Chapter Six
Lane
“What the fuck am I doing?” I asked, leaning against the farm’s office door and watching Will scroll through something on his laptop. I knew he was busy, but I needed to have a self-pitying moan, and Will was the best person to listen.
“Sounds like you invited your ex-boyfriend to the pub with us,” Will said without looking up.
“I know that, but why the fuck did I ask him? I could have just told him the pub was nice or suggested he go have a wander. I didn’t have to fucking invite him to come with us.
” I sighed and rubbed my face. I’d been asking myself the same question for the last two days, but I wasn’t any closer to answering it.
Probably because it would involve me taking a long, hard look at myself, which I was actively avoiding.
Will stopped scrolling and turned in his chair, looking up at me with a raised eyebrow. He was still wearing his navy overalls, just without his boots, which meant he was about to tell me something I didn’t want to hear, then go back to work. “Did you want me to answer that?”
“I don’t know. Do I?”
Will just looked at me. “Depends on whether you want to live in denial or not.”
“I’m not living in denial,” I said. “What am I in denial about?”
“The fact that you like Oliver. I know you think you should be pissed at him for what happened, but it’s obvious you’re not, or if you are, you’re not holding it against him. If you were that mad at him, you wouldn’t have even spoken to him in the first place.”
“I’m working on his fucking house. I’d have to have spoken to him.” Will was telling me things I already knew, and even if I’d begrudgingly started to accept them myself, that didn’t mean I really wanted to hear it.
“You know what I mean,” Will said, folding his arms across his chest. “You’d have just stuck to work shit. But you didn’t. Because yeah, you broke up, and things got really messy, but it’s obvious now that you’ve had space from each other, you still want to be friends with him.”
I made a non-committal noise.
“If your breakup was as bad as Alex made it out to be, you wouldn’t be here.
Last week, when you were talking about him at the pub, you weren’t exactly acting like he was some dickhead who’d appeared to ruin your life.
You were fine with Noah suggesting a line in the sand, so why are you so worked up about all this? ”
“I don’t know,” I said. I sighed and tapped my foot on the floor.
“I always thought I didn’t want to see Oliver again.
Ever. But now… I don’t know. I just feel kinda sad?
We were friends for so long, and I loved him so much, and we just threw it away because we were eighteen and angry and scared.
I lost the one person I could talk to about anything, the one who was always there for me, and now I think I regret how it all went down. ”
Will nodded. “You told me it was because he went off to uni and left you behind. Was that it?”
“Yeah,” I said with a weak chuckle. “Pretty much. Sounds so fucking ridiculous now. But he was leaving, I was staying here, and I was scared as fuck of losing him, so I just pushed him away. We ended up having this massive argument where I told him to get fucked, and that was it really.”
“That makes you both sound equally responsible for what happened, rather than him just fucking off to uni and leaving you with a broken heart.”
I grimaced. “I’m human. I’m not exactly gonna tell everyone I was a dickhead to him. Much easier to make it sound like his fault rather than both of ours.”
Will had a point, and it felt good to admit the reality out loud for once.
Over the years, the whole thing had gotten twisted by anger and lies.
Both Oliver and I had been scared teenagers facing the reality of being apart for the first time in our lives, and neither of us had reacted the way we should.
But when did teenagers ever do the mature thing?
And the further we’d gotten from the incident, the harder it had become to reach out and attempt to mend fences.
“Did you talk to him about it?” Will asked, standing up out of his chair and stretching. He headed for the office door and pulled on the boots that were resting on the mat. I followed him out the door into the yard, where his two sheepdogs, Nellie and Moss, were lying in a patch of sun.
“No, and he hasn’t mentioned it either. Every time we get near it, we just change the subject.”
“You should start there, then,” Will said. “Just accept it’s going to be a weird conversation and roll with it. You’ve admitted you were both at fault, and if you feel this way, I bet he does too.”
“You think?”
“Yeah, I do. You’ve just decided to play a fucked-up game of chicken to see who can go without talking about it the longest.” He grinned at me, and I knew he was right. Will always was.
“Fine. I’ll talk to him,” I said.
“Good. I’m looking forward to meeting him on Friday,” Will said. “It’ll be fun.”
It would be something all right, but I wasn’t sure fun was the right word to describe it.
Although I’d promised Will I’d talk to Oliver about everything between us, I’d never said when I’d do it. Which was why I talked to Oliver about everything but that for the rest of the week.
It hadn’t been that difficult. After I’d gently teased him about the camping stove he’d bought to make tea on, which was the most useless piece of shit I’d ever seen because it barely chucked out enough heat to make tepid water, he’d brought me coffee from Novel Tea, and we’d sat on the back lawn eating fresh scones Mabel had dropped off while he talked to me about his job and we reminisced about English at school.
The renovations were coming on nicely too, so it was easy to talk about daily progress and next steps and why Phil wanted Oliver to promise never to follow in his grandad’s footsteps when it came to DIY.
I knew we couldn’t keep avoiding the elephant that casually followed us around, but admitting I’d been wrong and apologising were hard, no matter how simple Will had made the conversation sound.
I’d spent nine years building up our fight to something epic and world shattering in my head, and admitting it was just a petty argument between two teenage boys borne out of fear would bring that crumbling down.
Not that it hadn’t been soul-crushingly painful at the time, but hindsight was helpful in this instance.
And also really unhelpful because it made me realise we’d both been acting like twats.
“Fuck this,” I muttered to myself, rummaging through the cupboard for the last few Jaffa Cakes.
It had been a long day, and I was tired from both work and the constant back and forth in my head.
And it still wasn’t over because I was meeting everyone at the pub in forty minutes, and I was sure it was going to be a shitshow.
I’d put a message in the group chat to let everyone know I’d invited Oliver, and while everyone, including Alex, had said it was fine, I was still worried.
I had a feeling Noah had told Alex to calm down and play nice, but whether he would or not was another question.
I loved Alex, but he just didn’t think sometimes.
Grabbing my handful of Jaffa Cakes, I stuck my head around the living room door to make sure my dog was actually still alive. “Sparrow?”
She looked up and huffed at me, cross that she’d been disturbed.
I wondered if she’d actually moved much that day.
Sometimes I took her with me so she could potter round while we worked, but I hadn’t taken her to Oliver’s this week because it had been hot, and I knew she’d get underfoot, wanting to lie in the cottage’s cool hallway.
Not that she’d minded. She was nearly eleven and preferred spending her days following the sun around my sitting room to leaving the house.
“Do you want dinner?” I asked, watching as Sparrow sat bolt upright at the mention of food. “Yeah, I thought so.”
Sparrow stretched and slid off the sofa before ambling over to me. While her hearing these days was definitely selective, anything vaguely related to food was always of interest, and she was still sneaky enough to steal sandwiches from unattended lunch boxes.
She followed me out into the kitchen and watched me scoop biscuits into her bowl. I chuckled as Sparrow let out an excited ooff and spun in a circle as I added some of the expensive canned meat she adored before sneaking in a small scoop of joint supplement.
“There you go. Remember to chew this time.” I put the bowl on the floor knowing that its contents would be gone in less than two minutes. Sparrow had always inhaled food rather than chewing it.
While she ate, I peeled the chocolate off my Jaffa Cakes and ate them slowly.
I didn’t have time to eat dinner before the pub, not if I wanted to shower too, so they would do as an appropriate snack.
I’d dug a portion of lasagne out of the freezer to heat up later since it would be easy to stick in the microwave when I got back.
I sighed and rolled my shoulders, feeling a deep ache in my muscles.
I knew I’d wake up sore in the morning. We’d spent the day starting to strip out two of the cottage’s bathrooms, and while they hadn’t been difficult to dismantle, the weather had been baking, and lugging shit down the stairs to the skip we’d had delivered outside was exhausting.
My job often involved me being a jack-of-all-trades, and while I mostly dealt with planning and paperwork, I was always there to step in and help out when needed.
Which had meant helping to haul shit outside.
I desperately needed a shower to wash the layers of sweat and dust off my skin, especially if I didn’t want to show up to the pub stinking to high heaven. Usually I wouldn’t care, because although Alex might give me shit, I wasn’t trying to impress him.
Did this mean I was trying to impress Oliver?
Sparrow burped, then yipped at me to indicate she’d finished and wasn’t happy her bowl hadn’t refilled itself. I let her out into the small garden behind my house, grateful for the distraction.
I tried to push Oliver from my mind as I watched Sparrow mosey around the grass. The garden really needed a tidy, but it could go on my to-do-at-some-point list. If the weather was going to stay nice, I’d invite everyone over for a barbecue, and that might give me incentive to get it done.
Would I want to invite Oliver as well? I didn’t see why not, but it would mean I was including him in my friends again. It felt like my brain was moving two steps ahead of my feet, and my heart was already disappearing into the distance without bothering to communicate with the rest of me.
It was confusing and infuriating and had me spinning in circles with no end in sight.
When Sparrow returned to the sofa, I headed upstairs. I shrugged off my clothes and dumped them in the wash basket just inside the bathroom, making a mental note to stick a load on tomorrow morning. I rolled my shoulders and neck again and felt something pop.
The cool air of the bathroom felt good on my skin as I turned the shower on and stepped inside, closing the glass door behind me.
I sighed contentedly as warm water cascaded over my head and down my back, getting lost in the sensation for a moment.
I closed my eyes as the water dripped down my face, washing away the remains of the day.
My swirling emotions around Oliver settled, leaving only a picture of him in my mind’s eye.
I’d tried to avoid focusing on the way Oliver looked, but I couldn’t deny he’d grown up hot.
As a teenager, I’d thought he was cute as fuck, but now he’d grown into his sharp cheekbones, full lips, and long legs.
I hadn’t missed how fucking gorgeous his legs were with a round, firm-looking ass that I just wanted to bite.
My cock throbbed and started to swell as I thought about the way Oliver had bent down to check the old under-sink cabinet in the main bathroom, making sure it was empty before we’d started ripping it out.
I’d stood in the doorway and hadn’t missed the way his jeans had fucking clung to him when he’d bent over.
I groaned and slid my hand down my chest, keeping my eyes closed as I lost myself in thoughts of Oliver.
I wondered what sex would be like between us now.
We’d fooled around a lot as teenagers, and it had always been fun, if occasionally awkward, but now my brain was conjuring up all sorts of delicious ideas about bending hot, grown-up Oliver over the kitchen table and fucking him until we were both shaking and dripping with sweat.
“Fuck,” I muttered as my fingers reached for my swollen cock, wrapping around the shaft and giving a few lazy pumps. I knew I shouldn’t be going down this rabbit hole, but it was too late to turn back.
I wondered if Oliver would beg if I teased him. If he’d try to stop himself from crying out as I sucked his cock and fingered his sweet hole. I loved it when my partners were vocal, not only because it was a total ego boost to know I was getting them off but also because it was hot as fuck.
My hand sped up, and I jerked myself faster, putting a hand on the tiles to steady myself as I got closer and closer to the edge. It felt like forever since I’d last gotten off, even if it had only been a couple of days. Maybe it felt like longer because I hadn’t thought about Oliver in forever.
Now, he was all I could think about.
His voice, his full lips curved into a smile, his beautiful dark eyes that would look so pretty all desperate and wanting, and his long legs that would feel so good wrapped around my waist as I fucked him.
“Shit!” I cried out as my orgasm crashed through me and cum flooded my hand, only to be washed away by the shower spray. My heart was racing, my breaths coming in deep pants as I slowly came down from my high.
I opened my eyes and stared at the dark blue tiles in front of me, my mouth setting itself into a firm line. What the fuck had I done? I knew a line had been crossed, and even though I didn’t plan on telling Oliver about it, it was still going to make this evening weird as fuck.
I didn’t regret it, though. If anything, I wished my fantasies were real, and that was probably the most fucked-up thing about all this. Grabbing the bottle of shower gel off the rack, I focused on getting clean rather than what had just happened.
Will was right about one thing. I definitely liked Oliver. I didn’t even know if I’d ever stopped liking him, even after everything.
And that was another thing to add to my list of things to be in denial about.