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“Things?” I slice bread buns and fry them cut side down in the same pan as the fish. “You mean an attachment?”

“If you say so.”

I chuckle, shaking my head. I don’t like the digital matrix modern life has forced on me. But I still know how to use it.

Sol doesn’t.

And Jack can’t look at screens for longer than a few seconds. Stepping up, I take Sol’s phone and relinquish the cooking to him. He’s trying to open an email in an antiquated browser. I click out of it and download the app that’s least offensive to me, logging in with his address and Jack’s birthday. “The email from Rubi?”

“Yeah.” Sol has already abandoned the bread to check on Jack.

I rescue the rolls one-handed and open the attachment. “These look like plans.”

Sol is too distracted by Jack not responding to him to hear me. I find water in the fridge and press the cool glass into Jack’s hand. Then I give them space and step out to calculate my insulin as a bedroom door opens down the hall.

Skylar appears in the living room a moment later. Hair light and messy as if he just woke up. “They have pumps for that, you know.”

I force a smile because it’s a running joke between us when I’m not avoiding him. Bite down on a flare of irritation neither of us deserve. “You think a pump would survive a trip to St. Helier and back?”

“I think you could find a workaround.” Skylar stretches his arms, yawning. “If you wanted to.”

“I do not.” I can’t. Adhesives fail in salty seawater and…well, yes. Perhaps I am as stubborn as Skylar’s wry silence accuses me of being. But I am who I am, and Skylar Buchanan is not a man who passes judgement on such things. He lets it go, as he always does, and despite the annoying, lingering instinct to protect myself from disjointed memories of his cold hands and iron will, we return to the kitchen together.

Jack is on his feet and assembling the sandwiches. I stand close in case he needs help, but he’s alert now and passes me one exactly how I like it. “Thank you, my friend.”

“Aye, you’re welcome. Sit down, boyo.”

I take a seat beside Skylar without asking where Mal is. I can tell by the plates Jack fixes that he’s not here. And that means I sit in his seat while Skylar eats, a silent promise made long before Mal ever came home, and one that sometimes takes a while.

Sol’s phone is on the table.

When I’m done eating, I pick it up again and open the email with the plans attached to it. It looks like blueprints for the Joker, and this place, this home, has become a sanctuary of no secrets over the past year, so I do not wait to address my curiosity. “What are these for?”

Sol swallows the last bite of his lunch and stands, depositing the plate in the sink. “Mal thinks we should renovate the kitchen downstairs and use it. I think he’s spending too much time with dodgy accountants and bored builders.”

“Bored builders?”

“Biker builders,” he amends. “Who’ve got nothing to do now they’re not living a life of crime.”

Beside me, Skylar gives a droll laugh and pushes his plate away. “Mal hangs out with Folk and Saint. They’re not builders or lacking in things to do.”

“Might as well be.”

Skylar doesn’t agree and I don’t know if it’s because Folk isn’t part of the Rebel Kings’ construction operation, or because trying to categorise Saint Malone as anything is near-on impossible. Either way, it’s not really the point.

I swipe through the plans. Study the vision whoever drew them has for the abandoned pub kitchen. “What is this part?”

Skylar peers over my shoulder. “Accommodation for whoever we con into cooking for us. We can’t pay them enough to rent a place in town.”

“It would not be easier to give them one of the rooms up here?”

Skylar’s face tells me all he thinks about that, and it is my turn to laugh as I take our plates to the sink. And it feels good to enjoy my friends without ruminating on the reality that I wouldn’t be alive if not for Sol keeping my head above water and Skylar refusing to let me die. It feels, today, at least, as though we can exist as if it never happened.

We can’t, of course. But I take the respite and wash the dishes with Jack while Sol goes back to work downstairs and I lose track of Skylar.

There is one sandwich left over. Fixed the way I like it. Jack wraps it up and presses it into my hands. “Take it home.”

Honestly, even I get sick of fish sometimes. But I take the package anyway and go downstairs with Jack and outside into the beer garden.