“I know, and I’m sorry I’m being a twat about it.”
Brix wanted to ask if being a twat about it included neither of them mentioning the drunken kiss that kept coming back to him at inappropriate moments, but for reasons he didn’t quite understand, he couldn’t. Instead, he took Calum’s money and left him to it.
An hour or so went by before Calum came to find him. “I got a SIM. It should come in the post tomorrow.”
“Good stuff.” Brix kept his eyes on the stencil he was prepping for the following day—a polka-trash pinup girl with far more colour than he’d ever imagined himself using when he’d first started tattooing.
“Lena said I need to show you the photos of the cover-up before she puts them on your Facebook page.”
“Okay.” Brix set his work aside. How the hell does she know I haven’t seen it already? “Let’s have it.”
Calum held out the studio’s iPad. “I didn’t get a before shot. Didn’t think it was appropriate, given how personal it was.”
“You thought right.” Brix was all for promotion, but a client’s privacy came first. He swiped the iPad until the photo app came up, revealing Jory’s work, and then Kim’s, and finally the cover-up Calum had done for Fen.
Brix stared, blinked, then stared some more, taking in the dark sketch of an Elastoplast with three words etched beneath it—three words that made the tattoo jump out of the screen and lance Brix’s heart: I forgive you.
“Wow. You fucking nailed that, eh?”
Calum shrugged. “Just drew what she felt.”
“Which was?”
“Angry, broken, and totally in love with the person who’d made her like that.”
It was Brix’s turn to be silent as he wondered if Calum’s empathy with Fen cut close to reality. The idea that Calum was still in love with the arsehole who’d driven him all the way to Porthkennack made him feel sick, and then more than a little stupid. Years of dormant friendship and a scrumpy-induced snog didn’t give him the right to know how Calum felt about anyone else, his douche bag of an ex included.
“Anyway,” Calum said when Brix failed to respond. “How do you know so much about the mental health ward?”
“Why do you think?”
“You were . . . er, a patient there?”
“Once upon a time. It’s probably changed a bit since my day, and I was on the children’s ward, so . . .” The distress in Calum’s eyes was too much, and Brix turned away under the guise of straightening ink bottles on the shelf. “Don’t look at me like that.”
Calum said nothing. Brix closed his eyes briefly, then turned back to face the music that was Calum’s liquid gaze. “Are you going to make me tell you all about it?”
“Only if you want to.”
“I don’t, but I reckon it would be better for both of us if I did.”
“Why?”
Brix shrugged. “Dunno.”
More silence. Brix sighed and drew Calum’s work chair close enough to sit on. He’d recovered from their drunken escapades a week ago, but talking about the past often left him profoundly tired. Not that he did it much. “I was thirteen when I got sectioned. My brother found me in the shed with a noose around my neck. I hadn’t jumped off the ladder, and I’m not sure I would’ve, but . . .”
Calum clearly tried—and failed—to conceal his horror. “Why would you do something like that?”
“It was so long ago, it’s difficult to explain now. Erm, I was thirteen, like I said, just figuring out I liked lads rather than birds, then I woke up one night and heard my dad say he’d shoot a poof on sight rather than have a pint with one. It fucked me up for a long time after Abel found me, until I realised my dad wasn’t his words.”
“What do you mean?”
“My dad . . . he’s been through a lot himself, you know? He wasn’t raised in the world we were. I’m not excusing inbred homophobia, but he was devastated when the shrinks told him I was scared of him. He came to the ward that night with a bottle of Scrumpty-Dumpty and told me he’d be proud to share his cider with me, even if I did like it up the arse.”
Calum’s eyes widened. “He said what?”
Brix chuckled. “Don’t be hard on him. It was as much as I could ever expect from him. My lot ain’t never gonna win any diversity contests. They are who they are, and they allow me the same privilege. Can’t ask for more.”
