I also wasn’t keen on the noise and mess created by whoever was developing the land Rae and his gang had once lived on. So I couldn’t recall their names either. “Why are you doing some faceless construction company a favour? Did they pay you?”
“It’s not a construction company…well, I guess it is, but the bosses are my friends. Besides, if they hadn’t bought the land, you know one of Goon’s mates would’ve stepped up, and we’d right back where we’d started.”
I shuddered. “But still. You don’t think it would be better if they left the land alone? Do you know how many newts were driven out of hibernation by the last big build around here?”
“I have no idea, and don’t tell me, I haven’t got a week to spare for a reptile lecture. But if it’s any consolation, Dom and Isha aren’t your average developers. They already had a ton of wildlife surveys done before the project started…”
He said more words, but my brain fixated on one. Isha. It was an unusual name, in white-washed Thorston, at least. What were the chances? Property developer. It would make sense. Conservation concerns aside, I hadn’t paid much attention to the new housing estate being built in the village, but I was aware enough to know that whoever was behind it had some serious wedge.
It also explained why Isha—clearly not a snake enthusiast who’d come from afar to view my boa collection—had happened to swing by my shop when I’d never seen him before.
“Did you just die while standing here?”
“Hmm?”
Rae shook his head. “I forget how spacey you are when I don’t see you for a while.”
“You said I was obsessive last time you were here.”
“You are about the things you care about, and oblivious to everything you don’t.”
I grinned. “Are you annoyed with me, Rae?”
“As if. You’re too cute.” Rae ruffled my hair—the only dude on earth who could do that without getting decked. “But I get the hint. You’re not interested in social housing developments.”
“Social housing? Last time I looked they were digging the foundations for a fucking mansion.”
Rae snorted. “That’s Isha’s house at the back, near the woods. The rest of the plans are for houses and flats for the local authority. It’s not big business, man. Dom and Isha aren’t like that.”
There it was again. Isha. I tried to absorb Rae’s words and apply them to the assumptions I’d made about Isha. To add up the stereotypes I’d applied to him that were gradually coming unstuck. He wasn’t married, and he wasn’t a rich arsehole with no social conscience.
But so the fuck what? Hooking up with him had still been a massive mistake. However hard he’d made me come, nothing justified the week and a half I’d spent angsting over him since. So he wasn’t a complete cockhead. Who cared?
Not me.
“Jude.”
“What?”
Rae set his cup down on the side. He stared at me like I was a mutant, and I braced myself for more Isha-themed conversation, but the blare of a car horn cut him off. “Fuck. That’ll be Cash. I told him I wouldn’t be long.”
“That certain my company would be shit enough for you to hit and run?” I spoke with a smile. In the past, Rae and I had whiled away hours in the shop when he’d needed somewhere warm and dry to hang out, but those days were long gone, and I’d got used to his flying visits.
Rae cuffed my shoulder, and turned to leave. I followed him through the shop to the door. A car pulled up outside—the flashy Lexus I’d accused Isha of owning. My heart skipped a beat, but it wasn’t Isha driving, it was Rae’s boyfriend, Cash.
I liked Cash, but I didn’t know him well enough for much of a greeting than a casual man nod. Rae hugged me, and slipped out of the shop. I shut the door behind him and leaned against it, trying to figure out how so many facets of my life were colliding at once. A random Grindr hook up had turned out to be the father of a kid I was hosting a birthday party for tomorrow. And worse than that, the bloke I needed to forget was apparently an all-around great guy, and friendly enough with one of my best mates to lend his boyfriend a car that didn’t even belong to him. Or something. And that was without dissecting Rae’s throwaway comment about the foundations being dug at the back of the building site.“That’s Isha’s house…”
I picked up my phone and opened the last non Grindr message Isha had sent me. There was no need for me to reply, none at all.
But I tapped out a message anyway.
Fool.
Seven
Isha
Don’t text him. Don’t text him. Don’t text him.