Laurel left him to get changed and he scrolled through his messages again, reading the thread he shared with Owen.
Jess wouldn’t put up with any shit. Lucia had had the choice to make friends with Laurel, she had the choice to not be an absolute dick, and she had emphatically made that choice. The toxic manipulation of her tears may have worked on him, and Jess for that matter, when they were in uni, but it hadn’t taken long to figure out that when Lucia was in the wrong, the sprinklers turned on. She just feels so guilty, she’s having such a tough time, she’s sorry, she didn’t mean to, it’s just so hard being her at the moment, blah blah blah.
He texted Owen now.
Imagine not even saying goodbye to people who have fed and watered you, put you up, who you were incredibly, unbelievably rude to and who were supposed to be your oldest and best friends.
There then followed fourteen selfies of Benji pulling various funny faces.
Nate sent back pictures of him making the same faces, but he had to own it. Benji was way cuter than him.
Laurel
‘Look how gorgeous he is,’ she said to Rebecca, showing her a picture that Nate had sent her of Benji pulling a silly face.
‘If you keep showing me pictures of someone else’s child, I’m going to revoke your status as “best auntie”,’ Rebecca said. Okay, she knew a warning when she heard it. But Benji was really cute.
‘Okay, sorry. Lila and Micah are obviously my faves, always will be,’ she said apologetically. ‘How’s life? How’s my brother? I feel like I haven’t seen you!’
‘That’s because you’ve been too busy shagging Nate, Laurel,’ Rebecca said airily. ‘And I don’t blame you one little bit.’
‘You’re still not getting details,’ she said, laughing.
‘Jack’s good. Nate is a good influence on him because he’s still pulling his weight. I expected it to fade away after a couple of weeks, but he’s going strong,’ she said, then added, ‘I think he had absolutely no idea how much I actually did.’
‘I fully agree. It probably didn’t even register in his tiny little man brain,’ Laurel said, waving at Robin who had just come in with his gaggle of boys. Rebecca followed her gaze, then lent over the table conspiratorially. ‘What’s happened to Robin as well? He seems to be going out less and actually doing stuff around the farm,’ she said quietly. ‘The pig pen actually got re-felted last week.’
‘Jack thinks there’s a girl,’ Rebecca said knowingly.
Laurel rolled her eyes, because there was always a girl.
‘No, a girl that he really likes, not just a shag.’ Rebecca topped up both of their glasses and put the screw top back on the empty bottle.
She assessed her sister-in-law.
‘Really?’ she asked, skeptically.
‘Really.’ Rebecca was adamant.
‘That would mean it would be someone on the farm. Do you think it’s one of the students?’ Laurel mused. ‘Oh god, not the one with the eyelashes and no bra. Can you imagine her at Sunday lunch? Dad wouldn’t know where to look.’
Rebecca snorted on her wine, choking down a laugh.
‘I bet her name is something like Rain, or Hemp, or Serendipity,’ she said.
Laurel’s face dropped. ‘It had better not be Sylvie.’
‘Why not?’ Rebecca frowned.
‘Uh, because if he shags her and then breaks her heart then it will be the most awkward thing ever, and she’ll leave, and I don’t want her to leave.’
She couldn’t leave, what would Laurel do without her? Sylvie kept everything running smoothly, and she was already seeing the benefit of that business course thing Sylvie was on.
‘But Sylvie’s a nice girl,’ Rebecca said, sipping her wine. ‘She’d keep him on the straight and narrow, wouldn’t she?’
Her eyebrow raised of its own accord.
‘If she gets her heart broken by her boss’s little brother, it’s not going to go down well.’
