‘No, it’s no drama, I’ll go!’ I say chirpily.
Something tells me that if I let her talk to Sam, she’d make things immeasurably more awkward. Plus, it is the perfect excuse to escape from this forced one-on-one. So, I flash her one more smile and hastily make my way across the stone floor towards the barbeque.
Sam stands tall and joyful, singing along to the music as he flips a burger in his barbecue corner. A beer bottle rests in his spatula-less hand, which he raises to me in salute as he spots me sauntering over.
‘Long time no see! El said you’d be coming.’ He stretches his arm out for a hug, the bottle cold against my skin as he squeezes me tightly. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Verona, with my sisters. El said I was coming?’ I ask.
What happened to ‘forgetting we had a thing’?
‘Sure did,’ he scoffs.
He offers me his beer bottle. I grab it without a second thought and take a hearty swig, taste be damned. Then he aggressively cleans a patch of the grill, before laying a piece of foil down and topping it with a veggie burger.
‘She hasn’t stopped interrogating me about that night in Berlin. Said the two of us should share a room. D’you have fun with your sisters?’ he asks, moving on.
‘Tonnes,’ I say.
‘Glad to hear it!’ Then he gestures to El and Noah, cuddling on a deckchair in the distance. ‘That’s weird, right?’
I splutter, the beer going up my nose. ‘Why do you think it’s weird?’
He side-eyes me as I recover, before going back to the burger and shrugging. ‘Just didn’t see it coming I guess.’
I raise my eyebrows. ‘Even that night in Berlin? She was all over him; it seemed fairly obvious to me.’
But he remains unfazed. ‘That’s just El. I mean, you should have seen her the first night she met me.’
‘Oh, I believe it. I saw the way you two hugged hello in Berlin.’
He smirks. ‘Were you jealous?’
I have to admit it. ‘Kind of.’
His lips twist further into a fairly satisfied smile. Then he shimmies the now-ready burger onto his spatula before holding it out towards me as I scramble for an empty plate. I grab a bun from the table and make a start on the sauces as he continues to grill.
‘So, you really think that they’re weird?’ I prompt him. ‘Why? What have they been doing that’s so weird to you?’
I came here ready to back them. I am Noah’s friend after all, and I want him to find his perfect partner just as he intended. However, it’s spine-tinglingly validating to know someone else might just get bad vibes from El too. Maybe I’m not heartbroken because he’s with someone, maybe I’m heartbroken because I know deep down that he’s with thewrongsomeone. Perhaps a second opinion will give me grounds to bring it up with Noah. I take another swig of Sam’s beer.
He pauses in contemplation. ‘Okay, maybe not weird, per se. It just wasn’t the couple I was expecting to find.’
‘Oh. Who were you expecting?’ I ask.
He turns to me, eyebrow raised. ‘I think you know.’
‘You and me?’
He snorts. ‘You and Noah. You had a vibe that night, as much as El tried to convince me you didn’t. I went in trying to move past it, but honestly with the way you two acted I didn’t think we’d make it as far as we did.’
I feel my cheeks grow hot. ‘Noah and I are just friends. Is that why you ghosted me?’
He chuckles. ‘It was hardly a ghost. I asked you if you wanted to see me again, you said no and that was the end of the convo. Didn’t think we’d meet again, though.’
‘But you’re so excited we have,’ I say jokingly.
‘Jumping for joy,’ he says, deadpan. ‘For real though, it is nice to see you again. Especially after the glowing review you wrote.’
