“Do you even have to ask?”

Malcolm laughed and shook his head. He didn’t, as a matter of fact, even have to ask. He opened two bottles and brought them over to the living room, along with the food. And a stack of napkins.

They turned on the football match and ate while they both looked on and off at their phones, and Miles flipped through one of the magazines on the coffee table. They didn’t say much, but it was a good silence.

In the past couple of months, they’d talked a lot. He’d asked Miles challenging questions, about what would happen if he failed, about what his backup plan was, about how he would support himself in the years to come. But Miles had had answers, thoughtful answers, to all of those questions. He hadn’t made this decision on a whim; he’d thought a lot of these details through, he knew what the dangers were, and he was ready for them.

Malcolm’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out of his pocket and shook his head at the news alert, then sighed when he clicked on it and read the whole article. Parliament couldn’t just take a break on the weekends, could they? This was going to make his week much more complicated.

“What’s this?”

Malcolm looked up. Miles had Vivian’s postcard in his hand.

Fuck.

Malcolm reached for it, but Miles was faster than him. He jumped up and kept reading as Malcolm tried to snatch it away.

Fuck fuck fuck. Why had he left the postcard on the table in the first place? He knew why—he didn’t want to pick it up and have to see it again, so he’d just left it there and covered it with more and more magazines. When did Miles decide he was so interested in reading magazines that he got to the bottom of that stack?

Miles grinned at him over the postcard.

“Go, Vivian! Brilliant, I really liked her. What did you say? You love her, too, don’t you? Is she coming back soon?”

Malcolm sighed.

“No.” He looked over at the book Vivian had finished while she was there and left on his end table for him to read. “No, she isn’t.”

Miles dropped the postcard on the table.

“No? Why not? Wait.” Miles gave him that superior teenager look he hated. “What did you do? How did you manage to screw this one up? Did you even answer her?”

Malcolm glared at his nephew.

“None of this is any of your business. You shouldn’t be reading my private correspondence anyway.”

Miles rolled his eyes.

“Well, you shouldn’t be leaving your ‘private correspondence’ around for the whole world to read, especially if it’s on a postcard!” Miles shook his head. “I can’t believe you did this to Vivian. I thought you liked her! You certainly talk about her enough.”

He wanted to wipe the smirk off the little jerk’s face.

“I do like her. Unfortunately, I’m an adult, not a teenager. Just liking someone—even loving someone—isn’t enough to change your whole life. She lives in California, I live in London, there’s no future for us. We shouldn’t have gotten this entangled in the first place.”

Miles sat down next to him.

“That’s your only reason? Are you forgetting airplanes exist?”

Malcolm sighed.

“Miles, it’s not just about the distance; that was only one example. We’re just very different people, and the whole idea is impractical. It’s too risky.”

Miles laughed.

“Risky? What are you risking here? Ooh, is it your feelings?”

He needed to throw his nephew out of his apartment.

“I told you, this is none of your business.”

Miles took another sip of beer.

“So what, then, you’re just going to live the rest of your life knowing that you love her and she loves you but you’re too scared to just go for it?”

“I’m not scared, and I didn’t say I loved her!” Malcolm said.

Miles smirked again.

“You didn’t have to.”

Malcolm stood up to get another beer. And to get away from this conversation. Miles glanced in his direction, opened his mouth once or twice, but didn’t say anything else.

For the next hour, Malcolm tried to concentrate on the football match, but instead he stewed about his conversation with Miles. There were plenty of reasons he hadn’t responded to Vivian. He wasn’t scared; he was just practical. They lived in very different places, they had very different careers, she was direct and effusive and chatty; he was the opposite of all of those things, and it would never work between them.

“You’re right: it’s none of my business,” Miles said out of the blue. “But . . . you’ve said a lot lately about how I should have a baseline of success and respect from the world before following my dreams. But you have that! People respect you more than anyone I know, and instead of taking advantage of that now, it seems like the rest of your life is standing in your own way.” He shrugged. “I just . . . I really liked her.”

Malcolm sighed.

“Yeah. Me too.”

But that was a lie. He knew it was a lot more than that. He just had no idea what to do about it. It all seemed impossible. Too hard, too risky, too complicated. And it might be useless—what if he tried, and it didn’t work out between them, and they’d both sacrificed for no reason? What if she was so angry at him for ignoring her for weeks that she’d realized he wasn’t the person she thought he was?