“You said that before,” Cillian pointed out. “And with much less drama. Cormac got all the dramatic genes in the family,” he told Finn.
“All of them?” Finn queried. “When was the last time he threw his phone in the river?”
Color crept into my brother’s cheeks. When Laurent drew close enough, I grabbed his hand and yanked him down next to me, throwing an arm around his shoulders to plaster him to my side when he might have moved away. “What’s this about a phone and a river?”
Laurent laughed. “It was a desperate act by a man who’d flown to Paris to make things right with his estranged boyfriend and immediately set about fucking up again.”
Cillian narrowed his eyes at Laurent. “Do we have to dredge up the past constantly?”
“It was sweet,” Finn said in defense of his boyfriend. “But there’s no arguing with it being dramatic.”
“Fine,” Cillian admitted. “It was dramatic. Everyone’s allowed to be dramatic at least once in their life. You were about to walk away from me again.”
“And you would have deserved it.”
“I would have done,” Cillian admitted.
Laurent attempted to squirm away, and I held on tighter.
Finn’s lips twitched as he stared down at us. “Is that an embrace or a wrestling move?”
“I was wondering the same myself,” Laurent said, his slightly strangled voice making me realize that perhaps I was hanging on a little too tight. I loosened my grip, Laurent making the most of it and extricating himself. Once he had, he moved along the sofa, putting what to me was a gaping chasm between us. When he glanced my way, I offered him my prettiest pout and held out my hand. Despite letting out a long-suffering sigh, he took it. “He loves PDAs really,” I said. “He demanded I kiss him in the middle of a busy cafe to prove my homosexuality.”
“Really!” Finn contemplated that with raised brows. “That doesn’t sound like Laurent.”
“I am here,” Laurent said drily. “You could talk to me rather than about me.”
Finn and I shared a glance, both of us shaking our heads and saying “nah” in unison.
“Seriously, though,” Finn said. He waved a hand between us. “I think this is great and I’m thrilled for the both of you.”
I offered my brother a beatific smile. “And what about you?”
His gaze fastened on our joined hands. To help him out, I lifted them and pressed a lingering kiss to Laurent’s knuckles. “I’m doing my best to get used to it, but I’m not going to pretend it’s easy,” he answered honestly.
The door opened, Amrita bustling in with an armful of brown paper bags she could barely see over the top of. “Dinner’s here!” she announced cheerily.
I checked my watch and threw my brother a filthy look. “You sent your PA out to get dinner at 8p.m? There are Chinese sweat shops she could work in and do fewer hours.”
Amrita deposited her bounty on the table so she could put her hands on her hips. “There are, aren’t there? Do you think I’d get free clothes?”
“I didn’t send her,” Cillian announced with a slightly affronted look on his face. “Watch this.” He stepped forward and grabbed hold of the nearest bag. “You sit down and I’ll put it out on plates.”
Amrita lasted as long as it took for Cillian to extract the first polystyrene container from the bag before slapping his hands away. “Don’t! There’s a system to the way the bags are packed. I know that because when the waiter got it wrong, I made him do it again. You’ll mess it up if you touch it.”
Cillian held up a hand that said “see” as Amrita put the container he’d gotten out of the bag back in it and swapped it for one from a different bag.
Three containers in, she clicked her fingers. “Plates. Cutlery. Or did you think we were going to eat like baboons?”
“I don’t mind,” I said.
“That’s because you are a baboon,” Cillian said. There was no bite to his words like there used to be, our relationship settling into a more typical sibling one where the digs and jibes were there, but the love was too.
“Still not seeing any plates,” Amrita demanded.
“Who’s the PA?” I asked as Cillian immediately ran off to do her bidding.
Only once Amrita had set up the table to her satisfaction, were we invited to take a seat at it. “Are the dishes in alphabetical order?” I joked as I took in the Chinese buffet on display.
