Chapter Twenty
MAC
I park and practically bound to the elevator, impatient to see my boy. And Ella. To get my hands on them both.It’s gone seven when I feed my key in the lock. Today has been manic—meetings with investors and the bank. I’m planning on expanding my low-cost membership model of urban gyms into towns and cities across the country. And now on the way home, the traffic is total shite. Still, my chest feels kind of settled as I push my front door wide. Dropping my wallet and phone to the hall table, I’m at the threshold of the living room in a few purposeful strides... my thoughts turn to vapour, my day spinning on its head.
‘Mac!’
It’s a tone filled with warmth and familiarity and none of the things I’ve longed for years to hear.Passion. Ecstasy. Love.How many times have I imagined this? Fin waiting for me at home, my child on her lap.
‘Fin!’ I fix my expression, not that she’s ever seen past the boy she grew up with. The one who, in her words, fumbled with her virginity back when we were kids. When she had blue hair and wore Doc Marten boots. Yeah, so we might’ve grown up mostly in the same house, but there was that one time. As a teenager, out with my mates those days, on Saturday nights, we’d get pissed on cans of Tennants in the local park. If you were lucky enough to have the company of lassies, you’d be sure to get your hands on cheap bottles of cider or sweet, fizzy wine. Hospitality, y’ken. It’s ingrained. But that Saturday night, there were just the two of us. Fin and me. Ivy had gone off with her flavour of the week—to the cinema, I think. Maybe my mates were out of town, or maybe I just didn’t feel like getting pished.
Left to our own devices that night, I’d gotten bold and smuggled a bottle of whisky out of the kitchen, left over from some party of the olds. We got hammered, and before I knew it, our mouths were fused and I had my hands in her knickers. I hadn’t meant it—I hadn’t taken her out with the idea of fucking her. She was my little sister’s friend—she’d eaten almost as many Sunday roasts at our kitchen table as I had. Her body had trembled in my arms, and my awareness had kicked in. She wasn’t one of the girls who hung out at the park, smelling of desperation, cider, and cheap perfume. She was worth more than that. Her virginity was a gift that didn’t belong to me, and what we were doing suddenly seemed wrong. And I knew Da would end up kicking my arse if he knew. So I’d gently pulled both hand and mouth away, and we’d stopped.
Nothing of note had really happened, and not many months later, she was gone. We’d joked about it once or twice since she’d returned to Scotland, only because I’d made the mistake of telling Ivy once. I was gonna tell her how I felt about Fin, how I’d loved her all these years, but I’d never gotten past the bit about our fumbling before she’d collapsed on the sofa, laughter bringing her to the verge of tears. The idea to her was so laughable, so I’d never told her the rest.
And now, as she sits in my living room with my wee boy on her lap, I realise the way I’ve felt about her has been forever tied to that night. I love her. I probably always will. But not like I’ve believed all these years.
