Page 27 of Try Hard
“Oh, that’s not true, is it Herc?” I asked in a slightly pouty voice. “He’s a true athlete.”
Terrance laughed heartily. “Sorry, but this one takes after Sophie more than you—has his moments for running around, but given a choice, he’d pick the indoors and a cosy couch every day of the week.”
He wasn’t wrong there, and there was no point arguing otherwise. If it rained, Hercules tried to refuse his daily walks, even when you put him in his stylish yellow raincoat. Soph wasthe same. She’d go outside, of course, but she’d complain non-stop about the bad weather, pouting from inside her hooded coat. Not me. I ran come rain or shine. Sometimes, I liked the rain better. There was something so vital about it. Sure, the conditions weren’t ideal, but I seldom felt more alive than when the rain pounded against my skin and flared up around my feet with every step.
Terrance poured himself another cup of coffee and sat quietly at the breakfast bar until I took a seat beside him with my food. Herc gave me the biggest puppy dog eyes, desperate for a taste.
“You good?” I asked, eyeing Terrance questioningly.
He nodded in that wise way dads seemed to. “Sophie mentioned you’d run into someone from school yesterday.”
I fought to keep my expression neutral as I sipped my tea. There had been about five minutes where Soph had been alone with Mum and Terrance before leaving. I should have known Ophelia would be the topic of conversation, but it, somehow, hadn’t occurred to me.
I nodded. “Yeah, Ophelia. She’s Soph’s old peer mentor.”
“Pretty name.” His tone was light but I realised I knew him well enough to understand there was something loaded in the undercurrent. “Sophie calls her Fia?”
“Most people do,” I said, concentrating on my breakfast. The butterflies in my stomach were not conducive to eating, but I’d just made a whole speech about being desperate for cheese and bean toasties.
“Not you, though.”
“I guess.” Maybe I should just call her Fia around everyone else. After yesterday, I’d understood why she’d said to do so in front of her parents, but it hadn’t occurred to me that I needed to around my parents too. It should have.
He hummed and nodded thoughtfully, sipping his second mug of coffee. “Sophie seems quite… taken with her.”
My insides felt like spaghetti—no form, no sense, just… squiggles. “Yeah, she really helped Soph when school was… not her favourite place in the world, shall we say?”
“Hm. Right. And you?”
“Me?” I laughed, the sound only a little abnormal. “I didn’t have a peer mentor. And Oph—Fia and I were in the same year. I know it was calledpeermentoring, but it tended to be someone from an older year.”
He fought against the wide grin threatening to spill out from his eyes to his lips. “Not that. I’m just wondering whether she’s the reason you’re charging around the place all wired today?”
“Aren’t I always like this?”
“Kind of, but something seems a little different today.”
“Is that right?” Had I smiled too much? Did he somehow know I usually ran a little slower? How could he? We didn’t spend so many mornings together that he knew my schedule. And it was my first morning back here in a minute. My run might have been faster because I was excited to be back on a trail I’d run so frequently as a kid…
Terrance finished off his coffee and stood up. “I don’t need to be genetically related to you to know you.”
I felt myself blushing awkwardly. That was unusual for me. I was generally confident enough in myself not to blush under other people’s accusations, but… here we were. Ophelia seemed tied to my ability to blush. “I know that,” I said quietly.
Terrance was a good guy and I didn’t want him thinking he was an outsider in the family. He wasn’t. Sure, he and my mum hadn’t yet been together for decades, but he’d slotted in perfectly. He made her happy. He was good to me and Soph—and Herc. He was a good guy. A bonus parent in many ways.Not a replacement for our dad, but another guy who came in and loved all of us fiercely. That was what mattered to me.
He grinned, standing on the other side of the breakfast bar. “You’re allowed to keep good things for yourself, Eve.”
I looked down. “I wouldn’t want to ruin anything for Soph…” That was essentially an admission, but what difference did it make? He’d already seemed to know what was going on.
“Sophie is perfectly fine. And, besides, you’re the one Fia is in touch with.”
“Only by default,” I said, more to myself than to him.
“Maybe. Or maybe there’s a reason for it. You deserve good things.” He grabbed his bag and clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Anyway, the building site calls.”
My head shot up. “You’re working on a Sunday morning?”
He chuckled. “Only for a couple of hours. Hence the protein.”
