Making myself press Record is still a tough decision.
I force myself to do it.
“Listen up everyone who wasn’t at the meet-up earlier. You might have already heard this from the gobshites in the group, but just in case you didn’t, I got a thing called aphasia.”
Explaining what that means takes a while. I ramble. Stop and start over and over. Get lost and repeat myself, I bet, but I don’t delete a single message. I keep recording until I can finally get to the point by asking them to help me make Dair’s last few days here less painful.
“I know it’s Sunday tomorrow, and a lot of you will already have plans. If you haven’t, come and help out with some wrapping and packing, yeah?” I make myself ask for the very last thing that I want to happen. “Because the sooner his stuff is packed up and sorted ready for auction, the sooner he can get home, and he’s running out of time.”
Answer after answer pings in, a squadron of thumbs pointing upwards.
The one thumbs down isn’t from an Ex.
It comes the next morning just before I leave for Dair’s place, and it comes from my cousin.
Kev calls me to say, “No, I can’t bring the van over on Monday morning. We already got a job booked in.” Just as quickly, he asks, “Why’d you want it?”
“To pick up a load first thing. We could do it early.”
“You finally finished that private job of yours?” Kev’s suddenly all business. “Want me to sort an invoice for you? Tell me what they owe you and give me their email. I’ll do it right now.”
“No.”
“No?” Kev somehow sighs and growls at the same time. “This private client of yours. It’s the one you brought over, isn’t it?”
I don’t know why I shove against that like there’s a sofa wedged between us.
“So what if it is?”
Kev shoves back even harder, fierce like he’s been for me so often. “Because I don’t know a fucking thing about him, apart from Marilyn telling me it’s the first time she’s seen you happy in forever.” If there was a sofa between us for real, it disappears with a single sentence. “Which is more than I can say for us working together.”
“I like working with you.”
“Not lately you don’t.”
Like so many times at school, I’m voiceless. It’s frustrating. I’m a fucking grown-up, so I work hard on getting verbal. Kev gets there so much faster. “Let me tell you what I can’t keep ignoring, yeah?”
“Yeah. Yeah, go ahead.”
“You haven’t been happy since I mentioned putting your name on the van.” Kev clears his throat. This still sounds strangled. “Then something changed. You started coming alive whenever I dropped you off after work. The last time you got all excited at clocking off time didn’t end well, did it?”
I don’t get the chance to say that it wasn’t Flynn who used to make me want to hurry back here each evening. It was having a purpose other than schlepping furniture up and down staircases.
Kev summarises all too neatly. “Because if you’ve got yourself tangled up with another dick who just wants to use you, I’ll?—”
“Dair hasn’t used me.”
“You planning on billing him for shifting his stuff?”
No.
Kev doesn’t make me admit that aloud. “Just talk to me, yeah? Don’t keep it all bottled up like I’ve been keeping something bottled up from you for weeks now.”
“What?”
“That desk of yours. What did you pick it up for at auction?”
“Twenty quid.”
