21. Jack
My brother stands like he’s belonged within the ancient, salt-worn walls of the Joker his whole life. He carries nothing but the damp clothes on his back and a weariness that has me closing the distance between us without another thought.
I hug him to me, brief and hard, knowing I’m on borrowed time as the room behind me comes to life. As someone I love makes a choked sound that’s almost a sob. “All right?” I pull back to look at him. “You’re okay?”
Mal nods, and though he’s tired, I see the truth in his clear gaze, and let him go.
He moves beyond me. I feel Sol at my back, and trusting he’ll follow, I slip to the open front door and head downstairs.
I’m at the bar when Sol catches up to me.
He grabs a rum bottle off the shelf and takes a healthy swig.
Don’t blame him. I’m so glad he’s here. And yet… “Why are you here? I thought you were heading out this morning?”
Sol shrugs, drinking more rum. “Missed the tide now.”
He doesn’t seem to give much of a fuck. Which should get me thinking about more than how beautiful he is with his wild hair, his face alive with pure emotion.
But I’m frayed and so is he. So I hug him as hard as I hugged Mal and bury my face in his neck, breathing him in as I try to compute everything I woke up to.
Try and fail.
Mal’s home. That’s all I’ve got. That and a list of shit that needs doing before I open the pub for Christmas Eve.
And Sol. I have Sol.
I kiss the sensitive skin on his bared throat. Because I know he likes it. And I love the low sound he makes in response. The full body shiver that rocks him.
It’s pure magic.
I don’t love that my mind won’t stay still long enough to revel in it. That I draw back from him without pressing him against the wall and let my gaze ping-pong around the bar, my eyes moving too fast for me to process what I’m seeing.
“Hey.” Sol holds my face in a gentle grip and coaxes my attention back to him. “We shut at four today, right?”
I nod.
He grins. “Good. And you know what you get to do after?”
“You?”
Sol’s grin widens a touch before he contains it. “If that’s something you want, we can talk about it later. I actually meant you get to spend Christmas with your brother for the first time since you were teenagers. That matters to you, Jackie. Always has.”
My brain shunts and I remember.
I remember missing Mal on a day that meant pretty much nothing to me without him. I remember missing my mam. I remember missing Sol when I was on the other side of the world and he was right here, in Porth Luck, all along.
“I didn’t get him a present,” I say instead of any of that.
“Doubt he got you one either.” Sol releases my face from his soft hold. “We don’t do presents in this house, love. It’s enough that we’re here. All of us, eh? Even Skylar.”
Another shunt and it all comes back to me.
The Christmas Eve dinner we’re having with Oscar later, before he and Sol sail out early on Christmas Day to haul a catch for their next pop-up while every other fisherman sleeps.
The no-presents rule that’s been in place since…
actually, I don’t know. All I truly recall is the certainty that Sol’s broken that rule and left something under my pillow.
And that I have something for him in the gym I need to retrieve when he’s not looking.
Which turns out to be harder than I anticipate. Sol’s abandoned fishing trip means he works in the pub instead, at my side all morning as we prep the Joker for a crazy afternoon. As we open the pub doors and revellers crowd in for one more mad session before we close until Boxing Day evening.
We haven’t worked the bar together like this in a while, and I’ve forgotten how much I love it. The light brush of our fingers as we reach for the same glass. The skim of his body against mine as we squeeze past each other in the narrow space.
It’s Christmas Eve.
Sea fog hangs over the lazy waves of the day and Porth Luck has turned into a postcard.
The Joker has holly tucked into the beams, old Cornish ribbon around the brass taps, and the soft glow of candles in jam jars.
Rowdy. Alive. Music from two fiddles and a bodhrán.
Shanty tunes older than the walls around us, and it’s not noise.
Not today. It’s community, and belongs to every soul in here.
Songs drift through the pub like smoke. Ending and beginning again without anyone deciding what comes next. It sucks Sol in—this music, it’s in his blood and he sings with the old fishermen as though he’s been doing it since he was born.
Because he has.
I’m watching him when Oscar rolls in and joins him.
When Mal and Skylar come downstairs and don’t punch anyone.
The music shifts. A livelier stomp lifts the crowd and Sol’s laughter fills my senses.
His broad grin as Oscar lifts him clean off the floor and spins him around as they sing about joy and life, a friendship kept safe by ancient walls and wood and steamed-up windows that make the sea a distant gunmetal smear beyond the glass.
It’s a moment where I really miss beer. But it’s cut short by…actually, I don’t know what. Just that I hear something above the singing raising the leaky pub roof. A voice from outside that has Sol turning on the chair he’s wound up standing on, cupping his hands around his mouth and calling back.
The voice answers and the pub door opens. And like this morning, a familiar silhouette fills the doorway.
Shorter than Mal.
Slimmer too—slender, almost—as cold air floods in and fog curls at the threshold of the Joker like a living, breathing thing.
For a second, I can’t place the man. Which is stupid. It’s been months, not years. And yet my mind skips past the shape of him, past the city boy coat and skinny jeans. Past the dark hair that lands in waves far looser than Sol’s wild curls.
I come up blank until the door bangs shut behind him, firelight catches his face, and Sol lets out a whoop of pure happiness.
Until clarity sharpens my dulled mind and I realise Sol’s brother has come home too.
Sev is alone. But he’s brought good news that Sol murmurs to me sometime later, as the music begins to ebb and people go home. Dav Bosanko has turned up safe and sound in Saltkiss Bay and Sol’s aunt is letting him stay.
Can’t lie. My brain’s been too full to give Dav’s whereabouts much thought beyond the toll this giant fucking mess has taken on Sol. But the relief I see in my best friend lets me know that maybe I should’ve paid more attention.
“I’m sorry.”
Sol tilts his head. “For what?”
“I didn’t really get that he was missing.”
“He wasn’t missing, he was AWOL. There’s a difference.”
“And he’s okay? Your mam too?”
“Everyone’s fine, Jackie. We can breathe for a while, eh?”
I don’t know what he means. But there are too many people around for me to follow a single train of thought. We close the pub and go upstairs. Sol and Oscar cook dinner. Roast cod, potatoes and greens—a meal we won’t eat until the first star appears in the sky.
Lithuanian rituals.
They’ve come to feel as normal as Cornish folklore to me. But me and Mal have our traditions too. Sausage rolls and caramel squares our nan used to call wee buns. Somehow Sol has found the time and headspace to stock the freezer with both and I love him more tonight than I ever have.
After dinner, the lowkey party crashes out in the living room, sprawled on the couches and cushions on the floor, passing round the sweet bread bites that make Oscar happy, even though he doesn’t get to eat that many.
Skylar loves them. A sight that has my brother hiding in the kitchen with me under the guise of washing up even though he’s yet to get his hands wet.
“You want to talk about it?” I wipe a plate and place it carefully on the shelf, braced for a non-answer. Mal’s been orbiting me all afternoon when he hasn’t been wrapped up in Skylar, as if he’s waiting for a moment like this, but I can’t tell if it’s for my sake or his.
“I’m all right,” Mal says after a beat too long, moving to the doorway to survey the living room while we talk. A sensible precaution, given what he says next. “They’re safe.”
His crew.
“All of them?”
Mal nods, but disquiet hovers in his gaze, an unsettled flicker even I can’t miss.
“They hurt?”
“Battered, but nothing unexpected.”
“Aye, but that doesn’t mean much if you don’t come back the way you left.”
Mal sucks in a breath that flares his nose and darts a glance into the living room, searching for Skylar. And I see the moment he finds that hard-won peace. See the comfort he takes from whatever he sees.
Makes me long for Sol, but whatever we are to each other, I know this is a conversation me and Mal need to have alone.
“Who are you worried about?”
Mal looks at me again. He’s drinking electrolytes, because he’s tired, but too wired and in love to go to sleep yet. “Orion.”
“Why?”
“He took more. Saw more. And he’s not like Moth and the others, you know? He’s a deeper thinker.”
I don’t know my brother’s friends that well.
Just their faces. And that Orion was the one who came to see me when Mal got hurt in Syria.
The soldier who travelled here instead of going home to look me in the eye and tell me my brother was hurt, but whole.
That he’d seen a lot, but he’d be okay if he let me take care of him.
Still not sure that’s where I am with Mal.
But I don’t need him to elaborate about Orion.
We speak the same language, and somehow I still have the muscle memory to fill in the gaps.
To see the way his hands twitch, fighting the urge to check kit he’ll never carry again.
To know that he won’t stop thinking about his friend until he knows for sure he’s okay.
It leaves the rest of us to worry about Mal, and I have a head start. Even with my fucked brain, I see the unnatural alertness in my brother that won’t fade for a while. The textbook shadow he can’t outrun, no matter how many times he loses himself in Skylar.