He stares at me blankly for a while before looking over my shoulder and noticing the group of friends and family around us is starting to take notice. He swallows, and I see his throat move, his emotions written all over his face. He’s pissed off at me, and he’s embarrassed. And I feel like the worst kind of arsehole.
“Thank you. I’ll have a red wine, please. Malbec if they have it.”
I nod, and he brushes past me, leaning away so he doesn’t even have to touch me.
Fuck.
The festivities are raucous as usual. People coming and going from our table to play darts, or pool, or to buy a round at the bar. Thepub is busy tonight, and Sam is clearly stressing out. It hits a peak at about nine o’clock, and Corey gets up, disappears behind the bar, and just starts serving people. It’s obvious Sam needs some help – his one other barman is struggling to keep up. The look of relief and gratitude on Sam’s face as he smiles at Corey makes me want to punch Sam a little bit. If Corey doesn’t come out of tonight with a job, I’ll eat my hat.
It’s an hour or so later, when Corey comes back to the table once the bulk of the crowd seems to have gone home for the evening.
“Guess what,” he says excitedly to Rain.
“What, babe?” Rain replies.
“Sam gave me a job! I’m starting on Boxing Day!”
“Oh, Cor, that’s so great,” Rain gushes and pulls his friend into a hug.
The evening passes as it does every year, with increasingly loud behaviour from Archer and Cole, reminiscences of trouble we got up to when we were younger, and a fair amount of village gossip. What is completely out of the ordinary is the woman who strolls in, wrapped in a fur coat like some Bond villain with a designer overnight bag hanging from her arm.
Sam, now sitting with us after the crowd in the pub thinned to a level his other barman could manage on his own, turns a ghostly shade of white at the sight of her. I don’t think I imagine the sideways glance he gives to Wren and the way he blinks a little slower than usual, as though he’s gathering his courage before he gets up. I have a horrible feeling about this.
Wren and I went for lunch yesterday, and she told me how he has been ghosting her and how she’s not sure what she did to make him act so differently. I’ll admit hearing that from her made the guilt I felt for how I’ve been avoiding Corey increase tenfold. But right now, I can’t focus on that. I’m looking at Sam as he stands and approaches the stranger.
“Tash?” he says, his voice gravelly.
“Hi, Sam.” Her round belly, clear to see under her open coat, suggests that she is at least eight months pregnant, and the somewhat arrogant tone she uses as she speaks to our friend immediately puts our whole table on edge. She indicates her stomach and says, “I think we need to talk.”
Sam quickly recovers from his shock, and he starts frantically clearing glasses from the table, obviously wanting us to leave as soon aspossible. Curiosity, as usual, seems to get the best of Archer, and he introduces himself to this stranger, who is apparently not, in fact, a stranger to Sam.
“I’m Natasha,” she replies, coolly. “Sam’s wife.”
The anger I feel towards my old friend is visceral in that moment. Has he been fucking around on my sister? Has he been leading her on?
I look over at Wren and see she’s crying quietly and quickly gathering her things before bolting out of the pub, giving Sam a glare as she passes him. For his part, Sam looks lost, and if I’m not mistaken, completely heartbroken. I can’t pretend to care all that much about his broken heart right now, though. I’m more concerned about my sister.
We all make our way outside, and Wren is already halfway down the road towards the café, Poppy’s arm wrapped around her shoulders. In my experience, what little I have, when a woman is upset like this, nine times out of ten, her female friends are a better source of comfort than her overbearing big brothers are likely to be. So, begrudgingly, none of us follow our baby sister and instead make our way to Aidan’s house.
Rain and Corey are walking a little way ahead of us, and I curse myself for paying such close attention to the way I wish his jeans were a little less baggy just so I could see the way his hips might move as he walks. I’m not really hearing what my brothers are saying, except for vague guesses about how the fuck Sam has a wife that none of us knew about.
We’re almost back at the house when Corey suddenly shouts.
“What’s that? That glow?”
Without hesitation, we all run in the direction he’s pointing, towards the eerie glow that lights the sky ahead of us. I have a sinking feeling in my gut about what it is, I just hope like hell I’m wrong.
Sadly, I’m not.
We round the corner of the workshop, and the smell of smoke, acrid and cloying, hits me square in the chest. One of the yachts – I think it’s the newest one that only got launched today – is burning. The cabin is engulfed, and the flames lick their way up the mast, the heat incredible even from the relative safety of the quay heading where we stand as a group, frozen in shock.
I’m the first to react, instinct guiding meto get the boat away from the rest of the fleet. If this boat is destroyed, if we can get it away from those on either side of it, hopefully it’ll at least be the only one. I rush toward the mooring ropes, quickly followed by Archer and Cole, and we work to untie the yacht just as Aidan makes his way along the deck of the boat beside us and jumps onto the burning vessel, using his pocket knife to cut the rope for the mud weight that secures the front of the boat.
I mirror my brother and make my way to the yacht on the opposite side of the burning boat – Ladybird, I register, as I pass the stern and see the beautifully painted name – getting to the bow just as Aidan jumps onto the other boat. We use our feet to push the burning yacht out into the river as Archer and Cole use quant poles to help.
I feel sick as I stand there watching the hard work of my brothers burn in the freezing darkness. I feel even more sick when Corey pushes past me, a water hose connected to the large tank by the workshop, dragging behind him. He leaps onto the back of Ladybird before I can process what he’s planning. Rain follows suit and takes the second hose to the other side.
Looking back on this moment in the future, I’ll recognise this as the moment theboundaries I put up between me and Corey, flimsy as they may have been, began to crumble. The fear of him getting hurt is overwhelming, especially when he pulls open the cabin doors and disappears inside the burning vessel.
