Page 22 of Mark
“It’s fine,” I reassure her.
“See, it’s fine.”
“I’m going to meet up with the others,” Teagan replies. “I hope we get to see you again, Freya.”
“I’ll be the one hanging off the end of the boat,” I grumble. “Just do me a favour and don’t try to talk me off the ledge.”
“Dude, you do realise that never happened,” Hayden declares. “Rose and Jack were never on that boat.”
“Which is why my dark humour isn’t offensive.”
“I’ll see you at the boarding bay,” Teagan replies as she walks ahead of us.
“So, sister, ex?”
As we cross the street, I reply. “We were together for three years and then suddenly, he broke up with me. He gave me some bullshit speech about wanting to find himself and that we weren’t right as a couple. A few weeks later, he turned up at dinner holding hands with my sister.”
“I would have lost my shit. I don’t have a sister, but if I did, you can bet your arse I’d cut the bitch. Then I’d cut his balls off.”
I laugh, wishing it was that simple. “Oh, I did lose it. But then my reaction to their actions is what everyone focused on. It still is. In their eyes, I overreacted.”
“It’s ballsy though. Turning up and announcing that. Risking your relationship with your own sister.”
I shrug. “It is what it is. I guess she didn’t care enough about me to even consider my feelings. Yet this whole wedding, I’m supposed to consider hers. It’s the story of my life.”
“Let me guess, she’s your parents’ favourite.”
I grin as we reach the queue waiting to board. “What made you think that?” I tease.
She chuckles. “It’s such a cliché.”
“Wait, you mean your parents don’t have a favourite?”
“Of course they do. Me! Some say it’s because I’m the only female triplet, but it’s really because I’m awesome.”
“Must be nice,” I muse.
“I am surprised you aren’t. Most favourites are the firstborn, or the best behaved. They are also children. But you’re an adult, so it doesn’t apply. The only other reason would be if you were a step-child, but you called them mum and dad.”
“I must have been a bad egg.”
“I thought my family had drama, but yours is literally forcing you to watch your sister and ex-boyfriend get married. I don’t think the couple of arguments we have compares to that.”
“I’ll be fine. I always am,” I admit. I don’t want her to feel sorry for me. “It’s not about them being together. I’m over that. I have been for a long time. It’s the betrayal I can’t forgive. I moved out to avoid the arguments. Esther was always making digs, and I’d snap. I just hate that there’s nowhere for me to escape to on this boat. My best friend, Summer, is normally the buffer, but they refused to let her come. Family only event and all that.”
“Well, you aren’t alone. You can come hang with us if you ever need to get away.”
“Not scared I’ll throw your cousin off the boat?”
She gets a look in her eye, one that says she knows something I don’t. “Not even a little.”
As we reach the back of the queue, I watch as Mark storms towards us, waving a receipt in the air. “Five hundred pound? Are you fucking serious?”
I cock my eyebrow. “Keep talking and I’ll go find your mum and make it another five hundred.”
He clamps his lips shut for a moment before turning to his cousin. “You let her do this?”
She smirks at the angry snarl he sends her. “Who do you think helped pick out all of her clothes?”