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11
BRYN
Christmas,a time of year for family, and don't I bloody know it. For weeks leading up to the day, Mum calls and hassles me about going home. I always do and I expect I always will. Apart from one Christmas, about five years ago, I missed out because I was overseas. Luckily, the heat of the States took away from the Christmas feeling, but an odd emptiness I never expected took its place.
Three days after my weird night out with the strange girl, who I can't shake from my mind, and I'm here on Christmas Eve. My three older sisters are spread around the country with their husbands and kids, but my youngest, Tegan, still lives at home. She finished her A levels, took a year out, and recently returned from a trip to Asia. Now we're all together under one roof.
Yeah, we're a bloody big houseful when we get together – sisters and partners, Mum and Dad, grandparents, uncles and aunts, niece, nephews. Good thing my parents accepted my gift of the converted farmhouse on the outskirts of Swansea.
I watch in amusement as my nieces and nephews establish a pecking order, the five of them squabbling until the eleven-year-old, Lola, promotes herself to boss and gets the others to do exactly what she wants. I laugh to myself; she's exactly like her mother, Beth, my eldest sister. Not keen on kids, I retreat to the lounge with my beer and flick the TV on.
Tegan appears, dressed to impress and I lift a brow as I study her tiny clothes. I see her two or three times a year, noticing how she changes each time, but my nineteen-year-old sister is a kid to me. My memories of how guys behave at nineteen pushes 'protective big brother' to the surface as I take in Tegan's long legs and slender frame.
“You'll get cold,” I tell her.
Tegan scouts around the room, straightened brown hair falling into her face as she looks under the coffee table. “You sound like Mum. I do have a jacket.”
“Your legs.”
Locating a stray bottle of nail polish, she straightens. “I have legs, yes.”
I ignore her sarcasm. “How's Scott?”
She pulls a disgusted face. “That's over with. He went to uni in Scotland and found somebody else.”
Great.“No new boyfriend with you tonight?”
“And? Bryn, I'm not a kid. I can manage my own relationships and decide what to wear.”
“Am I that obvious?” I ask and drain my bottle.
“Yes and your girlfriend is the same age as me and she wears less clothes than this; don't be a hypocrite.” Tegan sets herself onto an armchair, balances the bottle of polish and begins to paint her nails bright red.
“Mia is not my girlfriend.” I need to buy a T-shirt with this written on.
“So why does she live with you?”
“Because…” Again, story told too many times. “Doesn't matter.”
“Is she coming on tour with us?” Tegan swaps her brush to the other hand.
I pull a face at the overpowering smell of varnish. “Us?”
“You guys are touring end of January, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And you said I could come, right?” She looks up, narrowing her brown eyes.
Shit. Yeah, I did. Long-term agreement that once she finished school and if she had time, Tegan could come on tour. Now? I'm not so sure.
“Maybe the next one.” I suggest. “This one is only a couple of months; you should wait for the next US one or...”
“I might be at uni by then and won't be able to come!”
“Mmm. Didn't think.” But I'm not fooling Tegan.
“So cool that Ruby Riot is going with you,” she says with a look that arouses suspicion. Is this the real reason?
