Page 20 of Fool Me Twice
Si burst out laughing.“I can find some old boxing gloves if you two really wanna have a go at it.Es, give him a break.”
Esme’s smile made her look like a different woman.A much less scary one.“Oh, you know how I like to tease.Zig, welcome to our humble abode.I hope you’ll enjoy your stay.And if you trash the place, remember, Iama witch.”
“Uh, thanks?No worries.You won’t know I’m here.”
“Oh?That’ll be a shame.It’s always nice to have something pretty to look at.”
Zig gave her his best smile, and a knowing look.“Could say the same.”
She raised one perfectly groomed eyebrow.“Really?Does your mother know you flirt with her contemporaries?”
Si was making franticstopgestures.
“No,” Zig said.It came out a bit harsher than he meant it to.
“No,” Si agreed firmly, giving Esme a meaningful look.
Oh.He’d told Si his mum was dead, hadn’t he?It’d felt true enough, at the time.
Esme clearly had a degree in reading expressions, cos her face fell, then softened.“We all have our sorrows.Glastonbury can be very healing, you know.”
“I’m fine,” Zig said, because hewas.Why would he worry about a mum who’d walked out when he was four and who hadn’t cared enough to keep in touch?
Maybe she was dead, at that.It wasn’t like he’d know.
“I’m glad to hear it,” she said warmly.“Now, I know Scr— Mr.Greczik has to go to work, so if there’s anything I can do for you?”
Si shuffled his feet.“Yeah, I’d better be off, but I could meet you for lunch?Oh— Hang about.I said I’d see Adam and Sash, and Corin’ll probably be there too.”
“Sounds a bit crowded to me,” Zig said quickly.He wasn’t that keen on seeing Adam again.He was pretty sure the bloke had never liked him, and, well, these days he felt kind of guilty about what he’d done, back in the day.
Fucking moral compass.
“I’ll see you back here tonight.”Zig smiled brightly and strode out of the shop.
Right.Eight hours to kill in the freezing bloody cold.
He could do that.
Rather than going out on jobs, Si was working in the shop today, which was good.Kept him busy dealing with customers.Stopped him thinking too much about Zig.
He cut a key for a customer and she left with a smile, a chill gust of wind sweeping into the shop in her wake.There was a right nip in the air today.Was Zig hanging out in a café somewhere, keeping warm?Or was he out and about on the tourist trail?Si wouldn’t have reckoned he’d give a monkey’s about Glastonbury’s mystical sites—then again, he wouldn’t have reckoned Zig would want to watchDoctor Who, either.Perhaps he had changed.
Still seemed the same old Zig, though.A bit rougher around the edges, maybe.A bit more...notcynical, cos he’d had that in spades as long as Si had known him, butknowing, if that was the right term?When they’d been together, Si would’ve pissed himself laughing if anyone had called Zig naïve, but looking back, yeah, it’d been there, in that blinkered world-view he’d had, and that unquestioning obedience to his dad.He’d grown out of that, or life had knocked it out of him.
Was that why he’d had that—what had he called it?—that bust-up with his dad?Si couldn’t be sorry about that.Maybe he was too ready to find excuses for Zig, but he’d wished more than a few times, over the years, that Zig hadn’t been stuck in the sole care of a bloke who didn’t have two morals to rub together.
And he’d been so young, back then.Sihad been so young too—barely twenty—which was still two years older than Zig had been.
Everyone made mistakes when they were young, didn’t they?
It made Si’s heart beat faster to think about Zig—which just proved how bloody daft his heart was, cos hadn’t it ended up in shreds the last time he’d got involved with Zig?
Theonlytime.Not thelasttime, because there wasn’t gonna be a next time.Or a this time.Whatever.Si was older now.Wiser.There were some blokes who breezed through life, never let nothing or no one touch them where it hurt, and that was fine.Si wasn’t one of ’em, that was all.
And Zigwas—Si could still remember his carefree smile as they’d split up, and Si’s numpty of a heart twinged at the thought.So, they were just gonna be mates this time around.
Now his conscience socked him in the gut.Could he really forgive and forget the past?Mind, he didn’tknowZig had done anything wrong.Not absolutely one hundred percent.Granted, it’d been pretty clear Zig’s morals back then had been a bit, well, skewed...More like totally bent out of shape, if he was honest, but people changed, didn’t they?Got older and wiser and all that bollocks.
