‘Haven’t you heard, Mo,’ shouts Marcus, ‘our boy ain’t dating at the moment.’
Another burst of laughter, from everyone, greets this. I look around at them all. ‘Thanks, boys, thanks a lot.’ More laughter.
‘Seriously? You not got anyone? I don’t think that’s been a thing since we were twelve. Was it twelve?’ Henri says.
‘Nah, ten at least, I reckon. This man ain’t never not had a girlfriend. He had started whilst we were still swapping Digimon cards,’ Luke added.
‘Thanks. Thanks for that.’ I nod, place my hand on my chest and do a faux bow before lifting an imaginary cup.
‘Cassie’s got him on a short leash. She’s stepped in and told him he needs to stop searching for a wifey and spend some time on his own,’ Marcus tells everyone.
‘Not exactly what’s going on,’ I answer quickly, scrunching up my nose to reinforce the point that Marcus, as ever, is chatting shit.
‘Yeah, what have I got wrong then?’ Marcus sits up and looks across at me. I shrug, I share most things with the boys but I’m not going to start talking to them about Cass and Jas. Cass would never forgive me. Especially if she goes back to work at Mama K’s. I love Marcus like a brother but discretion is not one of his qualities. Neither is silence. He likes an audience and has the filter of an overactive seven-year-old.
‘Not much.’ I decide that rolling over has to be the easiest way after all.
‘So you’re not dating at all? How long has that been?’ Luke asks.
I shrug again. ‘Been a while.’ I cast my mind back to the family zoom when I had made the initial promise. That has to have been two months ago at least.
‘No women at all?’ Luke asks. I don’t know why they’re having so much difficulty understanding this.
‘He’s not saying no women,Cassis saying no women –’ I shoot lasers at Marcus and he laughs and carries on ‘– but you should have seen the gal he came into Mama’s with a few weeks ago. She was fine. Like Hollywood, no-filter-needed fine.’
‘That was work,’ I say brusquely.
‘Yeah, so you both said, but I’m telling you the chemistry these two had was lighting up the place.’
I roll my eyes and let out a sigh. I might not be able to talk to them about Cass but I really could do with speaking about Lily. I still haven’t told my sister about it all yet and there is so much shit spinning around in my head with this I could do with talking it out. I have spent the last week convinced I have ruined everything, and it hasn’t been helped by getting a message from Jinx earlier inviting me to a planning lunch. I was more than slightly relieved that I had footy and a ready-made excuse not to force myself into yet another situation with Lily. Jinx’s last invite didn’t exactly pan out well.
I’ve given my word I’ll help with the #MakeSureJinxWins plan and I will but I really don’t need things to take an even worse turn with Lily. I knew she needed space after our night together but there’s space and then there’s silent, never-ending depths of far-out galaxies, and with her not even returning my messages now, that’s where I feel she's banished me to.
I miss her.
I miss the sparky, slightly flirty banter we used to have and I’ve spent the best part of the last fortnight working out how to get it back.
But it may never happen.
This woman has so many sides to her and she’d been softening around the edges the more and more time I spent with her. Having her talk to me so frankly about her past felt like a bit of an honour to be honest. I believed her when she said she had never told anyone else about what that bastard had done to her in school. And it made me want to wrap her up and chip away at all the insecurities that she still carries.
After telling me about her PCOS, I went away and read about it, learned that her periods have always been a nightmare, and yet I hadn’t joined up all the dots until I stood in her room.
I have seen so many sides of Lily now and it’s hard to believe that the Lily with her head on my chest on the night of the ledge was once intimidating to me.
It’s also hard to deal with the fact that it was a one-off.
‘Yo, Jay!’
‘Eh?’ I say, turning my attention back to the boys.
‘You were absent there for a bit. You okay?’
‘He’s thinking of that girl, I’m telling you.I’mthinking of that girl and I don’t even know her.’
‘That’s cos you’re perverted man,’ Mo shoots back quick as a flash, shaking his head.
‘Unnecessarily harsh,’ Marcus responds.
