Page 29 of Reckless

People began drifting away in dribs and drabs, and I saw a familiar figure in the doorway of the Tourist Information Centre. Alastair. He was wearing jeans and a soft blue pullover. He raised his eyebrows when he saw me.

“Robbie,” he said, and I somehow fell into step beside him as we walked away from the Information Centre. “It’s good to see you.”

I didn’t know what that meant. I mean, I did, but I didn’t know to what degree he meant it. It was the sort of thing you could say to someone you’d missed like the sunlight on your skin after days and days of rain, or the sort of thing you could say to a person you barely knew. I didn’t know which one I was to him, but I was starting to worry that, to me, he was becoming the first sort. My heart raced and my skin prickled when I was close to him, and I couldn’t tell if it was shame or anticipation, but I liked both those things.

We followed the curve of the harbour.

It was dark now, the beam from the lighthouse cutting slowly through the sky as the lens turned. There were lights out on the ocean too, distant and blinking; cargo ships moving to and from the mainland.

I wasn't sure why I was following Alastair. He hadn’t asked me to. Just, it felt natural to fall into step beside him.

“Mavis said Button John is cleaning for you,” I blurted out, just for something to say.

Alastair’s mouth twitched. Someone else might have smiled properly, but Alastair wasn’t a smiler. I didn’t mind. Nobody had ever accused me of being expressive either. “Well, I’m not sure he’s cleaned too much yet. So far it’s just been me reminding him where everything is. But he should be able to figure it out for himself now he knows.”

He really didn’t know Button John.

But I nodded and said, “Yeah.”

There were some things you had to learn for yourself, my mum used to say.

We reached the old mill house. The light was on above the front door. Alastair took out his keys and unlocked the door, then glanced at me. “Tea, I think.”

I didn’t want tea, but I trailed inside, through the dark clinic reception area, and the open door that led into the part of the building that was Alastair’s house. Anticipation pushed the breath out of my lungs and prickled the skin on my arms as I watched Alastair fill the jug and turn it on, then take the mugs out of one cabinet and the tea out of another. He was precise and exacting with his movements, even for this. I didn’t know what was going to happen here, apart from tea, and I didn’t know what I wanted to happen, but there was nothing new there. I watched him closely all the same, as though there was something about the way he dropped a teabag into a mug and then straightened the string that would give me some hint.

It didn’t.

I’m going to Newcastle next week.

The words were right there, waiting to be said, but the push of air I needed to get them out of my throat didn’t come. I just stood in Alastair’s kitchen, watching as he made two mugs of tea. Nothing broke the silence except the click of the electric jug, the sound of pouring water and, finally, the soft scrape of a teaspoon against the inside of the mugs as he lifted the teabags out.

“My first Dauntless council meeting was certainly eye opening,” Alastair said. He held a mug out to me, and I took a few steps to reach him and take it. “I’d ask if they’re always like that, but I don’t imagine you’re a regular attendee.”

“No,” I agreed. “Not much interest in all that.”

Alastair leaned back against the kitchen bench, his pose relaxed, as though it wasn’t weird that I’d just followed him home. “You’d rather be at home with Gerty and your cows and goats, hmm?”

There was a note of humour in his tone, but it didn’t feel as though he was laughing at me, more as though he was warmly fond of the part of me that would rather hang out with farm animals than people. It was strange. It didn’t seem as though fondness should fit with all the other things he knew about me. Fondness felt too soft for whatever I was.

I clenched my mug hard so that I could feel the burn in my fingers. “Yeah.”

Alastair took a sip of his tea. “But you’re not tonight.”

I shrugged. “Kat’s got a visitor, so I made myself scarce.”

His gaze held me. “Do you want to come upstairs?”

“I’m going to Newcastle next week,” I said, the words spilling out at last. I couldn’t read anything in Alastair’s expression. He looked as calm and professional as he had when he’d told me I had gonorrhoea, and I wondered if there was anything, or anyone, that could rattle him enough for that mask to slip for even a second. But then, why should it be me? I’d said I was going to Newcastle, not that I wanted to know what this thing between us was, and whether it came with rules and expectations on either side, or on both. Because I didn’t know how to say any of that.

“I do hope that you’ll be careful,” he said. Calm and professional still.

That answered the question I hadn’t been able to ask, didn’t it? It should have felt like a weight lifting from my shoulders, the knowing. But it didn’t, because now that I had my answer, it stung to realise I’d been hoping for something different. Stupid, because I didn’t even know what. Just something.

“Yeah,” I said, looking at my feet and not at him. “I will.” I drew a breath, pushing my disappointment away, because it was dumb to want more than he’d offered when what he’d offered was already more than I had any right to expect. I liked what we’d done last time, mostly. It was different to what I was used to, but I wanted it. So why not have it, for as long as I could? I took a swig of hot tea that burned my mouth. Then I set the mug down and said, with more force than I felt, “And I want to come upstairs with you.”

Chapter 10

ALASTAIR