Page 16 of Winter at Wishington Bay
‘Oh. I thought you… I…’
Nate adjusted his beanie and tilted his head slightly, waiting for me to finish.
‘Did you catch him?’ I changed tack, having lost my original direction.
‘Yeah. Really nice guy. I think my brother’s got a really good friend there.’
‘He has, and I know Ned feels the same about Gabe.’
Nate nodded and the shadow from yesterday flitted across his face again.
‘You’ll always be his big brother though,’ I ventured, tentatively.
‘Yeah. Whether he likes it or not.’ He smiled but there was no heart in it.
I moved us off of the pavement again briefly to let more pedestrians through before stepping back up.
‘What’s that supposed to mean? Do you think Gabe would have gone to any of this trouble to get you over if he didn’t want to? I mean, I know he’s pretty easy-going but he’s no pushover.’
‘My mum can be pretty persuasive, and I know she’s been worried about me. Gabe feels a bit guilty he’s over here so anything he can do that might please Mum, he’s going to do it.’
I stared at him for a moment, then gave an eyeroll that was so big I could practically hear my eyeballs rattle in my skull and then turned away, in the opposite direction to Nate’s house. Two seconds later, a large hand caught my arm.
‘Where are you going and what was the massive eyeroll for?’
‘One, I’m going to do a bit of shopping. I’ll come and clean when you take your walk later if you can give me a time. And two, the eyeroll was because what you said was total and absolute rubbish, and the fact that a clearly intelligent man like you can’t see that just makes it even more ridiculous.’
‘Is that right?’
‘Yes,’ I said, meeting his eyes defiantly. ‘It is. Gabe was desperate to be here with you but he said you’d made it clear you wanted to be on your own and would only agree to come when he was on holiday. You also made the same thing perfectly clear to me the first day I met you. So your brother did the next best thing. He gave you his home to be alone in and made sure you were surrounded by people that love him, and ergo, care about you. I’m not entirely sure what your problem is, but your brother not loving you definitely isn’t one of them!’
He watched me for a moment.
‘Ergo?’
I felt my mouth drop open and quickly closed it as cold air raced down my throat.
‘Seriously? All that and the only thing you took from it was “ergo”?’
‘No. Not the only thing.’
‘Well, that’s a relief.’ My mother had always told me that ‘sarcasm was not attractive, dear’. But right now I wasn’t trying to be attractive – especially not when I was freezing my arse off. Nate McKinley was, undoubtedly, gorgeous. But he was also hard work, complicated, and only here for a short time.
I made another attempt to head off in the direction I’d turned to when the large, gloved hand caught hold of me again.
‘I feel like a bloody yoyo. Will you stop doing that?’
‘Well, stop going in the wrong direction then.’
‘I’m not.’
‘You are. The house is that way.’ He pointed down the bay, in the opposite direction to the way I myself was pointed.
‘Yes. And I’ll go there this afternoon. As I said. In the meantime, you can work in peace and I can go and get my shopping.’
‘What about my lunch?’
‘Excuse me?’
