A theory confirmed as the man extended his hand. “Brix,” he said. “You’re Gaz’s brother, ain’t ya? Jasper?”
I shook Brix’s hand. “Jas, but you’re right about the rest, and we’ve met before, actually, when you brought my old man some chickens. Where did you get these images? They’re awesome.”
“Me and Kim rescued them from my fella’s old flat in London. He’d forgotten he had them.”
“You got lucky. That’s Pam Nash, isn’t it?”
“Aye. We’ve got some Les Skuse in the back too. Want to see?”
More than he knew, but the thought of barging, uninvited, into yet another part of Kim’s life felt all wrong. I regretfully shook my head. Brix grinned wryly and looked as though he would disappear back inside the studio, but his path was suddenly blocked.
Red. She smiled at me. “You’ve kept me waiting.”
“That so? Didn’t know you were expecting me.”
“Then you don’t know much at all.” She put her hands on her hips. “Did you think I’d let you take such fantastic pictures of me without saying thank you?”
It hadn’t occurred to me that she’d want to thank me—at least, not in person. The band’s manager had paid my invoice ten minutes after I’d sent it, and I’d considered the transaction complete. “You don’t need to thank me. You and the band made my job easy.”
The band. Right. I’d taken hundreds of images that night, but only Red’s stuck in my mind, and I got the feeling that she knew it as her smile morphed into something close to a smirk. “Come inside,” she said. “Unless you fancy a coffee next door?”
I said goodbye to a clearly amused Brix, and chose the coffee, though I made a mental note to return to Blood Rush one day and have a butcher’s inside. Even without the promise of more vintage photographs, the place was fascinating.
“So . . .” Red said when she’d hustled me to a table at the back of the café next door to the studio. “I think I owe you an apology.”
I stirred way too much sugar into my espresso. “How’d you work that out?”
“I walked in on you and Kim like I owned the place, and I shouldn’t have.”
“So, why did you?” Kim had already explained it in far more detail than I was entitled to, but for some reason, I needed to hear it from her.
Red shrugged. “He was mine to walk in on whenever I liked for so long, I sometimes forget that he’s not anymore. And it’s not often that he has reason to care whether I walk in or not.”
“’Cause you join in? Shit, sorry. That was rude.”
“Not at all, but you’re wrong, as it goes. Kim and I had an open relationship, but we never played at home, and Kim still doesn’t.”
I took a slow, scalding sip of my oversweetened coffee. “He’s told me a little bit about it, but it’s not really any of my business.”
“Unless you want it to be.”
It wasn’t a question, but I turned it over in my mind as I watched Red’s elegant throat work as she swallowed a sip of herbal tea. “I’m not sure either of us is ready for anything more than we’ve already had. We’re friends . . . kind of.”
“Kim has enough friends.”
“So? There’s no room for a little one?”
Red put her elbows on the table. “Okay, real talk now. You know what I’m trying to say, even though Kim would bloodykillme if he knew I was sticking my oar in like this. Look, Jas,please. . . don’t judge Kim by something you don’t understand. He deserves better than that. I’d imagine you both do.”
“I haven’t judged him.” But as the words left my mouth, I remembered that they weren’t true, because Ihadjudged Kim, and her, from the moment I’d realised that their sexual relationship wasn’t entirely over.
Like she’d read my mind—seen through my unintentional lie—she leaned forward. “We’re not promiscuous,Jasper. It’s just a different way of living.”
The way she said my name did odd things to the jacked-up coffee in my stomach. For a brief, bizarre moment, I wanted to grip her chin and imploreherto listen tome, but I said nothing. Just stared, like the idiot I was, until I found my tongue. “Kim and I are friends, and I don’t judge him for anything. I admire him, actually. He’s like no one I’ve ever known.”
“Then you should probably tell him that. His opinion of himself sometimes needs a little bolstering.”
“And you can’t do that?”