december, age thirteen
Fairy lights were strung up all around town, sparkling when the December sun dipped down below the horizon each afternoon. As much as Lucas hated the long dark nights and the short dreary days, he loved to watch Farnleigh transform into a winter wonderland as Christmas approached. In the centre of town was an enormous fir tree, at least thirty feet high with a silver star glittering at the very top. Metres of tinsel hung from the swaying branches, weighed down by baubles as big as a head.
Lucas loved the giant tree that went up every year in time for the Christmas lights to be switched on: he and Asher always went along to the ceremony, hanging back away from the buzz of the crowds. That was when he felt like Christmas was really on the way. He didn’t care if it was cold or if snow fluttered down; he wasn’t bothered about the Christmas films that his sisters had on a loop in the den. He just loved the tree that brightened the centre of town.
The last day of term was a half day. Students poured out of high school into town, bumping along the frosty streets to find somewhere to eat in their huge groups. Lucas didn’t follow them, nor did he head outside to find Audrie and wait for his mother. She wasn’t coming today: Audrie had arranged to go out with her friends and Lucas was waiting for Asher to meet him in his classroom before they headed back to his house together. He had been a little nervous about to whom the invitation had been extended until Adler had dropped into conversation that she would be going straight to the airport after school for a pre-Christmas holiday to the south of France.
Mika had been invited too but she had other plans, telling Lucas with a coy smile that she was going home with Tom after the whole school assembly that had ended the term. He had waved goodbye to the two of them and smiled at his grandfather when he had turned up to take them home, and he had walked back to his classroom to get his bag and wait. The place was eerily empty: even Mr Finney had headed straight home with his satchel over his shoulder and his coffee flask in his hand, wishing Lucas a merry Christmas as he had left.
When Year Eight had come to an end, Lucas had dreaded being put into a new class in September until Mr Finney had let it slip that he would be Lucas’s teacher for the next three years – and Mika’s too. Classes had chopped and changed and Lucas had been disappointed once more not to be put with Asher, but he got to keep his favourite teacher and thanks to choosing the same options without consulting each other, he and Mika shared every single class once more.
At ten past twelve, ten full minutes after the day had officially ended, Asher turned up at last with his bag hanging limply from one shoulder and his coat slung over his arm. He always looked a little dishevelled: his mother could get away with her lateness when she always looked immaculate in ironed shirts and important heels but Asher hadn’t inherited that skill from her. His shirt was untucked, his hair scruffy; even his grin was wonky.
“Ready?” he asked, as though Lucas would ever not be ready before him. He nodded and stood, slipping his bag onto both shoulders.
“Is it raining?”
“Nope, you’re good,” Asher said. “It’s a bit windy but Mum’s here anyway so we won’t be hanging around. Oh, and it’s a bit slippery – Addie skidded on the quad and nearly went head over heels just now.”
Lucas wished she had. Maybe that would knock some sense into her. He didn’t say that though, aware that each snide comment he thought made him almost as bad as her. Asher didn’t like it when he was rude about Adler so he kept the words inside, only ever spilling them to Audrie. He liked sharing his Adler-related grievances with her when she reflected everything he said with worse language and a more fiery temper. It was a side to her that had been well hidden until her little brother’s feelings got involved: ordinarily she was a docile girl, an eco-enthusiastic vegetarian with a passion for space and sea, but she could just as easily switch to pit-bull mode when her family was crossed.
Asher dug his hand into his pocket and took out a couple of gummy bears from the bag of Haribo stashed inside his blazer, popping them into his mouth before he rustled around in his other pocket and threw an unopened bag to Lucas.
“Thanks,” Lucas said, dropping them into his own bag to save them for later. He didn’t want to ruin his lunch, whereas the sweets were always Asher’s priority.
“Let’s go.” Asher nodded at the door, swinging his bag over his shoulder again and hastily shoving his shirt back into the waistband of his trousers. They were a little long, the hems scuffed where they caught under his heels and rubbed on the ground. Lucas followed him down to Ishaana’s waiting car, both of them hopping in the back seat. She turned around with a smile, hooking her arm around the back of the passenger seat.
“Freedom at last!” she said, reversing out of the tight spot she had manoeuvred herself into. “I haven’t done anything for lunch so I was thinking we could swing by Tesco and you can get whatever you want. No Mika?”
“She’s gone home with Tom,” Asher said, buckling himself in. “I think she likes him?”
“Those two are like an old married couple already with their jigsaws and crosswords,” Ishaana said with a laugh.
“I know, right? And Mika even drinks tea!” Asher said.
“She’s such a mini Pearl,” she said, pressing down on her brake when someone cut into her lane. “Fucking hell, watch where the fuck you’re going, stupid shit!” she cried out, her words contained in the car. Lucas widened his eyes and Asher groaned.
“Mum. That’s, like, four pounds in the swear jar.”
“Come on, Ash.” She laughed, shaking her head. “Your brothers swear more than I do.”
“No-one swears more than you do,” he said solemnly. “And they’re not adults.”
“I hate to break it to you but they are,” she said. “They’re both at uni.”
“They’re just grown up kids. You’re a mum. Mums aren’t supposed to swear.”
“I’m afraid you’re just going to have to suck it up – I’m too old to change. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks and this dog likes to say fuck.” She reached into her bag when she came to a red light and took a five pound note out of her purse, handing it to Asher without a word. The note had only come into her possession that morning when she had won a bet with her husband.
“I’ve never heard my mum swear,” Lucas said, mere commentary rather than judging Ishaana in any way. Although her language had offended his ears at first, he had got used to it by now. It tickled him to check on the swear jar every time he went over, the coins and notes piling up before it was emptied out and they started over again. It had started out as a bit of fun to curb her fowl mouth but when that had failed, it had become something of a savings account. Each time she emptied the jar, she transferred the same amount to inheritance accounts that her sons didn’t know they had.
“Your mother’s a better person than me, hun,” she said. “Now, let’s get something to eat.”
*
After a lunch of their own choosing, which Lucas had much appreciated when at home he just had to eat whatever had been cooked, the two of them headed to the playroom while Ishaana hung out with Pearl, gossiping in the kitchen. The women had been friends since they had shared a house in university and after several years of drifting in and out of touch, they had reignited their friendship when they had both had children far later than planned. After a few years in America, Pearl and her family had moved back to Farnleigh five years ago and since then, she had been as much a staple in Ishaana’s life as Mika was in Tom’s.
It was easy to while away hours in each other’s company as they reverted back to the good old days, not really doing much at all as they just existed together. Asher was still slowly making his way through the Harry Potter series, turning the pages slowly as he made sure to read each word. He couldn’t whizz through like Lucas did, his eyes unable to skim the pages so fast when he missed enough as it was, but he was determined to finish at his own pace, to add the series to the list of things he and Lucas shared.
Lucas was lost in his own world, a purple pencil in his hand as he filled in a potion bottle in his Harry Potter colouring book, his thirteenth birthday present from Asher a few months ago along with a fresh set of the colouring pencils that were quickly wearing down. When Asher had turned fourteen a couple of days ago, Lucas had given him a family size bag of Haribo and a hug. Not even a tight one. Just a hug.
“Asher?”
“Yeah?” He looked up from his book, his finger marking the line he was reading. His father had looked into getting a large print version of the series but they were a hefty weight already and increasing the font meant increasing the page number and therefore the size, making it all the more difficult to read them in bed.
“Why did Dylan break up with Audrie?” he asked. Four months later, the end of the relationship still played heavily on Audrie’s mind when they should have been coming up for their third anniversary. It was a big milestone for any relationship, let alone one that had started when she was fourteen, but it had been ripped out from under her.
“I don’t know,” Asher said. “He never really talked about it.”
“It’s been four months.”
Asher shrugged. “He pretty much went straight to uni. I’ve hardly seen him since September. He was supposed to be coming home this week but I think he went to … Amsterdam, maybe? I don’t know, some kind of uni football trip.”
“Oh.”
“Why?”
“I was just wondering,” he said. He hated to see his sister so upset. She had moped about for the last three weeks of summer after Dylan had broken up with her as though she couldn’t remember who she had been before she was half of a couple. Although she was doing better now, slowly recovering from the news that had come out of nowhere, she still didn’t understand why Dylan’s love had disappeared.
“Hey,” Asher said, replacing his thumb on the page with a ruler. “Lucas?”
“Yeah?”
“I need to tell you something.”
Lucas looked up, staring straight at Asher, but he couldn’t read his face. The changes in his tone and expression were too subtle for him to register, even when he squinted at his best friend to try to figure out what kind of thing he needed to say. “What?”
“Adler asked me out.”
Lucas’s grip on his pencil instantly clenched as though reacting to the words independently of the rest of his body. The tip dug into the page, a darker mark than the rest. “Out where?”
“You know, out,” Asher said.
“Out where?” Lucas repeated, growing frustrated by his friend’s obtuseness and the mere mention of Adler’s name.
“Not like that. I mean she asked me to go out with her. As in, you know, to be her boyfriend. She asked me to be her boyfriend,” he said, laying out the words in more plain and simple terms when the euphemism went over Lucas’s head. He worked hard with his language but he sometimes still struggled not to take things too literally.
The tip of the pencil snapped, a tiny purple shard shooting across the room. The jagged end left an ugly mark that nicked the line, eking into the white that wasn’t supposed to be purple. Lucas stared at the smear that wasn’t supposed to be there, racing after his lungs to catch his breath when he felt the tell-tale signs of panic clutching his chest. Adler had got under Asher’s skin, burrowing her way under the surface deep enough that now she couldn’t be removed without hurting him too.
“Lucas…”
“You said no,” Lucas said.
“No.”
“That’s what you told Adler,” he said, looking up from the slash of purple that ruined the page like a wound. Asher sighed.
“No. I told her yes. I said yes,” he said. It took a second for the words to sink in but once Lucas heard them, once he realised exactly what Asher was saying, he felt his heart drop to the floor and his stomach churned, curdling everything he had eaten for lunch.
“Why?” His voice was quiet, the word hardly louder than a whisper that Asher didn’t hear. His hearing hadn’t been great when he was born so early, slowly getting worse as he got older. Anything quieter than a regular voice went over his head.
“What?”
“Why did you say yes?” Lucas forced himself to speak louder, the words cutting him as they left his lips. Asher frowned as though he hadn’t expected the question.
“Because … I want to,” he said, unsure of what other explanation he could give.
“Why? Why would you want to be her boyfriend?”
“Why does it bother you so much?” Asher sat straighter, a prickle in his voice.
“Because she’s awful!”
“You hardly know her, Lucas. You don’t have a single class together – you only hate her because of primary school but that was more than two years ago. We’re not little kids anymore. Why don’t you try getting to know her?”
Lucas sat up, his heart thudding. His brain felt like it was trying to squeeze itself out through his eyes, an immense pressure in his head as a sickly mixture of rage and nausea flooded his stomach and bubbled up to his chest. “I’ve tried,” he said, trying his best to control the volume of his voice. “I’ve never been mean to her but she’s still mean to me.”
“She’s not mean,” Asher said. “That’s just how she is. She doesn’t mince her words.”
“What?” He frowned at the image in his head. Asher gritted his teeth.
“I mean she doesn’t hide what she’s thinking. She’s just honest.”
“In a mean way.”
“What exactly even is your problem with Addie?” Asher asked, his voice calm. He looked directly at Lucas, the two staring each other down with a sudden barrier between them. Lucas wasn’t used to that.
“I told you, she’s rude. She makes me feel bad.”
“Maybe that’s your problem,” Asher said. He didn’t mean it really, he didn’t mean the words to come out so harsh but he couldn’t understand where Lucas was coming from. All he saw was a primary school rivalry that had got out of hand, a problem that had never been dealt with.
“She’s my problem,” Lucas said. He swallowed hard. The last thing he needed to do was cry.
“You need to let go of this,” Asher said, slumping back in his seat. “If you can’t let go of some stupid primary school thing then it’d going to tear our group apart.”
Lucas bristled, digging his nails into his palms. “She’s already doing that. She wants to get rid of me – she hates me and she’s trying to take you away from me.” His nails left deep marks in his skin, a line of angry crescents along his palm. “She probably doesn’t even like you.”
That was a step too far, the angry words hitting Asher like a slap across the cheek.
“You’re being selfish,” he said, biting his tongue to stop himself from spitting the words out.
“No, I’m the opposite of selfish. She’s going to hurt you and I don’t want that to happen. Adler hasn’t changed at all and I don’t want her to hurt you too because you’re my best friend.”
“You don’t sound like it right now.”
Lucas blinked hard, his throat aching as his eyes burned. “I don’t understand how you want her to be your girlfriend when you know how much I don’t like her. Don’t you care?”
“I just think you’re wrong.”
Lucas stood, shoving his book and his pencils into his bag. “You sound like Adler.” He wrapped his hand around his bag strap and stormed out as the lump in his throat grew and grew and threatened to take over. His eyes burned as though he had rubbed chilli into them, tears stinging with the effort it took not to let them fall. When he took off his glasses to wipe his eyes, he walked straight into Pearl as she came out of the bathroom.
“Oh!” she cried, her hand on Lucas’s shoulder to steady herself. He flinched away from her touch. “Lucas? What’s wrong?”
“When are you getting Mika?” he asked, his words short and blunt to stop himself from crying through them. Pearl checked her watch. It was five o’clock already.
“I’m just about to go now,” she said. “Is everything ok?” She ushered him towards the kitchen where Ishaana was drinking a coffee.
“Can you take me?” Lucas asked. As close as he had grown to Mika, he didn’t know her mother very well and ordinarily he never would have dreamt of asking her to give him a lift but he felt as though he was about to burst. He couldn’t bear to be in Asher’s house for a moment longer, desperate to break out.
“Shit,” Ishaana said when she looked up from her phone to see Lucas on the edge of a breakdown. “Hey, what’s happened? Lucas?”
“We had a fight,” he said, pressing his quivering lips tight together.
“What? Why, hun?”
He didn’t answer that. It wasn’t his news to tell. Instead he looked up at Pearl who nodded at him.
“I’ll take you to your grandparents,” she said, car key in hand.
“Lucas,” Ishy said, but he shook his head before she could continue.
“I want to go,” he said, sure of that at least. Asher hadn’t even followed him out. It was like he didn’t care at all.
A minute after Pearl had left with Lucas, Ishaana stalked over to the playroom and pushed open the door to see Asher hunched over on the sofa, his phone on his hand.
“What on earth just happened?” she asked, her arms crossed.
“We just had a fight,” Asher muttered.
“I know you two. You don’t fight,” she said. “What’s going on? What did you say, Ash?”
Asher scowled. “Why do you think it has to be something I said?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Because you’re the one sulking in here and Lucas is the one who came out crying and begged Pea to take him home. In my experience, that means you probably said something to upset him and I’m not going to just sit back and let you hurt your friends, Asher. What happened?”
“I just told him I’m going out with Addie,” he said, mumbling his words. Ishaana’s eyes widened.
“What? You’re going out with Adler? That girl in your class?”
“Yeah. Why’s that such a shock?”
She didn’t tell him that for the past ten years, she and her husband had assumed he was gay. Instead, she shrugged and played it off as nothing when her mind was alight. No wonder Lucas was upset.
“He freaked out and we kinda fell out. I didn’t mean to upset him.”
“Well, great job there,” she said drily, relaxing her stance a little. “I don’t care who said what or who’s right – don’t like a girl come between you, ok? That’s not the Asher I raised.” She left him with those words, giving him the time and space for them to sink in as she returned to the kitchen, shaking her head to herself. Bishop came in from work with a frown on his face, looking over his shoulder before he met her eye.
“What’s going on? Why’d I just drive past Pearl and Lucas?”
She sighed. “The boys had a fight,” she said, and she leant close to kiss him hello. “You’ll never guess what about.”
“Your English?” he teased, his hand on her hip. She flicked him.
“You’re a twat, you know,” she said with a laugh. “No, Asher has a girlfriend.”
Bishop’s eyebrows shot up. “Seriously?” He laughed to himself. “Looks like you’re going to owe me a hundred quid soon.”
She gave him a look. “They’ve got four years left,” she said. “Don’t get too cocky.”
*
Maddie was surprised to see Lucas when she opened the door for Mika’s mother, her eyebrow shooting up as she and Pearl exchanged children. Mika left with a wave for Lucas, bouncing off with her mother, and Lucas sloped into his grandparents’ house.
“What’s with the long face?” she asked, her hand on his shoulder. He didn’t react. “Why’re you upset? Your mum told me you were with Asher for the night.”
“We fell out,” Lucas said.
“Oh, hun. Everyone falls out with their friends sometimes – you two will be fine, I’m sure. Strong friendships survive fallouts.”
“Adler’s his girlfriend now,” he said. Maddie’s eyes hardened.
“What? Why does he want to go out with her?”
“That’s what I said!” he cried out. “She’s such a horrible person. He said I’m wrong and selfish and that’s the kind of thing she would say. What if she’s making him hate me, hammy?”
Maddie held him tightly. “She can’t do that,” she said. “He’s not a stupid boy – he’ll come to his senses, baby. Don’t worry about it too much. He’s got a good head on his shoulders. Hers is completely rotten.”
Lucas nodded. “I want to go home,” he said quietly. Maddie smiled and rubbed his back, nodding.
“Ok. I’ll take you home.” Turning over her shoulder she yelled, “Nick? Are you around?”
He came to the top of the stairs with a towel tied around his waist, his body dripping as he wrung out his hair. “Yup. What’s up?”
“I’m taking Lucas home. Just letting you know,” she said, her eyes exploring his semi-naked form. With a wink she added, “I’ll see you later.”
The drive home was quiet. Lucas didn’t want to talk. He just wanted to get home, craving his mother’s arms around him. There wasn’t a lot that a hug from her couldn’t at least soothe, her embrace as soft as her words. She didn’t have to grip him so tightly: he knew she was there for him. Sometimes he forget th at for a while, it had been just the two of them – for her at least. He had spent every other weekend with his father and she had spent those days alone and he hated that. She had too, though she had never let him know just how much she had missed him when he was with Floyd.
The driveway was full, more cars parked outside the house than they owned. Behind Sarah’s and Truman’s cars was a third, one that rang a distant bell in Lucas’s mind. It was one he saw a lot, he knew, but he couldn’t place it until he got out of the car and peered inside the window to see his teacher’s familiar satchel on the passenger seat.
“Oh, Bree’s here!” Maddie said, joy in her voice as she said her best friend’s name. The two had known each other for thirty-seven years now, their first meeting before she and Nick had even started dating, and it hadn’t been long before they had become friends. They had seen each other through everything, their friendship always emerging stronger on the other side of marriage, birth and disease.
“Why’s she here?” Lucas asked as though his grandmother was a fount of all knowledge.
“Maybe she’s helping out with Lottie,” Maddie said, letting herself in with the key her daughter had given her. A couple of months after Charlotte’s diagnosis, further tests had shown that her hearing loss was more profound than initially thought. Temporary hearing aids had proved futile, making no difference whatsoever, and the audiologist had given no guarantee that cochlear implants would help. Rather than let the news get them down, Sarah and Truman had thrown themselves full force into learning sign language and teaching it to their daughter with the help of Bree and Kit. Lucas struggled to call him that when the man was very much Mr Finney to him, though that sounded far too formal outside of school.
While Kit was fluent, having started learning more than twenty-five years ago, Bree had been a certified sign language teacher for almost two decades. Twice a week, she held a class at the Farnleigh community centre that Sarah had started going to with Charlotte, and she took advantage of her friends every chance that she could.
“Hammy?”
“Yes, hun?”
“If Lottie can’t hear, how’s she going to speak?” Lucas asked, trailing behind his grandmother towards the sound of voices.
“She might not,” Maddie said, lips pursed. “I suppose that’ll be up to her, really.”
Lucas frowned, his automatic face when he was thinking. That wasn’t something he had really contemplated before until now, that he might not hear his sister’s voice. She would never hear his.
Sarah, Bree and Charlotte were sitting in a triangle on the floor as Bree demonstrated the signs she was teaching, talking as she went. Kit and Truman stood elbow to elbow, watching their wives and chatting to each other with a mug of tea each. Kit looked up when he saw Maddie, his face lighting as he pulled her into a hug.
“Hey, stranger,” he said, kissing her cheek. Lucas tried not to wrinkle his nose though he still struggled to see his teacher outside the classroom. “Hey, Lucas.”
“Hi.”
“How’s it going?”
“Ok,” he lied. “It’s weird having my teacher in my house.”
Kit laughed. “Just pretend I’m your granny’s best friend’s husband,” he said, sipping his tea.
“That’s not pretending,” Lucas pointed out. “That’s just a different truth.”
Maddie chuckled and stroked his hair, fondly tutting at him. “How’re things going here?” she asked. Kit nodded, rolling his lips together.
“Really well, actually. Charlotte’s very perceptive, or Bree’s just a good teacher.”
“So are you,” Lucas pointed out. In September, Kit had founded the school’s Talking Hands club, teaching sign language every Wednesday lunchtime when Bree had time to come in and help out. Lucas had joined immediately, desperate not to fall behind in communicating with his sister, and Kit was always willing to help him out with extra lessons.
“Cheers, Lucas. Always nice to hear from a student,” he said with a grin. “I haven’t driven you stir crazy yet, huh?”
“We’ve still got three years,” Lucas said. He wasn’t trying to be funny – it was just the truth – but he got a couple of laughs from his teacher and his grandmother anyway.
After a few minutes, Sarah stood and brushed down her skirt, greeting her son with a rosy smile. She had seemed happier than ever over the past month or so, ever since she had been told that the best option for Charlotte was to learn sign language: the choice had been taken out of her hands and she enjoyed learning how to communicate with her daughter, finally feeling as though she had a handle on her tantrums. After four months of hard work, they were finally beginning to understand each other.
“Hi, baby,” she said. “I thought you were with Asher today? Did you go home with Tom instead?”
Lucas shook his head. “I went home with Asher,” he said. Sarah frowned.
“Is everything alright?”
He stepped forward and hugged her, wrapping his arms around his mother and burying his face in her shoulder without another word. Alarm crossed her face and she looked up at her mother as she hugged Lucas back.
“They had a bit of a fallout,” Maddie murmured.
“Oh, Lucas,” Sarah said with a sigh, resting her cheek against his hair. When she went to let go of him, he held on tighter and she softened, cuddling him as though he was younger than his thirteen years. He still felt that way – in her head, he was as sweet and innocent as he had been at three. Now he was just taller and he had a bigger vocabulary. His view of the world hadn’t changed much at all in the past ten years.
A full minute passed before he let go and when she asked if he wanted to talk about it, he shook his head. There wasn’t much to say that would help. He looked down at his sister and waved. She waved back, smiling up at him. She had smiled a lot more over the past few months, her tantrums dwindling as her family made the effort to learn with her. She held up her left hand, her index finger pointing up, and mimed unzipping it with her other hand.
“You want a banana?” Lucas asked, copying the sign she had just made. “Have we got any bananas?” he asked his mother.
“In the kitchen,” she said, her cheeks pink as she beamed to see her daughter taking it all on board. “I can’t thank you enough,” she said to Bree, who just gave her a grin.
“All in a day’s work, eh?” she said. “You know my hours – I’m pretty much free all week except the four, five hours I teach. Any time you need me. And you know Nia said she’s more than happy to help out any time.”
Lucas came back with a banana, peeling it and holding it out to Charlotte when she reached for it. “Say thank you,” he said, signing as he spoke: he touched his hand to his lips and moved it away as though blowing a kiss. When she copied him, he passed her the banana and she took it with a grin, happily munching on it. He had been nervous when his parents had first sat him down with his siblings and explained the situation, that they would all need to learn a new language for Charlotte, but he loved to see her progress.
Not long after Bree and Kit left, as Truman was putting on supper and Sarah was getting Charlotte, Felicity and Liliana ready for bed upstairs, Audrie slipped into the house quietly, leaving her shoes in the hallway before joining her father and brother in the kitchen with a smile.
“Hey,” she said, running her hand through her hair.
“Hi, peanut. I was beginning to wonder where you’d got to. We’ll be eating in twenty. Good day?”
She nodded and smiled and when her father was looking down at the pan of sauce he was stirring, she met Lucas’s eye and nodded at the door. He followed her when she headed into the hallway and down the stairs to the den.
“What?” he asked. He wasn’t really in the mood for messing about.
“I had lunch with Dylan,” she said as she dropped down onto the sofa, looking up at Lucas.
“What? Why? I thought you broke up.”
“We did.”
“Why did you have lunch with him then?” he asked. The two didn’t go hand in hand for him.
“He said he wanted to talk,” she said. “I thought maybe he wanted to get back together.”
“Did he?”
She shook her head. “But it’s ok. We talked. It was really good. We’re still friends.”
“Why did he break up with you?” He sat down next to her. She pulled her feet up onto the sofa, her chin on her knees.
“You can’t tell Asher, or anyone. He hasn’t told anyone yet. You have to promise you won’t say anything.” She held out her hand, her little finger outstretched. “Pinky promise?”
“Pinky promise,” he said, linking his finger with hers. “What is it?”
“He came out to me,” she said, hugging her knees. “He’s gay,” she added.
“He’s gay?”
She nodded. “I was a bit upset at first. He was really apologetic though – he said he was sorry for stringing me along when he was trying to figure it out. We’ve been best friends for so long, I think maybe he got his feelings confused. It makes sense, really.”
“Maybe that’s why he didn’t want to have sex,” Lucas said bluntly. Audrie blushed, though it had been one of her first thoughts. It had been an odd comfort really: there wasn’t something wrong with her. He hadn’t been repulsed by her. He just wasn’t attracted to her.
“I’d say so,” she said. “I wanted to tell you, but you can’t tell Asher.”
“I won’t,” he said. “We fell out.”
“What? Why?”
“Because Adler asked him to be his boyfriend today and he said yes,” Lucas said. Audrie gasped.
“What? Why? She’s such a toxic little bitch! What the hell does he see in her?” she cried out. “Oh my goodness, Lucas, I’m so sorry. That really sucks. That really, really sucks. She’s such a shitty kid, oh my goodness.” She shook her head, fuming.
“She is,” Lucas said with a nod. “I told Asher I don’t like her and I said they shouldn’t date and he got angry because he does like her and he can’t see how mean she is. I think he has a blindspot. She knows exactly where it is.”
“She’s a manipulative cow. I bet she doesn’t even like him.”
“That’s what I said.”
Audrie guffawed, clapping her hand over her mouth. “You said that? To Asher?”
He nodded. “That might be why he got angry,” he said, thinking over what had been said. “But it’s true. She’s spiteful and manipulative, what you said. She only wants him because I like him.”
“She knows?” Audrie asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe. She has spidey senses. But … a bitchy version.”
Audrie laughed to hear him swear. “Oh my goodness, don’t you dare let Mum and Dad hear you say that. I’ll totally get blamed for breaking you. Or maybe I could blame Ishy.” She dropped her hands to her feet, curling her fingers around her toes. “It won’t last, Adler and Asher. It’ll crash and burn.”
“How do you know?”
“Because their names are too similar,” she said. “You know what?”
“What?”
“We should switch brothers,” she said with a laugh. “I’ll take the straight one, you take the gay one.”
Lucas didn’t find that funny. He knew she was only teasing but it didn’t make him laugh, only serving to deepen the dread that no matter how much he pined, Asher’s heart was elsewhere. He had given it to Adler. Or rather, she had snatched it.
“You know,” Audrie began slowly, “if he’s anything like his brother then he’ll date Adler for a couple of years, realise he’s a flaming homosexual and he’ll burst out of the closet to jump straight into your arms, and you guys can ride off into the rainbow sunset together.”
Lucas sighed, mimicking his sister’s position. “I hope so.”
+ – + – +
i wanted to finish this chapter by 3am and it’s only 7 minutes past – not too bad considering i boarded my plane at 9:30 last night and got home at 2am with the chapter half done. i hope you like this! (well, i suspect you won’t, but you know what i mean)
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