Crashing the car would make for a terrible second impression.
Thankfully my best friend struck up a conversation with his brother and didn’t expect me to join in.
Chapter 2
Noah
Being on planes sucked. Being on planes when you were a poorly functioning adult with an ADHD brain was one step short of torture.
I could have cried when I heard my brother Ollie’s voice over the din from the crowd that spilled out of customs.
“Noah! Over here, by the door!”
I hadn’t been back to Scotland in three years, and this time I didn’t know how I’d be able to keep up the facade of how great my life in Bali was.
Not after that breakup and … everything else.On top of that, I had a harrowing journey behind me, having lost my cool in an airport somewhere in Germany where I had to change flights.
Everything had been packed with people who had pushed and complained. I was still deep in sensory overload, and I needed a wee. I wasthisclose to crying when Ollie hugged me. He was as handsome as ever with his hair short and cheeks shaved. The scent of his aftershave was strong in my nose when I collapsed against his chest.
“Ollie,” I sniffed, hugging him back and letting his tall frame shield me from the hustle and bustle of arrivals.
The feel of his arms around me momentarily took me back to our childhood, to the years when my bad dreams had peaked.
Our parents had insisted I was too old to be comforted at night. Ollie had stepped in without hesitation. He had held me to him, my small body shaking with sobs, and had told me stories to distract me from the night terrors.
Our parents weren’t bad people per se, but he and I had to grow up quickly. We had to take care of each other. I hadn’t seen Mum and Dad in ages, and wouldn’t until Christmas Eve. They were on a motorcycle tour from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. Whatever updates I had were from their ArgoS account.
“We just can’t stay in touch with everyone, Noah,” Dad had said in a phone call a couple of weeks ago.
No, not everyone, but maybe your son.
Their social media was plastered with pictures of them beaming arm in arm in front of landmarks, being fed by locals, or watching sunsets together. Their tens of thousands of followers loved it. I was happy for them.
It was just … I missed having someone to take care of me. I shouldn’t; I was twenty-nine, a grown-ass adult who should have his shit together by now.
I didn’t need to be babied. Didn’t want to be. But sometimes I longed for someone else to help me carry the burden.
What burden? You live on a paradise island and make money with pictures of your body.
“Hey little bro, come on. Let’s get you home, okay?” Ollie muttered, rubbing my back.
“Good idea, people are bonkers. You’d think it was Christmas already.” That always seemed to bring out the worst in people. My voice was muffled by his sweater I was pressing my face into. I wanted to hide from reality for a bit longer. Our lives—as different from each other as possible—had made Ollie and me drift apart in the past couple of years. I knew he didn’t really understand what I did and didn’t follow my account because the content wasn’t for him.
I secretly thought Ollie resented me a little for our parents’ behaviour even though he might not realise it. And who could blame him? Stuck with the neurodivergent mess I was, he’d never fully been free.
That was one of the reasons why I left Scotland almost as soon as I came of age. That and wanting to get away from the tight-knit community we’d grown up in.
When my boyfriend broke up with me a few weeks before my nineteenth birthday, I’d taken it as a sign from the universe to move some place new. I’d picked Bali on the other side of the world. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.
For a decade I’d lived and worked on the island, and I stillkindaliked it. Yet once the novelty had worn off and routine set in, I’d realised that even though I was a world away, I was still the same person I’d been at home. All the problems I had had inScotland travelled to Bali with me, and no amount of beach and sunshine made them evaporate.
It had been great to explore my sexuality away from the people I’d grown up with, and a nice change not to have my boyfriends pestered by my brother’s best friend, too.
I still had no idea why Lewis had taken it upon himself to make our lives shitty. He, his mother, and his brother had moved here a few weeks after one of my closest friends, Madeline Gallagher, left town with her dad. I’d been devastated when one of my closest friends had gone.
My heart lightened a bit when I thought about her. She was back in Scotland now, and married to Fitz. It would be so good to see both of them again, especially Mads. Where Ollie had been the brother Lew needed, she was the sister I’d never known I missed.
Lew and I had got along as well as you could when he was your older brother’s best mate and you had a terrible crush on him. Then it had all turned to shit.
