Page 81 of The Wedding Pact
August
Back at their home on Elizabeth Street, August had been sitting on the wall in the rain since returning from her run. She was cold, goosebumped, and her lips had turned blue.
She hadn’t wanted to hurt Flynn, of course she hadn’t, but how could she have kept this to herself? Calling Poppy an icy bitch was probably a bit of an overstep, though. But August had developed a deep friendship with Flynn over the past months of living together, and if Poppy thought she could waltz in and light a stick of dynamite in their world she wasn’t about to stand for it.
‘What are you doing out here?’ someone asked, and she turned, expecting it to be Flynn. Instead she faced Abe, who was looking at her with concern.
He was holding a shopping bag and wearing a baseball cap to shield his eyes from the rain, and he stepped over the wall to her, putting the bag in a puddle, concern causing him to remove his coat and place it around her. ‘You’re frozen, come inside.’
She tried to find words but instead her teeth chattered, and for a moment she lost herself in the warmth of Abe’s coat, the smell of him, and the kindness of his face.
He led her inside and into her flat, and she thanked him. She headed for the shower, in the hope that the steaming water would wash her worries away. It didn’t work, but it did at least warm her up. When she emerged a little later in dry clothes and with a little more colour to her lips, she was pleased to see Abe still there, sitting on her sofa, with two piping hot cups of coffee before him.
He stood up when she entered the living room. ‘I hope you don’t mind me staying,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘But you made me a coffee when I needed it a few weeks back, so I wanted to return the favour.’
August sat down on the sofa, and he sat next to her, their proximity something neither could ignore. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
Abe glanced at her. ‘Do you want to talk about it? About why you were sitting outside in the rain in November, looking so down?’
‘Um … ’ she really did want to talk about it. August wasn’t good at keeping things bottled up. But how much could she say to Abe, really? ‘Flynn and I just had a bit of an argument, that’s all.’
Abe shifted in his seat, and when she did the same it caused their knees to touch lightly. It was almost imperceptible, but not quite. Neither of them made any move to pull them back apart. August’s breathing slowed a little.
‘I’m sure everything will be okay,’ said Abe, his voice quiet.
‘I’m sure it will too. I just don’t know if I did the right thing or not at the moment. And then I said some horrible things.’
He nodded. ‘It’s not fun when that happens in an argument. But I’m sure he’ll know it was just in the heat of the moment.’
There was something about the way he said ‘heat of the moment’, how his voice cracked, how they met each other’s eyes for a second. But then he angled himself away, reaching for his coffee, and the spell was broken.
August leaned forward and drank from her cup too. ‘Mmm, this is perfect, thank you. And thank you for stopping me from catching pneumonia out there.’
‘Of course. It’s the neighbourly thing to do.’
‘How’s your mum?’
‘She’s okay. Not getting any worse, which is good, but I worry about her more over the winter months. Whether she admits it or not I think she needs me quite a bit, which is partly why I keep coming down from London at the moment.’
It hung in the air, his mention of ‘partly why’. It hung suspended within this heavy tension that surrounded them, with him thinking she was a married woman, and her caught in her own lie. August couldn’t bring herself to ask what his other reason might be, as she was afraid in case it was her. She was also afraid to ask in case it wasn’t. Instead she said, ‘If I can help, in any way, you can always call me and I’ll go and check on her?’
‘Thank you,’ he said, with a smile. She felt a compulsion to lean her head on his shoulder, and she decided to go with that feeling. August felt Abe flinch under her touch, but he didn’t move away. It felt good to be close to him.
‘It’s the neighbourly thing to do,’ she murmured.
With the coffee warming her from the inside, Abe from the outside, and the rain falling gently beyond the window, August was lulled into a sense of calm. So much so that she jumped when the door to the flat opened.
Flynn walked in, his shoulders hunched and his hair wet. She shifted away from Abe a moment too late. Flynn’s eyes swept across the two of them, and it stopped him in his tracks.
Chapter 57
Flynn
Abe stood up, fast, and nodded at both August and Flynn, looking flustered, before making his way out of the apartment. But Flynn had seen them snuggled together. He’d seen how August was taking comfort from their argument in his arms. And he knew it could have all been different if he’d just admitted what was going around his mind earlier. That’s not to assume she would have ‘picked him’, of course, but perhaps he would have been able to live his life with a bit more clarity. As it was now, he felt so far below the murky surface he could think of only one way out.
‘Are you two … ?’ Flynn asked August.
‘Me and Abe? We’re just friends.’
