sensed her discomfort, because he laughed and said, “Sorry. I still have a questionable filter.”
“You don’t have a filter,” she replied, a slow smile tilting her lips. She was probably blushing like a tomato right now.
“Very true. And since we’ve established that—would it be rude of me to ask who knocked you up?”
She snorted, laughter bubbling up without permission. “Someone with the necessary equipment.”
“Someone sounds quite distant.”
“Well, he’s far away from here. So distant is right.”
“Hmm.” Samir’s air of constant amusement cooled, solidifying between them. She barely had time to wonder at the change before he said, “Just to clarify—is he distant because you want him to be, or because he’s a piece of shit?”
“Um… both?”
There was a pause. Then, his voice gentler now, he asked, “Laura… are you here on your own?”
“Yes,” she admitted. “It’s not a big deal. I wanted to come alone.”
He ignored that completely. “For how long?”
“I told you,” she said, trying not to sound self-conscious. “I’m having a baby.”
“Assume I know nothing about human gestation, since I don’t. How long?”
“I’m due in September. Mum and Hayley are coming eventually—you know, in the last few weeks or so…”
He sighed heavily. Her eyes tracked the motion of his shadowy outline, and she couldn’t be sure, but she thought he was raking a hand through his hair. It was a familiar motion, one she remembered even after fifteen years. Just like she remembered exactly how that hair felt, thick and soft and swirling from his crown in unruly waves.
“We haven’t seen each other in years,” he said. “Years. We don’t… we don’t really know each other anymore. Technically.”
Something in her instinctively wanted to disagree with that, after ten minutes catching up on a beach in the dark. Which was ridiculous. The little things, the surface things about him, might seem the same, but he must be different now. She was different now. She was a little bit ruined.
She was damaged.
“I don’t want to act like we’re still close,” he said. She thought it was unusually tactful of him to say close instead of what they’d actually been. But then, what they’d actually been was the sort of thing that didn’t matter as much at thirty as it had at fifteen.
“I’m not going to storm into your life and act like your guard dog,” he muttered, and she realised that he was actually talking to himself. Convincing himself.
“You’re not?” she asked, an edge of mischief in her voice. She hadn’t heard that edge in a long time. It was a shock, to have it back all of a sudden—but a good one.
“No,” he said wryly. “I’m not. That would be out of order.”
“Okay. But if you were going to do such a thing—”
“See, everyone always called you the good girl, but I knew from the start you’d be a bad influence.”
“If you were,” she repeated with a grin, “what would you say right now?”
He heaved out another of those sighs. “I’d say I have a cafe in town called Bianchi’s. And you should come and see me tomorrow. And tell me about this guy with the necessary equipment and the bad attitude.”
At the thought of sullying Samir’s ears with even the whisper of Daniel’s name, panic stung her like a jellyfish gliding out of deep waters. “I can’t do that,” she said, her throat suddenly tight. “I mean—he’s—I can’t talk about him. You’re—and he’s—I don’t want to talk about him—”
“Laura,” Samir said, his voice achingly gentle. She felt his hand bump into her upper arm, and then her shoulder… and then, finally, he pushed her hair out of the way and rested his palm against the back of her neck. Just like he used to. “It’s okay,” he said. “Don’t worry. We can talk about whatever you want—about something else. Anything else. Okay?” He squeezed slightly, and she realised that her breath was coming fast. “Okay?”
“Yeah,” she managed. “Cool. Yeah. Something else. Sorry—I’m kind of on edge. Long day.”
“I get it,” he murmured. His hand left her as quickly as it had come, and she shouldn’t have felt like she’d just lost something.
She did, though.
Even worse, as her panic drained away, embarrassment rose to take its place. Jesus. She’d just hyperventilated at the mention of her husband.
Ex-husband.
Ex-husband-to-be.
Oh, she was so sick of thinking about this.
But then Samir said, “Hey, do you remember when we convinced Hayley that me and Hassan were the same person?”
All of a sudden, she wasn’t thinking about Daniel at all.