Chapter 15
Iwas sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a coffee and gazing into space, when I heard the jangle of a key in the front door and Jerry let himself in.
After all the errands he’d so kindly run for me as I stuck close to Dave, I’d told him he may as well go ahead and cut himself another spare key from the one Marcy had. He’d heard, Let yourself in whenever you feel like it.
“Morning,” I said.
“Morning.” He stumped over, dropped himself into a chair, and looked at me expectantly.
I paused with the coffee cup halfway to my lips. “You know where the kettle is. If you have a key, you’re not a guest. You can make your own cup of tea.”
He heaved back up to his feet and went over to the sink to fill the kettle. “Someone woke up on the sassy side of the bed this morning.”
I ignored him and sipped my coffee.
I’d been surprised but not upset to wake up and find Dave gone.
I thought that he’d have stuck around, it being our first big reunion-sex romp and all.
Then I’d come downstairs to find the fridge door hanging open and all the tubs of prepared fish I kept in there gone.
I spotted the tubs in the garden later, lids off and empty.
I decided that it was safe to assume that his appetite was still at a full burn, and he’d headed off for more hunting and mayhem.
Jerry brought his tea over to the table, taking a giant swig en route, and sat down with his usual lack of grace.
Sometimes, I thought that this was what it would be like to be married or in a committed, long-term relationship with another human.
Some guy shows up at your kitchen table morning after morning.
You both sit there in contemplative silence, waiting for your brains to come online and your days to start.
Maybe one of you is reading the paper.
Maybe someone snitches someone else’s uneaten piece of toast from his plate, even though he just came from his own breakfast table with his actual wife.
Sometimes, on moments such as this, the word queerplatonic drifted through my mind.
I made sure to let it keep on drifting, all the way through my mind and out the door.
My life was already complicated enough, thanks, what with being in a relationship with a merman. I didn’t need to add a sixtysomething straight fisherman to the shitshow and call it a throuple.
Jerry finished my toast, drained his tea, and checked the weather app on his phone.
I didn’t know why he bothered. The man was a walking barometer.
He’d spent his life watching the local weather and knew far more than any app could.
He tutted at whatever the phone told him, glanced over my shoulder and out of the kitchen window, and seemed to come to some sort of conclusion.
His assessing gaze landed on my face and held as he came to a another sort of conclusion.
He grinned. “Ohhhhhh,” he said.
I lifted my cup and pretended to drink my already-finished coffee. It was a feeble and transparent attempt to hide my smile.
“Dave finally showed up, did he?”
My cheeks heated. “Yes.”
“Stop hiding behind that, you pillock, we both know it’s empty.” Leaning over the table, Jerry pushed the cup out of the way. “Is he all right? All healed up?”
“Yes. He’s got some scars, but…yes. He’s fine.”
Jerry blinked at my enormous smile, and his face softened. “That’s good, Joe. Happy for you.”
“Thanks.”
“You can stop moping around and start having a proper summer now. Back on track!”
I nodded in agreement but couldn’t stop my smile from fading.
Jerry eyed me warily. “That didn’t last long.”
I sighed. “Do you remember the first year he left?”
“Yup.”
“I thought he wasn’t coming back.”
“Couldn’t pass up all of that now, could he?” Jerry waved a hand in my direction.
“Right,” I said. “Anyway, he did come back. And then he went. And he came back again. And again.”
Jerry nodded encouragingly, eyes wide, as if this was fascinating news and he was hearing it for the first time rather than having lived it with me.
“I’ve always been worried, Jerry. From the very start, I’ve always been aware that one day he might not…
might not come back.” I put my elbows on the table and my chin in my hands.
“I thought I was getting good at living in the moment. All I got good at was repressing it. The thing is, now I know—I really, really know—that there’s a good chance that one autumn I’ll kiss him goodbye, and he might not come back.
Because he nearly d-didn’t. You saw him. ”
“I did, lad.”
I dashed a hand over my eyes and cleared my throat. “Now I’ve got evidence that tells me yes, I should have worried, and I should continue to do so, and in fact I could stand to step it up a gear. You saw the size of those sucker marks, didn’t you?”
Jerry sketched a circle in the air between us with his hands, nodding.
I continued, “I’m not going to say I don’t know if I can handle it because that’s irrelevant when I already know I can’t handle not being with Dave.
It’s moot.” I shoved a hand through my hair and gripped it.
“I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I’m with him, all the way.
To the end. I suppose I’m just starting to face the fact that the end is going to look like me standing on a cliff like some gothic Victorian widow, looking out to sea and slowly crumbling to dust as I watch for the man who’s never coming back to me. ”
Jerry nodded a few times. “Well,” he said thoughtfully. “All I can say is, Dave was clearly off his game last night if you’re moping about thinking bullshit like this.”
Expecting something at least a little sympathetic, it took a moment for his comment to sink in. “What?” I said indignantly.
“He normally bangs the fretting clean out of you. Have to say, mate, I’m unimpressed.”
“You’re—”
“You need to go and have a cuppa and a chat with Marcy. Reckon that might get your head on straight.”
“Jerry, I have the highest respect for Marcy, you know I do, but I’m not sure she can bring anything to the table when it comes to my gay relationship with my gay merman lover. No offence.”
“Offence,” he said mildly. “Lots of offence. What, you think you’re special?”
“I do, as a matter of fact. I’m in love with a merman.”
“Don’t care if you’re in love with a merman, an alien, or a regular man.
You’re in love. That’s kind of a universal thing.
As for Marcy, she’s been married to me for going on forty years.
Which means she’s got a few decades on you of being with a man who regularly goes out to sea, and each and every time he does, she’s got to know there’s a non-zero chance he might not come back. ”
I stared at him.
“Fishing’s one of the deadliest jobs in the world.
You know that. Worse than mining or construction for fatalities, it is.
I pay a fucking fortune in life insurance to make sure Marcy and the kids’ll be taken care of if it happens to me, because while I’m good at my job and I know these waters, sometimes a fella’s luck plain runs out. ”
Now I really was indignant. “I’ll take care of Marcy and the kids if anything happens to you. Christ, Jerry. I’m loaded.” I’d never actually come out and said it to his face, what with not wanting to be an actual dick, but good lord. I eyed him. “In fact, if you want to retire—”
“Joe, I won’t lie, I’m flattered, but we’ve been over this before and I am not going to be your kept boy—”
“Ew. Ew, no. That’s—”
“My point is, being in love with someone who goes off to sea doesn’t make you special. Being in love at all doesn’t. Makes you lucky, but not special. Sorry. You just got to learn how to handle it.”
“What if I can’t learn?”
Jerry blew a raspberry. “You’re a smart lad. You’ll learn. You haven’t got any options, anyway. Unless you’re going to break up with Dave? Tell him we had a good run but I’m a giant coward so ta-ta, I’ll be moving inland where you can never find me. You go ahead and waste away pining for me.”
“Okay,” I said hurriedly. I hated the idea of Dave returning to Lynwick to find me gone even more than I hated the idea of me waiting for a Dave who never returned. “I get it. I’ll learn.”
“Gotta learn how to relax. Live in the moment.”
“Is that all? No problem. I’m great at that.”
I was so bad at that I was in therapy for a decade.
It might be time to consider giving my old therapist a call and restarting it. While I was at it, I should also let Charlotte boss me through some more yoga. And borrow Biscuit.
“Thing is,” Jerry said, “this situation you’ve got going on with Dave isn’t going to last forever. Dunno as if you’ve noticed or not, but he’s staying here longer than when you first took up with him. Comes a little earlier, stays a little later.”
“I had noticed.”
“You’re probably worrying over nothing. Maybe one day, he’ll stop having to leave you for six months out of the year. Or five and a half, as it was last year. Maybe by the time you’re my age, he’ll be living with you full time, or near as.”
That would be…god. That would be heaven.
“Alternatively,” he added cautiously, “by the time you’re my age, or most like a lot sooner’n that, might be you find yourself in a place where you’re happy to head off with him on the Rosy Dawn. When you’ve not got anything tying you to land.”
He was talking about Grandpa and Art.
Grandpa was in his late eighties. Art was in his early eighties. The main reason I hadn’t been able to follow Dave was because I needed to be contactable and able to fly to Kos on short notice.
Jerry was right. Like it or not—and I absolutely did not—the day would inevitably come when I didn’t need to be available for that anymore.
“Yes,” was all I said.
“Except if you’re planning to go sailing off into the sunset or anything like that, you’re going to have to actually learn how to do it proper.”
I sat up. “I can sail.”
He made a rude noise. “Barely.”
“I go out on the Rosy Dawn all the time!”
“Uh-huh. Ever taken her out more than two hours from shore?”
“…no.”
“Not to worry.” He braced his hands on the table and shoved up to his feet. “I can teach you.”
“I can sail,” I muttered resentfully.
“I’ll teach you to be a proper sailor. But you’ll have to call me Captain.”
“Wow. No.”
He laughed and carried our empty mugs and my breakfast plate over to the sink, dumping them in unceremoniously.
I’d told him a hundred times, they go in the damn dishwasher.
“Don’t have to worry about any of that now, anyway,” he said. “That’s in the future. Only future you need to be worrying about is the long hot summer of mad shagging ahead of you. Need me to pick you up some B12 supplements? I’m going into town to get Biscuit’s deworming tablets later.”
“I’m good, thanks.”
“Think you meant to say, I’m good thanks, Captain.”
“No. I definitely did not mean that.”
Jerry laughed again, then groaned when his phone buzzed. “That’ll be Vinny, fussin’ at me to get a move on. Better head out.”
I followed him to the door and showed him out. “Jerry,” I said, once he was halfway down the path.
He paused and looked back over his shoulder.
“Thanks.”
“Welcome,” he said automatically, then squinted at me. “For what?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“Right. Remember now, don’t forget to stretch before and after, and stay hydrated.”
Oh my god.
“And you tell that Dave, if he steals my fish one more time, I’m getting out the harpoon.”
“Will do.”
He waved and trotted off to his Land Rover.
I stood in the doorway until he was out of sight, and then I continued to stand there, leaning a shoulder against the doorframe and gazing out to sea.
It was a truly glorious day. Blue sky, froths of pink and blue wildflowers, waving green and gold grass all the way down to the rocks and tiny golden wedge of sand which was all I could see of my beach from here.
Beyond that lay the wide open sea.
And Dave.