Page 105 of Full Contact

“He won’t.”

“What’s he going to do?”

“He’s planning our summer. Apparently we’ve been wasting several days between trips by hanging out at home.”

“You like hanging out at home,” I said.

“I’m excellent at it. He found four days in August when neither of us had anything booked and suggested we go somewhere.”

“Where?” Pickle asked.

“I don’t know. I was still trying to explain that I’d been looking forward to those four days.”

“Doing what?”

“Nothing I had to buy a ticket or gas for.”

Pickle nodded. “Adrian had a shoot canceled last month. It left a whole Saturday.”

“A client got sick,” Adrian said.

“So he called and said he was coming over. Which was good. I wanted to see him.” Pickle rubbed his thumb along the handle of his cup. “But I’d bought snacks. I had my laundry going. Nobody was going to ask me anything until Sunday.”

“What would I have asked you?” Adrian said.

“Whether I wanted lunch. Which is a nice question. But then we have to decide what lunch is, and whether we’re going out, and if we’re going out I need to put on different pants.”

“You could have told me.”

“I know that now. At the time you were happy about having Saturday off, and I didn’t want to say I’d been happy about having Saturday to myself.”

Varga pointed at him. “Exactly.”

“Did you have a bad afternoon?” Mark asked.

“No. We ordered food and watched a movie. It was great.” Pickle looked at Adrian. “I still wanted my Saturday.”

Adrian nodded. “You told me on Sunday.”

“I needed a day to work out why I was annoyed when you hadn’t done anything.”

Varga sat back in his chair. “Try telling Rook you don’t want to go away with him because you’d like to be home with him, provided he doesn’t expect you to spend the whole day together.”

“It’s like Jake says. Peanut butter and mayo are both great, but sometimes they are at their best on different sandwiches.”

Varga stared at him. “Who’s eating a mayonnaise sandwich?”

“You put other things in it.”

“Then say the other things. Ham. Cheese. Give the sandwich a chance.”

“It isn’t about the sandwich,” Pickle said.

“You brought up the sandwich.”

Mark laughed beside me. I thought of an afternoon at home with Peaches asleep on my legs, the remote within reach, and no reason to look at the clock. I’d always liked knowing I had one of those coming.

“Jake explained it better,” Pickle told Adrian.