It doesn’t.
If anything, it only rubs in how little cash Dair will raise in London before he leaves it in a few days’ time. He puts on a brave face once we’re outside the museum. “So, a basic house-clearance auction it is for all of Alice’s china.”
“Yeah. Sorry we couldn’t find any matches.”
Dair rallies and is so much brighter than I’d be in his situation. “I didn’t honestly expect you to. It was still good to do something different. Didn’t know how much I needed that. And…” He lowers his voice, although that’s pointless. The Exes who circle us don’t even pretend to mind their own business. “And I wouldn’t have missed being here for what you told us. About your aphasia.”
They all nod, then get busy earwigging what else he tells me.
“I’d rather listen to you than think about how much china I’ve still got left to wrap and pack. Wish I hadn’t taken on extra shifts.” He pulls out his phone perhaps to check the time. “I should get going.”
He can’t have meant to show me his lock screen, but there I am, my chin lifted, and it’s a hell of a time to also see Flynn.
Not for real.
He isn’t in central London. I have no clue where in the world he is, yet my expression on Dair’s lock screen is a reminder of Flynn’s determination every time he turned around from a to-do list that still had one box left to check off.
Get back what I lost.
I don’t need to be good at reading or writing to see what Dair’s lock screen means—he doesn’t want to lose me.
Exes notice. Then they get even nosier by asking if me and Dair banging means my new rule is cancelled.
I don’t tell them that we haven’t. Banged, I mean. We’ve done plenty of rule bending. And not nearly enough. To be honest, I don’t pay attention to their shit-talking. I’m locked in on Dair. And on the jacket he wears. No, I can’t read the logo over his chest, but that heart shape is a reminder that he needs to go care for other people.
Right now, that’s all I want to do for him.
I have to settle for pulling his jacket closed. For threading together the two sides of his zipper and tugging until he’s warm and cosy. I can’t even make myself care if that makes me the subject of piss-taking as long as I get to watch Dair smile wider than he has since I shared a secret that Kev always worried meant people would take advantage of me. That smile fades after Dair’s gaze drops to my mouth. To my lips. He wets his own, then says, “I have to go.”
He backs off, leaving, and not getting to kiss him goodbye sucks. So does Blake and Adey walking away in opposite directions to each other, but I just saw a photo of how Dair perceives me. That means giving up isn’t an option.
“Hey!” I call out.
Blake turns on his heel. So does Adey. I focus on the third man who stops walking away and who turns to face me. “What are you doing tomorrow?”
Dair calls back, “More packing and wrapping between shifts.” His laugh is a little helpless. “It’s never-ending.”
But it will end. And once it does, he’ll hand over his keys to a family who never once showed up for Alice. That injustice turns my order into a growl. I aim it at eavesdropping Exes.
“Give us a minute, yeah?” Once they do, I aim another question at Dair. “What time do you finish?”
“My shift? Sometime tomorrow morning.” Dair smooths the front of his jacket. “Then I need to be back at work later that afternoon until after midnight, so don’t expect another visit from the furniture fairy. I’ll need to sleep until lunchtime to get through my last shift.” He edges closer. “Vincent, before I go, are you okay?”
“Me?”
He nods. “Because that was a lot. You telling everyone. Telling me. Really wish I hadn’t taken these last two shifts. I’d cancel if…”
It wouldn’t let down people just like Alice.
Dair backs away again, and I make up my mind.
I won’t let him down either.
I get startedon that as soon as I’m back at my place.
It takes me a while to record a thank-you voice note for the group chat. I start by speaking into my phone in the same spot where I’ve caught up with so many conversations too late to join in. Today, it feels all wrong to lock myself in a bathroom to listento a robot reading out their texts, but reaching out to the Exes while pacing in a new location doesn’t feel much better.
I stop in front of a vision board that I bet some of them could have helped me read much sooner. Asking for their help feels as wrong here as it did in the bathroom. I finally send them all a message from a chintzy armchair with my feet up on a gifted footstool, and I start right from the beginning because not all the Exes were at the V&A this morning.
