“That’s a weird way of describing your legs opening.”
“Fuck you, Ryker,” she snaps. “You can’t judge me, not when you’re the biggest man whore around.”
“It’s funny because I still can judge, and I do.”
“You don’t know what Freddie’s been like this last month.”
My mouth shuts with a click of my teeth. She’s right, I don’t, because I couldn’t handle being around him, couldn’t fake being happy about his engagement.
“Then enlighten me,” I reply coldly.
“He’s been stressed, and quiet, and worried about work.”
“What about work?”
Keegan looks away. “He’s convinced himself he’s going to lose his job. Every day he goes there believing he’s about to be fired. I tried to cheer him up . . .” Her teeth dig into her bottom lip, and a memory plays in her eyes. “I tried . . .”
My stomach fills with lead. “What did you try?”
“I surprised him.”
“With what?”
“Dinner.” She glances off towards the door that leads to the kitchen. Her surprise happened here, but something tells me it wasn’t a few burnt potatoes or a raw carrot that soured her grand gesture. Something wentwrong,and whatever it was puts a deep wrinkle at the top of her nose when she thinks about it.
“What happened?” I ask.
Keegan shut her eyes. “I invited Freddie’s dad over.”
Shit.
That lead in my stomach reveals itself to be a dagger and jabs into my side. “His . . . his dad. You surprised him with his dad?”
“I didn’t know . . .” She folds her arms defensively.
I widen my eyes. “You didn’t know they don’t get on?”
Keegan leans her back to the wall with a thud, and my nose itches at the whiff of her perfume. “I knew that. Freddie said he didn’t want his dad at the wedding, but I thought it was sad, so I reached out to Ian, and we talked.” She shrugs. “He seems nice to me.”
“He’s not your dad. He’s not let you down a million times and hurt you.”
“But that’s all in the past. He wanted to make amends. He was polite, and welcoming. A proper gentleman.”
“There’s no way in hell that’s true.”
“It was Freddie who reacted badly. He started shouting and told his dad to get out.”
My eyes are stinging. “He damaged Freddie and his mum emotionally, and physically, and treated them like a yo-yo,throwing them away then yanking them back. Freddie’s mum never cut that string, she died still being toyed with, but he broke free.”
It had been a horrible cycle to watch. We begged our parents to step in, but Freddie’s mum inevitably let his dad back into the family home whenever he returned. Freddie would always go downhill fast.
He didn’t tell us specifics, and even as an adult he keeps it vague, but both Ryker and I saw the bruises on his body, and then there was the incident at school during PE. Eric Granger whacked a tennis ball Freddie’s way, and he threw himself to the ground, shaking and terrified. He started breathing too fast and clutching his chest, and Liam and I thought he was having a heart attack. It was downgraded to a panic attack, but that wasn’t much better. Our best friend had panicked so badly from a ball heading his way at speed he’d collapsed, and we didn’t know why, but it was him, his dad, something to do with him.
The black eye and broken socket he got from playing ball with his dad in the garden always made us suspicious too.
“He’s still his dad,” Keegan says.
“No, he isn’t. You’ve got to earn that title.”
