“God probably does,” I admitted with a grin. “Finally, Elliott’s tone, which can be awesome.”
Max grinned. “Wow, look at you, liking things.”
“I like outcomes. Liking things makes me lose time.” I tapped my cup. “We don’t have time to lose.”
“You have time to be a person,” Max corrected. “Which includes liking a thing so much your plans fall over like distracted dominoes.”
I grimaced. “I don’t… do that.”
“You do. You just don’t admit it out loud. Because if you admit it, you think you’ll break.”
My lips twitched. “And there you go again, rolling out the old armchair psychology. Ialwayslove this part.”
Max saluted me with a biscotti. “Judge all you want, Captain Clipboard. The truth is, you’re good, but you could be great if you unclenched, even a tiny bit. How about letting one single molecule of chaos pass through your membrane without incinerating it?” He shook his head. “Nothing changes. You were exactly the same in college.”
I opened my mouth to deliver a dry retort, but my phone buzzed on the table. GARY WALTERS lit the screen.
What came to mind instantly was not my high school and college best friend, but his brother.
His hot, sexy-as-fuck brother.
Max peered at my phone. “Gary?” His eyebrows shot up. “Haven’t seen him since that party where he fell asleep in the bath. Please tell me he got better at holding his vodka.”
I thumbed to answer, then tapped my EarPods. “Gary. Hey.”
“Hey, man!” Gary’s voice was a burst of sunlight through the rain, warm, easy, and exactly the way a decade-old friendship should feel. “You still alive or has London swallowed you like a python?”
“Half-swallowed,” I said. “What’s up?”
“Well…” Gary exhaled, and my senses were suddenly alert. I recognised that sigh. It was the one friends used when they were about to ask for something and wanted you to remember you loved them.
“Don’t stop now,” I prompted. “You’ve got this far.”
“I need a favour, and I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t desperate.”
My spine straightened on instinct. “Okay.”
“It’s Cameron.”
The world edged out of focus for a fraction of a breath. Not enough to be dramatic, but enough that I tightened my hand around my cup without even thinking about it.
Gary kept going, oblivious. “His landlord pulled the plug, and he and his flat mates have two weeks to vacate.”
“Right.” My voice sounded strained, and nothing like me. I cleared my throat. “That’s… shit.”
“Yeah. He’s scrambling. So I was thinking—well, more like hoping… You’ve got that place in Hammersmith, right? Is it big enough that you could let him crash there for a bit? Just until he finds something. He won’t be in your way, I promise. He’ll be at classes, drawing, painting, working, whatever. He’s quiet. You know Cam.”
I stared at a raindrop as it fattened, joined another, and rolled down the pane in search of more drops to assimilate. Inside me, a hallway of doors opened at once. Cameron in a hoodie at the leather bar, leaning over the menu, his breath warm against my ear. Cameron, sixteen, laughing in a choir room. Cameron at eighteen?—
My pulse kicked hard enough to feel it in my gums.
“Theo, you still there?”
I forced air into my lungs. “Here. Sorry. Coffee brain.”
“So? Can he?” I caught the thread of worry running through Gary’s voice, softening it. “I wouldn’t ask, but I can’t bring him here right now. We’re packed. Besides, his studies are there. You’re—you’re the safest person I know.”
I shut my eyes. That sentence slid under all my defences.