Chapter 29 #2
“But I’m not.” Marc’s arm tightened around Lou. “Gay, I mean. Wait. Was it the lip ring?” Marc pondered. “Or was it the black nail polish?”
“It was the eyeliner, I reckon.” Jude nudged the pile of postcards. “I’d had years of seeing the way he’d get all quiet, and look so….” He didn’t know how to explain it, but, thank goodness, Lou did.
“Marc, have you ever seen one of those ferns that curl up when you brush past its leaves?”
Marc nodded.
“He was like that. He was perfectly fine with tourists, but he’d kind of retract around anyone who pinged his radar.”
“Turns out it must have been guilt,” Jude said.
Hauling such heavy thoughts to the surface was hard.
“Back when it all kicked off for Trevor, Dad did what he told him. But Dad was a better man than that.” He knew that for certain.
Every single lesson his father had taught him had been about pulling together.
“He was a much better man, only he was pulled in two directions, and then lying as Trevor told him to only got him nowhere. All that guilt at what he’d said festered. ”
“Until now,” Louise said.
Rob’s arm around Jude helped him let out more of his own poison.
“That’s why I avoided you when you hung around here so often.
Dad reacted like one of those ferns because he thought the way you looked meant something that I wanted to avoid him thinking about me.
None of that was your fault. I’m sorry I wasn’t friendlier when you first got here, and I’m glad you stayed. ”
Marc’s gaze was level, thoughtful. “I get it, but I stayed for my own reasons.” His gaze swung to Louise, whose blush was vivid. “I’m not going anywhere while you’re here, Lou.”
Rob nudged Jude and whispered, “I think this is where they finally make out. We should leave them to it.” He pulled the office door closed behind them before asking Jude, “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Jude said before shaking his head and getting honest. “No, not really.”
Rob’s hug was so easy to lean into, his pat on his shoulder the kind of simple support Jude had just witnessed Marc offer. Rob steered him into the kitchen, which was full of shadows. The darkness made speaking easier, for some reason.
“Every time I think about Dad bottling up feeling ashamed for so long, I don’t know what I’m pissed off about most. The time I wasted worrying that he’d hate me, the friendships I avoided, all the distance I put between us.
..” It was a list that would unspool for longer if he let it.
Instead, he let Rob kiss him, his mouth so gentle in contrast to the prickle of his stubble, his hands firm on Jude’s hips another grounding contrast.
“It’s over,” Rob said when they parted.
Jude nodded.
Or maybe it wasn’t.
The kitchen door swung open, Marc’s expression shadowed even after he turned on the light. “You need to come and see this.”
Had Jude missed something important that his dad had written?
Rob got back to the office before him, reading over Lou’s shoulder, but they both looked at the laptop screen rather than the stack of postcards that now stood abandoned.
“We just got an alert that the website’s down. Too much traffic. It must be a glitch,” Louise said, scrolling down the online booking system. “There’s nothing here.”
“Let me.” Rob opened a new tab and typed two words— Porthperrin Anchor —before adding two more— Guy Parsons .
“It’s too early for a review,” Lou insisted. “He said there was a six-week lead time for the Sunday papers.”
“But it’s not too early for him to post on all his social media.” Rob clicked on a link that started with a single sentence that made Louise gasp.
Don’t go to the New Anchor at Porthperrin.
“Fuck.” Jude closed his eyes for a long moment. A picture had loaded below that statement when he dared to open them again. “Wait… is that—?”
“Us,” Rob said simply. “It’s us, together.”
Ian must have caught a moment right after they’d kissed, Rob’s smile was purely joy-filled, Jude’s its perfect mirror. He couldn’t drag his gaze from it.
Lou read aloud as she scrolled down. “Don’t go to the New Anchor at Porthperrin,” she said, her voice doleful until it suddenly picked up. “You’ll only fall hopelessly in love with the glorious food, the charming location, and the lovers who run it!” Her eyes were wide when she turned. “Oh my God!”
“Scroll down,” Jude demanded. Another photo loaded, this time of the meal he’d cooked, along with a caption.
The secret ingredient for this hidden gem’s success is the love each meal is cooked with.
“The secret was seaweed, actually.” Rob joked, but his voice shook.
“What does he say about the bedrooms? Oh.” They were all silent for a long moment.
Somehow, Ian had snuck a photo of his parents’ haven, walls papered with maps, shelves crammed with his mum’s treasures.
“There’s no doubt that eclectic taste runs in this tight-knit family business,” Rob read.
Jude featured in the next photo, or rather a fragment of his face did, light catching the stubble on the square of his jaw, turning it golden, his eye the same shade as the batik fabric he shook out.
The sky framed by the bedroom window was the exact same colour.
“That’s got to be photoshopped. No way are my eyes that blue. ”
“They didn’t photoshop the next photo,” Lou said, teary again. “Look. That’s the end of the sea wall, and the photo credits Susan.” A slightly blurred Guy Parsons knelt in front of Ian, who had a hand over his mouth as if shocked. “Wow. He proposed to his photographer while he was here.”
Rob refreshed the booking website. This time, the page loaded correctly, colours changing from yellow to blue on its built-in calendar for June, July and August.
Lou leaned forward. “Wait…. Doesn’t that mean…?”
“Yeah,” Rob said faintly, only standing because Jude braced him. “We’re fully booked for the whole summer.”