Page 55 of How To Not Need You

The photo proves Rebecca is seeing someone else. Unfortunately, it doesn't prove easily be explained away.

Which is how I find myself sitting in a closed bookstore while Luca seriously suggests using pigeons for surveillance.

"No pigeons," Harper says without even looking up.

"I still think you're dismissing the pigeons too quickly." Luca objects.

"They're unpredictable." Harper bites back.

"They're useful." Luca huffs.

"They're birds." Adrian adds, causing Luca to turn towards him with a look of betrayal plastered on his face.

"They're professionals." He replies, causing Freya to pinch the bridge of her nose.

"I genuinely can't tell if you're joking anymore." She says.

"I'm offended you'd even ask."

"You weren't joking, were you?" Adrian sighs.

Luca smiles innocently. "No."

"I knew it."

Ben leans further over the table, completely absorbed in the rough diagram he'd drawn across the back of a serviette. It looked vaguely like a shopping centre if the shopping centre had been designed by someone who'd suffered a concussion.

"So Rebecca parks here," he explains, tapping one corner.

"I'm pretty sure that's a duck," Harper observes.

“It is not,” he says, deeply offended.

"And this?" Harper adds as she points to another area.

"The grocery store."

"It says 'evil groceries.'"

"I was making notes."

"I don't think that's helping."

"It helps me."

"I've known you for only a short time," Luca announces proudly, "and I already know you're my favourite person."

Ben looks up from the napkin. “I get that a lot."

"I somehow doubt that," Adrian mutters.

Around us, mugs sat abandoned amongst notebooks and biscuit crumbs. Fairy lights cast a warm glow across the bookshelves, making the empty café feel smaller somehow.

Across the table sits a woman I've only properly met about ten minutes ago. Wren. Tanned skin, dark curls piled into a messy bun, bright blue eyes and the sort of calm expression that suggests Luca's chaos isn't even registering. Perched on one shoulder was a bright green macaw with a scarlet chest who'd apparently arrived as though bringing exotic birds to meetings was perfectly normal.

"That's Popcorn," Luca had announced earlier, as if that explained everything. It hadn't.

Wren scratched beneath the bird's beak absent-mindedly while listening to Harper explain Rebecca's latest movements. Every time Luca interrupted someone, Popcorn tilted his head, ruffled his feathers and muttered what sounded suspiciously like,