Chapter 11
Iwas in the garden, weeding, when the gate squeaked on its elderly hinges and heavy steps came up the gravelled path behind me.
“Well?” I said over my shoulder as I wrestled with a stubborn dandelion whose taproot apparently went all the way down to hell itself. “What was that all about? Because I don’t believe for a minute that you fell overboard. You jumped, didn’t you?”
Jerry didn’t say anything.
I snorted and wedged the old butter knife I used for weeding deeper into the soil. The footsteps stopped behind me.
“I hope it was worth it,” I said. “And yes, I saw the whole thing. You’re going to get it from Marcy when you get home.
Vinny will absolutely tattle on you.” I grunted and tugged at the dandelion.
I liked to leave them for the bees while they were flowering, but once they were going to seed I pulled them out, or they’d take over completely.
I went rigid when a gentle hand cupped the back of my neck. Only for a second. I hunched my shoulders and swung an arm out behind me as I yelled, “Jerry, what!”
Of course, my hand didn’t make contact with sea boots or all-weather utility trousers or even jeans.
It wasn’t Jerry.
I shuffled around, still on my knees, and stared up at Dave.
He smiled wistfully down at me, his dark indigo hair dry and blowing over his shoulders in the offshore breeze that always picked up in the early evening. He touched my cheek.
“Dave.” I reached out and put my hands flat on his thighs, sliding them upwards as I rose to a high kneel. “Dave.” I threw my arms around his waist and held on tight, pressing my face against him.
Yes, it happened to be at groin level but that was purely because he had ridiculously long legs, not because I was going for it.
It would take a while before I regained the confidence to initiate anything.
I tightened my arms when he moved, terrified that he was going to pull away. All he did was go to his knees in front of me.
I didn’t waste any time. I scrambled onto his lap, wrapped my arms around his shoulders, fisted his hair in both hands, and pressed my face into his warm neck.
A low, trilling sound vibrated softy from his gills.
His gills, which I’d thoughtlessly plastered myself against, and at least one of which had been bisected by a hideous wound.
I gasped and pushed back, gripping his biceps for balance.
“Oh. Oh, thank god.” I tore off my gardening gloves and reached out a tentative fingertip. I paused before touching his side, glancing up to check his face.
His eyes were on mine, watching me with hungry patience. He gave a tiny grunt and lifted his chin.
Taking it as permission, and keeping my gardening-grubby mitts just clear of making contact, I traced the ghosts of the wounds that I’d fretted over when he was drying out and starving in my bed.
When I’d thought I was helping him, caring for him, tending to him.
When I’d been making it worse.
He lifted my face and touched a thumb gently to the corner of each eye.
I sniffed and let go of him to stuff a hand into my pocket and grab a tissue. I blew my nose loudly, stuffed the tissue away, and blew out a breath. “Are you better?” I asked. “You look better.”
He sighed and stood, taking me with him.
I was out of practice at being manhandled. Startled, I yelped and thrashed in his arms. He juggled me calmly and set me down with only a small wince. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Did that hurt? Sorry.” I hovered my hands uselessly over his torso.
He caught them and held them between us.
I think I knew then that he hadn’t come over to say, Good news! I’m all better! Get naked.
Normally, if he grabbed my hands, it was to pin them to the ground or the mattress or the wall beside my head. If not that, then he’d be directing me to grab his dick, or his arse.
He never stood before me with a sorrowful look in his eyes and held them clasped between his.
Which wasn’t to say he never stood in front of me and stared at me with that sorrowful look in his eyes, because he did. Every year.
Every autumn.
On the day he left me.
“No,” I said, then said it again, louder, as if that would help. “No.”
He chuffed softly.
“No, Dave. I haven’t…we’ve barely seen each other. It’s June! It’s too soon. Don’t leave me.”
He moved his grip to hold both of my hands in one of his, lifting the other to cup my chin. His head tilted as he gazed down at me.
“Please don’t go.”
I’d never come out and asked him. I’d never said this to him. I hadn’t, because I knew that he had to go, and I knew that he’d stay if I asked. I knew that it would do terrible things to him if he stayed. If he didn’t outright die, he’d suffer.
I didn’t want him to suffer for me.
But it wasn’t fair. “This isn’t fair.” I yanked at my hands, trying to pull them out of his grip.
He sighed, the deep resonance rippling over my skin like a soothing stroke. The fingers he had curled under my chin rubbed gently before he let my jaw go.
As soon as he did, I craned away from him and yanked again. Anger surged up out of nowhere, hot and white. “Get off me,” I said.
It was a hundred times worse than when he’d rebuffed me in bed. A thousand times.
The soothing sound he made in return did nothing other than fan the flames.
“If you don’t…if you won’t stay for me, for even another month, then you can fuck off right now. Just go. Go, Dave!”
He held me effortlessly. It was infuriating. I writhed about, feet skidding on the gravel, getting angrier and angrier.
The soothing croons he’d been making changed in tone to something stern. He squeezed my hands until my knuckles creaked and I gasped. I stopped flailing and glared up at him.
Fond amusement flitted through his indigo eyes, making me grit my teeth. He said something. I had no way of understanding the words, but the meaning was clear enough. The gesture that accompanied it was as familiar as the rest of this goodbye.
He touched his chest. He gestured to the sea behind him. He touched my chest, and pointed at the ground beneath us.
“Dave will go. Joe will wait,” I said dully. “I know.”
He gave his head a single shake, as if I was being overly dramatic at the thought of not seeing him for what would be practically a year this time, then he closed his eyes, bent down and puckered up.
He cracked his eyes open to find me glaring at him.
The absolute dick had the nerve to stay there, close his eyes again, and start making kissy noises at me.
“You’re an arsehole. That’s something else I know,” I grumbled.
The flare of anger had burned up and burned out.
God, love was hard sometimes.
I leaned up and pecked a kiss on his warm, full lips.
He gave a satisfied chuff and I might have at least got a good long kissing session out of it, as his lips parted sweetly beneath mine when I went back for seconds, but with his usual spectacular timing, Jerry picked that moment to show up.
The garden gate banged open and rebounded against the drystone wall.
“Oi!” Jerry bellowed. “Wanker! I want a word with you!”
Dave snatched his mouth from mine and straightened, his eyes opening wide as Jerry ran for him. To my astonishment, Dave bolted.
“Don’t you run away from me! Get back here, you thieving coward!” Jerry yelled, changing course and trying to cut Dave off from the gate.
Dave didn’t need the gate.
He put on a burst of speed, dodged Jerry’s outstretched arms, and the last sight I had of him was a beautiful athletic flex of his big body as he vaulted the wall and was gone.
Jerry pounded after him, still yelling.
Well. This wasn’t our usual tender and romantic yearly farewell.
Jerry stomped back into the garden, his bearded face red and his ginger-grey curls wild. “That dick!” he complained loudly as he marched up to join me. “Do you know what he did?”
“He left me.”
“He went for my nets again and he—what?” My words sank in and he broke off from his ranting. “He what?”
I shrugged, twisting my lips to hide any rogue wobbles. “Left me. That was goodbye.”
Jerry stared at me. Then, “Bollocks,” he said.
Right. “Thanks for the sympathy. If you’re ready to let me pay you for the lost catch now, let me know how much. Otherwise, I think I’d like to be alone.”
Jerry snorted. “Bollocks,” he said again.
“Okay. Good talk.” I turned and headed for the house.
Jerry trotted after me. I sped up. Jerry sped up. My legs were longer; I made it through the back door and shut it in his face. He immediately opened it and followed me in.
“Dave wouldn’t dump you any more than Marcy would dump me,” he said.
“I didn’t mean he’d left me forever, I meant he’d left me for the year. I know a goodbye when I hear one. Unlike some people.” I gave him a pointed look.
“Hah. Dave hasn’t gone for the year, and I ain’t leaving you to brood, you great drama queen.”
I ignored him, dropping my gardening gloves on the table by the door and going over to the kitchen sink to scrub my hands.
“Well, okay. Could be he has gone for the year,” Jerry amended. “I can’t be sure about that part. But him coming back, and me not leaving you to brood, that I’m sure about.” He hauled out a kitchen chair and dropped into it. “Make us a brew, would you?”
I filled the kettle and set it to boil.
Jerry was worse than dandelions. If he wanted to be there, you couldn’t get rid of him.
I opened the biscuit tin and dropped it in front of him. He busied himself stuffing his face with Hobnobs while I busied myself making tea.
I brought the tea over and sat opposite him. “It was goodbye, Jerry.”
He did me the courtesy of not simply brushing it off straight away. Probably because he had his mouth full of biscuit. He swallowed, washed it down with a noisy gulp of tea, and said, “So. It was goodbye. Big deal.”
“Yes, actually. Big deal. I’ve said before that I’d wait forever for Dave, and I mean it.
It’s not exactly my preference, though. Forgive me for my disappointment.
” I poked through the tin and selected a custard cream, twisting it viciously in half and going right for the filling.
I had to take my pleasures where I found them, I supposed, since I’d be going without the kind I really wanted for another year.
God.
I wanted to hold him. To be with him. It wasn’t the sex. It had never been about the sex. I wanted to hold him.
“I still think he’s got worms,” Jerry said.
I grimaced.
“That’s disappointing. Was trying to cheer you up. Make you laugh. Make you choke on your biscuit.”
I wanted to choke on something else, thanks.
“All right, I don’t think it’s worms. Can’t argue that he’s unnaturally hungry. Twice he’s gone after my nets. That’s a lot of fucking fish, Joe. I reckon he ate them all, as well. Reckon if he didn’t, he’d have tossed any leftovers up over the side.”
“Yeah. I think I was starving him.”
“Starving him? You’ve got a right one on you, haven’t you?” At my flat look, he said, “You’re in a mood.”
“Thank you, I do understand the idiom.”
“Do you also understand that you were doing your very best and that’s all you can do, then?”
“Yes.”
“Give yourself a break, would you? He’s still convalescing. He needs his food. The way he’s going at it so single-minded, like, says it’s more than hunger what’s driving him. Know what I reckon is more important to Dave than wanting a little snack? Wanting a little Joe. That’s what I reckon.”
I stared at him.
“And…” Jerry scratched his beard. “Maybe if I’d thought of that earlier, I’d have let him keep on at my nets.
And billed you, because I want to see you happy, Joe, but I need to pay my mortgage, too.
But if that was goodbye, I bet you anything he’s gone off to find a better feeding ground.
He’s cleaned us out around here. Soon as he’s got his strength up and can give you a good seeing to, he’ll be back. ”
“Do you think so?”
He grinned. “Yeah. Have a fiddle with your magic button and have a look. Bet you he’s scoffing already.”
“Not a magic button.”
“Have a fiddle with that very ordinary and easily explained by science scar on your neck made by your merman lover’s giant fangs what lets you bond to him mentally and see what he’s seeing.”
I quickly brushed my magic button.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” Jerry said with satisfaction, celebrating with another Hobnob. “Stuffing his face, isn’t he?” He brushed at the crumbs that landed on his jumper.
“Yes. He is.”
“Where is he?”
“In the sea.”
Jerry made a go-on gesture at me with both hands.
I stared at him. “Jerry, he’s underwater. I don’t exactly recognise any landmarks.”
He shrugged and reached for another Hobnob.
Maybe Jerry was the one who had worms.
I connected with Dave again, shuddered when he caught something, and decided to leave him alone for now. “Feels like he’s pretty far out,” I said, scowling at the tremble in my voice.
“Good. Means he’ll stop snitching my catch.”
Far out, and deep. Heading away from land.
Jerry must have read my thoughts on my face. “He’s coming back, Joe.”
God, I hoped so.