september, age fourteen
Year Nine was an odd year for Lucas and when summer had hit, he had been glad to see the back of it. Although starting Year Ten meant starting serious work, with GCSEs looming at the end of the two-year course, it wasn’t the work that bothered him. He had always been a solid, studious worker: he wasn’t distracted by social events when his family occupied the vast majority of his time. He much preferred tagging along to his sister’s sign language classes than going to parties with his classmates, his socialisation extending no further than his three friends. Mika, Tom, and Asher.
For the past nine months, Lucas had stood on the sidelines as he watched Adler infiltrate his life, taking up the spot he wished was his. She laughed with Asher, pouring herself over him as though they were glued together, and he seemed to love it. He also didn’t seem to notice how much it still bothered Lucas: no matter how much they hung out together, nor how hard Lucas tried to not let Adler bother him, she always found a way. Although he and Asher had made up within a couple of days of their first ever fight, each muttering apologies before they allowed the tension to ruin the Christmas holidays, it still weighed on his mind far more than he suspected it weighed on Asher’s.
Lucas was torn. Asher was his best friend – that would never change, he was determined – and part of the unspoken best friend code was wanting the absolute best for that person. As much as Lucas hoped that he was the best for Asher, one thing he knew for certain was that Adler wasn’t. Even pushing aside his hang-ups about her, the objective facts were clear. She appeared to believe that her lack of any proper friendship group was because she didn’t care; she was independent. It was clear to Lucas, however, that her solitude was by no means her own choice.
He had heard the way the other girls gossiped about her behind her back, their painfully true words mirroring Lucas’s thoughts. Adler was stuck-up; cocky; braggadocious – a word of Maddie’s choosing, not any of the Year Nine pupils. She had no best friend because none of the other girls wanted to hang out with someone with such a critical eye, someone who always appeared to be giving them the once over.
And yet somehow, in a way that Lucas couldn’t understand or explain no matter how hard he tried, she had cast a spell over Asher. He was under her charm, completely blind to what everyone else saw. Being with her gave him tunnel vision, completely oblivious to everything that went on around him. He didn’t see the way she looked at Lucas as though he was dirt on her shoe, often moments after putting on a show of being his friend. Lucas was sure that Asher had talked to her after they had fallen out: ever since then, she had made a point of being nice to him when Asher was around.
It was hard to watch. As difficult as it was for Lucas to tell himself to let go, it was even harder to watch his best friend be manipulated by a girl who had him under her thumb. It was as though she knew exactly which strings to pull to dominate him. When they were together, Asher wasn’t the Asher that Lucas knew. He wasn’t as strong or as determined: the conviction he had shown when Lucas had confronted him disappeared when Adler was by his side, as though she sucked the life out of him without him even realising.
He let her win.
But Lucas wasn’t ready to let him go. He wasn’t prepared to give up.
The summer holidays were almost over. School was due to begin in less than a week, that week always a let down when his birthday was the last day of August. Between turning fourteen – the last one in his class to do so, except for Mika who had only turned thirteen a few months earlier – and starting school exactly a week later, Lucas never knew what to do with himself. There was no last minute back-t0-school shopping to do when he lived in a state of constant preparedness, no holidays to take when Truman used his two weeks of summer to cover his children’s and his wife’s birthdays.
On Friday afternoon, three days before school and the shock that Year Ten would be as work suddenly started to matter, Lucas was lying outside on a towel while his sisters played around him. Liliana and Felicity paddled in the stream at the bottom of the garden, only returning to the house when their mother insisted they top up their suncream and have a glass of water, while Audrie played bean bag basketball with Charlotte. Although she struggled with her balance, her walking still wobbly at twenty months old, she had impressive hand-eye coordination for a toddler and she loved to play catch with the brightly coloured bean bags.
Sarah lay next to Lucas with a pair of sunglasses over her regular frames, having lost her prescription pair, and a book in her hands. It wasn’t often she got a spare moment to read but with all five of her children occupied, she allowed herself a few minutes to relax and tan her body in the last of the summer sun. With each child she had, she found that she cared less and less about her lumps and bumps, no longer bothering to hide her stomach when she was lying out in the garden at home.
“How many times have you read that?” she asked, looking over at Lucas as he made his way through Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows once more. Each time he finished the series, he forced himself to read at least ten other books before he started again from the beginning, but that wasn’t much of a challenge when he devoured novels the way Liliana devoured potatoes.
“A lot,” Lucas said. He could no longer count how many times he had read the same pages he was holding, though he was sure he must have read each book at least seven or eight times a year since Bishop had first introduced him to the novels when he was six. It had become a ritual, his mind comforted by the wizarding tales that never grew old even as he did. At six, he had been spellbound by the books. Now fourteen, he related to them more and more with each reading, somehow always finding a word he had missed.
“Twenty?” Sarah guessed.
“At least fifty.”
“Oh my goodness.” She propped herself up on her elbows and lifted her sunglasses. “Fifty? Baby, don’t you get bored? You know, we could head to the bookshop this weekend and see if there’s another series you could start.”
“I’m good. Thanks,” he said. He had an entire bookshelf dedicated to the novels he had yet to read, methodically working his way through them in the weeks he took as a Harry Potter sabbatical. “I can’t get bored. It’s too interesting to get bored.”
Sarah smiled. “As long as you’re happy,” she said, resting her head back on the pillow she had rolled up under her neck. She didn’t always understand her son, unsure of where many of his habits came from, but that had never affected the unmeasurable love for him. If anything, it only made her want to protect him more. The world could be a cruel place to people like him.
Audrie rolled away from her sister when her phone rang next to her and Charlotte pouted, tapping her fingers together to sign, “More!”
“Wait a second,” Audrie said, holding both palms up and wiggling her fingers. Signing had become second nature over the past year, especially for Felicity who absorbed the extra language alongside learning English. Audrie grabbed her phone, smiling as she opened a text from Dylan. The two had become even closer since they had broken up, once Dylan had come to terms with who he was. He had yet to tell his family, waiting for the right time as though he needed proof for them to believe him, but in Audrie he had a best friend and a confidante, someone he trusted with his life.
Lucas envied her and simultaneously held her up as a beacon of hope. She had loved Dylan and that love had come crumbling down but she had emerged stronger on the other side – they both had. As much as he hoped he wouldn’t have to let go, he knew that with each passing day there was more of a chance he would have to and if that happened, he wanted to hold onto Asher the way Audrie had held onto Dylan.
As he came to the end of chapter twenty-eight, he heard the ping of his own phone from inside. Even after three years, he hadn’t grown used to the device that always seemed to want his attention and he hardly ever had it on him. It was too much pressure, even if the only people who messaged him were his parents or one of his three friends. The one time Adler had texted him had been a mistake, a text intended for Asher. He wasn’t sure it had been a mistake at all.
“Are you going in, hun?” Sarah asked, rolling onto her front to sun her back.
“Yeah.”
“Could you do me a glass of water, please?”
He nodded, stepping inside before he cleaned his glasses with a sheet of kitchen roll and he checked his phone while the cold tap slowly filled a pint glass. Patiently waiting on the screen was a text from Asher that he opened with a swipe.
Asher: hey! fancy a film fest this evening? I hear The Playroom is showing a pixar marathon and I’ve got two tickets 😀
Lucas smiled at the message. The Playroom wasn’t a cinema: it was literally the playroom in Asher’s house, which was in constant metamorphosis. Its current state was something of a home cinema ever since Bishop had rigged up a projector in front of the white wall and arranged a few sofas to make it feel like a theatre. Switching off the tap when the glass was an inch away from overflowing, he sent back a reply.
Lucas: Just you and me?
Asher’s response was instantaneous, the message marked as ‘read’ within a couple of seconds. He was fairly typical of their age, his phone glued to his hand as though it was a life source whereas to Lucas, it was a drain.
Asher: just you and me (:
Asher: well dylan and aaron are in the house somewhere. mum & dad are here but i doubt they wanna watch toy story aha
Asher: oh wait no lol dad says it’s his fave so he might crash the party haha
Lucas took the glass of water out to his mother and took a seat on the patio swing as he read through the messages a couple of times over. Asher’s tone in the texts soothed his overthinking mind.
“Mum?”
“Yes?”
“Can I go over to Asher’s later?”
“Of course, hun,” Sarah said with a smile. The last thing she wanted to do was be any sort of barrier to their friendship when she had seen how down he could get when he and Asher weren’t on speaking terms. It had crushed her spirit to see him so low, especially when there was nothing she could do but hug him and tell him he would be ok. She wasn’t even sure how true that was when she had no way inside her son’s head, which seemed to work so differently to hers. “It might have to be after Dad’s home, though.”
“I’ll take you over,” Audrie said, holding up her hand. She had been driving ever since a month before her eighteenth birthday when she had passed her test the first time around after almost a year of learning with her parents. Confident and safe, she owned the roads when she got behind the wheel and Lucas knew he was in good hands with her.
Although Sarah always had a quiver of doubt about her children being alone in the car without her or Truman, just in case the worst happened, she had loved the freedom afforded to her by Audrie’s ability to ferry everyone around. Liliana had started dance class on Tuesdays and piano lessons with Kit on Thursdays, adding to the already hectic schedule that came with a seven person family.
“Thanks,” Lucas said.
“No worries,” Audrie said. She had always been giving with her time, doing anything for her family, but she had upped the ante recently as a precursor to her heading off to university.
After achieving three A*s in her A-levels with near perfect marks across the three sciences, as well as an A in her French AS, she pretty much could have gone anywhere she wanted and she had set her sights high. In less than a month, she was due to move two hours away from home to start her degree in Earth and Marine Sciences at Oxford University. There had been a time that she had considered going further afield, looking at Harvard and MIT when her personal tutor had told her she had what it took, but she couldn’t bear to be so far from her family that she couldn’t drive back within a day.
*
“Are you scared?” Lucas asked halfway to Asher’s house, once Audrie had settled into the drive with one of her favourite playlists playing. The sky was a delicious shade of blue that seeped into purple in places, dotted with pale grey clouds that bled into the sky.
“About what?”
“Going to uni,” he said. She lifted one shoulder.
“Yeah, I guess. It’s going to be weird, and quiet, I bet.” She pursed her lips before pulling them between her teeth and smiling. “It’ll be good, I’m sure. Dylan said he loved his first year, though I suppose it’ll be really different. We’re not exactly doing the same thing.”
“What’s he doing?” Lucas asked. He knew he should know that but with so much going on over the past year, the knowledge had slipped out of his head. “What university is he at?”
“Sport Science at Loughborough,” she said, flexing her hands on the wheel. “I can’t believe he’s already done a year. And Aaron’s about to start his last year.”
Aaron had surprised everyone when he had followed in his father’s footsteps and accepted an offer to study Sociology at the University of Edinburgh: after years of complaining about school and doing as little as possible, he had pulled his socks up when he had started his A-levels, coming out with just the right grades to do what he wanted, moving to Scotland to complete his degree.
“That’s scary,” Lucas said. “I’m going to miss you.”
“Aw, I’m going to miss you too,” Audrie said, “but you know you can Skype me all the time. I’ll always find time to chat. Plus, Oxford isn’t even that far away. It’s only a couple of hours.”
“That’s far when I can’t drive.”
She chuckled, giving him a soft smile before she returned her eyes to the road and indicated left, heading down the winding country lane that led to Asher’s house. “You’ll be driving before you know it. Crazy as that seems. I can’t picture you behind the wheel.”
Lucas shook his head. Neither could he. The road seemed too overwhelming, packed with too many chances for things to go horribly wrong. One misread sign, one tiny mistake, could end lives and he wasn’t sure he would ever be ready to hold that responsibility on his shoulders.
*
Audrie hung around when she arrived, heading off with Dylan when Lucas headed into the playroom to find Asher. He was sitting on the floor, hunched over his laptop as he queued up a series of films to play and when he spotted Lucas, he took off his glasses and got to his feet with a grin.
“Hey,” he said, pulling him into a tight hug. In moments like those, Lucas felt his every doubt melt away as he just enjoyed being in Asher’s company with no-one else around to tarnish their time. “Did you bring your stuff?”
Lucas held up the bag in which he had packed his book, his pyjamas and his toothbrush.
“Awesome. I feel like you haven’t stayed over in ages – I miss you,” Asher said, moving his laptop to the coffee table. “You ok?”
Lucas nodded and smiled. He kept his comments to himself, not wanting to ruin the moment by remarking that there was a reason they hadn’t seen each other as much as they usually did, a reason that had a sarcastic smile and hard eyes. “Yeah. You?”
“Pretty awesome.”
“How was Portugal?” he asked, remembering that Asher had got back from a family trip down south just a few days earlier.
“Amazing,” he said with a grin, dropping down onto the sofa. “Helped a lot by the fact that Dad speaks enough Portuguese to get by. No idea how.” He shook his head to himself, baffled by the ease with which his father seemed to pick up anything he tried. “You have to go someday. You and I should go when we finish school, have a lads’ trip down there. That’d be pretty cool.”
“Yeah,” Lucas said with a smile. He had never much liked the idea of going abroad and being thrust into a world he didn’t understand with a language that made no sense to his ears but the idea of doing it with Asher was a lot more tolerable. “That would be fun.”
“I’m gonna hold you to that,” Asher said, holding out his hand. “Shake on it.”
Despite the flutter of doubt in his stomach, Lucas shook Asher’s hand with more confidence than he felt. He wondered if he had been imagining the tension he had felt all year, if that was something he had put between them as a subconscious way to protect himself. Without Adler around, he didn’t need that barrier anymore and being with Asher felt like the old days again.
Asher set up the film and put it on as he chatted away about his trip, recalling the days on the beaches and the night his parents had got hilariously port-drunk, his words only quietening when the film began to play and Lucas was thrown back to his childhood when the first scene from Toy Story started. It was a film that had been handed down through the generations, one his grandmother had grown up on after it had come out the year of her birth. Many of his favourite films had been hers too, the ones he had grown up on when they had always been playing whenever he stayed with his grandparents.
The two hardly said a word for the eighty-one minutes that the film played, enrapt by the movie they had seen countless times that still managed to capture their attention. Asher didn’t touch his phone once, ignoring it even when the screen lit up with a message several times. It was only once the credits rolled that he turned to Lucas, a thoughtful expression on his face.
“Lucas?”
“Yeah?”
“We’re ok, aren’t we?”
“What do you mean?” Lucas asked. He often had to clarify, preferring that to jumping to incorrect conclusions.
“You and me … you’re not mad at me, are you?”
“No,” Lucas said. That was true: he wasn’t mad at Asher. At least, he wasn’t mad at this Asher. Sometimes he grew frustrated with the other Asher he came across when Adler was around, when he was a different person, but mostly it was her he was mad at.
“I just … I know this year’s been weird,” Asher said, his voice low and serious. “I don’t want you to hate me too.”
“I don’t hate you,” Lucas said. “I could never hate you. You’re my best friend.”
Asher smiled, seeming to relax when he heard the words. “I just felt like things had been kinda awkward recently. I felt like you were mad at me.”
“Things are just different now,” Lucas said. Too different for his liking, but he kept that to himself. He was learning, with Audrie’s help, what was and wasn’t appropriate to say in front of Asher. Most of it wasn’t, as it turned out: too many of his thoughts were insults towards his best friend’s girlfriend.
“I know,” Asher said quietly. They both looked up when they heard Ishaana call them for supper but neither moved, not done with the conversation just yet. “That doesn’t have to be bad, though. You’re my best friend. You always will be.” When he stood, Lucas did too and Asher gave him a wonky grin, lightly pushing his shoulder. “I love you, man.”
Lucas felt a fizz in his stomach as though his butterflies had exploded, a mass of wings fluttering like the embers spat out of a bonfire. He tried to play it cool, dousing the fire in his heart as he made an effort to match Asher’s casual tone. “I love you too,” he said, though he struggled to make the words sound as easy as Asher had. That was difficult when he meant them with such sincerity.
*
After a night at Asher’s like the good old days, the two of them still sharing a double bed despite all the space in the house, there was a mass exodus to the Song household for a Saturday afternoon barbecue. The weather was set to turn nasty for the remainder of the week, the weekend the last chance to enjoy the sun before autumn brought showers and piles of browning leaves, and Truman and Sarah had decided to celebrate with a barbecue in their garden. The long stretch of lawn was plenty to accommodate their friends and family.
Lucas drove over with Asher and Aaron and their parents, leaving Dylan to make his way over in his own time. The day was hot, the perfect kind of day to spend outside with the stream and the shade to cool down, a nice way to say goodbye to the summer before school started up again. Truman had put on a spread, grilling sausages and burgers and chicken while Sarah had put together a certifiable feast of salads and quiches that she laid out buffet-style in the conservatory.
Although the house was busy, Lucas didn’t mind so much when every face was familiar, many of them family. Bree and Kit were there; his grandparents had turned up with Tom; Claire and Laura were there with their son Grayson, whom they had finally adopted three months ago after trying for almost two years. A couple of weeks away from his second birthday, he and Charlotte were just a few months apart and Sarah couldn’t wait for her daughter and her nephew to grow up together.
It didn’t take Lucas long to find Tom, who shied away from all kinds of crowds regardless of whether or not he was related to them. Finding Tom also meant finding Mika, who always seemed to be wherever he was, Lucas had noticed. The two clung onto each other and though Tom needed Mika more than she needed him, there was nowhere she would rather be than by his side as they worked together in silence.
“Hi,” Lucas said when he pushed open the door to the den and saw them sitting together in the cool room. Tom lifted his head and pushed his shoulder-length hair off his face – he hated getting it cut, opting instead to grow it out like his father did.
“Hi,” he said. Mika smiled. The two of them were sitting so close together that their arms touched and yet Tom hadn’t felt the need to shy away, to move down an inch or two to protect his bubble of personal space. “What’re you doing?”
“The puzzle page,” he said, holding up the day’s newspaper to show Lucas the extended page of puzzles that came every Saturday.
“We’re trying to do every single one, but they’re not easy,” Mika added.
“We can do it,” Tom murmured to himself, glancing down at the newspaper with a contented look on his face. After yet another year from hell, his only respite the lunchtimes he could spend with Mika and occasionally Lucas, his summer had started off on a good note when his parents had sat him down for a serious talk.
After a couple of hours of discussing options that Maddie and Nick had been pondering for months before they had put them to Tom, they had come to a decision as a family. When Lucas returned to St Matthew’s in two days time, Tom wouldn’t be joining him. When Liliana and Felicity headed back to St Mary’s, Maddie would no longer be there to wave them good morning from her Year Six classroom.
Instead, she would be at home with her son, teaching him at his own pace. As much as it had pained her to say goodbye to the job she had cherished for almost thirty years, to leave the school that had raised her before it had raised her children, her family came first. Tom’s misery was a kind of torture, slowly killing both of them as he cried almost every single day and she tried not to let her emotions show. It would be a difficult transition for her, from the hustle and bustle of a full classroom to one-on-one lessons with her son, but one she was prepared to make without a second thought.
Part of her, a part she had never dared to speak out loud except in a whisper to her husband in the dead of night, had desperately feared that the longer Tom spent at high school, the less likely he would be to survive it.
“Are you ready for Monday?” Mika asked Lucas, letting Tom take over the newspaper.
“Yes, I think so,” he said, nodding. He was as ready as he could be, his uniform ironed and folded in his cupboard and his bag already packed. There was nothing to worry about when he already knew that he and Mika would share several of the same classes again, put together for maths and English at least, and he was even set to be with Asher for the first time in three years at the school. They had both chosen geography as one of their GCSE options, and Lucas knew for a fact that Adler hadn’t. He couldn’t wait.
“How about you?” he asked, looking at Tom. “Are you ready?”
“It’s going to be weird, I think,” Tom said with a serious face, slowly nodding. “But Mum’s a very good teacher. She gets me. None of my other teachers have ever got me before.”
“I think it’s going to be awesome,” Mika said with an encouraging smile. She had taken on the role of Tom’s cheerleader over the years, always there to pick him up when he felt down. “Though we won’t be able to do the puzzles every day at lunch.”
“You’ll have to come over,” Tom said, looking up at her with the faintest pinkness in his cheeks.
“You can come over too,” Mika said. “I told Mum you’re leaving and she said you’re welcome to come over any time you want.”
He smiled, a rare and beautiful sight. “Thanks, Mika.”
*
With so many people milling in and out of the house, it was easy to drift around without being noticed too easily. Lucas did so with ease, floating between his friends and his sisters until Audrie caught his arm and pulled him inside even when he fought against the sudden touch.
“What’re you dragging me for?” he asked, shaking his arm where she had grabbed him a little too tight.
“Sorry,” she said. She looked a little jittery. “Dylan just texted me.”
“Is he coming?”
She nodded. “He’s a bit nervous.”
“Why?”
She looked around to check that no-one was nearby, no prying ears to listen to them when she said, “He’s bringing his boyfriend.”
Lucas’s eyes widened, his eyebrows shooting up. “I didn’t know he has a boyfriend.”
“No-one does,” she said. “Well, except me. They’ve only been together a few months but no-one even knows he’s gay. He said I’m the only person who knows so far. And Benji.”
“Is that his boyfriend?”
“Mmhmm.”
“Well, I think people will know after today,” he said. Audrie nodded, sucking in a deep breath to calm the nerves that had fired up on behalf of her best friend.
“Ishy and Bishop are here, aren’t they?”
Lucas nodded. “And Aaron and Asher.”
She pursed her lips. “I don’t know if this is a good idea. I said he should probably tell them first but he didn’t want to – he said he just wants to get it over and done with and they won’t make a scene if everyone’s here.”
He thought to himself for a moment. “I don’t think that would stop Ishy from making a scene. But also, I don’t think she’ll make a scene. Unless she’s surprised. But she won’t be angry.”
“Good. Good,” Audrie said, rubbing her hands together in a nervous tic. “He’ll be here any minute. God, I feel sick for him.”
“Don’t be sick,” Lucas said. “You had the last piece of the best quiche. That would be a waste.”
*
At quarter past two, Audrie and Lucas opened the door to Dylan, who stood hand in hand with Benji. He had a kind face and sun-kissed blonde curls that didn’t quite meet his shoulders. Audrie hugged each of them in turn; Lucas lifted his hand in a static wave. Dylan didn’t try to hug him – he was well aware of his boundaries after having him in his house for so many nights over the years.
“Everyone’s outside, really,” Audrie said as she led them to the kitchen. “Mum’s put a load of food out in the conservatory so just help yourself.”
“Where’re my parents?” Dylan asked, peering around the quiet house. Audrie pointed outside, where the pair could be seen standing with a glass of wine each: Ishaana guffawed as she chatted to Bree, sharing memories from decades ago when Bree had dated Ishaana’s best friend for two years, while Kit, holding Charlotte, was locked in an intense conversation with Bishop about child psychology.
“Just grab some food and act natural,” Audrie said. “If you’re freaking out then they’re only gonna think there’s something to freak out about.” She passed a plate to the two of them, taking a couple of slices of cheese and tomato bruschetta for herself. “Take a deep breath and nike.”
“Wait, what?” Benji asked, looking from Audrie to his boyfriend, who chuckled.
“Just do it,” he said, explaining Audrie’s reference. Benji laughed.
“Oh. Ok. Easier said than done, I think.”
“Not if you just do it,” Lucas said.
“Well, you’ve got me,” Dylan said. He reached for Benji’s hand, squeezing gently.
Ishaana looked up when she spotted her middle son, grinning and waving him over. She pulled him into a hug, almost sloshing her wine down his back. “Hey, Dylan! We were beginning to wonder if you’d ditched us. Did you get some food?”
He held up his plate, laden down with finger food to give him something to do with his hands. Before he could introduce Benji, Ishaana stuck out her hand.
“Hi! I don’t think we’ve met, have we?”
“Not yet,” Benji said, shaking her hand with a nervous smile on his lips.
“Benji, these are my parents, Ishaana and Bishop. This is Benji,” he said to his parents. “My boyfriend.”
Ishaana choked on a bite of sausage roll when she gasped, clearing her throat when her husband slapped her back, and she laughed at her own ineptitude. “Sorry. Nice to meet you, Benji,” she said, gathering up the contents of her brain that had just exploded. Bishop shook Benji’s hand; Dylan glanced from his mother to his father and back again, trying to gauge any reaction other than the normalcy with which they seemed to take his coming out.
“Hi, Benji,” Bishop said with a warm smile, glancing at his wife when she glugged her wine to clear the tickle in her throat. “I didn’t realise you were seeing anyone, Dylan.”
“How long have you two been together?” Ishaana asked when she got a hold of herself, recovering from the mouthful of sausage that had tried to kill her.
“A few months,” Dylan said, gaining enough confidence to slip his hand into Benji’s.
“A few months? And you’re only just telling us?” She feigned horror that he would hide his relationship from her for so long, taking another wary bite of her sausage roll.
“Well,” Dylan said, shifting on his feet, “I wasn’t sure how you’d take it.”
“That you’re gay?” Bishop asked. Dylan frowned, straightening his back.
“Wait, you knew?”
“No,” his father said with a laugh, “but considering you just introduced Benji as your boyfriend, I put two and two together.”
Benji laughed and elbowed Dylan, visibly relaxing when he realised that neither Bishop nor Ishaana posed any kind of a threat. “I don’t know what the fuck you were so scared about, you twat. Your parents are clearly fucking goals.”
Ishaana grinned to hear his language, bursting with pride. “Oh my God, you’re a man after my own heart,” she said, pulling Benji into a hug without warning. “Well, hey, you should come over tonight and we’ll have supper. Oh! We should go out – there’s that new place I’ve been dying to try. No time like the present.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, to which she nodded.
“Of course. We need to get to know you – sounds like we’ve got some catching up to do.”
Dylan gripped his mother in a tight hug without a word. Neither of them needed to say anything to know exactly what they were thinking. After a couple of seconds he pulled away and he and Benji eventually drifted off to find Aaron and Asher, and Ishaana leant against her husband.
“Wow.”
“Wow,” he echoed. Then he laughed. “Did your mother’s intuition not pick up on that, huh?”
“Not even a tiny bit,” she said, dousing her surprise with the last of her wine. “Shit.”
“What?”
“We never even thought to bet on that.”
+ – + – +
so, we have a couple of introductions to make! i hope you enjoyed this chapter!
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