Chapter 8 #2
He meets my eyes, and I can see it. Can feel it too when his hand brushes mine.
For a second, our fingers tangle, then the lift opens, and I don’t run exactly.
I do take off in a hurry, which is stupid—I’m the one who invited him back here—yet now that I’m in a hallway where the front door of each flat faces a storage cupboard, regrets chase me.
Behind one of those padlocked doors are a whole lot of answers to the questions I know he wanted to ask me.
I fish out the set of keys Kev and Marilyn have so far insisted I keep.
“Wait here. I need to grab a different key.” I open the front door to the flat and call out, “Maz?” to no answer, apart from a yowl.
My aunt’s cat shoots out before I can stop her from escaping, and Dair crouches to greet a perpetually furious street fighter.
“Careful. She’s—”
I don’t get time to warn Dair that the cat is almost feral.
He most likely wouldn’t hear me over her purring.
That’s surprising. And a real blast from the past. What is new is hearing him call a thug of a feline a bonny wee something or other.
I grab the key I need from the hook just inside the front door and ask him, “What did you just call her?”
“A piseag. It’s Gaelic for kitten.” He strokes ears shredded by run-ins with rivals who limped home the loser.
Then he runs a hand along the back she arches for more pets, and she purrs even louder, the bell on her collar tinkling.
I can’t say I blame her. I did more than purr the last time Dair paid my own back the same kind of stroking attention.
He looks up from his crouch, and that’s so close to another bathroom flashback I almost stoop to kiss him.
Thank fuck, a door slams further along the hallway, or I’d break a promise I made to myself this morning to stop take, take, taking.
“What’s she called?” Dair asks, like he hasn’t noticed my inner battle.
“Kitty.” I get a grip on myself and cross to the opposite side of the hallway to unlock a padlock. “Not very imaginative, I know. I didn’t name her.”
“Ha! My cat’s called Mog. Nothing wrong with keeping it simple.” He pets Kitty some more. “Who named this one? Your cousin?” Dair gets to his feet.
“My aunt Stacey. It’s her cat. And this is her storage unit.” I swing open the door to a deep, dark cupboard. “I mean, it was hers. It’s Kev and Marilyn’s since they took over her tenancy.”
“Stacey lived here first?”
“She did.” Thank fuck Kev’s succession application was successful or strangers would now live here. I busy myself by digging through containers that hold almost everything left of a life, apart from an angry cat and the spiky plants Stacey tended.
“Very tidy,” Dair murmurs from the doorway, and I glance back to see him leaning on the doorframe with Kitty winding figure eights around his ankles.
“Yeah,” I say roughly. “She didn’t leave a mess for us to sort through.
” I hope he doesn’t hear that as judgement for what he’s been left to deal with.
During our video calls, he’d described the belongings filling each of Alice’s rooms as overwhelming.
A never-ending tide. One I watched him drown under each evening while I was away up-country.
I straighten up, fully expecting to see him curling like a fragile fern at criticism. Dair just looks interested, so I rephrase, working hard to make my meaning clearer.
“I mean, the house-clearance side of the business meant she was prepared. She saw plenty of places that were really hoarded. A lot of people keep hold of actual rubbish. Those places are nothing like Alice’s.”
“Your aunt worked for the business?”
“Stacey? She started it.” I can’t get over Kitty still weaving around his legs.
It pulls on a loose thread, tugging free the button holding my lips closed on family business.
It pings off, skittering to some dark corner as I admit, “That was right after she found out her little sister had been trapped in a difficult situation. One she wanted to leave but couldn’t. ”
“Her little sister?” Dair asks quietly. “You mean your mam?”
“Yeah.”
Dair wets his lips. “She tried to leave that difficult situation. With you?”
I nod again, and his gaze darts in the right direction for the rat run of alleys where a dealer just thanked me. His smile flickers. “Someone helped you both to do a midnight flit?”
I don’t answer.
Some words can’t be spoken.
I’m pretty sure I couldn’t find the right ones even if I had stuck it out at school for longer.
I rummage through tote boxes instead, looking for something that might help Dair’s situation.
It’s easier than seeing his face crease with concern.
That doesn’t stop me from hearing sympathy.
“That guy said he paid back your old man. Your dad?”
I can’t answer that either.
“I- I’m so sorry.” He’s also curious, wanting to know more about me, even if it’s ugly. “When did it happen, Vincent?”
“Ages ago. When I was almost nine.” I clear my throat. “Anyway, that’s how come I lived here with Stacey before she…”
I don’t know why he keeps calling me smart. He joins dots way faster than I ever could have.
“Wait. That guy said your aunt helped out his sister at the end of the summer. That she wouldn’t take payment, so she must have still been running the business.” He falters. “H-how long ago did your aunt—”
I back out of the storage unit before he can finish speaking, and I don’t do it empty-handed.
I’ve found the tote I wanted. “We lost Stacey four months ago.” I count back.
“Almost five now.” I lock up fast and head for the front door of the flat like a ghost is chasing me across the hallway.
“Heart attack. No warning. Come in.” I step inside.
“There’s a laptop in this tote. I can’t see the charger for it. Think there’s a spare in my old room.”
Dair doesn’t follow.
He’s rooted in the hallway between the front door and a cupboard holding boxes Kev and I packed in clenched-jaw silence. Kitty still winds around his ankles. “Really, Vincent? Just four or five months?”
“Yeah.” I heel out of my shoes. “Come in.”
He does, heeling out of his own shoes, if slowly, but at least Kitty follows him inside instead of doing her usual disappearing act. She sticks close to home when, up until now, she’s tried over and over to escape, desperate to hunt down a woman she’s still furious she can’t find.
Now she trots towards the kitchen, the bell on her collar tinkling. The rattle of her eating kibble comes next, that bell clinking against a rare mudlarking find of a complete saucer I’d scrubbed clean of Thames mud in return for a second Mr. Whippy.
I walk away from that memory and into my old bedroom, only to stop dead.
Dair follows, but he doesn’t notice what’s different in here since my last visit. The bedding spread across my mattress is new—Marilyn not done trying to tempt me home, it seems. There’s no reason for Dair to know that; besides, he has a different focus.
It’s me.
I find that out next to a bed covered with semi-naked firefighters. Or at least it’s covered with a brand-new duvet featuring bare-chested heroes, all with extra-long hose reels, and I can almost hear Marilyn’s cackle.
I do hear her ring tone from my phone, so I set the tote down and answer quickly. “Yeah, Maz?”
She tells me she’s running late and won’t be back until later. I don’t know if I thank her or even say goodbye. I’m snagged by Dair’s gaze, which doesn’t stray to my new beefcake bedding or even to the window with its view across the river. It locks on me and shows no sign of shifting.
“Four months is no time at all. I thought…” He falters again. “T-the way you mentioned it made me think you lost her a long time ago.”
“No.” It just feels like forever.
“And you used to live here with her? Not just when you were a kid. As an adult as well?”
I shrug, aware I’m as gritty as the banks below us. “Have you seen the price of rent in this city?”
“I’m not criticising. I didn’t move out from my foster parents’ place until I started caring for Alice.” And he isn’t done asking questions. “But you did move out to live with your… With Flynn?” He guesses why. His shoulders sag. “Oh. So you didn’t have to be here. When was that?”
“When did I move to Kensington? The day after the funeral.” And it does seem years since I left a sad wake only to stand outside a happy meet-up I couldn’t make myself enter.
I don’t even know why I went there. I shove my phone into my pocket, fingers finding the pen Harry left me. “I couldn’t face—”
“Being here without your aunt? No wonder, and after losing your Mum too.” He blinks. Blinks again even faster, his eyes shiny.
For me.
Dair hauls me into the kind of hug that tells the real truth about someone I first guessed would be easy pickings. A soft touch. He feels plenty strong to me right now. Sounds it as well.
“Alice has been gone for longer than four months.” His breath is so warm against my ear.
“A lot longer, Vincent. Probate took forever. The court case. It all took so much more time than you’ve had, but you’re the one putting on a brave face.
” His voice thickens. “Dinnae do that,” he orders in another warm gust.
He doesn’t order me to stop breathing, but it’s increasingly hard to inhale or exhale around what sounds like permission to feel everything that just chased me across the hallway.
Getting a grip shouldn’t be tough. I lift and fucking carry for my living.
It’s never been harder.
His arms around me tighten like he can tell, and I got no choice when his hands sweep up and down my back for the second time since we met. Dair smooths both palms over my coat, soothing, and fuck everything I told myself about not taking.
I clutch him back even tighter. I also lower my head, and his mouth is right there, so I kiss it.
We’re fifteen floors above the riverbanks littered with broken china. This kiss puts me back together. It’s what I wanted each night last week when our video calls ended. And it’s what I’ve woken up wanting since he walked into a restaurant and told me why Charles had sent him.
Right now, Dair gives me a perfect reason to stop reliving my past. Our tongues touch, and he scoots nearer, his feet nudging between mine, and we might as well have been carved to fit together. Then he’s somehow even closer and we’re kissing like we both need it more than breathing.
Some oxygen must find its way to my lungs. Whatever started to smoulder the first night I met him doesn’t just rekindle.
It combusts.