“Are you stupid?” Noah scolds. “Were you trying to give yourself an asthma attack for fuck’s sake?”
“I don’t have … asthma,” I wheeze out. “I didn’t realise it had got that bad,” I look back at the barn and see a plume of dust drifting out the open door.
My head’s been a mess since yesterday. I’m still no closer to finding out why Teddy hates me so much—hate might not be a strong enough word. His eyes had been like shards of black ice when he told me not to touch him, revulsion dripping from his words. I know I’m missing something important, but I have no idea what.
“I think the dust has settled. Ready to go back in?” Noah asks after a few minutes.
Looking back at the barn, the huge cloud I made has finally dissipated. “Sure, are you going to actually help this time?”
Noah scoffs and leads the way, grabbing a broom as he goes. “Are you going to tell me why Theo punched you in the face yet?” he asks.
I keep my eyes down. “It was just an argument, I told you. We went to school together and it didn’t end well.” I shrug as though it were nothing, as if the memory of a grinning eighteen-year-old Teddy doesn’t feel like a knife to the heart.
“That’s a half-arsed answer.”
“I’m not ready to talk about it.” I stop to look at him so he knows I’m serious.
“You’d tell me if you were in trouble, right?”
My jaw clenches, and I go back to sweeping. There’s so much I haven’t told him, haven’t even told my therapist. So many secrets stacked up inside of me, ready to collapse at the slightest breeze. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to tell Noah about my past. What would he think? If I saw disgust and horror in his eyes, it would destroy me.
“Yes, I’d tell you.” I force the lie out.
After a couple of hours sweeping and washing the wooden floor the barn finally looks better. I stretch my arms up and my stiff back twinges.
“Oh! It’s looking good, boys,” Isla says as she comes through the doors with Richard. She pulls her phone out and starts taking photos of our progress.
Richard comes straight to me, handing a large tool kit and a drill over. “Apparently you know what you’re doing?”
“Of course I know what I’m doing.” I’ve been working for Jake since I was eighteen. Building decking and sheds is routine work, and it’s the whole reason we’ve come up here so early. Richard insisted on paying for the barn to be fixed up, but Jake whacked on such a big discount that the price barely covered thecost of the materials. Jake told me and Noah that we’d be coming with him to help, but I’m starting to think that was a lie. The past few days, Jake’s buggered off somewhere, leaving us to do all the work.
I show Noah how to pre-drill some holes into the hardwood, then I get to work nailing down any loose boards. I’m barely listening to the conversation going on around me, mind wandering back to yesterday again. Specifically to the way Teddy dismissed me, saying I’d made it clear I wanted nothing to do with him ... I didn’t think I’d been that convincing when I broke up with him. A flare of irritation rises in me. He should’ve known I wouldn’t have said those things unless I had no other choice.
The resentment I harboured for Teddy after he abandoned me at eighteen starts to rear its ugly head again. I feel the wood beneath my hand, coarse and cool, and count back from ten, shoving it all back down.
“You want coffee?” Richard asks, tapping me with his foot. I’m pulled away from my thoughts, which is probably for the best. I can’t keep blaming Teddy for something I started.
“Please,” I say.
Richard turns away and shouts across the barn. “Come on Noah, help me get the drinks.”
Within two seconds of them leaving, Isla sidles up next to me. “So what’s going on with you and Theo?” She hands me a nail and I line it up on the floorboard. I’d managed to avoid her for most of the week. I knew the questions would start as soon as she got me alone.
“I’m not sure what’s going on.” I say, gripping the hammer tighter and hitting the nail repeatedly, in rhythm with my pounding heart.
“You said you were friends in school, right? He never mentioned you ... but then I didn’t keep in contact with himmuch when he moved. But even when he came back, he never mentioned making any friends.”
It feels like there’s a fist clenched around my heart, squeezing until I can barely breathe. Two whole years erased, just like that. My throat feels tight and raw as I swallow.
Placing the hammer down, I stand and face Isla. “We fell out. I told him I never wanted to see him again, and that I didn’t want to be …friendsanymore. After that, he left.”
Isla’s eyebrows rise. “Must have been a pretty big falling out if he punched you twelve years later.”
I frown. “I don’t know why he punched me. The Teddy I knew never would have done that, even with how I left things between us, he never would have hit me. Maybe something else happened and I?—”
And Iwhat? I can’t remember because I was out of it the night he left. Half that night is missing when I think back. I can’t tell her that. So I swallow around the lump in my throat and crouch back down to finish nailing the floorboards. I struggle to see the nails as tears fill my eyes.
“What else could have happened?” Isla asks with a slight edge to her voice.
