Sliding Down the Sky by Amanda Dick Page A

I will,” I lied.
    I didn’t want to have to go into it further. One lie was enough.
    “When?”
    “Can we not talk about work tonight? It’s Friday night, dude. I just want to forget all about work till Monday morning, okay?”
    “Sorry, you’re right. No more work talk.”
    I felt shitty about fobbing him off again, but I had enough on my mind. Instead, I offered him an alternative conversation topic. One that didn’t involve me.
    “Have you talked to Ally yet? About the baby thing, I mean?”
    He cast a quick glance into the hallway behind him, shaking his head.
    “Not yet.”
    “Does she even know that you told me about what’s going on?”
    “No.”
    Great.
    “Are you going to?”
    “What?”
    “Tell her that I know – or am I supposed to pretend like I’m completely in the dark when – if – she decides she wants to talk to me about this too? I mean, I just want to get my story straight here.”
    He picked at the label on his bottle for a few moments, before looking over at me.
    “I’m not lying to her, I’m confiding in my best friend,” he said. “There’s a difference.”
    I felt for him, really I did, but secrets had a habit of tearing apart even the strongest of relationships. I’d seen it before, first-hand.
    “ Has she talked to you about it?” he asked.
    “No. But it’s no fun being stuck in the middle, I can tell you that. You know that you need to talk to her, not me, right?”
    I amazed myself sometimes. Quite happy to get involved in their personal dramas, but completely unwilling to let them into mine. It was another case of ‘do as I say, not as I do’.
    “I know, I’m just waiting for the right time. After the last appointment, we said we’d give it a few weeks before we talked about it again because it was driving both of us crazy. It’s worse now. I’m too scared to go anywhere near her, just in case… y’know. It’s freakin’ killing me. My balls are turning blue.”
    “Dude – too much information.”
    “Sorry.”
    What went on in the sack between them was their business, and I’d made that perfectly clear to both of them from the beginning. They were both my best friends, but I didn’t want to know what either of them did in bed. It’d be too weird. I had to look them in the eye, after all. There had to be boundaries.
    “Wonder what the band will be like tonight?” I asked, briskly changing the subject.
    “I guess we’ll find out, if we ever get there.” He shot a glance at the hallway again, but still no sign of movement from the bedroom. “Have you bumped into Sass again?”
    I’d told him about the diner fiasco, for what it was worth. I think I was hoping for some insight, which, it turns out, I didn’t get.
    “No.”
    Not for lack of trying, though.
    “I’m guessing they’ve been busy with the opening. I ran into Leo at the gas station yesterday, he looked pretty ragged.”
    “I’m not surprised. They’ve taken on a hell of a lot of work. That place was a dump before it closed down. I can only imagine what eight years of neglect would’ve done to it.”
    It had been Jack’s idea to go to the opening tonight. Ally wasn’t a fan of being in an enclosed space with hordes of people, and I couldn’t blame her. She’d have to use her crutches and braces, which meant that one wrong move could send her flying. But he’d sold it to her by saying it was a business proposition. If the bar did well, Leo and Gemma might want to extend their lease, which was good business for them as landlords. Ally, I guess, took it to heart. I also suspected – as I’m sure Jack did – that the other reason she was going was to prove to him that she could handle it. She was as stubborn as she was beautiful. If she wanted a baby, it would take the combined forces of the galaxy to stop her. I did feel for Jack. He better make up his mind that he was ready for it, and it better be soon.
    I took another sip of beer, just as Ally and Maggie finally emerged