Harry sighed. “I don’t believe you, but whatever. Okay, here’s the thing... when it came to being with Joe, there wasn’t really a choice to be made. Being with him was going to happen, and there was a big part of me that didn’t care how. Like, I’d have doneanythingto be with him.”
“Seems legit. You don’t think he’d have done anything to be with you?”
“It wasn’t the same for him. He loves me as much as I love him, but he was in a different place. Joe doesn’t have the kind of life he can pick up and move to London. He has to be here, and I have to be with him, so that’s what happened.”
“But why? What made his life more important than yours?”
“Everything. There are thousands of dudes in London who could do what I was doing, but there’s only one Joe in the world. Besides, I didn’t want to go back to the city. I was miserable, Rhys... you know I was.”
Rhys couldn’t argue with that. Putting up and keeping on was in the Foster family blood, but Harry had never been able to hide how much he hated it. Wearing his heart on his sleeve there for the whole world to see. Loneliness had hit him far harder than it ever had Rhys, and no one deserved his new life in Newquay more than him. “I don’t know what to do.”
“So this is about Jevon? Angelo told me he’s gone.”
“How the fuck does Angelo know that?”
Rhys couldn’t keep the growl out of his voice, but Harry didn’t seem to hear it. “I’d imagine because Jevon kept in touch with him after you helped him out that time. Angelo’s still here, by the way.”
“I know. Joe told me.”
“Because you’d rather talk to him than to me?”
“Shut up.”
Harry laughed. “You’re fucking impossible. Look, I don’t know what the deal is between you and Jevon, but Angelo reckons he’s the tits and that he’s as into you as you are him. You just have to figure out how to mesh your lives together. If you love each other, what seems impossible is easier than you think.”
“Shutup.”
“Dude, you called me.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Rhys said goodbye and hung up, pondering Harry’s sage advice as he thumbed through his phone to Jevon’s contact details. Eleven digits and a photograph. It didn’t seem enough for the mark Jevon had left on Rhys’s soul.
The phone vibrated in Rhys’s hand, startling him enough for the phone to slip out of his grasp. He fumbled for it, expecting Harry and any words of wisdom he might’ve forgotten.
But it wasn’t Harry.
It was Jevon.
Rhys sat up and swiped at the screen like a man possessed. The picture jumped like an eighties TV and froze before finally—finally—Jevon’s smile lit up the world.
“Hey.”
“He—” Rhys cleared his throat and tried again. “Hey. There you are.”
“Here I am. Are you okay? Did I wake you up?”
“Nah. I’m good. Just getting in. God. I can’t believe it’s you.” Rhys touched the screen. “Where are you?”
“Camp Moria, on Lesbos. Hang on, I’ll show you.” The picture panned away from Jevon’s face as he flipped the camera and scanned the scene below wherever he was.
More tents than Rhys had ever seen filled the horizon. “Jesus Christ. It’s huge.”
“Not huge enough.” Jevon returned the screen to his face and sat down on what appeared to be a sandy-coloured rock. “Four thousand people in a camp that was built for fifteen hundred. It’s like the end of the world, man. And more keep coming. I’ve never seen so many kids... I can’t even describe it.”
Rhys crawled out of bed and drifted to the kitchen, though for what, he wasn’t entirely sure. “What can you do for them?”
“With seven of us? Not a great deal as we don’t have enough equipment to go around, but we’ve played a lot of football this week, and I got caught up in a Taylor Swift singalong last night.”
Rhys cringed. “Ouch.”