Chapter 22
“What brought you this way instead, then?” he asked curiously.
Phil flushed a little. “Just being neighbourly, I suppose?” he said, his voice lifting up at the end to almost make the statement a question. “I enjoyed talking to you the other day. I thought you seemed to enjoy it too. I thought you might appreciate a change of face.”
“Invalid visiting, then?” Laurie said, slightly crisply. “I can do without your pity as well, thank you very much.”
Phil shook his head at him across the table, that flush increasing. “No,” he said. “Not like that. Not like that at all. I just enjoyed talking, that’s all. You made me laugh and I haven’t laughed in a while.”
That was painfully honest of him, Laurie thought. Not many people would come out and say it straight like that. Although Laurie had shown enough of his own soft underbelly this week, he supposed.
“Sorry,” he said, brushing his nose. “Bit sensitive.”
“I can see why you would be. Is there anything I can do to help?”