Page 147 of Love Thy Brother
Fun times. Not. We communicated in grunts and hand signals. I drove, slept, and texted River so much I got cramp in my thumbs, while Nash drove, smoked, and stared into space. By the time we passed theAngel of the Northfor the second time, I was ready to chew my own arm off.
Nash slouched in the passenger seat, glowering at the Bluetooth speaker dangling from the sun visor, trying to figure out what kind of playlist went from the Levellers to Zig and Zag, and I wasn’t about to tell him.
Them Girls got under his skin.
He skipped back to Battle of The Beanfield and twisted out of his seat.
I figured he’d stropped off for a nap, but he came back with his battered guitar and played along with the song, tapping his feet. It was the best vibes he’d given off in days and something settled inside me. The way it did when River smiled. Or Saint gave me a hug of his own accord. “Sing for me, brother.”
Nash had the voice of a heavy-smoking country crooner. He had the face, too, though his scabby eyebrow made him kinda menacing.
Still, he sang for me until the song played out and I relinquished my phone. “Pick a playlist.”
He took the phone without comment, clicking out of the offending playlist and scrolling through the hundreds of others we’d curated over the years. Trying to gauge what he’d go for distracted me from the monotony of motorway driving. He was a moody dude when it came to his tunes. Metal was in our blood, but acoustic jams made him happiest, and I was one-hundred percent not shocked when Bombay Bicycle Club filtered out of the speaker a few reflective minutes later.
The melancholy song was so fitting I almost choked on my four-quid smoothie—the only real vitamins I’d consumed since we’d left Devon. It was blue. Spirulina. Nash had bought it for me and left it on top of my bag.
I’d bought him a sub roll that looked fucking phallic. He’d never said if he’d noticed.
Nash went back to noodling on his beat-up guitar.
I listened for a while. Then the playlist finished and it was just him, and that thing that I thought had settled inside me fissured into a thousand pieces. “I’m sorry, man.”
Nash stopped playing. “What are you sorry for?”
“For keeping shit from you. Not speaking to you for weeks. All of it.”
“I didn’t speak to you either.” Nash strummed a couple of chords, then set his Fender aside. “And I was wrong to come at you for not telling me you’d slept with River. I kept stuff from you too.”
“Not that. I know you never slept with Orla. And even if you had, it wasn’t a blood oath, bro. We didn’t owe each other celibacy.”
“Mate, neither of us has ever been celibate.”
I didnotconcur. On his part, not mine. But I’d spent enough time at odds with him to last me the rest of my days. “Whatever. I’m sorry what I did made you feel like I’d manipulated you. I’d never do that. To anyone, let alone you. I love you.”
“I love you too.” Nash reached over and rubbed my arm. Then a quiet fell over us, but it wasn’t tense, it was easy, and the peace I’d craved with my best friend finally solidified.
My eyes burned with happy tears. What could I say? I was a fucking crier and I didn’t give a shit.
Nash went back to playing his guitar. I sang along with him all the way to the top of the M1 before he got bored and hit me with the million-pound question. “Are you and Riv together now?”
Ooof. I eased onto the slip road to exit the motorway, heading for the service station where we’d spend the next few hours while we both got some sleep. “I don’t know how to answer that.”
Nash said nothing as I manoeuvred the HGV into the worst truck stop in the history of truck stops, and I appreciated it. Reverse parking this beast took all my concentration. When I was done, though, his baby blues drilled a hole in the side of my face.
I shut the engine off and slumped in my seat, rubbing my sore eyes. “We’re something.”
“You’ve always been something.”
“Yeah, but it’s different now, and we can’t go back to the way it was before.”
“So move forward.” Nash dug around for his smokes and unrolled the passenger window. “Youwantto be with him, right? For real? To be like Mats and Em?”
Course I did. How they’d eased from years of pining to the sweet domestic bliss they had now... fuck me, that was relationship goals. I mean, I loved Cam, Saint, and Alexei together too, but life was more complicated for them, and I was sick to my bruised and broken brain of complication. “I want it more than I’ll ever want anything else.”
Nash was more astute than most people gave him credit for. They saw his surfer hair and pretty eyes, his rumpled rock star aesthetic, and thought they knew him. But he knewme. He heard everything I wasn’t saying and abandoned his unlit cigarette. “You’d leave the club to be with him?”
The thought of it fissured my heart, but there was no doubt in my mind as I slowly nodded. “Nash, I’d do anything for him. My biggest regret is I’ve let him think I wouldn’t.”
