He pried the creased card free and turned it over. Jevon’s contact number jumped out at him, and his phone was out of his pocket with little conscious thought.
Rhys jumped down from the helicopter and tapped the digits into his phone as he walked back to the base rest quarters. He felt sick. Three weeks. Threefuckingweeks. Would Jevon answer? Would he tell Rhys todo oneeven if he did?
Jevon didn’t answer. The call went to an automated voicemail, and the nausea in Rhys’s gut turned to despair. The email address on Jevon’s card was the same as the one on the FFP’s website. The one that had bounced back when Rhys had sent a benign message asking Jevon to contact him.Fuck. He crumpled Jevon’s card in his hand, then instantly panicked and flattened it out again, shoving it into his flight suit pocket for safekeeping, at least until his shift was over. He’d known it was taking the piss to expect Jevon to wait around the best part of a month for him to call, but he was sorely unprepared for how much that one unanswered call hurt.
His phone buzzed in his hand. Rhys’s heart briefly leapt again but sank just as fast when he saw his brother’s name on the screen.
H:Where are you?
R:Work
H:Can you talk?
R:No
In the past, Harry would’ve let that slide, but he’d become more persistent since he’d jumped ship to Cornwall. Like seventy-five thousand texts a week made up for the fact that he wasn’t there. Like it perpetuated the myth thathewas the older brother,distracting them both from the fact that Rhys couldn’t be bothered to check in on himself, let alone anyone else.
H:Stop ignoring me
R:I’m not. I’m at work
H:You’re not on a run or you wouldn’t be responding at all
R:Fuck off
H:No. What’s wrong?
R:Nothing
H:Liar
R:Fine. I think I’m in love with a real-life clown who’s blown me once. Happy now?
Harry called instantly, but Rhys silenced him and turned his phone off. He justified his childishness when the base alarm went off a few seconds later, but by the time his shift ended in the early hours of the morning, he’d accepted that he was a moody prick.
He rescued Jevon’s card from his flight suit and tucked it into his wallet, then he turned his phone on and sent Harry a GIF acknowledging his wanker status.
Harry didn’t reply, but why would he at this time? And no one else had tried to contact Rhys either.
With a heavy heart, Rhys pocketed his phone and headed out to catch the night bus home. Staying awake on route was a struggle, but when he got home, he found himself irritatingly restless again. A packet of fags called his name, but a year-old promise to Harry kept him indoors, and eventually, he crawled into bed.
The TV droned in the background while he stared at the ceiling, willing himself to pass the fuck out already. He had twenty-four hours off work, but it came on the back of seven days straight, and he was so tired his eyeballs hurt.Sleep, dickhead.But the gods were against him. Under his pillow, his phone buzzed with a message. Assuming it to be Harry’s response to his half-arsed apology, Rhys ignored it until it vibrated a second time, and a third.
“Fuck’s sake.” He shoved his hand beneath the pillow, prepared to turn the phone off again, but when he looked at the screen, the three new WhatsApp messages weren’t from Harry.
And the sender was still online.
* * *
Rhys leaned on the wall outside the pizza bar, eyes closed, his face turned to the fading afternoon sun. Inside, his heart was thumping, his mind racing, but like this, with the warmth of the late autumn seeping into his bones, his nauseating nerves gave him a break.
“Rhys?”
Or not. Rhys jumped and opened his eyes to find Jevon right in front of him, dressed in Timberlands, grungy black jeans, and a white tee, his hair held back by a tribal-patterned scarf. “Hi.”
“Hi.” Jevon’s smile was cautious, and Rhys knew why. He hadn’t got round to telling his tale of woe in the handful of WhatsApp messages they’d exchanged over the last couple of days. Lord knew what Jevon was thinking.
“Listen—”