Page 27 of Someone Like You

Jerk

Ian

Now go to fucking sleep

I want you at the fountain at six sharp

You

I don’t need a babysitter

Ian

Prove it

Phil didn’t have anything clever to shoot back. He was giddy, inebriated by the scent of the flowers sitting next to him on the sill, an ear-to-ear grin stretching his lips as he sipped his chamomile.

It took a minute to sink in.

Giddy.

Ear-to-ear grin.

It sounded soforeign.

As foreign as the idea of himself buying a bike because he wanted to go places or resuscitating his laptop because he was feeling like trying to write again.

Feelingwas a word that hadn’t applied to Phil in a long, long time. Numbness had dug its cold tendrils so deep inside him that he’d given up all hope he’d ever feel like a sentient being again. Some, Abby included, considered going from wanting to die to not feeling anything at all an improvement, as if the fact that he was still here to tell the tale made any difference at all. For months the only proof he had had that he was still alive was that he was still breathing, and now all of a sudden he was feeling all sorts of things — clumsily, because his heart had been a sterile desert for so long that it’d lost its ability to retain and process emotions, but he wasfeeling.

It’d been like this since he’d started running again.

Since meeting Ian, one might argue.

A knot of mild panic clogged his throat.

Third surreal event of the day: there was a possibility he might feelsomethingfor Ian Galloway.

chapter 6

IAN

He was playing with fire.

Things were escalating fast and he was too selfish and too masochistic to just walk away. It was wrong, and it was stupid, but it was too late to do anything about it, anyway: he was addicted. Addicted to Phil’s wry humour and his sharp comebacks, how he never missed a beat, even when Ian played his best cards. Addicted to that brokenness that made Phil appear so brittle when he was, in fact, the strongest, bravest person Ian had ever met. The most loyal, too.

Phil, who had come all the way from America to disrupt the natural order of Ian’s life.

Phil, with his brooding air and eyes way older than his forty-five years.

Phil, who couldn’t be any more off-limits if he tried.

Ian pressed his forehead to the cold tiles of the shower, biting down on a curse.

He wasfucked.

And a git.

When he’d seen Jamie with Irene, or Iris, or whatever her name was, he’d feared it’d punch him with nostalgia, but that hadn’t been the case. Because Phil had taken charge, and while thathadhelped Ian get through a potentially unpleasant situation, it had also made him realise that Jamie, whom he had once believed to be the love of his life, was now as relevant as a speck of dust on his sleeve. A simple brush had swept him away, leaving room and clarity for another realisation: having Phil tucked under his arm felt unfairlyright. Not just because he fit there so damn well; for a straight guy, he’d played the gay boyfriend part surprisingly confidently.

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