Chapter Seventeen
Seventeen
I’ve worn that coat before. I can almost feel the weight of it, like some kind of muscle memory.
“Ready to go?” he asks. I look behind me, wondering if Sam has noticed we’re walking together and whether he’ll have something to say about it. But he’s already in the hot tub with Sara, so I nod.
“About last night…” Freddie starts.
I blanch. “No, no. It’s all on me. I’m sorry. I’m the one who made it weird. It won’t happen again. I was really, stupendously drunk and as you know, that is never a good look on me.”
Freddie sniffs a laugh. “I feel like I didn’t get a chance to fully explain myself,” he says anyway. “And besides, I don’t even think you did embarrass yourself last night.”
“Oh, come on, Fred. You know that’s not true.”
“You were vulnerable. That’s not the same thing.”
“In my world, it is.”
He shrugs. “Well, not in mine and I don’t know… Can I say I’m flattered I was the one you picked?” he jokes. I can hear the humour in his voice, neatly disguised in his dry tone.
I laugh, short and sharp. “You were just the guy in the hot tub. I really wouldn’t be flattered if I were you. Could’ve been anyone.” I cringe and look away. That was mean. And not true.
I almost go to take it back but he’s smiling. “Good thing I have such a huge ego.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just saying…”
“That I was just a ‘body’ to you?”
“No! Not just a body, a body I trusted. That means something.”
I finally turn to look at him but regret it immediately. He’s watching me, his face passive but his eyes anything but.
“Can I explain myself?” he asks.
I open my mouth to respond, but I’m unsure what to say, so I close it and nod. I think I want to say he doesn’t need to explain himself. What is there to say? But I’m intrigued that he feels like there’s something that needs to be said.
And maybe I’m nosy.
“I’m sure you remember much of what went down with my parents. Or… I don’t know, they were so private, it probably wasn’t that noticeable right away.” He looks at me for confirmation.
It takes me back to the weeks when Sam would come to ours instead of me going to his, which was weird.
Whatever my mum did or didn’t know about the situation, she took Sam under her wing.
Freddie was hardly around because he was at university.
I don’t remember there being any talking about it and there was certainly never an explanation.
Besides, it didn’t feel like something I was supposed to ask.
“I remember the time. I don’t know what happened,” I say. “Other than the eventual separation.”
Freddie nods, like that confirms his thought process.
“I wasn’t there for Sam. I was at university, barely an adult myself and their break-up was uglier than it looked from the outside.
My dad used to get angry. He threw things.
Broke things. Drank until he passed out and blamed my mum for a whole ton of shit. He was a crappy dad.
“At university, I was trying to reset my life, finally free of him. I sort of forgot about it all. I learnt a lot about myself, and I was doing ok in my course. It just felt like things made sense away from home. But I’ll honestly always regret that Sam had to take those years on, on his own.
I don’t know if he’d have kept his head above the water if it wasn’t for you.
You meant the world to him back then. Still do. ”
I swallow, digging my hands deeper into my pockets. “I don’t think you’re giving Sam enough credit. He always seemed so unbothered by it all. And once your dad moved out, he was happy as anything living with Mandy.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m glad him and Mum get on so well.”
“Even though you didn’t? Or don’t?”
I’m sure Freddie flinches but he covers it up by rubbing his chin. “Mum thinks I chose Dad. It’s been a difficult few years trying to get back in with her and Sam.”
I don’t feel like it’s my place to pry so I stay quiet. I can’t work out what this has to do with last night.
As if he can read my mind, he continues.
“Dad needed me. He wasn’t well. And all of a sudden, he was on his own.
I’m not saying he particularly deserved my company, and I regret losing touch with Mum for a time.
I was like his own personal hobby for a while and I don’t know why, but I let him guide me, assist in my career and get me set up in London.
“I have trouble figuring out some of my decisions sometimes. I want to be the good guy, but I resoundingly end up being the villain. I tried to get Sam to not take sides that year when you kicked me out of your party…”
I gasp. “Oh, the night Sam punched the wall! But, hang on, I didn’t kick you out!” But when I look at him, he’s smirking. For once, it’s not a fucking frown. Trust him to finally try out a smile while talking about the darker stuff in life.
“I know. That idiot ex of yours did.” He chews on his bottom lip for a beat, then adds, “I just couldn’t abandon Dad.
He lost a lot in that divorce. Even if it was self-inflicted.
And I understand why Sam cut him off. I do.
As much as I’d have liked to have seen him set up too…
I’d never ask him to try out that relationship again. ”
“Do you still talk to him?” I ask. “Your dad?”
Freddie takes a deep breath. “I do. But it’s more strained than it used to be. He doesn’t want to talk about anything except my career.”
“The career that you hate.”
He rubs the back of his neck. “I don’t love it.”
“Well, what you going to do about it?”
He smiles, tugging on my beanie. “What would you do, storm cloud?”
It’s out before he’s even realised he’s said it. He pauses in his step, looking out at the forest on his side. It’s been three years since he called me that last.
“Do you need your own list of things that didn’t happen?” I joke.
“Nah. That doesn’t count because I’m not embarrassed.”
My core feels like warm honey despite it being freezing outside.
Distraction. Think of a distraction…
“What I would do, if I was in your situation,” I say, “is I would reevaluate what it meant to me to be happy. What it is that makes me smile and how I can manifest that even if only for ten minutes every single day.”
“Damn. That was profound.” He ponders for a moment as if trying to work out what that single thing could be each day. Then asks, “Do you have that at the gallery?”
“I do. Especially when we get new art in.” I can’t even fight the smile.
“Like last week, for example, this local landscapist brought in the most simplistic oil painting of the sea during winter. It was incredibly minimalistic. So real. It was just varying layers of grey and the slightest amount of drab blue.” I look across at Freddie to see him scowling again in thought.
“I’m not selling it very well. But it’s beautiful.
It does so little but makes me feel so much.
I just sat there all afternoon smiling at it. ”
“It sounds very you,” he says.
“What? Grey?”
“Not grey but plain.”
Well, ouch. “You think I’m plain?” I choke out. “No wonder you didn’t want to sleep with me…”
“Hattie… No. I mean you’re beautiful without even trying.”
“Oh, well.” I bite my lip as a stroke of warmth rolls right through me. Head to fucking toe.
Freddie thinks I’m beautiful.
Not fucking grey. Not plain.
Beautiful.
I think about that sketch. I think about the last time we spoke…
I’m tongue-tied. Literally not a single clue how to respond.
Thankfully, his car is in sight. As is the fallen tree, which has been dismantled and stacked to the side of the road.
Freddie does a quick walk round to check there’s no damage while I jump in and try to reengage my brain.
Somehow, it’s colder inside the car than outside and the windows are so iced up, you can’t see out of them at all.
I realise, to my horror, that this means we’ll have to wait for it to defrost first before driving back up to the lodge. My adrenaline spikes again. I need to do something to set this right. It’s my fault it’s awkward. It’s my own fault I’m panicking. There’s no one else to blame.
I tap my fingers against my thighs, trying to get myself together and to warm up.
Freddie hops in and cranks the engine, blasting the heating on the window screen. The fans are so loud, I can barely hear myself think. I roll my head back on the seat whilst we wait.
“I’m trying to work out what decision makes me the good guy in our situation,” he says, his voice just loud enough over the hum of the heater.
I blink at him. “What do you mean?”
“You asked for my help last night and I said no. And now I can’t help but wonder if that makes me the bad guy in your eyes. But if something ever happened between us, I have no doubt Sam would be…” He blows out a breath, struggling for the word.
“Apocalyptic?” I offer.
“That bad? Do you think?”
I’m trying to grasp that he’s thought about something happening between us and I wonder just how much thought went into it. “I didn’t think he’d find out, so…”
“And so, in Sam’s eyes, I’d be the bad guy for helping you which, by extension, would make me the bad guy in Mum’s eyes too.
And if we did do something and you wanted more, but we couldn’t without hurting people…
” Freddie laughs. He fucking smiles again.
“I have no idea what path I’m supposed to pick to avoid being the villain.
Does that mean I’m the bad guy by default? I never seem to get it right.”
I puff out a visible breath. It’s so cold in here.
“Well, I can make that decision super easy for you.” I feel so stupid.
I feel responsible. I feel like some kind of homewrecker.
Even if it is between brothers, not husband and wife.
(Hell, I’d never do that!) But I should never have put Freddie in this position where he’s questioning his fucking morality.
I force a smile as I say, “I’m taking helping me off the cards. ”
Freddie’s lips fall flat as he leans back. “You are?”
“Yeah. I’m surprised you’re even humouring it,” I laugh, incredulous now. “It was never a good idea, Fred. I was drunk.”
“Right.” He runs his fingers over the steering wheel. “Good.”
“I can’t believe I was going to trust the villain of the Harrison household,” I say.
Freddie laughs but it’s stunted. “I was never a villain to you, was I?”
“Only when you dobbed us in after that party and were mean about my music choices.”
He chuckles, throwing his head back. “Christ. Your taste in music was terrible.”
“I take extreme offence at that statement.”
“And I had to dob you in, sadly. The alternative was lying to Mum again.”
“Again?”
“Yes. There were things I kept from her about Dad. I regretted it. So, a few days later when your disaster party happened…” He sighs and it’s a ragged sound.
“Believe it or not, I really didn’t want to dob you guys in.
I would’ve helped you out had the circumstances been different.
But I was used to being the evil older brother then and I think I just assumed my role. ”
“Ugh. I didn’t know all that was going on.”
The windows are clearing up. Freddie straps himself in and puts the car in gear. We roll slowly up to the lodge, the tyres crunching on the icy, ragged surface. Once he parks outside, he turns to me as if to say something but just stares at my face.
“What?” I demand, wondering if there’s a splat of mud on it or something.
“Do you still have it?”
I know what he’s referring to, but I don’t want him to know that. “What?”
He’s onto me. “You know what.”
“Maybe,” I say, taking my keys out of my pocket.
He eyes it in my hand, reaching over to squeeze it between forefinger and thumb. There’s a vulnerability to it and it makes my heart swell. I watch his face, a few of his tawny hairs escaping the edge of his beanie, the small wrinkles on his forehead scrunched together. His lips pink from the cold.
I tell myself I do not want to climb across the car and feel them against my own. But I’m lying.
The moment stretches, then he laughs. “Fuck, your rendition of ‘Thunderstruck’ burst one of my eardrums.”
I tip my head back on a laugh, snatching the charm away from him and jumping out of the door. “Get stuffed, villain boy.”