Page 100 of Swept Away

Ryan comes down the corridor from the bathroom, and I wince—Penny’s boyfriend is so loud. He’s just a big man: gigantic arms, broad shoulders, blockish head. I can’t exactly object to him on these grounds, but he does take up so muchspace.

Still. I suppose he probably thinks the same about me, the childhood friend of Penny’s currently installed in the flat he shares with his girlfriend.

“You all right?” Ryan says, taking the armchair and reaching for the remote.

“Not really, Ryan, no,” I say.

He pauses and looks at me. I look back at him. The silence stretches.

“I was really worried, you know,” he says. “When you went missing.”

“Really?” I say, interested.

I have reflected very little on how my disappearance affected Ryan, mainly because in my brain Ryan features only in the role of General Inconvenience. I am aware that this is potentially unfair, but experience has taught me it’s best not to get attached.

“You know, you’ve actually never asked me a single question about myself,” Ryan says, carefully placing the remote control back on the arm of the chair. “And that’s meant I sort of think you’re a bit of a prick, really. You’ve never once given me the idea that I’m welcome here.”

I am too drained to feel much at all, but I do feel a wave of guiltat this. It’s true. I’ve been waiting for Ryan to leave since the moment he arrived.

“But I know you’ve seen all the blokes before me who haven’t stuck around, and I know that’s why you keep me at arm’s length. I know you’re looking after Penny and Mae. I respect that.”

“Thanks,” I say, looking pointedly at the remote. Where’s Penny? How long does it take to get the ice cream out of the tub?

“And just so you know, I never wanted Penny to suggest you move out.”

My gaze flies to his face. Ihadalways assumed he had a part to play in that whole drama. He looks back at me steadily. There’s something very simple about Ryan—not to say that he’s not smart, more that he’s straightforward. I don’t know if I’ve ever consciously registered that about him before, but now I think of it, I realize he’s never tried to bullshit me. He doesn’t suck up or try to make me like him. He’s just stolidly tolerated me.

“As far as I’m concerned, the more parents Mae has, the better,” he says. “You’ll always be welcome in my life as long as she’ll have me in hers.”

I open and close my mouth. That hit me somewhere in my chest.

“I’m not trying to replace you, that’s what I’m saying. I never have been. And Penny asking you to move out, that really was—well, she can tell you.”

I follow his gaze to the kitchen doorway, where Penny stands with two ice cream bowls in her hands. Her eyes are wide and pained. She doesn’t want to have this conversation. I suspect she’s been dodging it for days. I know she hates that she hurt me; I know she feels guilty; I know she wishes she could take it back, as she so often does when she’s lashed out or said something she doesn’t mean. I also know that she hates to saysorry—not because she isn’t sorry, but because she can’t stand to feel shame. She’d rather live with a mistake than confess to making one.

“It’s all right,” I say, before she can speak. “I know you were trying to—”

“I was trying to set youfree, Lexi,” she says, and a tear spills over her lash line. She hurries forward with the bowls, putting them down on the coffee table and heading back into the kitchen for the third one.

“I’ll do that,” Ryan says, getting up and putting a hand on her arm. “You talk to Lexi.”

Penny turns slowly to face me. I pull my knees up, making room for her on our beloved turquoise sofa that sags in all the right places. Wordlessly, I flick my gaze to the empty space. She drags herself there and sits down.

“I’m awful,” she whispers. “I’m an awful friend. It’s my fault you got lost at sea. It’s my fault all this happened.”

“What?” I sit up, chucking the self-pity cushion off my chest. “What are you on about?”

“If I hadn’t told you to move out…Or if I’d confessed to selling the houseboat, so you’d have known you couldn’t go there to crash that night…”

“Penny. I chose to go to the houseboat without asking you. That’s on me. And I’m the one that bloodytied it to itself.”

She looks at me, eyes still forlorn and wide.

“Did you actually?” she says. “But Lex, that’s so fucking stupid?”

I burst out laughing. It’s the first time I’ve laughed in four days. If you’d told me two weeks ago that I’dstoplaughing when I got off the houseboat, I would never, ever have believed you.

“I know,” I say, reaching to stretch my blanket out so it covers both our legs. “Whydidyou sell it?The Merry Dormouse?”

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