Page 46 of Catch Me

She wraps me in a tight hug, her voice a whisper in my ear as I sink into her warmth. “Just call him Lo, I can guarantee he’s desperate to see you too.”

“I can’t,” my voice breaks and a tear lands on Molly’s shoulder as I grip her tightly to me. “I asked for this break and it’s not fair for me to keep pushing him away and then pulling him back in.”

Molly chuckles a little and holds me at arm’s length. “He won’t give a shit about that, he’ll just want things to go back to the way they were. Seriously Lo, just call him later, you won’t regret it.”

I nod quickly, swiping the moisture away from my under-eyes. Molly plants a fleeting kiss against my cheek and saunters down the hallway to her bedroom. I barely have chance to process her words when the clicking of the front door makes me jump. Irub the sleeve of my jumper across my face, trying to erase the evidence of my tears just as Sean appears in the doorway. He has Lily in one arm and what looks like forty shopping bags in the other. Callie follows closely behind him, Lily’s bouncy chair in tow as well as her own collection of bags.

“Are you two moving back in or something?” I laugh, “Let me know because there’s no way I'm living with Sean ever again, it was bad enough the first eighteen years of my life.”

“Ha-fucking-ha,” he says robotically with a roll of his eyes, “I was great to live with and you know it.”

“Oh yeah, I really miss going in the fridge every morning and finding a barren wasteland because you’d raided it in the middle of the night.”

His eyes gleam at me, that rebellious twinkle still present like when he was a naughty toddler. “You know me so well,” he plops Lily down onto the sofa and races towards me with a dimpled grin.

“Don’t!” I yell but it’s too late, he drops his chest and flings me over his shoulder. I cackle out loud as he spins me, my hair spreading around my head like helicopter propellers. I try not to laugh, I really do but I can’t help it, the shriek of joy flies out of me before I can stop it.

Sean places me on my feet, my head spinning but my heart beating so fast it feels like it might burst out of my chest. The shot of happiness is like a lightening bolt from my toes all the way up to my temple and as annoying as Sean is, I'm so grateful for the momentary beat of normality. He looks down at me, his hazel eyes a mirror of mine and before I can think about anything else I fling my arms around his middle. My cheek is squished against his hard chest and his arms come around me too, squeezing tightly.

We stand there for a moment, my eyes squeezed shut as I listen to his heartbeat and try not to let the sadness seep back into my chest when I think about Nick.

“What’s going on with you?” Sean whispers, one hand cradling the back of my head as I sniffle quietly against him.

“Nothing, I'm just a bit overwhelmed with coursework at the moment, that’s all.” The pang of guilt at my lie hurts my heart and brings back the memory of the months and months of hiding my relationship from my brother.

I’m unsure about the future of Nick and I’s relationship, but there’s one thing I know for sure, I'm not going back to sneaking around. I don’t want to hide it anymore, I'm sick of pretending I'm not desperately in love with Nick when we’re around other people.

Sean holds my face in his huge hands and peers at me through wondering eyes. “You need something to cheer you up, you need to get out of this dorm and have some fun.”

“Ok Dad, I’ll bear that in mind.”

He lets out a chuckle as I slither out of his grip and head for the fridge. “Hey, Mac has organised some kind of party thing tonight at The Good Mixer. He said a lot of the freshmen gymnasts are going, you should join them.”

I’m barely listening to him, my nose buried in the fridge, trying to sniff out anything that I can stomach right now. “Uh-huh, sure…” I mutter and hear Sean's heavy footsteps plod down the hallway after Callie.

NICK

Sean and Callie arrive home at 6:34pm, I know the exact time because Lily’s hawk like scream makes me almost fall out of my chair. I’m sat at the desk in my room, still trying desperatelyto focus on the screen and get as much coursework done as possible before the weekend. My phone sits next to me, screen facing up and every time it brightens I grab it so fast it keeps slipping from my hand like a bar of wet soap. But Lois hasn’t called or texted of course, I don’t know why my heart stops each time the damn thing pings, like I think she will suddenly cut this break between us short.

My heart falls out of my ass for a second time when Sean flies into my room, letting the door slam against the wall.

“Hey man, can I borrow that shirt that you were going to throw out?” He’s digging in the bottom of my wardrobe, the one that currently resembles a war torn country.

It takes me a few seconds to collect my brain from the floor. “Erm, yeah sure it’s in here.” I traipse across the room to my chest of drawers to retrieve the shirt and throw it at his head, to which he simply grins and heads for the door.

“Hey,” I call after him and he pokes his dimpled smile back around the doorframe. “What are you doing tonight? I feel like going out.”

God knows I need a distraction tonight and with a lonely weekend coming up without Lois, I'm in the mood to get shit faced so I can forget about the aching hole in my chest just for a few hours.

Sean pauses, thinking. “Not sure if Cal is planning to go out with the girls, but I was going to just stay in with Lily and have an early night. To be honest man I'm fucking shattered and I need the sleep.”

I nod quickly. “Yeah, yeah no worries.”Do I ask what I want to ask or do I just keep my huge mouth shut and leave it alone?“Where are the girls going tonight then?”

Sean pops a shrug, elbow propping his body up against my door. “Not sure, but she mentioned that Molly wanted to go for a drink in some new bar in Camden.”

I pause for a beat, holding my breath before I squeak out, “What about your sister? Won’t she go with them too?”

I know I should just leave Lois alone, not try and find out where she’s going to be tonight or what she’s doing but I can’t fucking help myself. Luckily for me, I could hit Sean with a bat that had ‘I'm fucking your little sister’ carved into the side of it and he still wouldn’t realise what’s going on right under his nose.

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