Page 3

DEAN

“Who the fuck is Harry?”

The question came from my manager, Astrid, who was standing on the other side of the fitting-room door.

“What?” I felt panic tighten around my throat. “Why the hell are you asking me that?”

“Because there’s an unsent message on your phone from last night. It’s from you, wishing someone named Harry a Happy Birthday and if I’m honest, it’s kind of gushy… and emotional… and hot! Who is this Harry?”

I threw myself out of the fitting room, lunging for the phone in her hand. Unfortunately, I was only half -dressed, the bright red leather pants Astrid wanted me to wear for the shoot only halfway up my legs. Before I knew it, I came crashing out of the fitting room and teetering across my dressing-room floor, trying desperately to snatch my phone from Astrid’s clutches and failing spectacularly.

“Can you please gimme that!” I shrieked before—“ Oomph! ” I hit the dressing-room floor, shirtless, ass up, red leather pants slipping down around my ankles.

The second she heard me hit the floor, the freelance wardrobe assistant hired by Constellation Records for today’s shoot rushed toward me, giggling, her phone already out. Apparently, she was all too willing to throw her burgeoning career away for the chance to make her social media dreams come true by videoing me at my most awkward and vulnerable, before—

“Put that fucking phone down right now!” Somehow Astrid’s British accent and perfect pronunciation made her even more terrifying when she was mad. “Take one single second of footage of Dean Reeves in his jocks and I promise you’ll spend the rest of your fucking career washing the cum stains of sixty-year-old rock stars out of the sheets in the laundry room of the Beverly Hills Hotel. You wanna be famous? I’ve got news for you, sweetheart. It takes talent, not a phone. Now get the fuck out of here… you’re fired!”

With a clatter of her stiletto heels, the stunned and teary wardrobe assistant fled like a whimpering baby hyena about to be pounced upon and ripped to shreds by a protective lioness.

I rolled over onto my back on the floor, the leather pants still twisted around my ankles as I sighed with relief. “Thank you.”

Astrid smiled. “My absolute pleasure, darling. Now hold still, you look fucking adorbs.” With my phone still in hand she took a snap of me.

“Astrid! You just fired someone for trying to do that!”

“Yes, but this photo’s on your phone, not on some random assistant’s devilish device, so you can do with it what you will. Maybe you’ll decide to share it with this Harry chap, because that birthday message you never sent was rather steamy.” Suddenly a thought dawned on her. “Oh shit, it’s not Harry Styles, is it? Have you secretly been dating Harry Styles and didn’t tell me?! Oh. My. Fucking—”

“It’s not Harry Styles!” I thrashed my legs, furiously trying to get the pants off. “Oh my God, who was the masochist that designed leather pants! For the love of God, someone get these pants off me!”

“Dean, calm down, darling!” Astrid set my phone aside, brushed back her fiery red hair, hitched up her skirt, and knelt beside me. “Now, do you want the pants up… or down? I can get them off you if you want, but please keep in mind we have an award-winning photographer in the next room who’s keen to take a snap of you in these red leather pants for the cover of Rolling Stone . So the choice is yours. Pants come down and we call the whole shoot off… pants go up and you sell a million more downloads on Spotify. It’s up to you. Oh, and a friendly reminder, the magazine has had their entire print -run in a holding pattern for a week waiting for your schedule to sync up with the photographer’s. Keep in mind this month’s issue comes out next week. No pressure.” She leaned down and pecked me on the forehead with a kiss that was at once caring and patronizing. “So, my darling, what’ll it be?”

Astrid Aldridge was the toughest, sexiest, most ambitious talent agent in the Los Angeles music industry. A bloodthirsty early-thirty-something from Shoreditch, London, Astrid had moved to the West Coast three years earlier, bringing with her an ear for the freshest new music and an eye for the next big thing. Astrid was the one who found me on the internet, that stupid nineteen-year-old kid singing his original tracks on his own private YouTube channel, hungry to be heard, just like the billion other kids posting their songs on social media. Except when Astrid sniffed me out like a bloodhound on my trail, she was ready to push aside every other dreamer with a guitar to bet the whole farm on me.

Me .

She was the one who snatched me from Mulligan’s Mill within three days of me posting my video of “ Hammer of my Heart ” online, swooping in with a bottle of champagne, a one-way ticket to LA, and a contract with Constellation Records, the music subsidiary of Constellation Media, the fastest-growing entertainment distributor in the world.

With her bombshell looks, business savvy, and the fearsomeness of an entire Spartan army, Astrid took me in her arms and parted the seas of the recording industry so effortlessly that, well, I couldn’t help but fall in love with her.

And she fell in love with me too.

How much? I’ll never really know.

But when she was ready for a fresh young shooting star to launch her career into the stratosphere, I was happy to be her comet.

She was not only my manager; she was my adviser, my stylist, my legal counsel, my sounding board, my emotional anchor, my mentor in a world I knew nothing about. She chose which clothes I wore, which parties to attend, which haircut would spark a new trend in Hollywood, which salads to order off the menu, which lunch meetings to say yes to, which conversations to walk away from, which people to trust and who was sure to kill my career, even if only by mere association.

“It doesn’t matter if you like them,” she would tell me. “It doesn’t matter if you think the bloody sun shines out of their arse. If I tell you to avoid them, it means their star is about to come crashing down. The last thing you want is to be dragged down with them. In this game, comebacks take a long time and a lot of hard work. People will sooner move on to the next big thing than give you another chance.”

Sometimes the pressure became all too much.

There were nights when I found myself on the doorstep of Astrid’s penthouse apartment with a half-finished bottle of tequila in my fist.

She nursed me through my drunken moments, overwhelmed by the burden of my rising star. She also nursed me through my many hangovers the next day. And sometimes, when I needed to be held, when I needed to be loved, she nursed me in her arms.

I lost my virginity to Astrid, but I never lost my trust or faith in her, even when I lost faith in myself.

We were never exactly a couple.

We were never public with our affections.

She simply did what she had to do to make me a star.

Yet, in all those times I found myself in her bed, in her protection, there was always someone else’s arms I wanted around me.

Harry.

Then again, what would Harry know about the lightning-paced, ego-fueled, money-hungry, celebrity-obsessed, fame-addicted world of Los Angeles? He’d hate it here. He’d be like a tiger in a cage, pacing back and forth, constantly looking for his chance to escape. Hell, there were times I wanted out too; to simply vanish, to give it all up, to just write the music I loved so much instead of playing the game for the sake of the cameras and the fans, performing to screaming audiences night after night, all the while pretending it was okay to be clawed and kissed and grabbed and fondled by hordes of complete strangers.

Yes, sometimes I wanted nothing more than to go back to Mulligan’s Mill where I knew I was safe.

Especially now that the letters had started arriving.

There had been three of them so far, all looking like stalker mail from a 1970’s slasher movie, their threatening messages made from different newspaper and magazine headlines, letters cut and glued in creepy, helter-skelter fashion.

The first one I found taped to the front door of the Malibu beach house I was renting. Astrid was with me when I opened the envelope and saw— The world doesn’t need another wannabe star. Quit now or you’ll live to regret it!

The second letter was found by a janitor who was cleaning up backstage after one of my shows— End your career, before I end it for you!

The third letter I found on the back seat of my limousine— Sing one more song and it’ll be your last!

The driver had insisted he hadn’t seen anyone come or go while he was waiting to pick me up, let alone notice anyone opening and closing the back passenger door to the limo.

Astrid had told me not to let the threats get to me, despite having hired a burly Romanian bodyguard named Bogdan who had started escorting me everywhere and stood outside the door of whichever room I was in at any given moment, including the dressing room I was in before the photoshoot. Astrid’s advice was to be vigilant—to be alert rather than alarmed—but not to let some psycho ruin my career.

I had told Astrid after the second letter that I needed a break from the whole fame thing, which is when I called my dad and organized my trip to Mulligan’s Mill.

Astrid reluctantly agreed, although she warned me not to stay away too long. After all, as she had often reminded me time and again—“What it takes to step out of the spotlight is one thing, my darling boy. What it takes to step back into it is something else entirely.”

Lying there on the dressing room floor, I pushed thoughts of my stalker out of my head and answered Astrid’s question. “Up. Pull them up.” I was talking about the red leather pants. I knew it was the answer Astrid wanted to hear.

She smiled, hitched up my pants, and said, “That’s my boy. Rolling Stone cover, here we come.”

“We’ll be finished before my flight leaves, right?” I tried not to sound too panicky.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On how ready you are to make love to that camera. I want you dripping with sex for this shoot. I want you to ooze with desire. I want copies of this magazine hidden under the mattress of every horny teenage girl and raging queer in the world. Deliver me that, and I promise you’ll make your flight to Hillbilly Hicksville.”

“Mulligan’s Mill.”

“I’m teasing.” She buttoned up my leather pants for me, then decided to undo the top two buttons.

I eyed her suspiciously. “You’re not doing that so I can tuck my shirt in, are you?”

Astrid winked. “What shirt?”

Ten minutes later, I was sitting on a wooden stool with an electric guitar in my hands and a plain white scrim behind me. My red leather pants, unbuttoned at the top, hung low around my hips. Although I’d been told to “ooze with desire” before, I was anxious about my flight and was having trouble summoning the level of sensuality Astrid wanted from me.

“Darling, you’re tense,” she said, even as the photographer continued snapping away. “What’s the matter with you today? You’re getting caught up in your thoughts again, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. I’m sorry.” I did know. I was thinking about my flight. I was thinking about the letters from my damn stalker. I was thinking about… Harry.

“Darling, put everything out of your mind that’s stressing you. Make room for nothing else but the one thing you desire the most. The one thing that drives you wild. The one thing you want more than anything else in the world.”

I put the flight and the letters out of my head.

I closed my eyes and thought of the night in my room back in Mulligan’s Mill, when Harry came up with the word “hammer” and suddenly a hit song was born.

I threw my head back and with one hand I positioned the guitar between my spread legs.

With my other hand I ran my fingers through my wild blond hair, then down the side of my face.

I touched my fingers to my neck, my chest, my nipple.

For a few more seconds I heard the camera clicking furiously, then the sound faded away as I completely lost myself in the moment, the images in my mind stretching beyond a simple memory, pushing their way boldly into fantasy.

I imagined Harry sitting beside me on the bed…

Taking me in his arms…

Laying me down on the sheets and planting his lips on mine, forcing a loud, ache-filled groan from deep within.

I suddenly realized the groan wasn’t just in my imagination.

I threw my head forward and opened my eyes, my gaze happening to find the camera in that exact moment, my entire body quivering with longing.

Lust.

Hope.

Snap!

“That’s the fucking money shot!” Astrid declared, yanking me out of my daydream and back to reality with such a jolt I almost fell off the stool.

There in front of me stood Astrid, fanning herself with my phone, while the photographer muttered in a somewhat stunned voice, “I think that’s a wrap. And I think I need a cold shower.”

* * *

In the limo from my house in Malibu to the airport, Astrid managed to down two Grey Goose vodkas on ice and inhale three cigarettes—yes, she had found one of the few limousine companies left in LA that turned a blind eye to smoking—before escorting me to the gate in the first-class lounge, the towering Bogdan trailing close behind, my guitar case in one of his gigantic fists and his black suit two sizes too small for his Hulk-like shoulders.

Astrid waggled a finger at me as she saw me off at the gate. “Keep your sunglasses and headphones on for the flight. Don’t eat the fish and do not drink the coffee; airplane coffee will kill the joy of caffeine for you for the rest of your life. The flight crew will stop anyone from harassing you, that’s their job, unless a kid with a rare disease approaches you and asks for your autograph. If that happens, give her one of your signed publicity photos, you know, the ones we give away to all your VIP fans.”

“But I didn’t bring any with me.”

“Yes you did. There’s a dozen of them in your backpack.”

“I didn’t put them there.”

“ I know . And for fuck’s sake, if the sick kid thing happens, make sure someone gets a photo and posts it online. Money can’t buy that kind of publicity.” The gate attendant tried to take my boarding pass, but Astrid held me back a moment longer. “My darling boy, I know there’s a lot going on in your world with those nasty letters. I know you’re feeling on edge. So take this time to find yourself again, recharge that beautiful soul of yours, and perhaps even write a hit song or two. I promise that when you return, that stalker of yours will have found somebody else to torment and your star will shine brighter than ever before!”

She kissed me on the lips then thumbed her lipstick off me.

Bogdan handed me my guitar.

“I’ll call you,” I told Astrid, then gave my boarding pass to the gate attendant.

After one final wave to Astrid and Bogdan—who stood waving back at me like they were playing my parents in some arthouse horror movie version of my life—I turned and boarded the plane…

On my way home to Mulligan’s Mill.

* * *

Dad looked dusty.

His eyes were bloodshot, his face was unshaven and his bed hair—or was it sofa hair?—hadn’t quite been tamed. It didn’t matter. I was just glad to see him as he pushed his way through the crowd at Eau Claire airport to greet me.

“Hey pal! Come here! Give your old man a big hug!”

He wrapped his arms around me, squeezing hard, almost knocking the sunglasses off my face and breaking the headphones that were now around my neck.

“Hey Dad,” I grinned, knowing I could always buy a new set of headphones.

But that hug from Dad?

That was priceless.

He broke the hug and held me at arm’s length to get a good look at me. “You look taller. Your hair’s longer. Have you been working out? Your shoulders look bigger. Have you been eating? You look kinda thin around the waist. You need some fattening up. I know just the thing. How about I cook you up a batch of my famous fried chicken with some ranch dressing on the side, huh?”

“Oh God, that sounds so good. But Astrid my manager would kill me!”

“Then we won’t tell her,” was Dad’s swift, decisive response. “Maybe we’ll even invite a friend or two? I’m not talking about a party or nothing. Just a coupla people to say welcome home. You feel like company?”

“Not really. I’m kinda tired.”

“What about Harry? You remember Harry?”

“Dad, of course I remember Harry. I didn’t leave town and forget everyone I’ve ever known my entire life.” I shrugged to make my next comment sound as casual as possible. “Yeah, I guess you can invite Harry over.” I gulped. “He’s cool.”

“He’s a good guy. He’s easy. Why don’t we see if he wants to come over for a few beers. Just to make an occasion of it. You don’t come back home every day, you know.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Maybe I sounded too casual. Dad must have read my tone as offhand. “I thought you liked Harry. Don’t you like him?”

I scoffed, overcompensating yet again, this time in the other direction. “Of course I like Harry. Everyone likes Harry.”

“I know, right. I’m trying to set him up with someone new in town. A teacher at the school. She seems great.”

“You are? She does?” I did a terrible job of hiding my shock. “That’s great.”

Instantly I wanted a change in conversation. I needed a distraction from the pang that hit my heart. At that moment a pair of teenage girls rushed toward me, Sharpies and boarding passes in their hands, and I’d never been happier to be approached by a couple of fans.

“Excuse me, are you… Dean?” one of them asked, breathless. “Oh my God, it’s really you. I’m dying. I’m dying right now! Can we please get your autograph?”

I smiled and took their boarding passes to sign. “I’d love to. What are your names?”

The girls gushed. “Susan. No wait, I’m Denise. She’s Susan. Oh my God, we can’t believe it’s really you! Would you mind signing my T-shirt too?”

I chuckled. “That’s a Shawn Mendes T-shirt.”

“He’ll never know,” one of the girls said.

“I won’t tell him if you don’t,” I replied with a wink.

The two girls giggled so hard I thought they were going to hyperventilate.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed my dad stepping back, a little confused, as though he wasn’t expecting any of this. I guess in a way he wasn’t. Whenever we talked on the phone, I never really went into details about life in the fast lane. I knew it wasn’t his style, so why fill his head with it. It’d only keep him up at night worrying about me. So I kept our conversations simple; I told him about a new burger joint I liked, about how small the Hollywood sign looks when you’re standing right in front of it, about the beaches and the gridlocked traffic and the funny, crazy, weird and wonderful people you see on the Boulevard. But I never talked about the fame, the concerts, the paparazzi, the fans, and he never asked. Clearly, he wasn’t following my career online—hell, despite being a handyman, Dad could barely operate the TV remote, let alone navigate the internet—and that was fine by me. Because if he wasn’t swept up in it all, it meant that I had someone I could trust who could stop me from being swept up in it too. I had someone who would always keep me grounded.

Deep inside, I hoped that Harry could be that someone too.

As I signed the boarding passes and the T-shirts—always on the sleeve, never on the chest; not even Astrid needed to give me that tip—the girls scurried back to their parents, eeking and squeeing and trying not to make a scene in the airport.

Dad looked at me strangely, as though some alien had claimed my skin as its host. “What was that all about? Do you know them? Does that happen all the time?”

I shrugged. “Forget about it, Dad. Let’s get home. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for a big plateful of fried chicken.”

* * *

Home was home, the same as it had always been.

Driving into Mulligan’s Mill was like kicking off a tight-fitting pair of shoes at the end of the day. It was like unbuttoning a collar, like stretching the cricks out of your neck, like slumping onto the couch, grabbing the remote, and flicking on the TV.

I physically sank into the passenger seat of Dad’s pickup as we passed the Welcome to Mulligan’s Mill sign, like melting into an easy chair.

I sighed with relief when he drove along the clattering boards of the red-roof-covered Brannigan’s Bridge, then gawked at the cordoned-off hole in the ground where the old Ritz Theater once stood. “What happened to—”

“Don’t ask. It’s a long story. I’ll tell you over a drink.”

From Main Street Bridge I saw the changes that had happened on the river promenade—that Mrs. Hartigan’s old garden shop had been transformed into Bud’s Blooms , while next door to that Mr. Flannery’s bakery had become Pascal’s Patisserie —and I suddenly felt the sting of distance, that a small part of me had become a stranger in my own town. “When did that happen?” I asked Dad, pointing to the new stores.

“Last year, I guess. Just after you left. Bud opened up his flower shop, then Pascal moved to town from Paris and opened up his patisserie, then before we knew it—boom! They fell in love. There was more than just geraniums blooming, let me tell ya.”

“Wait. You mean, Bud? The mechanic? He owns a flower shop now? He’s gay now?”

“Yes, he owns a flower shop now. Flipped from being a grease monkey to watering daisies, just like that.” He clicked his fingers. “The whole gay thing, though, I’m not entirely sure how that works, but I don’t think it’s something he suddenly decided one morning. Hey, I could be wrong. You probably know more about that than me.”

I sat up defensively. “Me? What do you mean? Why would I know about being gay?”

“I don’t know. Because you live in LA now, I guess. You must meet lots of different people. Isn’t Elton John gay?”

“Yes, but I’ve never met him.”

“Well, you’ve probably met some gay people since you’ve been out there, I’m sure. Mind you, you don’t have to go far down the streets of Mulligan’s Mill these days before you bump into some happy gay couple.”

“Seriously? That was not the case when I left.”

“Seriously,” Dad nodded. “Mitch Winton finally came back and hooked up with Gage Channing. Apparently, they had a little somethin’-somethin’ going on way back in high school.”

“You mean, ‘Wings’ Winton, the ice skater? And Gage, the guy who was once captain of the hockey team?”

“They’re not the only ones. Old Man Raven’s son, River, returned home from the Marines and fell head over heels in love with Clarry from the ice cream parlor. Talk about chalk and cheese, but I tell ya, those two walk around like they’re on a cloud. Then Benji and Bastian from the BnB finally got back together again. Yep, love is in the air everywhere you look.”

“Wow, who would have thought?” My chest had tightened when Dad had asked about knowing any gay guys in LA—which of course I did, a couple of them had even hit on me once or twice although I’d never acted on it—but knowing that there was something of a rainbow shining down on Mulligan’s Mill made me breathe easier about my secret crush on Harry.

Not that there was a remote chance of romance with someone like Harry Dalton.

But it at least gave me hope that if I ever did fall in love with someone —other than Harry, of course—that maybe one day we could settle down in Mulligan’s Mill.

I scoffed audibly at the thought, and Dad looked at me.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “You don’t like the gays? I know they’re a little different to us, but they’re not hurting anyone, and who they love is their business.”

“Oh God, Dad, you know I’m fine with gay people. I’m good with everyone .”

“I know, son. I raised you right.”

It was nice to have a father who was as small -town as it gets yet had learned to teach himself tolerance and compassion over the years, which was a far cry from the father who had raised him , using a belt or the back of his hand to try and beat any kind of empathy or enlightenment out of him.

My dad could have turned out to be a very different man, he could have continued the abuse down the line, but he chose not to. For that I would always respect him.

“What about you?” I asked. “If love is in the air, has the breeze blown in your direction yet?”

He didn’t quite get the metaphor. “What?”

I kept it simple. “Have you met someone?”

“Me? What the hell?” He laughed so hard the pickup rocked. “Not likely! The only person who could ever love this old coot was your mother, God rest her beautiful soul.”

Mom had died when I was three. I couldn’t remember her at all, but there were pictures in the house still, and whenever Dad mentioned her, he always added, “God rest her beautiful soul.” I wasn’t sure he’d ever get over the loss.

I reached across and squeezed his shoulder. “You know that if someone did come your way… someone you liked… Mom would be happy for you. You know that, right?”

He patted my hand. “I know, son. I know.”

As we pulled into the drive, my entire body seemed to exhale with relief at the sight of our house; our house that was exactly the same as the day I left. The white paint on the porch was still peeling, the broken weathervane protruding from the peak of the roof swung lopsidedly and squeaked noisily instead of spinning with the breeze, and the guttering on one side of the house was still buckled and rusted after a snowstorm a few years back, something that Dad had promised to fix time and time again. I guess when you’re a handyman, the last thing you wanna do is spend all day fixing other people’s properties then come home and have to fix up your own.

“I’ll get to it when I get to it,” was always Dad’s motto… which was better than my grandfather’s motto of “I’ll skin you like a fucking deer if you don’t do as I say, you no-good little bastard!”

We very rarely talked about my grandfather, and when his name did come up, we spoke about him like he was dead. He wasn’t. He lived just outside of town. He was a recluse. He hunted for his own food and rarely came into Mulligan’s Mill. We hadn’t seen him since I was twelve, and even on that occasion we crossed to the other side of the street before he saw us. I guess Dad preferred to avoid the man who made his life hell, rather than poke the Devil if he didn’t have to.

Stepping inside our house I saw once again that nothing had changed.

The glass panel on the clock hanging in the hallway was still cracked, threads of carpet were peeling away on the well-worn line between the couch in the living room and the kitchen door, and the screened-in porch at the back of the house was still set up for Friday night poker with Dad’s buddies.

I wondered if Harry still came over on Friday nights and my heart began to race. I gestured to the beer bottles yet to be taken out to the trash. “You had the guys over last night like you always do, I see. Did he have a good birthday?”

The question came out before I even thought about how knowing it sounded.

Dad just looked at me, puzzled. “Birthday? Who’s birthday?”

My chance to backpedal. “Nothing. I was getting confused.” But it was too late, the cogs in Dad’s still-hungover brain were spinning.

“Oh fuck! It was Harry’s birthday yesterday, wasn’t it? Shit, I always forget. I’m such a shit friend sometimes. How the hell did you remember?”

“Oh. Um. I guess I got a Facebook reminder.”

“Harry isn’t on Facebook.”

“It was something like that, then,” I muttered vaguely.

Dad went back to kicking himself. “Shit, we really need to invite him over for a drink now. I should bake him a cake,” he mumbled… before realizing, “I have no idea how to bake a cake.”

“Dad, Dad, relax. Harry’s not the kind of guy who’s gonna hold this against you. Besides, you forget every year. Don’t make a big deal out of it, Harry would hate that.”

Dad was already fumbling with his phone, stabbing slowly at the screen with his calloused index finger which was his clumsy way of communicating via text. “I know, I know. But I kinda get the feeling this was a big one.”

“What do you mean?” I knew exactly what he meant, but it wasn’t my place to put two -and -two together for him. I regretted not sending Harry the birthday message I’d typed the night before, but Astrid was right, it was kinda gushy and emotional and yes, hot. Note to self: go back and delete that message.

Dad, meanwhile, plonked himself into a chair at the poker table, still jabbing at his phone. “Yep, I’m sure it was a big one alright. Harry’s six months older than me, and I’m thirty-nine which means…”

“You forgot your best friend’s fortieth birthday?”

“I know, I know. I’m such an asshole.”

“No, you’re not, Dad. Harry would never think you’re an asshole.”

“I know, but I still feel bad.” He paused, finished his message, then read it aloud. “Hey Harry, Dean’s home. Come over for a drink. Besides, I owe you a birthday beer. Happy Birthday, big guy.” He looked up at me. “How does that sound?”

My head was focused on the words “big guy.”

They reminded me just how hot Harry was, even despite the fact that the words had come from my father’s mouth.

“That sounds great. You didn’t make a big deal of it, that’s perfect.”

I could see an idea flash through his mind, as he typed and spoke at the same time. “Why don’t I invite Madeline too.” He hit send and said, “Done.”

He looked pleased with himself, like inviting Madeline as well—whoever that was—would make up for forgetting Harry’s birthday. What was she gonna do, jump out of a fucking cake?