“You’ve been reading too many Penguin wrappers.”
“You gotta hand it to me for setup,” he said, beaming at me. Genuinely happy.
How many more moments like this did I have? Not many, I thought. Best to savor it.
“The setup was good, I can’t fault it,” I admitted.
“You looked really excited there, for a second. When I mentioned kids.”
I looked down and kicked up a handful of snow. “I’ve always wanted children. Two, close in age, so they’d always have each other.”
I’d never told anyone else that before. It had seemed like such a silly fantasy.
“Two sounds good,” Andy said quietly.
When I looked up in surprise, he was smiling softly.
“It does?”
“Yeah, one each. No one ever has to have zero parents at a recital or game or whatever it is they’re into.” Andy shrugged.
“Unlike us, you mean,” I said, thinking of all the Christmas pantomimes I’d been in that no one who loved me had seen.
“Unlike us,” Andy agreed.
Weweretalking about children. Right now, out here in the snow, we were talking about our future children, ourlifetogether.
I had to tell him. Andy was talking about havingchildrenwith me, and I was keeping this awful, selfish secret like a time bomb under my ribcage.
He deserved better. Better than me, better than my selfishness and my cowardice.
“Andy, I... the thing is, I, umm… it’s… fuck.” I ran a hand through my hair.
I knew I needed to say it, but how? I’d already left it too long. He’d hate me. He’d walk away right now and never speak to me again, I wouldn’t even bloody see him when I collected my things from our apartment.
The sound of a door swinging closed in the distance made me look back at the house, and my heart sank.
Dammit.
Will waved cheerfully at the two of us, jogging over to catch up.
If looks could kill, he would have died instantly. Either fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, he wasn’t paying any attention to me.
His attention was focused wholly on Andy, and I may as well have been invisible. Not that I was desperate for Will’s attention.
I would have been quite happy for him to ignore me for the rest of my life.
“Lovely morning for it, hmm?” Will asked as he fell in beside us, looking around with a broad smile on his face as though we’d never had an argument in our lives. “Bracing.”
“Bracing,” Andy repeated.
Will either didn’t hear the sarcasm, or ignored it. Always hard to tell with him.
Andy bent down to let the dogs lick his face as he took the ball from them and threw it again.
“They’re fond of you, aren’t they?” Will said cheerfully. “Everyone seems to be. You’re quite the hit, Andy. Kit never did tell us where he found you.”
“In New York,” I said, testily.
