Chapter Fifteen
Wynter
It doesn’t take me long to pack up the couple of bass guitars I have with me.
I leave Max disassembling his drum kit and help Reid wrestle a copious number of leads into boxes.
He’s down, which is why he turns the task into a circus.
In typical Reid fashion, he doesn’t say why he’s down, he just makes endless busy work for himself.
“Just tell her you don’t want it to end.”
“Thought I had already.”
Which means he hasn’t, not really, not in an actual heart-to-heart serious conversation, only in an offhanded, hyperbolic Reid fashion.
‘Stay with me to the end of time, while I kiss every inch of your skin six times over’; that sort of shit.
I know him well enough to realise that means he’s ready for the long haul.
Not sure Iris does.
“It’s probably for the best,” he sighs from his balls. “You don’t like her anyway.”
“Don’t go pinning this on me. I never said that.”
He cracks a grin, throws an arm around my shoulder, and proceeds to muck up my hair. “Ahh, you do like her. I knew it. Called it.” He smacks a kiss on my cheek. “We can be all polycule-lier together. I want both my lovers to get on. It opens up the possibilities, you know…”
“Except we’re leaving.”
He drops the lead he was coiling, which unravels and whips him across the midriff.
“Fucker.” He wrestles it into submission as if it’s a snake.
“It’s not just me. Max tried too. She’s not hearing us.
” He turns on the sad boy face again and makes sorrowful eyes at me.
“I’ll do all your laundry for you, for a month… six months.”
“I’m good thanks. I can do my own.”
“Please fix this, Wynter. Please. You’re the fix-it guy. I know you can do it. Please.”
I want to throttle him. We wind up kissing instead.
***
Iris is wandering the shoreline when I come back from moving things across to our van. I watch her attempt to skip stones with limited success.
This is madness.
Her out here, and Reid and Max inside moping. Fuck. I told Reid I categorically wasn’t going to do this, but I can’t deal with this much moseying about being pathetic.
I crunch across the noisy shingle towards her, which instantly causes her to turn her head.
“Come to show me how it’s done?” She offers me the chunky pebble from her palm.
“Not something I’ve mastered.” I do know that you’re supposed to use flatter stones. I hunt around and find one, along with a chunk of sea glass I offer to her.
“I’ll be out of your hair tomorrow.” She tries to make it sound jocular and not as if her heart is rupturing at the thought of leaving. “Sorry that I got in the way.”
“What are you doing, Iris?”
“Skipping stones.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean the ‘Sorry I got in the way’.
We’re way past this. You’re the reason we have a future that’s worth pursuing.
If you hadn’t arrived, our world would be fucking grim right now.
Either we’d have been dropped with no hope of scoring another deal, or worse, we’d have been still fucking signed to Chinchilla and being strongarmed into releasing that utter bunch of toss their guy produced. ”
She accepts this with her head bowed, teeth indenting her lip. “I’m glad it worked out for you all.”
It hasn’t worked out, yet. We still have to convince Harry, but I believe in what we have. Enough to be optimistic.
“Why is everyone around here so shit at communicating?” I mutter it under my breath, but I mean for her to hear me. She looks up, startled. “Reid doesn’t want it to end. Max doesn’t want it to end. You don’t want it to end. So why the fuck are you ending it?”
Her mouth drops open. Tears well in her eyes. Angry tears. Frustrated tears. “It won’t last, out there. How can it. People will—”
Any phrase that starts with that sort of phrasing is always a reflection of internal fucking fears. I know. I’ve spent the last six months engaged in that sort of thinking.
“Fuck people. What do you want, Iris?”
She opens her mouth. Closes it again.
I try and fail to skim a stone. Plop! “Okay, ideal world time. Humour me. If you could have anything you want to happen tonight, tomorrow, what would that be?”
It takes her a while, but eventually she admits in the smallest of voices. “I’d leave with the three of you, and—”
“What’s stopping that from happening?”
“Peop—”
“No.” I abandon any further attempts at stone skipping and shake my head. “Not people. You. The only person stopping it from happening is you.”
Heat blooms in her cheeks as if I’ve struck her with more than words. “It’s not…”
I hold my ground. “Iris, why the fuck not? And if you’re about to respond with some bollocks about what other people think, then don’t. The only people who get to have a say in the matter are the ones involved.”
“I can’t date all three members of Lucidity out in the real world.”
Big assumption, in more than one way. “You asking me out, mermaid girl?”