Page 40 of Witch You Weren't Here

‘Well, sure. Makes sense. Especially if Harry’s secondary affinity is helping him figure out which route to get you home.’ Joe released a breath. ‘Oh, that makes me feel much better.’

Kay went to respond and stopped, realising that Joe already knew about Harry’s itchy magic compass. But that definitely wasn’t something he’d known he had back when they were doing their A levels together. So Joe must have found out since. And Harry had known random facts about Kay’s life … and been invited to the wedding. ‘Are you … Joe, are you still in touch with Harry?’

Another pause. ‘Yes?’

‘Why are you saying that as though it’s a question? I assumed you’d lost contact.’

‘No. I just …’

‘What?’ Spit it out, she wanted to say, but restrained herself because he didn’t deserve her blowing a gasket down the phone at him.

‘We stayed in contact. We meet up quite regularly. As regularly as I manage to meet up with anyone these days.’ He gave a beleaguered little huff, which she knew was more to do with the demands of his job than the demands of the wedding.

‘You’re friends still?’

‘Well … yeah.’

‘H-how? I thought he’d ditched you after your A levels?’

‘No. Not at all.’

‘But you literally never mention him.’

‘OK … see, I just figured it would upset you. I know you took it hard when he …’

‘Stood me up? Dropped me completely?’ Her hand tightened on her phone at the memory of Joe handing her the napkin with Harry’s scribbled message. Thinking of how he’d barely wanted to look at her at the time doubled the pain.

‘Both. You know we weren’t exactly talking back then and by the time we were, well, it was obvious that it would upset you.’

‘Was it?’

‘Yeah. Mum said never to mention the Ashworths even as a family.’ He gave a soft laugh. ‘You know how she is. She couldn’t bear feeling how upset it made you.’

Kay’s cheeks flushed. She had been upset, obviously, but her mother had made it sound like she was having a Bella Swan-esque breakdown. She knew her feelings must have been a lot for her mum to deal with, on top of her own, and she appreciated the protective sentiment, but she was capable of telling Joe if she didn’t want to talk about something, she didn’t need to be coddled. The reason she and Joe had fallen out so dramatically after the divorce was because they didn’t shy away from being honest with each other. Or so she’d thought.

To prove the point to herself, she pushed her hair back from her face and spoke as neutrally as she could. ‘If you thought I was so traumatised, why did you stay friends with him? Sisters before misters, no?’

Regardless of her easy tone, Joe sounded squirmy. ‘Because … I knew what was going on with him at the time. And we were basically kids. He’s not a bad person, Kay, he just screwed up. Maybe I screwed up a bit too, all right? We weren’t on talking terms, but I still probably should have hauled him over the coals more about it than I did. Then, by the time you and I were cool again, it would’ve been weird to say: “Right, I’ve got a bone to pick with you now.”’

‘All right, I guess I can see that,’ she said, all the more grudgingly because she knew he couldn’t be using his gift on her to make her see his point of view. ‘But weren’t you annoyed at him on your own behalf. He used you.’

‘How did you figure that one out?’

‘Because you were always helping him with his work, leading up to his A levels. And then when they were done, he dropped you.’

Joe sighed. ‘Kay, like I said, he didn’t drop me. I tried to stay out of the house as much as I could that summer, then I went away to university. I kept in contact with him, but you weren’t to know that, obviously. The thing with helping him with his A levels …’ He cleared his throat. ‘Look, I’m not proud of it, but his dad paid me to tutor him when he found out what my gift was. That’s why Harry started coming around all the time, initially. I was saving up for that car, wasn’t I? Harry and I had always been around each other through secondary school and got along OK, but we weren’t what I would have called friends. But then when I started to tutor him, we got to know each other better and we were hanging out as much as working and I felt bad for taking the money, but Harry said not to worry because I was helping him and actually it meant he could come over and spend time with us, get some downtime too, without his dad constantly getting on his case …’

He trailed off and Kay sat down heavily on the cold metal bench.

‘You think I’m awful for charging his dad to help him with his dyslexia, don’t you?’ Joe carried on, his voice pained. ‘I do feel like a shit for it. Especially since it was the thing that made me realise I wanted to go into teaching and now when I see how hard it can be for kids, I can’t believe I did it—’

‘No,’ she interrupted, like she was suddenly waking up, because there was no way she was ready to start thinking about the other implications of what he was saying just yet. ‘No. That’s not shitty, Joe. You get paid to teach now, don’t you? It’s fair enough. It’s a great use of your gift.’

‘That’s what Harry always says.’

Of course he did. She felt like she’d put together some puzzle pieces years ago, figured it all out, and now she’d dusted the box off, it turned out the image didn’t match. She’d forced pieces together that didn’t belong. Finding out you were wrong about something was never a very comfortable feeling, but when you added the fact that it meant Kay was the only person Harry had decided he didn’t want to continue a friendship with, it stung.

Joe had said he liked hanging out with both of them, so what had gone wrong? By trying to break out of the friend zone, had she freaked Harry out? It still didn’t make his treatment of her respectful – he could have spoken to her, told her no thank you – but it not being the end of some underhand scheme to get what he wanted from Joe made it less of a character deficiency and more like one of those growing-pain moments, which everyone sometimes messes up. Goddess knew she’d messed up plenty. This news was having the simultaneous effect of making her think of him as less of a bastard, and herself as more of a reject.

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