Luke sighed. “I don’t know. I s’pose we’re just gonna have to guess and hope she doesn’t kill us.”
“Kill you. You’re the one who has to go home with her.”
“And you’re the one who didn’t listen to her instructions. Trust me, we’re all in trouble.”
“Not Gus.”
“Right.” Luke rolled his eyes and hefted a slab onto his shoulder. “Because none of this is his fault.”
He strode away before I could answer, but I was absolutely not taking that hit-and-run shit from him. I picked up my own slab and followed him to the stand that was Mia’s for the day. “What’s Gus got to do with anything?”
“You’re the one who brought him up.”
Luke wasn’t looking at me. I set my slab down and got up in his face. “Why wouldn’t I bring him up? I live with him, he’s Mia’s brother, and he’s your best friend.”
“Is he? I’ve hardly seen him since you moved in with him.”
“Because you asked him to make sure I didn’t tear the town up.”
“I didn’t, actually. No one can stop you doing anything if you’re in arsehole mode. You think I’d put that on Gus?”
“I don’t know what you’d do, any more than you know me.”
It came out harsher than I’d intended, but Luke didn’t flinch. Just stared at me with a steady gaze that would’ve suited Gus better. “We can fix that, though, right? That we don’t know each other very well? I know I’m hard to get along with when I’m stuck in my own head, but I’m trying to be better.”
“And I’m trying not to be an arsehole, but I want to know why you’re talking about Gus like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you think you know something.”
“Something about wha—” Luke caught himself and shook his head. “Okay, you got me. I was putting the bins out when you left the other night. I saw you together and it made me think there was something going on between you. Is there?”
I thought back to when we’d left Mia’s last night, scrutinising the way Gus had meandered drunkenly down the drive, and the steadying arm I’d slid around his waist. Truthfully, it hadn’t been necessary. Gus was an adult who could handle a skinful, but given that we’d called time on hooking up, and I was missing him like fucking air, I’d done it anyway. I hadn’t considered how it would look to anyone watching. I hadn’t considered anyone except my own damn self and my poor aching heart. Bless.
Luke was still staring at me.
Back when I’d first rocked up in Rushmere, I might’ve glowered back, flipped him the bird, and stomped on by, but I didn’t want to be that dickhead anymore. I wanted us to be like Gus and Mia, easy, warm, and forgiving of age-old shit that didn’t matter. “Can I ask you something?”
Luke set his slab down. “Of course.”
“Did I sleepwalk when I was a kid?”
“Yup. Every night for two years until you started smoking weed. We didn’t make the connection at the time, but I figured it out when I was talking to someone about you offshore in Indonesia.”
“Indonesia?”
He nodded. “I was based there for a while after the earthquake in Sumatra.”
“Doing what?”
“Same as I did everywhere else. I put the fuel in the helicopters so they could fly their missions.”
“That was your job?”
“Yeah. It’s more complex than it sounds, but at the same time, pretty fucking simple.”
Nothing about Luke was ever simple, and I wanted to ask him more about the sleepwalking. But I didn’t want to explain to him that I needed to know how I’d ended up in Gus’s bed the night of the barbecue despite being sober as a judge. And I didn’t want him to stop talking when it was the most he’d told me about himself in the best part of a decade.