“It’s pink.”
“I know. It’s my punishment for tipping her Golf convertible into a ditch when I was pissed.”
“Oh. When was this?”
“A long time ago. I only got my licence back last month.”
Sometimes I chose to forget the destruction Kim’s addiction must have wreaked on those around him. I waited until he got close enough and then pulled him in for a quick hug, brushing his cheek with a kiss. “It suits you, the pink, I mean. Not many blokes could own it.”
“You could.”
“Thanks.”
Kim shrugged. “You’re the coolest motherfucker I’ve ever known.”
He thinks I’m cool?As hard as I tried, I couldn’t quite believe it. I was a nerd—tied to my computer when I wasn’t surgically attached to my camera—and no match for the mellow poise that rolled off Kim. “So . . . you wanna see the barn?”
“Lead on.”
I took Kim to the barn, which, minus the furniture and some new doors, was well on its way to being finished. The kitchen was up and running too.
Kim sniffed the air. “Pasties?”
“You Porthkennack boys can smell them a mile off, eh?”
Kim’s grin concurred. I rolled my eyes and meandered to the kitchen to swipe him one from the plate Laura was bound to have left out for inevitable thieving fingers.
I came back with a plain pasty and one of the spicy variations. Kim pulled a face at the latter and opted for the plain one. “Dude, I like my curry, but you don’t mess with tradition.”
“No?” I was secretly pleased. The keema pastyrocked, especially with the dollop of Gaz’s ginger-mango chutney on the side. “Oh well. Guess I’ll have to eat it, then.”
Kim eyed me with obvious suspicion. “Must be an emmet thing. Calum loves that shit too.”
Emmet. It had been a while since I’d last been called that, though I’d spent most of my childhood refuting my brothers’ claims that I wasn’t Porthkennack enough to be truly Cornish. And the city-boy mockney accent I’d acquired since then probably didn’t help. Gaz said I spoke like a hipster in a beetroot bar.
Still, I was Cornish enough to ride Kim’s dick, so he could jog on with his emmet bullshit.
I poked my tongue out at him and turned away, drifting towards the area of the barn that had been designated as the canteen. “The rest of your tables and chairs will go here.”
Kim nodded. “And I’ve got three weeks to finish them, right?”
“If you say so.” Unforgivably, I’d been so caught up in my own deadlines that the barn’s schedule had slipped my mind. “Are you on track?”
“As much as I ever am with anything.”
Kim’s tone spun me around. He was brushing crumbs from his hands—eyes down, head slightly bowed—and his expression was hard to gauge, but something was clearly off.
I came back to him and nudged his arm. “Everything okay?”
“Hmm?” Kim jumped, apparently startled by my touch. “Sorry, what?”
“Checking you’re okay. Got a weight on your mind?”
He offered me a weak half smile that did nothing to ease my concern. “No more than usual. Ignore me, mate. Probably hungry.”
“You just ate.”
“Be right as rain soon enough, then, won’t I?”
