‘Just two, today, hen.’ Will got a call as we were leaving, changing his mind on hanging out with us. Probably on a promise.
She turns to face us, her eyes tracking to the door we’ve just walked through. ‘No Will, then?’
He’s her favourite—he’s usually every woman’s favourite and charm its-fucking-self, when he has half a mind.He has some nerve to tease me about my sex life.
Keir, on the other hand, is still licking his divorce wounds. It wasn’t that long ago his wife left him for some ballbag, getting a wedge of his dough in exchange for leaving him their daughter. He may have called it the best deal of his life, but now he doesn’t have much of a life beyond work and home. No late Saturday nights for him, and no trawling clubs for pussy. A pint or two in this spit and sawdust establishment following a game is the most he allows himself.
‘You’re looking battered there, Keir, love.’
‘You should see the other fella,’ he says, grinning as he passes over a twenty to pay for our drinks.
‘I hope you got the better of ’im,’ she says in her nasally north London twang.Norf Landan,as the locals say.
Keir waves away his change, and she leaves us to our inspection of our drinks, either guessing we’re not in a bantering mood or not interested in our company withoutMr Flirtatioushimself.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ He doesn’t turn, though I can sense him eyeing me carefully through the speckled mirrored wall behind the bar.
‘Nope.’ I pick up my pint, swallowing deeply.
‘Fair enough.’
We’re blokes. We don’t do heart to hearts on the regular. In fact, the only reason he knows how I feel about Fin, my little sister’s best friend and the woman I love from a distance, is whisky.
A few months ago, he’d been having a bad day. His ex had visited, which I ken she does when she needs cash—coming home with threats of courts and visitation rights, when really all she wants is more dough. It messes with his head. Not that anyone would guess. I think the wordstoicwas invented for him. Anyway, one glass led to another until we’d drank enough to fell a horse, and I’d told him how I’d fallen for my sister’s best mate years ago. How I’d lost her twice now to other men. The first time she was barely twenty-one when she went travelling and came back hitched. The second time? She’d fallen in love with some arsehole while I’d told myself I was giving her time to get over the first.
I’m a two-time loser where she’s concerned.
So we aired our drunken hurts, and brushed the secrets shared back under sobriety’s carpet the next day. As men, we only refer to the topic of that night in the most general of terms.
All right, pal?
Aye, no’ so bad. Yer self?
‘What you need is something else to focus on.’
Keir’s words break though my introspection. ‘Aye? So I’ve been told.’
‘Why?’ he asks, frowning. ‘Who else knows?’
‘About Fin getting married?’ Turning to face him, I match his frown with one of my own.
‘No, daft arse. About you and Fin.’
‘There is no me and Fin,’ I answer glumly, staring now into the amber of my pint. And there never will be. ‘There’s just Fin. Then there’s just me. And that bastard in between.’
‘He seems like a decent enough bloke,’ he says, referring to Rory, the man she married a few days ago.
‘You’re supposed to be on my side.’
‘You know what I meant. He doesn’t look the type to rag her about for not havin’ his tea on the table when he gets home.’
‘Yeah. He is a decent bloke,’ I answer begrudgingly.
‘Who did you tell?’
‘It’s all right; I didn’t gate crash the ceremony, yelling my objections.’ I’d have liked to on some level—the level where she’d see me as someone other than a brother figure.
‘No, that’s not you.’ Keir says evenly. ‘You’re too conscious of other people’s feelings.’
