Page 23

We’ll be there at 7

Luca:

Henry:

“Luca.” With a start, she turns around to find Toni waiting for her by the exit. “Let’s go.”

Esther is still sitting behind the counter, the oat milk chai untouched in front of her. Luca gives her a small wave before following Toni outside.

“Everything all right?” Luca asks carefully.

“Sure,” Toni says.

They don’t talk much after that.

“Have you told Mum and Dad yet?” Henry asks around a mouthful of pizza. They’re sitting on the floor in Luca’s room, surrounded by clothes and toiletries. Her suitcase waits half-packed on her bed.

Luca sets down her slice to shoot him a look of betrayal. “Why’d you have to ask me that in the middle of eating?”

“Oh, sorry.” He blinks innocently at her. “Did you want to keep pretending you won’t have to eventually?”

“I’m going to tell them, I just—”

“You really should,” Henry says. “They’re going to wonder why you have enough time to go traveling all across Europe when you’re supposed to be doing assignments, or whatever.”

“No, they’re not,” she says stubbornly. “The summer term ended at the end of May. I have until August.”

“Luca,” Mason cuts in softly. “I really don’t think it’s going to get better the longer you put it off. Do you want me to tell them? I can—”

“No,” Luca says, looking down at her half-eaten pizza. As much as a part of her wants to simply hand the responsibility off to her oldest brother, she knows that this is something she needs to tell her parents herself. This isn’t a broken vase or a detention because she wouldn’t stop rocking her chair in class. This is her dropping out of uni without talking to her parents first, effectively wasting the thousands of pounds they’d invested in her education and leaving herself without any real prospects for the future. “I promise I’m going to tell them. Just . . . after the tour.”

In her periphery, she can see her brothers exchanging a glance. Mason is frowning, gently concerned in the way that’s pretty much his default expression. Henry is chewing on his thumbnail, the worry as out of place on his freckled face as it would be on Luca’s.

Luca hates this. Mason marched straight through university and into a classroom; he has a wife, a child on the way, and a decent house with a garden in southwest London. Henry is a freelance web designer who works from all over the world and never once seems to doubt that he made the right decision. Next to them, Luca sometimes feels like her parents’ problem child—always struggling, always a mess. It took her two years to decide what she wanted to study, and then she didn’t even last one semester. She doesn’t know how to explain any of it to her brothers, much less her parents, who were so proud when Luca got into uni and moved into a place of her own, who sound so excited every time they ask how her studies are going. The idea of picking up the phone and telling them she couldn’t do it makes her stomach hurt.

“Whatever nightmare scenario you’re imagining,” Mason says, reaching over to squeeze her ankle, “I promise it’s not going to happen. They love you no matter what.”

Luca lifts her shoulder in a small shrug, her throat too tight to speak.

After a moment, Henry asks, “What are they like, then?”

“What are who like?” Luca asks quietly.

“The band,” Henry clarifies. “What are they like?”

Luca picks at the pizza box in her lap while she considers her answer. “They’re . . . really cool. Almost too cool.”

Mason frowns at her. “You’re cool too.”

“Right,” she says. “Um. They’re really nice. Miray, she plays keys—she’s really sweet. Toni went shopping with me earlier. Izzy is—a little scary, but also nice.”

“What about the singer?” Henry asks. “What’s her name again?”

“Florence,” Luca says reluctantly. She’s almost afraid to say it out loud in front of her brothers. A part of her fears that they’re going to know what she and Florence did just from the way her mouth shapes Florence’s name. “She’s. Um. Nice.”

“So they’re all very nice,” Mason summarizes.

Luca opens her mouth. Shuts it. Says, “Yeah.”