Page 87 of Perfect

Ryan’s face and his own confession about it being ‘complicated’ connected the dots.

“Because they’re brothers.” I put in at last. Ping! “Nathan and Ryan.” At last.

Ella grinned as she turned to face me, knowing that it had clicked. I felt like a bit of a dummy having not totally realised it after quite a few hints looking back.

“Yes, Nathan and Ryan,” she nodded, “and no threesomes were involved as that would be repulsive. For them anyway.”

I chuckled to myself at her cheekiness and then stopped when her voice became serious again.

“And yes, complicated as Nate doesn’t know about Ryan and I don’t know what to expect if he does find out, but it won’t be good.”

Boom again! Now that explained those moments of strange atmosphere I’d witnessed.

“So, which one was the dad?” I puffed before I could reign in the thought.

Ella rolled her eyes at that one. “There wasn’t a baby! Eck, that story is so six months ago.”

“So, you wereneverpregnant?

“No way! You go away for a few months in this village and you’re either pregnant or on drugs,” Ella explained drily. I was surprised I hadn’t offended her, if I had she recovered really quickly which made her more believable. If she had got pregnant and was lying about it, I’d have known it. I was usually good at reading people when they were full of it.

I patted her on the shoulder.

“Sorry. Just call me the ‘jump to conclusions’ girl.”

“It’s fine, really. It never bothered me to be honest, well the rumours didn’t.”

“So, Nathan and Ryan?” I prompted, feeling my phone vibrate in my pocket. I left it to ring. This girl was, at last, opening up and I didn’t want any distractions. The fact that she also had no feelings for Connor was the cherry on top. I wanted to do a little victory dance on the spot.

I thought briefly about the two boys and how different they were and Ryan Lane, how the hell wouldthatwork? I blew out a breath, I needed to be supportive, not appear like an overly judgemental type.

“So, it’s a triangle-type thing? Who came first, Nathan or Ryan, I’m confused. And no pun intended,” I grinned. My God, I was suddenly the dirty-minded girl.

I jammed a hand through my hair, frustrated by my own lack of patience.

“Sorry, you go. Give it me from the top,” I said encouragingly, doing the ‘zipped mouth and throw away the key’ gesture with my fingers.

*****

So, the basics of it were. Ella and Nate had been involved in an on-and-off ‘thing’ over the last year or so. They’d made out a few times at parties and Nate had sent Ella a dick pic by mistake. This led to Ella winding him up on and off about it until one night they left the friend zone and slept together. Ella said it was one of those stupid drunken moments that she immediately regretted the next day.

She explained that Nathan became hooked and didn’t want to go back to being ‘just friends’, to the point where he started to make a nuisance of himself.

Ella said after weeks of being hounded by Nathan, who had started to behave like a jealous boyfriend that their original friendship had been irreparable. A rift was created in the group of friends and going to parties and other events had become awkward, to the point where Ella had taken herself off the grid for a while and travelled around America. Ping! The supposed pregnancy months in the USA.

And then came the bit about Ryan. The ‘complicated’ section.

Ella had returned to Pickering and was waiting for a taxi at the train station at the same time Ryan had come back from London. They’d shared a cab and got talking. She explained to me how she’d always had thishugecrush on Ryan and thathewas the real reason she went to Nate’s parties with the hope of running into him.

Over the months that followed, on trips back from her aunts, Ella said that she and Ryan had started to see each other on and off, to the point where things had headed into more serious relationship type of waters.

“My parents would freak out if they knew I’d been seeing someone almost seven years my age and the fact that he’s one of the Lane boys, would probably give my mother a stroke.”

Ella puffed with frustration as we faced each other across the log. I had both my feet up now and was sat cross-legged, drinking in all the information. I had actually missed talking about these types of shenanigans. My girlfriends back home were full of stories like this, notexactlylike this of course.

“Does Ryan know you slept with Nathan, cos that conversation won’t be easy?” I said with a pondering edge. Talking about exes was probably not the easiest of discussions with budding boyfriends.

She worried her lip and I knew the answer before she opened her mouth.

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