when you have a shouting match in the stairwell,” Mason says.
I hate it when he’s reasonable.
“Stop being an arsehole and come back to the kitchen.” Ross waggles the bottle at me. “Let’s get shitfaced.”
“Fine! But if you get out-of-hand I’m calling Lucy.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Got her on speed dial.”
“No wonder Rowan left you.”
“You little shit.” I launch myself down the stairs, but Ross ducks backwards, bee-lining towards the kitchen and cackling gleefully as he barrels into Jonathan, who’s propped himself against the door lintel. “Come back here!”
“See! I told you he liked her,” Ross shouts at Mason.
“Obviously he liked her!” Mason calls back. “They were making cow eyes at each other from the moment they got here.”
“Shame he drove her off. She was good craic.”
“I did not drive her off.” We’re both in the kitchen now, but Ross has put the table between us as a barrier. I feint left, and he runs right, veering at the last minute to avoid my reaching hands. “We mutually agreed to go our separate ways.”
“Who knew you were made of such utter bollocks?”
