13
I needa minute for my cock to calm down, and for whatever chooses right now to constrict my ribs to loosen its death grip. I brace against the kitchen counter, my head hanging, doing my best to breathe through it until someone shouts, “I was promised tea. Where the hell is it?”
I get my shit together fast then and carry a tray of full cups through to the living room. Before I can even set it down, the teasing ramps up. Someone I only know as Small Print peers into the cup I pass him and grumbles. “Bit stewed, isn’t it? Anyone would think you got distracted and let it brew for too long.”
Another Ex tag-teams with him. Loves Puzzles peers into his own cup. “Stewed? Mine is dishwater.”
Harry told me they usually oppose each other. Here they join forces, but for once, I give back as good as I get. “Then quit your bitching and swap cups, or—” I’m about to suggest they go make their own tea. Dair walks in, and I forget what I was saying.
It’s an action replay of the first night I met him.
He wets his lips, gaze flicking around at all the watching Exes like he’s not sure if he’s about to be the butt of a joke, and yeah,I still remember that front-of-the-class feeling. He doesn’t need to feel it here with men Harry described as family.
His smile flickers the same way now as it did that evening, until he finds me. Then his shaky smile firms, and maybe I stare for a little too long. Someone stops my gaping by launching a ball of tissue paper at my head, and more laughter erupts.
For once, I like it.
Dair does too. I see it in his warm glance across the table. He takes a seat with Adey in front of a laptop to explain a process we created together. “Vincent was right. Adding detailed descriptions made it easy for the furniture rental company to say yes. Doing the same with the china swamped me.” He meets my eyes. “You still think it’s worth doing?” He trusts me to have an answer. “Or should I give up and dump it?”
Exes lean in like they’re invested in a Netflix drama. Adey proves his teacher credentials with a single order. “Get back to work.” He’s gentler with Dair. “If I’m ever unsure about which direction is the right one, I trust my tools. My map and compass. Vincent hasn’t steered you wrong yet. If he says adding more detail could help make you some cash, let us do that for you.”
Dair does.
He vacates his seat. Blake takes it to crack open a reference book from the Isle of Dogs, and Adey types whatever he reads out. Once done, a production line of Exes wrap each tea set and dinner service piece by piece. They also wrap Dair in jokes and bullshit chitchat that I’ll have to find a way to thank them for later, even if that chitchat comes with me being the brunt of their jokes.
I get why.
It’s a distraction from a process that thumps Dair in the chest over and over, and I’m not the only one here to notice.
Cash Money must see it as clearly as me. He opens his mouth then snaps it closed like he never does at meet-ups. Here, helooks at me first, as if asking my permission to come out with a diversion.
I nod, and boy, does he come out with a humdinger.
“I don’t know why you made such a song and dance about not being able to read or write, you great big whiner. Some people have real problems. Like me. The real tragedy is that the one time I tried out monogamy was with a long-distance cheat. All I’ve got to show for it is a whole bunch of air miles. Never again.”
He aims that at me, his gaze actually focussed on Dair, and I spot what he must have already noticed. Dair stands at the mantelpiece, a china spaniel in hand, swallowing hard the same way I did over tote boxes, and I’ve never been more relieved that he’ll soon get a soft landing with his fam in Scotland. It’s just shit that home of his is so far away when everything since I met him has felt like a beginning, not an ending.
I mean, I’m no man for flowery writing, but the last few weeks have been like turning a page, or like wiping clean a whiteboard we’ve filled with new descriptions for each other. There’s also no denying what every app on my phone has confirmed: If I wanted to visit that castle estate Dair once mentioned on my weekends off, I’d have to turn around the minute I got there. It doesn’t matter how I phrase the question each time I ask my phone, Siri keeps giving the same answer—it could take twenty-plus hours by train, bus, and ferry to get there. And that’s only if the connection gods smile and there are no delays or cancellations.
Visiting him wouldn’t be impossible. Doing it regularly is another matter. That doesn’t stop me from being relieved for him.
He’ll get to be someplace where he can let out what I’ve tried and failed to smother—that I bottled up, like Kev admitted to also doing. And yeah, Dair is clutching a china spaniel right now, swallowing down loss with all of us right here to see it, but he’llget to draw a line under a legal shit show and get to hug the real spaniel Alice left to him.
I both love that for him and hate it for me.
Love too that an American gobshite earns his place in heaven by taking that china dog from Dair with careful fingers. It’s a fake, not the real deal. Won’t make much more than 50p at auction. Cash wraps it in tissue layers like it’s worth a fortune.
What a legend.
I can’t even make myself care that he continues to distract Dair by joking about me. “All that angst over literacy when another tragedy is that I can’t click my fingers. Listen.” He demonstrates, no sign of the snapping sound that every other competitive fucker in this room then makes with zero problem.
The next distraction comes from a stockbroker. “Don’t tell any of my clients, but I never managed to learn my nine times tables.”
A third distraction comes from an ex-teacher. “You don’t know your nines? Watch this.” He holds out both hands, demonstrating the same finger-counting trick Kev once taught me. Adey repeats it until an Ex who trades millions daily says, “Oh my fucking God.” He looks at his left hand, then at his right hand, counting. “Four times nine is forty-five.” He’s a quick learner. He lowers another finger and has what sounds like a revelation. “That means five times nine is fifty-four.”
I can’t help smiling. Adey smiles too, only he does that down at Dair’s laptop, and maybe today is a learning day for Blake too. He shifts his chair closer. “Teach me?”
Adey does. While they’re busy, I step into the shoes Blake used to wear—I guard Dair for the rest of the afternoon, his shadow until everything Alice left him is packed, stacked, and listed.
