Page 76 of Actually Yours

“Hey, big bro.”

I watch, dumbfounded, as my little brother strolls into the living room, dropping his duffel bag and discarding his keys as he goes.

What is he doing here? He’s supposed to be gone until February.

“What are you doing here?”

Robby gives me a lazy look, like he can’t even be bothered to make a proper expression. “I live here.”

Such a twat.

“I know that.” I get up and round the couch, stopping a few steps away from him. “You were supposed to be gone all summer.”

He shrugs, another lazy gesture. “I changed my mind.”

Flinging himself on the spot I’d just vacated, he puts his feet up on the arm of the couch and changes the channel, like it’s been six minutes and not six weeks since he’d flounced off on ‘tour’.

I grab the remote, angrily putting it back to the show I’d just been watching, before pausing it and turning to face him. With supreme effort, I keep the annoyance off my face, needing to get to the bottom of his sudden reappearance.

“What happened?”

He sighs like talking to me is such a hassle. “Nothing ‘happened’,” he says, using exaggerated quotation marks and I want to punch him. “Things with the band were pretty slow, and I got over it.”

This is typical Robby. He’s always floating from one thing to the next, never committing, never seeing things through.

“So, you just left them?”

He makes another face, this time looking supremely annoyed to be questioned in this way. “It’s not like they ever let me play.” He sounds like a petulant child. So, accurate. “And I was bored.”

This is so completely on brand for Robby that it takes my breath away. First, he jumps into a commitment with full enthusiasm and then he drops it when it all gets too hard. Or too boring, in this case. He does this with work and with jobs around the house. He does this with women. He did this with Amelia.

My blood boils.

“Didn’t you expect this? You were theback-updrummer?”

He strokes the beginnings of the awful-looking beard on his chin. “I didn’t really think about it. It just sounded cool. And Rebecca wanted to go, so I went.”

The mention of his girlfriend has all the memories of that night, the one that had Amelia storming over here, note in hand, flooding through my brain. Without thinking, I fist the front of his shirt in my hand and pull him upright.

“Speaking of Rebecca.” My face is mere inches from his. “What was with you leaving that note for Amelia before you took off?”

Robby’s face flames red as he pushes me away from him. “How do you know about that?”

“Because she turned up here with the note, looking for you.”

His face turns hopeful and I stalk away from him, the temptation to punch him getting stronger every minute.

“She did?”

“Yes, she was upset.”

His face falls.Good. “How upset?”

I rub my face with my hands. “Actually, she wasn’t upset. She was seething mad. What were you thinking?”

He flops back down on the couch, covering his eyes with his forearms, the very picture of dramatic. “I just missed her.”

He issucha twat!

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