“I’ll just come here then,” she said.
“Not if I lock the doors.” I filled the kettle up and flipped it on. No chamomile for me; if Amy was home, it would be a late one.
“Fine then. I’ll just hang with Dad,” she said, sitting down at my little two-seater dining table.
“Great, get him off my back.”
“Prodigal son having issues with Dad? No way.” She scoffed. “The two of you are hilarious. Just tell him you don’t want to be a contractor!”
“Yes, because he’d be so thrilled to have that conversation,” I said.
“Just tell him you’re going back to uni. He was so furious when you dropped out.”
“Deferred,” I corrected, though it had officially been a decade since my supposed deferment, so I supposed that qualifier wasn’t valid anymore.
“What about this?” she asked, and I turned around from dropping teabags into our mugs to see her holding up my RIBA Journal. It was open to the same page I’d been staring at for weeks since it had arrived.
“What about it?” I asked. “I just like the stuff they write about sustainability.”
“Which is why the magazine lays completely flat to the page about certification programmes?”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. So I’ve looked at the programmes. But there’s no way I’d be able to do it. Dad would never forgive me. The deal we made when I moved back was that I would take over when he retires. If I go back on that, he’s screwed. I’m the only one he’s been training.”
“He’s not exactly about to keel over,” Amy said. “He can find someone else.”
I thought about Dad’s “what was that, son?” when I’d even flippantly suggested not wanting to do his job. If I told him I was going back on my promise? He’d be furious. He might even kick me out.
No, I’d worked too hard to rebuild my life after Aria. Was it my dream to take over the family business? No. But it was a sacrifice I was willing to make if it meant I got to live and work with my family and be near my friends.
“It’s a non-starter,” I said, placing an Earl Grey down in front of her. “Plus, I’m not the one who’s in between jobs. Why don’t you just move home?”
“Because,” she said, and if I’d thought I’d reverted back to my teenage self earlier, the defiance in that single word put me to shame. “How embarrassing would it be to move home at twenty-four?”
I narrowed my eyes at her, trying to figure out if she was being a dick or just forgetful. She cracked a smile, and my suspicions that she was just being a dick were confirmed. Man, was it good to have her back, even if just for a few days.
Chapter14
Morgan
Icouldn’t stop thinking about Jack fucking Evans.
I’d never felt more embarrassed than I had at the top of that stupid hill, and the worst part was that I still had no idea what had gone wrong. I was pretty sure it wasn’t my fault; every time I replayed the moments leading up to his rejection, I became more convinced that he’d been giving off serious mixed signals.
Come to think of it, he’d been giving me mixed signals for weeks. On that stupid weekend away, he’d got close to me in the river only to proudly proclaim that he didn’t date. And he’d been the one to ask me to go hiking … well, sort of. It had at least been mutual, and I was certain that almost-kiss had been, too. Or maybe I was the only one who had felt something when we’d been floating face-to-face in that river; when our hands had brushed against one another as we walked.
But that was beside the point. “Water under the tree,” as I’d so idiotically said. And he was clearly trying hard to prove a point that he still wanted to be my friend. He’d been texting me throughout each week, and he’d been way friendlier than usual at our Monday night games. So despite my persisting confusion, I was determined to move forward as if it hadn’t happened. At least as far as he could tell, anyway.
All I wanted to do at work was go cuddle Pablo and plan my Ren Faire outfits; Phil wanted us to send him our ideas by the end of June at the latest so he could start sourcing materials.
But not only did I have actual work to do, I couldn’t even use my lunch break today for puppy cuddles; I had lunch plans with Chloe, which had morphed into plans with Grey and Fatima, too, apparently.
We met up at a cafe a short walk from the office, Grey still in high-vis from their job as a train guard, and Fatima looking as polished as ever. When I asked why she wasn’t at school, she muttered something about inset days and actually having a lunch break for once.
“I genuinely can’t wait for October,” Grey said as we tucked into our food. Their hair was now a sunshine yellow, and they’d added a new patch to their biker vest: a frazzled-looking possum with the words “even baddies get saddies” in lime green embroidery around it.
“I know, I’m so excited,” Fatima said. “I told Jared about it and he tried to invite himself.” Jared was Fatima’s long-time boyfriend who lived in Manchester, where she spent most weekends.
“He could totally come.”
