Free Off Limits by Alexandra Vos

scowled. Of
course he’d picked up on it. “Fine. Just had a bit of a run in with my mum, as
always. Nothing really important. I thought work would keep my mind off it.” Of
course he knew our almost incident yesterday was going to have an impact, too,
but I wasn’t going to mention it again.
     
    “I’m sorry for
asking you to lie to Phoebe. I should tell her, I know.”
     
    I hung my head.
“It’s fine. It was a mistake that came out of a completely weird situation,
it’s not going to happen again and we’ll forget about it.” It only made me feel
guiltier that my best friend wasn’t even the thing bothering me the most. I was
so pathetic. “Whatever, anyway. I’d rather talk about something else. How are
your multiple extra-curricular activities going? I don’t know how you’re
fitting anything in around working and school.”
     
    “I do hobbies that
don’t require a lot of time commitment mainly. Like, I play the piano and I do
this creative writing group and then I play football. Apart from football, I
meet like once a week with the writing people and practice with the orchestra
for that amount of time, too. But yeah, it’s been good.”
     
    “How long have you
been playing the piano?” I’d noticed the instrument in the corner a number of
times, but I kind of assumed it was a decoration in-fitting with the rest of
Angela’s décor. “That’s pretty cool. I played the flute for like three months
before I couldn’t be bothered to practice anymore.”
     
    “Since I was about
ten I think. My dad always pushed me to play, I haven’t really felt like
playing since he left.”
     
    That was sad. “I
always really liked piano music, you should play just because it sounds really
awesome.”
     
    He grinned and I
was sure his cheeks were tinged pink. “I do still try.”
     
    “I’m glad.”
     
    Tyler popped his
head out of the door to let us know it was time to leave and I ripped my
hairnet off with a sigh of relief. “I really hate this thing.” My hair tumbled
back down to the dip in my hips and I fluffed it out. The natural curve came
back when it was tied up for that long. “Anyway, let’s get going.”
     
    Luke blinked and
nodded. “Sure. You said you had a run-in with your mum, were you wanting to
come back to mine for a bit? My mum’s put a lasagne in and she says you’re more
than welcome.”
     
    I couldn’t stop
the smile. I wished me and my mum were like Luke and Angela. Now I had another
parent-child relationship to be jealous of, but Angela had taken me under her
wing more than Phoebe’s parents ever had. Then again, I was giving her money so
there was no way of knowing how genuine that was.
     
    I still accepted
his invitation.
     
    We dug into the
food almost as soon as we got back to Luke’s and the food was gorgeous. It
seemed like forever since I last had a cooked meal – my dad did the cooking and
my mum did the cleaning. There had been a lot of instant noodles recently.
     
    “I was thinking we
should go through the finances tonight,” Angela explained in between mouthfuls.
“It was the month end a couple of days ago.”
     
    Luke raised an
eyebrow, glancing at me only once, before nodding. “Sure… we can do it now if
you want.”
     
    “I thought you’d
want to wait until Carmen had gone,” her gaze flicked to me for a moment now,
but Luke only shrugged.
     
    “I don’t care. I
told Carmen everything, anyway. May as well get it over and done with.”
     
    I felt slightly
awkward as Angela got up to go and fetch her paperwork. Hearing about it was
one thing, but sitting in on their financial discussion did feel a little bit
awkward. It felt like I was a part of their family already even though Luke had
only introduced me a few days ago. I kept my gaze in my pasta and tried not to
look like I was intruding. “It’s looking a lot better with your wage coming
in.”
     
    Luke nodded,
taking the bank statement off her and checking the numbers himself.