Page 58 of Summer Holiday Lifeline

“You’re direct.”

Steven tilted his head. “You started it.”

Myles snickered. “The ‘I’m an alcoholic’ truth vomit. Right. That was me.” He picked up his coffee and spent some time savouring the warmth and distraction of it.

“So?” Steven said eventually. “Why?”

“No one thing, really,” Myles admitted. “I was… drowning, I guess. Jet was hanging out with a crowd that six months ago, he had not a good word to say about. And suddenly, he was in tight with them? It didn’t track.”

“Bad crowd?”

“Headed that way. And he knows it.”

“He just lost his mom.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s a hard thing.”

“I know.” He met Steven’s eyes. “I was only a year or two older than him when mine died. Same cause as Nat. Dad couldn’t deal. He let the farm go to a neighbour who needed the land and our access to the river. Moved us all into the city, no warning, no discussion about what we wanted, nothing. I took off to university almost immediately. Nat fumbled through high school, and Dad made a small fortune flipping houses.” He chuckled. “Ozzy would probably call what he did to those old places an atrocity.”

“I thought you joined the army.”

“I did. After I graduated.”

“What did you study?”

“Nothing useful.”

Steven grinned. “Come on.” He jostled Myles with his foot. “Spill.”

“No, seriously. It was, as my father loved to point out until the day he died, a complete non-starter.”

“Hence the army? Couldn’t find a job in your field?”

“The army was because Nat had graduated and moved out of the house. I had no interest in joining my father’s company. He’d grown up a farmer. Married, literally, the girl next door. Raised us to be farmers. And then, there he was in the city growing an empire with his boots firmly planted in the kind of gentrification he’d fought off his whole life.” It was all he could do not to curl a lip and snarl. “Let’s just say, we didn’t agree on a lot of things. I wasn’t going to keep living under the same roof. And yeah, no. I couldn’t find a job in my field.”

“Which was?” Steven sipped his coffee and lifted both eyebrows.

“Relentless,” Myles said.

“Deeply curious.”

“I earned a BA.”

“That covers a lot of things.”

“In English,” Myles said into his mug.

A slow smile grew on Steven’s face. “Now I’m wondering if you’re only interested in me for my bookstore.”

“That’s not at all⁠—”

Steven snorted.

“You’re kidding. Of course you are.”

“Of course I am.” He nudged Myles with his foot again. “As to the other. Well. It isn’t any of my business.”