The Road Trip by Beth O'Leary (grave mercy .txt) 📕

Marcus is right, I think – I’m pushing him too hard, expecting too much, or perhaps expecting the wrong thing altogether. He’s Marcus. That’s not going to change. And, quite honestly, as I watch him reason with the bemused shop assistant, I realise I don’t want it to.

THEN

Addie

From the moment Dylan gets home, he barely leaves my side. Even on Christmas Day he drops around in the evening, making the drive all the way from his parents’ place in Wiltshire just to hand-deliver our presents and join us for microwaved mulled wine in front of Elf.

Once term restarts in January, he’s actually a really great support about work too, now he’s around to listen. He always seems to get things from the kids’ point of view. He was a delinquent at secondary school, apparently. Almost kicked out of the super-posh private school his parents chose for him. Though he claims that was mostly Marcus’s fault.

I come home from work one night in January and find Dylan sprawled on the sofa, watching Dad’s latest documentary. He’s staying in an Airbnb while he flat-hunts, but he’s here most nights. Already smiling, I kick my shoes off in the hall.

‘You must come and try fly-fishing at ours,’ Dylan is saying as I come into the room. He sips from one of our most chipped mugs – clearly Mum doesn’t see him as a guest any more. ‘My family has fishing rights for a stretch of the Avon, and they go to waste. My brother and I proved disappointingly poor sportsmen. Luke could never be doing with it and I didn’t have the patience,’ he says ruefully, scratching the back of his head.

My dad blinks a few times. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘Golly. Thanks.’

I catch my mum’s eye. She’s tidying up around the living room – my mum is always bending down to pick up an errant sock or a used glass – and I watch as her lip twitches in amusement. He’s so posh, she mouths at me. I pull a face.

‘Don’t pretend you don’t love the idea of owning half a river one day,’ she whispers to me as she passes me to the kitchen.

I laugh and follow her. ‘You like him though? Right?’

‘Why do you keep asking me that?’ she says, loading the dishwasher.

I move to help her. She bats me away for putting a cereal bowl in the bottom instead of the top.

‘I just . . . I want you to like him.’

‘Well, I do.’ She looks at me shrewdly. ‘Do you want me to say he can stay here until he finds his own place, instead of hopping around all those short-term rentals?’

I blink, startled. ‘Whoa.’

‘He’s here all the time anyway, sweets,’ she says, straightening up and wiping her hands on the back of her jeans. They’re ‘mom jeans’, made of thick old denim and turned up at the bottoms. ‘Your dad and I talked about it last night.’

I say nothing. My heart flutters. Do I want that? Dylan living here? It feels . . . big.

‘Ads?’ Mum tilts her head. ‘No? You two are so inseparable, and you seem so settled together . . .’

I lean against the counter, scraping at the skin on the edge of my thumbnail. ‘Yeah. No, we are.’

She lowers her voice. ‘But you’re not feeling sure about him?’

‘No, I am, I am, it’s just . . . that time when he was away, I sort of started thinking . . . he didn’t actually like me much. Or he would have come home.’

‘He did come home, didn’t he?’

‘Yeah, but . . . not for ages. And I was starting work, and I kind of needed him here.’

‘Did you tell him you needed him?’

‘I wanted him to just . . . know,’ I say, wincing at myself.

Mum waves me out of the way so she can wipe the surface behind me. ‘You should talk to him about it and clear the air, sweetie.’

I chew my lip. Trouble is, I really raised the bar for myself in those weeks in Provence. Three weeks was just enough time to be sexy and interesting and a bit mysterious. Now Dylan’s here, on our second-hand sofa, and I’m back late from work in my worn black trousers and dowdy blouse . . . I do worry that this just isn’t very Dylan, all this. All my real-life stuff. He fell in love with Summer Addie. I’m definitely not the girl I was before the summer, but I’m not exactly Summer Addie now either, am I?

‘How do you do it?’ I ask impulsively, watching my mum tuck her hair behind her ear as she scrubs at the surfaces. ‘With Dad? I mean . . . you’ve been together for . . .’

‘Twenty-five years,’ Mum says, glancing over her shoulder with a smile. ‘And it’s all about compromise, I’d say.’

‘Like how you always let Dad watch the telly after dinner and you tidy up?’ I say, raising my eyebrows.

‘Exactly. He cooks!’

‘But you do all the thinking about what to make,’ I point out. ‘And the shop.’

She frowns. ‘We each do our fair share.’

There is no point talking to my mother about mental load. For her, Dad is the ultimate modern man because he irons his own shirts.

‘Will you at least let me wash up?’ I ask.

‘Of course!’ Mum says, passing me the rubber gloves. ‘You really are a changed woman these days. Gone is the layabout student, in comes the responsible young lady who notices the pile of dirty pans by the sink.’

I stick my tongue out at her. ‘Urgh, I don’t know,’ I say, turning on the hot tap. ‘I don’t know why I’m holding back. I’ll ask him about moving in for a bit.’

‘Only if you’re absolutely sure, sweets – you’ve got a whole life ahead of you, there’s no need to rush things. Oh, Addie, careful with that plate, it was your grandmother’s . . .’

I let her step in and wash up the plate I