Chapter 5
Jack’s in a mood. Usually I’d blame the cash I left in the microwave for him. A peppercorn sum compared to the sixty grand he gave my mum six months before he got hurt, and an old joke from our childhood he never finds funny.
But this feels like something else, and no matter how hard I focus on the rabble of spiteful crabs trying to take my fingers off, I’m still in the kitchen with Jack, drunk and listing—drunk and tumbling—headlong into his stare and imagining I see something I’ve yearned for my whole life.
We’re standing too close.
The edge of the world is soft.
His body heat reels me in, and fool that I am, I think mine does the same to him. I lean closer—
Gods, make it stop.
Make it stop.
Make it stop.
I drop the pot and it topples overboard. I need the money from the big brown crabs, but I can’t bring myself to care.
He’s looked at you like that before…
Yeah. Before. So it doesn’t count. It doesn’t matter that he looked at me that night so long ago as if he’d been waiting twenty years to touch me. That he kissed me that night like he’d drown if he stopped. Stripped me naked and—
I cut the memory off at the neck. A raw sound escapes me as I shove it down where it needs to stay. That night was a one-off and belongs in a life I don’t get to live anymore. That Jack doesn’t get to live. The past is dead and no amount of drunken yearning is going to change that.
Not that I’m drunk right now.
I wish.
Instead I’m out here on the Sirona, at the mercy of the honest Cornish winter, and I’m cold. Or at least, I would be if my imagination wasn’t making me sweat into my clothes.
I peel off my jumper.
Toss it in the vague direction of the cabin.
It lands on the sea-damp deck and on cue, the wind bites deeper, reminding me what a blithering idiot I am. The waves are calm, but everything inside me yawns and rolls like I’m pitching through a squall, and it’s one of those days I wish the sea would swallow me whole.
You’d soon be praying for Bucca to spit you back out.
‘Course I would. Jack needs me. And that thought…it lets our distorted encounter in the kitchen the other night crowbar its way back in. The nearness. The heat. The way we broke apart so slowly it couldn’t have been a mistake we’d drifted so close in the first place.
Before Jack snapped his gaze from my mouth and asked me why I don’t hook up anymore.
It’s killing me that he likely meant that I should. That I need to, for his sake. So I stop leaning into moments that aren’t real.
And then…
Leave me alone.
Didn’t imagine that bit, and my chest contracts, a lance of pain real enough to lodge between my ribs and stay there.
Leave me alone.
He’s barely spoken to me since. I’ve had to get used to the shape of his muscled back as he walks out of every room I walk into. To the quiet when he can’t escape me and he keeps his lips pursed, parking whatever he’s thinking and feeling. So it’s separate, and—
My phone rings, buzzing against my thigh like a trapped wasp. I want to ignore it, but I can’t. I could never.
Jack.
I rip my phone from my pocket, my heart in my throat.
But it soon sinks as the screen flashes the name of the last person I want to talk to.
Despair turns to anger, an emotion I loathe with every fibre of my being, and I long again for a deathly swell to put me out of my misery. Or at least topple my phone overboard.
Of course my dad is calling me now, as if he scents I’m already flailing on the sea breeze.
I answer with a sigh, wishing for the hate I’m incapable of. “What?”
“Sol, lad. Did you talk to your brother yet?”
“No. I already told you I’m not tapping Sev for money.”
“He’d give it you, I know he would.”
“So? Why should he? Even if he has as much as you need, he’s not the one with a thirty-grand gambling debt, is he?”
Over the wind, I hear my dad shuffling around, rustling things to break the line up, like he always does to avoid admitting his sins.
“Maybe you could talk to Jack?” he says eventually, and a scream builds in my throat. A violent howl that makes my soul bleed even as I swallow it down.
“We’ve talked about this too. I’m not asking Jack for money. I still owe him from the last time you nearly put Mum on the streets.”
“He helped before—”
“Exactly!” I explode. “That was before, and it was a piss-take then. What makes you think he’s got that kind of money anyway? That you didn’t clean him out last time?”
“That was years ago, boy. And I know it was wrong, I just need this one more—”
I hang up, like I have a dozen times over the past week, every time he’s called and called and called, telling me over and over he’s somehow secured a loan on the house Jack paid off and blown it all on the horses.
Only this time, when I drop my phone into the wheelhouse pocket, something else claws at me as the wind picks up and I start the Sirona.
Something worse than the groan and shudder of that maybe-cracked engine block or the prospect of my family home being repossessed by the bank again.
Something money can’t fix.
Because Jack looked at me like he wanted something he shouldn’t—
Except, no.
He didn’t.
I imagined it—because I wanted it—and I was too bladdered to control my face, my gaze, or whatever it was that spooked him, and now, for the first time ever, he’s pushing me away.
And I don’t know what I’ll do if it’s permanent.
My dad’s waiting for me when I get back to shore.
I bring the Sirona in hard, the discordant thrum from the engine rattling my bones, and ignore him.
Gather my catch and pray he doesn’t jump aboard to “help” and see how big my crab haul is.
Like me, my dad’s a generational fisherman.
He knows what this catch is worth, and I thank the gods I had the foresight to radio ahead to the harbour buyer who’s already out on the quay.
The quiet quay.
No people, no sunshine.
As I make land Porth Luck is grey mist and gloom.
I throw a rope. It slaps against the buyer’s boots and he gives me a look. “You’re the last one in.”
“Aw, Rog. But you know I bring the best.”
Roger treats me to the same vague sympathy he gives every poor bastard bringing in shellfish right now. “Weather’s turning.”
“Calm enough today.”
“Wasn’t yesterday.”
True story. And I know what he’s getting at. What he’s trying to do. But I already know the storms have churned up the seabed and drowned the pots we have left in sediment. I don’t need forewarning he’s going to drive the price down. He’ll pay what he’ll pay, and I’ll take it.
“All right then.” Roger stands back as I set the first crate on the quay. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
He’s not the only one who wants to see. As he crouches, I sense my dad drifting closer, peering at the browns as they clatter and skitter.
Heavy crabs, lively and solid despite the battering they’ve had from the storms. They’re worth enough to pay Oscar for the week, put enough diesel in the Sirona to keep her moving, and perhaps cover the patch repairs for whatever fresh hell the weather’s shaken loose below deck.
Maybe even leave Jack another touch in the microwave.
But Roger clicks his tongue with a shrug. “Market’s soft right now.”
“How soft?”
He names a figure and it’s terrible enough that my dad takes a few steps back.
I sigh, something oily churning my gut, and take the deal anyway. What else am I going to do?
Roger counts the crates and hands me a roll of cash too small and too thin to brighten my day.
I should stick around to help him load his van, but it’s not in me.
I secure the Sirona and walk away from her, aware of my dad following me along the sea wall, chasing me all the way to Oscar’s house.
Right there when I discover Oscar’s not home.
Damnit, Oscar.
He’s the nicest dude in the world, but if there’s one soul on earth my sunny wingman has no patience for, it’s my dad.
And gods, I wish I didn’t either. That I was stronger.
But I feel the weakness in my bones as I stuff Oscar’s wages through his letterbox and bundle what’s left with a stray elastic band.
It’s not much.
Won’t get my dad much more than an hour in the bookies.
But I give it to him anyway. Toss it at his chest and walk away. And I keep walking until I’m out of town and find myself halfway to Porth Ewan. To the Sea Bell—the only pub I can drink in without getting shit for my dad’s bad choices or where I like to put my dick.
Where I used to put my dick, before the idea of touching someone who didn’t haunt my dreams made me want to feed myself to the sharks.
I reach the Sea Bell and slip through doors almost as venerable as the ones that frame the Joker.
Old wood and stale beer, it should feel like home, but it doesn’t.
Because my people aren’t here. No one is and I sit in a quiet corner alone with a pint that doesn’t taste as crisp as the ale Jack serves, because no one is as diligent and focused as he is, about line-cleaning or anything else.
You haven’t lost it, Jackie. I promise.
“Why the fuck are you drinking at crack o’clock in the morning?”
A shadow darkens the table as a figure looms over me.
Mal, of course. Despite the bitter wind, he’s wearing cargo shorts and running shoes, with one of Jack’s hoodies slung over whichever of his three t-shirts he’s wearing today.
My clothes are as old as time because I can’t afford to replace them.
Mal would rather wear his big brother’s and it’s cute when I have the headspace to think about it.
I don’t today. I have beer, empty pockets, and a toothless irritation that my solitary sulk is over. “What are you doing here?”
“I followed you.” Mal spits that like it’s normal and sinks into the chair opposite. “In case you jumped off that dirt nap spot out there.”
“Not funny, Mally.”