Chapter seven
LUCAS
I’d had a surprisingly non-awful day in the mountains with Callum.
He looked freaking intimidating. I didn’t hear him say a single word the night I arrived on the island.
He’d sat next to Aster in the mayor’s kitchen-diner, his huge muscles flexing each time he passed a bowl of vegetables.
Then he’d whisked my best friend away into the mountains for sex I’d hear far too many details about later.
Callum didn’t give off less of a scary vibe when he met me at the foot of the mountains this morning, but quickly it became clear that the packaging didn’t match the squishy insides.
Aster had told me hundreds of stories about this guy.
Not a single one made sense until I looked past hunched eyebrows that screamed he could murder me with one pinkie and had thousands of places to hide my body, and actually paid attention to what Callum said and did.
His voice was gruff, but he’d quietly asked if I was happy to roam around the mountains together to check on the wild pygmy goats that populated the island. Then he’d proceeded to ask questions about my time training as a vet and what London was like and stories of growing up with Aster.
It took until we’d stopped for lunch beside a babbling brook for me to fully realise Callum was as lovely as Aster claimed.
He seemed as nervous as I was about making a good impression.
I’d worried about connecting with him since he was now part of the Aster-package, and he’d apparently been doing the same.
I’d chatted more freely in the afternoon.
I wasn’t too worried about saying something weird, since this guy had fallen for Aster.
I asked about growing up on a tiny island and what it was like to date my bestie.
By the time we walked to his cabin, I’d even seen him smile a couple of times.
It transformed his face from that of a hardened killer to something more like a shy kid.
The door of the cabin crashed open as we neared.
A couple of pygmy goats hopped outside, quickly followed by my best friend.
I’d been smiling as I told Callum about Aster’s firm insistence in primary school that the numbers 5 and 9 were besties who deserved to be counted one after the other, but quickly forced my expression into one I hoped conveyed the depths of my displeasure.
‘I’m mad at you,’ I called across the shortening distance between us.
The bright smile on Aster’s face collapsed. Exactly the reason it was impossible to stay mad at him.
‘No. No no no.’ He hurried over to meet me, his panda print socks sinking into the lush summer grass.
His hair was longer than it had ever been when he lived in London.
The light brown strands fell every which way with slightly more decorum than my wild thatch.
His freckled skin never tanned, instead became so intensely covered in brown dots that at a quick glance he could have been considered sun kissed.
He held up a hand before my face, then beamed at Callum.
‘Hello, Aster.’ The huge mountain man pressed his forehead into my best friend’s. Aster was at least a foot shorter, so Callum’s broad back bowed.
‘I missed you and I love you and I made a start on the stew so you should go sort that hot mess out.’ Aster pecked Callum on the lips. He dropped his hand from in front of my face, then his pulled into an exaggerated grimace. ‘I missed you and I love you and you can’t be mad at me.’
I might have been terrified Callum would rip my arms off for challenging him for Aster’s affections if I hadn’t spent the day seeing how tenderly he treated the teeny goats across the island.
Plus Aster had probably told him everything about me, which included how unromantic yet undying our love for one another was.
Callum shook his head fondly and walked to the cabin, leaving me to berate Aster outside alone.
‘Why couldn’t you have kept your mouth shut when I accidentally thought Kit was Callum?
’ I grumbled, even as Aster stepped into my space and wound his arms around my waist. It was hard to glare at such close proximity, but I did my best. If Aster hadn’t kicked things off so badly between me and Kit, then maybe I would have been able to salvage a budding friendship despite my inability to say normal things in his presence.
‘I’m sorry.’ Aster pressed his face into my neck. ‘I promise no one cares and you’re absolutely not the only person who thinks Kit is a hottie. That dude is model-level gorgeous.’
‘Yeah, I guess,’ I hedged.
Aster loosened his hold so that he could look up at my face. ‘You’re still sad, though?’
‘Yeah.’ I couldn’t hide anything from him, except for the one thing I hid really well. I didn’t even like to think about it around him, just in case I blurted it out. ‘Since then, I’ve kind of messed up stuff with Kit even more.’
Aster’s light eyebrows drew together, throwing the freckles across his forehead into new constellations. ‘Oh, Lukey.’
I’d told my bestie my fears around making friends without him.
Aster believed they were totally unfounded despite the unignorable evidence to the contrary, but even he couldn’t deny that I didn’t have any buddies outside his circle.
It had bummed me out that things with him and Jamie ended so badly before he came to Doughnut, because losing Jamie as a friend had been a serious blow.
At least he’d fucked off to Iceland the day after Aster left London, so I didn’t have to hang out with my new enemy.
Aster guided me inside the cabin, which was tiny and rustic but also inviting and comfy. While Callum stirred stew and baked bread, I unpacked the short but embarrassing interactions I’d had with Kit.
Steaming bowls in his hands, Callum joined us on the sofa. He seemed unbothered when Aster perched on his knee and continued nattering to me.
Seeing my bestie with someone who got him made me happy.
If anyone deserved unconditional love, it was Aster.
His heart was a wide-open book, one which everyone before Callum had decided to scribble in and crumple up the pages.
It was good that he’d found someone who loved him just as he was, because who my bestie was pretty freaking awesome and I’d fight anyone who tried to say otherwise.
Well, he was awesome until he said things like, ‘It would make life much easier if you fancied Kit. Then we could chalk your awkwardness up to being tongue tied because all the blood in your body had flowed to your dick.’
Callum choked on his last mouthful of stew. He extracted himself from beneath Aster and carried our bowls over to the sink, perhaps sensing that the conversation was taking a turn.
I jumped up as well. This was a topic I needed to avoid. ‘You know that’s not the case.’
‘I know.’ Aster flopped back on the sofa but puffed out his chest. ‘My name’s Lucas and I’m straight even though my best friend has told me how boring that is and how bum sex is the bestest.’
I shoved my feet into my boots and decided tying the laces could wait until I was out of sight of the cabin and thus out of shouting distance of Aster. ‘Yup. That’s me. Totally straight.’
Callum’s head snapped up. He stared at me, his thick eyebrows lowering.
I waved at him as I tripped out of the cabin.
There was no way he could know I was lying.
Not that I even was lying. Aster had said I was straight a hundred times because of my lack of interest in any of the apparently hot guys he pointed out, and it was easier to go along with that rather than unpacking the truth.
Because the truth wasn’t normal. I already ran the risk of pity-filled looks because of my inability to make friends without Aster around, and I didn’t need him also treating me like a hurt kitten because of my inability to form any kind of romantic attachment to anyone as well.
He wouldn’t understand. Aster, and apparently most of the population of Earth, walked through life looking at people and feeling instantly attracted to them. That had never happened to me. Not once.
‘Lukey, wait up.’ Aster caught me outside the cabin door and pulled me into a tight hug.
‘Everything with Kit will work out, I promise.’ He squeezed around my middle.
‘And you know I thought me and Callum would have sex four times my first night back on the island? Well, it was five times and they were all amazing and I’ll tell you about it the next time I see you. ’
‘Bye, Aster.’ I wriggled out of his embrace and started the walk down the mountains.
I didn’t begrudge him and Callum their wildly active sex life, but I simply didn’t get it. Alongside never forming an instant attraction to anyone, I’d never felt what Aster described in detail with the small number of the people I’d had sex with.
I’d wandered if a connection might come after humping, that maybe I needed physical closeness to feel an intense pull towards someone, but that hadn’t worked either.
I definitely wanted to have sex, which probably ruled out the chance I was asexual, but I didn’t feel the urge others did to be with someone in that way.
I’d had sex with a grand total of three women, and each time had been as disappointing and lacking as the last. The final time, I’d pretended to come just so that it would end.
Even kissing, which Aster could have written sonnets about even before he met Callum, did nothing for me. I couldn’t stop focusing on the mechanics, the sounds and physical sensations. There was never a spark. Nothing.
Callum couldn’t possibly know that. Maybe he pitied straight people as much as Aster.
Callum couldn’t know I went along with it when Aster said I was straight because it was easier than the alternative.
Which was that I didn’t know what was wrong with me.
I wanted a relationship, wanted sex to be as amazing as it seemed to be for everyone else, but I couldn’t get there.
I’d never looked at a person, male or female, and felt a stirring of attraction.
I hadn’t consciously decided to keep my abject failure to fancy anyone from Aster, but it had gone on for too long now. I was twenty-three years old and had never had a satisfying sexual experience with another person. I’d never even enjoyed a kiss.
Telling my bestie that was never going to make him happy, so I kept it to myself. I let him believe I was boringly straight and unbothered about finding a woman to settle down with. I let him assume I didn’t mind being alone.
I blew out a long breath as I walked down the road towards the village.
I’d declined Callum’s offer of a ride on his quad bike not because Aster warned me of the danger of death but because the longer it took me to get back to Kit’s, the more likely it was that he’d be tucked up in bed when I got there.
No chance for me to make a twat of myself if I didn’t see him.