Whenever I needed to work through some hard stuff (because, let’s face it, you don’t get to work for Dennis Pearl for six years without a few existential crises along the way), sitting on the floor outside Norman’s bedroom had always been my favorite place to think. Even after so many years, I’d never quite got to grips with living in an actual grown-up house that I paid an actual grown-up amount of rent for, and I still always felt like the teenager who’s moved back in with their parents. Except in that one spot. I feel different there. Safe. Grounded. Because behind that door is a boy who needs me.

When I leaned my head up against the cool plaster I’d sometimes fancy I could hear Norman’s faint, small-boy breathing beyond the wall. I’d close my eyes and slow my own breath until it measured the same steady pace, and it didn’t matter that the walls were a solid two inches thick and the sound was probably the wind. He was there and so was I.

But that night, as I pressed my back against the other side of Norman’s bedroom wall, no amount of closing of eyes and counting of breaths could help me. As quickly as I played out a new scenario of how I was going to come good on my latest promise, it was swatted away with disdain. I mean, the only thing I’d been put in charge of for the past few years was Pearl’s staff Christmas party. And with the limited budget Dennis gave me to work with, there really wasn’t all that much involved beyond putting a nominal sum behind the bar of the pub next door and keeping up the supply of smuggled-in packets of Tesco crisps.

But now, here I was, putting myself in charge of what felt like your classic garden-variety mission impossible. And I think you can give me that one. Norman had two weeks left of school before the summer holidays, after which I’d basically guaranteed him a spot at the world’s biggest comedy festival and a delivery of a long-lost father, to boot. As you do.

I sat outside Norman’s room for the longest of long times and as a sliver of first light nudged its way along the hallway I stretched out a numb leg and caught a glint of something near my foot. I reached forward to pinch the hair between my fingertips and felt a low hum of electricity travel up my arm to the back of my neck. Not one of the identical mousy browns Norman and I left behind in our communal brush in the bathroom. Blond. Golden, even. Bad-boy length.

As the sliver of light bled into the dawn of the fourth day after I made my promise to Norman, I wrapped the thread of Jax’s hair around my index finger and thought about the bloody Rolls-bloody-Royce of bloody best friends. Feetfirst, break the door down and damn the consequences.