A screw slips through my fingers, clanging off the drainpipe. I catch it before it falls, but it’s a stark reminder there’s no buzz in the world matching how I feel when I’m with Skylar.
Like I’ll die if I keep fucking him.
Like I’ll die if I stop.
I finish up with the cameras and climb down from the roof.
Sol waits for me, shaking his head, brandishing a bowl of something as white as the clouds. “You’re going to give me a fucking heart attack.”
I can’t tell if he’s taking the piss out of me or himself. Or if he’s deadly serious. I peer into the bowl he’s offering. “What’s this?”
“Viennetta. We have too many in the freezer.”
“So stop fucking buying it then.”
Sol makes a noncommittal sound that spells far more trouble for my heart than a two-storey climb.
I wait for him to elaborate.
Nudge him when he doesn’t.
Sol sighs. “Skylar likes it. Sometimes, anyway.”
“Because it’s white?”
“You noticed that?”
“He doesn’t fucking hide it.”
Sol regards me, speculation dancing in his soulful eyes. Wisdom, that I haven’t had much time to appreciate while I’ve been caught up in his seafaring dramas. “What’s going on with you two?”
“Why are you asking me that?”
“Because I wasn’t joking the other night when I said you’re a hate fuck waiting to happen.”
“You didn’t say that.” Not to me, anyway. Which means there’s a distinct possibility he said it to Skylar. And that Skylar told him he hates me.
I take the bowl from Sol and glare at the stark white ice cream flecked with chocolate. It’s the same shit our mam used to bring home from the Spar shop on Comber Road when we crawled out of school with scraped knees, and I tell myself that’s why my heart sinks into my shoes.
I tell Sol, “I’m not hate-fucking anyone.”
Because it’s the truth.
“I know,” he says. “I was joking.”
“Your jokes are shite.”
“I know that too.” Sol speaks around a sigh. “Butyoushould know, Skylar doesn’t hide this part of it because he wants us to think that’s all it is. Sometimes the more open he is, the deeper he’s sinking?—”
One of the bar girls calls Sol’s name. Calls himaway, leaving one of the worst sentences I’ve ever heard hanging in the wind.
The cold from the ice cream bites into my hand. I put together what Sol’s telling me with what I’ve seen with my own eyes, and I want to throw the bowl at the wall. But I’ve been working on containing the rage flares my brain keeps throwing up. I take the ice cream inside and find Jack at the alcove table reserved for staff.
He’s not alone, and it shouldn’t surprise me. After weeks and weeks of Skylar ghosting in and out of my life like a moody fucking angel, suddenly he’s everywhere.
It’s how I wound up on my knees for him in the utility room, but blowing him is the last thing on my mind as I slide onto thebench seat beside him. It was the last thing on my mind whenI didfucking blow him, and somehow it happened anyway.
I drop the bowl on the table loud enough for Jack to glance up from the stock sheets he’s working on.