But that place on memory lane you like still looks the same but something about it's changed Marc slides down the wall to squat beside him, drink in hand. From below, it's impossible to tell what it is -- champagne or something stronger -- but the smile on his face is likely to be a permanent fixture. "You coming back in?" Marc asks, holding out his fingers, expectantly, his forefinger and thumb centimetres from each other in anticipation of what they'll hold, and he wobbles, not quite balanced enough to remain in that position. The echoes of laughter from the party inside spill out into the darkness, and Andy quickly moves his thumb, swiping away the message, partially written and still unsent. The time between messages has been too long, he thinks, the mathematic formula that controls the long parabola of her gravity is disproven now, perhaps. He turns the phone over onto his thigh, with one hand, using the other to pull the cigarette from his lips and pass it over, as Marc slowly begins to scoot his legs forwards to sit down instead. "I'll take that as a no," he says, answering his own question in an exhale of smoke. "Secrets, secrets," comes the taunt, the gentle knocking of shoulder against shoulder that Andy understands is meant to relieve him of the guilt that comes with hiding outside. He accepts the mantle of 'enigmatic', sometimes 'complicated' instead, understanding that people genuinely mean 'difficult' and fear the repercussions of expressing the thought aloud. Disappointing, maybe, that he's chosen to turn someone else's happy moment into something about him. Again. Summertime means uniquely sticky days, reminiscent of the gulf, and for a moment, he allows himself to think of her on the other side of the world, feet in the sand somewhere close to home. He doesn't ask for his cigarette back; instead, he shakes his head. "Can you imagine Viv if I smoked inside? She'd go fucking mental."

And you lived there so long it's kinda strange, now you're gone His eyebrows raise to punctuate his sentence, eyes widening first in imitation of shock, then softening in amusement. "But if that's the mother in law you want for the rest of your life --" he shrugs carelessly. Of all the mothers he's wooed before, Vivian Green took the longest for him to win over, too close to his own mother to be able to separate the mythos of Andy from the man himself, but her minor neuroses had never seemed too much for Marc, a certified mum whisperer in his own right. It's a skill that Andy has always felt resulted in his deflection of violence, back when they were too young to know what they would become. He knows what Marc wants to say without it being spoken aloud: Yeah, she's no Tabitha, but they are both reluctant to truly invoke the ghosts of relationships past. "We always thought it would be you getting engaged first," he says instead, and the regret for the slip is profound, the panic creeping up his neck and into his face. Marc's shoulders raise and he winces involuntarily. Too much to drink they think in unison. In a friendship long past apologies, sometimes are none given and none are expected. He doesn't say me too, even as a man who flirted with the idea of transforming something that never needed that definition into something more permanent. Marc glances down at the phone on his leg, balanced precariously, and Andy knows that he knows that he hasn't reached into the void yet. "C'mon. Kate's making everybody look at her ring."