4. Skylar #2
Mal tracks the movement, barely a flicker of his green eyes, but I see it as much as he sees me.
“The pub isn’t on its knees.” I finally find the breath to speak. “At least, not compared to how it was when we bought it, and it’ll be better by the end of this summer.”
Mal nods. “Tourist season. I get it. Then what?”
“Then we weather the winter while the business rates don’t change and there’s no footfall in the evenings. It’d be easier if we could open the kitchen, but it’s hard to find a chef who wants to live off-site and stay the whole year on the shitty wage we can afford to pay.”
Mal takes it all in, leaning forward a little.
It’s a struggle not to match the movement, but I stay eased back in my seat, trying not to imagine it’s the rocks at that beach and he’s about to bear down on me, seize my jaw, and?—
Mal shifts. Not to press me against the wall and kiss me, just his leg, the faintest hint of motion.
But it brings him closer to me. Our knees brush and I feel it, I feel him , everywhere.
And it’s not even sexual, though it is. It’s something else, and I don’t know what to do with it.
Instinct has me wanting to run a fucking mile, bad habits so engrained they’ve become my entire personality.
But I don’t move, neither does he, and we find a new game of chicken to play as his voice wraps around me again.
“That’s some pertinent information for a business you don’t have much to do with.”
I shrug. “I don’t pull pints that often. Never said I didn’t pay attention.”
“When did the kitchen last open?”
“Last autumn.”
“Why did it close?”
“I told you. Chefs don’t stay.”
It’s a half-truth and unnecessary. But I’m curious. I want to test Sol’s theory with something benign, just because, even though every instinct I have about this man tells me it’s accurate.
Mal’s brought a mug to the table.
Coffee, undrunk and cold.
I wonder if he takes it like Jack, dark and strong, no sugar. Because he’s so used to being stuck on operations without milk he’s long forgotten about it. I slide my hand into my pocket and find the object there and wonder if the coffee’s decaf, like it needs to be—for Jack and for him.
Mal tilts his head, as if he’s privy to every thought rolling through my brain. “Why did the last one leave?”
The last chef.
We’re talking about chefs.
Not the organ in Mal’s chest where my attention has drifted unbidden.
Could be worse.
“She fell in love with Sol.”
“And he wasn’t interested?”
“He didn’t notice.”
No surprise lights Mal’s face. He just nods again, as if it makes sense, and I remember he’s known Sol a lifetime longer than I have. “What about you?”
“I’m not in love with Sol.”
“Not what I meant, Skylar.”
He utters my name in the same moment I realise my back is no longer to the wall.
That my elbows are on the table and our knees are pressed together hard enough a shared heartbeat thuds through our limbs.
Mine or his, it doesn’t matter. It bothers me more how normal it feels to touch him.
He’s Jack’s brother. My housemate. As of today, we share a bathroom and a bedroom wall.
But he’s still a stranger, and this…whatever it is, it feels more intimate than any encounter I’ve had in a while, and I don’t know what to do with that either.
I cycle back to the words that preceded my name.
Not what I meant…
Alarms flare. I need to get away from this conversation. Away from him. He’s too close and it has nothing to do with his leg that now feels welded to mine. Mal’s stare is already shrewd, but it deepens as he holds my gaze, and I feel stripped again, like I did when I walked into the room.
Run .
That bad habit again, even if it’s rarely literal. But he’s caught me at a weak moment, the weakest, perhaps, that I’ve been in a long time, and I’m too slow. He speaks again before I can extract myself and his words snare me like a fish in one of Sol’s nets.
“What’s with the white food?”
Ice slithers through me. I detach my knee from his without conscious thought and the distance I didn’t reclaim in time springs up between us like a black void, shadows curling around me, yanking me clear from him.
It shocks me every time, how fast the devil in me moves to protect itself.
In my head, I’m halfway out of my seat, but I make myself stay, forcing bland calm into my features as panic threatens the breakfast I’m trying so hard to keep in my body.
The weird breakfast I’d been a fucking fool to think he wouldn’t notice.
“What do you care what I eat?”
Mal’s lips twitch, but I don’t get the feeling he’s fighting a smile. A pause stretches out. Then he shrugs. “I don’t care.”
I nod. “All right then.”
“Is it?”
No. Nothing ever is. But if he doesn’t give a shit about me, it’s easier to not give a shit about him.
I let myself rise and draw my hand from my pocket. Toss the pill bottle I fished from the bathroom bin in his face, unsurprised that he snaps it from the air long before it hits him. “Don’t throw stones, Mal. You might find yours are bigger than mine.”