“Hmm?”
“We’re here.” I let my fist slip away. “You’ve got a little time before your appointment, though. If you need a minute.”
Tam blinks. “You made me an appointment?”
“Yup.” I lean back in my seat, content to wait. “It’s quicker than sitting in the walk-in clinic all morning. Figured you had better things to be doing.”
Unless his wrist is so damaged it needs surgery, but we’re not there yet. We’re in my car—the one he opened the bonnet to without a key. The one that’s broken, but reparable. Like everything else.
“Fuck it.” Tam moves suddenly and gets out of the car.
I recognise the urgency. He’s done thinking and he wants it over with. So I follow him, slip ahead, and lead him round the building that seems to unnerve him so much, and to a smaller operation behind it.
The fracture clinic is busy. I put Tam in a seat by the door,and he lets me. Then I do all the talking at the desk for him so he doesn’t have to.
I take a form back to him, along with a chewed-up biro. “Fill that in.”
He obeys without comment and I settle into my seat, fighting a yawn. I spent way too long last night debating whether to slip that note through his letterbox. Then I got hungry and remembered I still hadn’t been shopping, and dreaming about a meal that didn’t come in a foam tray had me tossing and turning until it was time to get up.
I need a nap. A long one. Preferably after I’ve stuffed my face with something not fried.
“I’m not always this extra.” Tam’s deep voice startles me, speaking over the tinny rendition of Band Aid filtering from a speaker buried somewhere in the low budget decorations above us. He’s finished the form and fixed his attention on me instead, his stare swirling with dry self-deprecation, and the warmth that makes him so attractive. “In case you were wondering.”
I open my mouth to deny it, but it’d be a lie. “It’s not extra to be nuanced. Everyone has something.”
“What’s your thing?”
“Running away every time things don’t work out.”
“Girl trouble?”
“Sometimes. It was a dude this time, though.”
I force myself to keep my gaze on the screen that calls patients forward for their appointments. To not track his reaction to the man-love thing. If my sexuality makes him uncomfortable, I can’t say I care that much.
“He break your heart?”
I turn my head.
Tam’s expression hasn’t changed except to flare withsympathy I don’t entirely deserve. “Not quite. It was on its way, though. You know when your head signs up for something your heart can’t handle?”
His gaze deepens. “Ouch. Yeah. I’ve been there. It’s why I don’t do relationships anymore. Or even hookups unless it’s with someone I know for sure doesn’t want anything else.”
“You don’t get lonely?”
“So fucking lonely.” Tam touches his good hand to his chest. “But I’ve been broken before, and I don’t have the energy to fix myself again.”
The declaration feels loaded, as though we’re talking about more than love, and that wide awake part of me from last night surges to life.
I lean forward in the same moment Tam shifts a little, rotating to face me better. Like we’re in a quiet corner of a cosy pub instead of a bright and noisy hospital waiting room. Like we’re old friends, not new acquaintances.
It should feel weird.
It doesn’t.
“How long have you been sworn off love?”
“Years.” Tam lets his hand drop and it’s a struggle not to study the ink on his knuckles while I have him this close. “My brother calls me a bitter old spinster, but then he’s here every other week, kipping on my couch because he can’t get along with his missus, and I don’t feel like I’m missing much.”
