and get it, or do you need me to sub you because of your deprived background?”
He kept up the stare for another moment, but so did I, and eventually he shook his head ostentatiously and went up to the bar. He didn’t even bother dodging the brunette this time, not that she noticed.
“What the fuck?” I demanded, when he was out of earshot. “What was that all about?”
Sean shrugged. I had brought back a few packets of peanuts with the last round—I hadn’t had dinner, disentangling the Gouger situation had kept me too late at the office—and he had found one with something dubious on it; most of his attention seemed to be on that.
“I didn’t hurt anybody. Nobody got hurt. He’s acting like I punched his granny.” I had reached the earnest stage of the night; I was leaning forwards across the table, maybe a little too far forwards, I couldn’t tell. “And anyway look who’s talking, for Christ’s sake. He’s done stupid stuff before. Plenty of times.”
Sean shrugged again. “He’s stressed out,” he said, through the peanut.
“He’s always stressed out.”
“He was talking about getting back with Jenna.”
“Oh Jesus,” I said. Jenna was Dec’s most recent ex, a noticeably crazy schoolteacher several years older than us who had once rubbed my thigh under a pub table and, when I glanced over astonished, winked at me and stuck her tongue out.
“Yeah. He hates being single, though. He says he’s getting too old for first dates and he can’t handle all this Tinder crap, and he doesn’t want to be the forty-year-old saddo who gets invited to dinner parties out of pity and sat next to the divorced one who spends the whole night bitching about her ex.”
“Well, he doesn’t need to take it out on me,” I said. I could in fact see Dec ending up exactly like that, but it would be his own fault if he did, and as far as I was concerned right then, he deserved it.
Sean was settled back in his seat, watching me with an expression that could have been amusement or just mild interest. Sean has always had this air of comfortable detachment, of being—without either effort or smugness—a little more on top of the situation than anyone else. I always vaguely attributed it to the fact that his mother died when he was four—a fact that I regarded with a mixture of recoil, embarrassment and awe—but it could just have been because he was such a big guy: in any situation involving alcohol, Sean was inevitably going to be the least drunk person there.
When he didn’t answer: “What? Do you think I’m some kind of evil Thatcherite Fagin bastard now, too?”
“Honestly?”
“Yeah. Honestly.”
Sean shook the last of the peanut dust into his palm. He said, “I think it’s kid stuff.”
I couldn’t work out whether to be insulted or not—was he dissing my job, reassuring me that this was no big deal, what? “What are you talking about?”
“Fake Twitter accounts,” Sean said. “Imaginary skanger wars. Sneaking stuff in behind the boss’s back, keeping your fingers crossed it’ll all be grand. Kid stuff.”
This time I was genuinely injured, at least a little bit. “For fuck’s sake. It’s bad enough Dec giving me hassle. Don’t you start.”
“I’m not. Just . . .” He shrugged and upended his glass. “I’m getting married in a few months, dude. Me and Audrey, we’re talking about having a baby next year. It’s hard for me to get too excited about you pulling the same old stunts.” And when I drew my eyebrows down sharply: “You’ve done stuff like this ever since I knew you. Got caught sometimes. Sorted it out every time. This is the same old same old.”
“No. No. This is—” I made a wide, slicing arm motion that ended in a dramatic finger-snap; it felt like a pure and complete statement in itself, but Sean was still looking at me inquisitively. “This is different. From those other times. This is not the same thing. At all.”
“How is it different?”
I was miffed by this; I knew there was a difference, and I felt it was ungenerous of Sean to demand that I explain it after this many pints. “Never mind. Forget I said anything.”
“I’m not giving you hassle. I’m asking.”
He hadn’t moved, but there was something new and sharpened in his face, an unblinking intentness, as if there was something important he wanted from me; and I felt an obscure urge to explain myself to him after all, explain