9. Skylar
Jack doesn’t do well without his best friend.
When we first came here, I thought I’d be enough when Sol was gone. That I possessed the innate calm Jack often needs from someone else. It wasn’t long before we both figured out I didn’t.
And I still don’t, as I make him repeat himself despite the worried frown creasing his face. The kind of frown that leads to all manner of stress and anxiety he doesn’t deserve.
“Mal went out with Sol again.” Hesitance drags his speech. “I think…”
Doubting himself, he glances to the ocean. The rough ocean. It’s dusk and summer has deserted our tiny slice of the world for the day. Sol’s pride and joy—the Sirona —is nowhere in sight, and it won’t be for a while with the surf as high as it is tonight.
A fact not lost on Jack as his worry deepens. “Mal used to get sick on the boats.”
“When he was a kid?”
“Yeah.”
I move closer to Jack and swipe a few empty glasses from the picnic table he’s paused beside. The pub is rowdy as ever, but save a few smokers, the wind chill keeps the garden quiet. For the most part, we’re alone. “He’s been a paratrooper since. I’m sure he’s over it.”
“Hmm? Aye. Maybe.” Jack massages his left hand, his tell when he’s nervous, and it’s my fault.
I make an effort to smooth whatever terror of an expression I’ve brought home from a hellish nightshift, a twelve-hour nightmare that rolled over into an endless barrage of debriefs I only attended to not have to revisit the horrors of a four-car pileup another day.
It’s what I do with shitty things. Burn them.
Bury them. Shame some things never die. “Did you eat yet?”
It’s such a rare question from me that Jack blinks, yanked away from wherever his thoughts had gone. Confused still, but with less fear. “No. Why?”
“Let’s go have dinner.”
I take his elbow and steer him inside, letting go once we’re out of the wind and under the glare of the locals. The bar staff manage the crowd, the densely packed, mostly male bodies, the scent of stagnant sea water and beer thick in the air.
There aren’t many women, and I give the few who do frequent this side of the pub a wide berth to stop them trying to pinch my cheeks and touch my hair. I can handle it at work. Here, it’s a hard no.
I reach the bar before Jack and duck behind it, slipping through the door without acknowledging the bar staff.
Beer tempts me, but a gremlin roils in my gut, one that tries to tug me towards the cellar gym, and I need my wits about me to defeat it.
Especially if I want to survive dinner with Jack without making him feel worse than I already have.
Upstairs, I examine the contents of the fridge.
Someone’s shopped. Not me. Definitely not Mal.
He keeps the bathroom spotlessly clean, and the rest of the flat devoid of any sign of him.
The only proof he lives here is the money he dropped in the grocery account last week, a tangent that zones me out from putting food on Jack’s plate.
Chicken. I can cook that.
I snag the pack and shut the fridge. Find some rice.
Still all white, though.
Fuck.
Jack appears behind me, as quiet as Mal, but bigger, like the men my entire life revolved around before he ever knew me. Inked and unshaven, bleeding masculinity. It took me a while to make peace with his kind heart.
Mal has a kind heart too. I see it in how he watches at his brother. How he darts to help him before even Jack knows he needs it. But it’s cracked and burned too, like mine. I see that too, I just don’t know why I can’t stop looking.
Jack reaches around me and shuts the cupboard. “Sit down. I’ll do it.”
“You’re working.”
“So have you been for the last three nights.”
I know that tone. It’s the one Jack doesn’t believe he possesses anymore.
But he’s wrong.
Despite the support he needs, Jack takes care of us all, and I know a command when I hear one, and I’m happy— relieved —to obey.
I fall into the same place at the table I’ve occupied since Mal arrived. Not on purpose, just habit. A new one. And it’s not my worst, so I’ve let it stick.
If Jack’s noticed, he’s kept it to himself. Sol won’t when he does, but Sol’s not here.
Neither’s Mal .
I need a shower. To clear my head as much as wash away the long shift.
But the bathroom smells like Mal and I’m not in the mood.
I’m annoyed , which is fucking ridiculous.
What do I care if he’s developed a sudden interest in crab pots and mackerel nets?
Maybe if the timing was different, I wouldn’t.
But the questions he asked me in the cellar rattle my brain, and I fucking know he doesn’t give a shit about fish.
Jack slides a plate of chicken and rice in front of me.
I’ve been distracted enough to miss him cooking up an actual meal.
Too broody to fold my face into an expression of gratitude.
But he’s used to me. He squeezes my shoulder and goes back to the counter for his own plate and the salad that lets me know it was Sol who did the shopping.
He puts the bowl on the table.
I don’t look at it.
Neither does he, as he tosses some on his plate. And then he eats like Mal does. Without seeming to notice or care what it is. Without stopping to check every forkful before he puts it in his mouth.
I’m jealous, truly. Jack knows how to cook for me. How to put it on the plate without the chicken and rice touching—how to tell when that mood is on me. And he doesn’t ask what’s different about tonight, when I ate Sol’s pasta just fine four days ago.
He eats and stays quiet, his gaze flicking between the window and the door that leads to the landing, and I know he’s not fretting about the pub. He’s fretting about Sol, about Mal, because I put the idea in his head, and now I have to whittle it out before he gets upset.
“What’s got your brother so interested in fishing with Sol?”
Jack keeps his focus on the window. “I don’t know. Maybe he wants to be a fisherman.”
“How likely is that?”
“I already told you he pukes on boats.”
“Used to.”
Jack sighs. “If you say so. We haven’t spent much time together in the past decade.”
“You never crossed paths on operations?”
“Only once or twice. He was in a different squadron.”
“Because you’re brothers?”
“Aye. And he’s a dickhead, so D Squadron suited him just fine.” A faint smile tugs Jack’s lips. “That lot are fucking hooligans. Ramsey can tell you that.”
I haven’t seen Marc in a while. Not to talk to anyway. But that’s not really the point of the conversation, so I leave it unsaid and wait for Jack to figure out what he wants to say next, while he waits for me to finish my dinner.
His damaged brain proves faster than my resilience. “I think he’s bored.”
“Mal?”
Jack nods. “We were both paras, but he was way more into it than me. I just wanted to be the best at something and I didn’t fancy the marines. Mal got hooked on the jump. Even on leave he’d be chucking himself out of planes for the fun of it.”
“Adrenaline junkie?”
“It’s more than that.” Jack’s frown turns wistful. “There’s so much freedom in the air, even the noise is liberating. Then it turns quiet and that’s a different magic. I’ve never asked him which part he likes best.”
“What part do you like?” I ask, even though I know the answer.
“The quiet,” Jack confirms. “Like heaven, even on your way to fucking hell.”
I love that he’s shared that without worrying he can’t remember. I hate that the little snippets I’ve learned about Mal are nowhere near enough.
Enough rice remains on my plate to haunt me.
Jack gets up and fills me a glass of water. Sets it down without saying a word and drifts to the window, scanning the night sky for the lights of Sol’s boat. “I wish the old lighthouse was still live.”
“Sol can navigate this coast with his eyes shut.”
“I know.”
“Are you worried about the weather? It’s not a storm. Just wind.”
Worry tightens Jack’s gaze. “Those waves are big.”
“He’s sailed through bigger with a smile on his face.”
“It only takes one—it’s my worst fucking nightmare.”
“Jack, he’s okay. I’ll try his phone in a bit. When he’s back in range. Find out where he’s at.”
Jack doesn’t have a phone of his own. It’s times like these I wish he did.
That his brain didn’t short-circuit at the mere thought of too much time squinting at a screen.
I don’t want to track Sol all the way home.
I want to finish this fucking rice, take a shower, and sleep before the gym goblin gets the best of me.
But I love Jack and I owe it to him to put this right. I force the rice down, drink the water, and cement myself to my seat while I poke at my phone to see if Sol has been online in the past few hours.
He hasn’t.
I call him and it doesn’t connect.
Jack gnaws his bottom lip. “Try Mal.”
“I don’t have your brother’s number.”
“I’ll get it.”
He’s out of the room before I can speak, and returns with the palm-sized notebook he keeps all his important shit in.
I flick through the pages, finding the emergency contact information and digits newly scrawled beneath my fucking name. We’re grouped together, like a package. Like it’s impossible to think of one of us without the other.
At least, it seems that way to me.
I tap Mal’s number into my phone, resenting every digit. Messaging would suit me most, but I can tell by Jack’s face he wants me to call.
Fuck my life.
I do it. But only because I love him. Jack, not Mal. And the call connects, ringing, both in my ear and somewhere else.
Somewhere close.
I rise and follow the sound out of the kitchen and into the hall, all the way to Mal’s room where his phone sits on the windowsill by the open fucking window, my number lighting up the screen with no way of me taking it back.
Irritation flares. I don’t want my number in his phone. Not because I don’t want him to call me, but because I know he never will. Why would he? We’re not friends. We’re barely housemates given how often I see him. And I don’t want my number in his phone.
I don’t want to puke my dinner up either, but it happens the moment Jack goes back downstairs.
It’s the first time in a while, and I hate the raw feeling it leaves behind.
The sense of failure that’s more profound than not eating in the first place.
Because it can’t be fixed. Not now, or in that terminal place of later.
It’s done. It’s gone. And the cycle starts again. Forever and always, it starts again.
I take refuge in the shower, for once not hiding from the minimal signs Mal lives here too. His toothbrush in a glass. That cedar-wood soap. The way he hangs the towels to dry with perfect angles.
His running shoes are in here too—again, tucked in the corner.
Does he come in here the second he gets back?
I haven’t been around enough to know, but I find myself wishing I did.
Wishing I knew everything that made him tick, all the while accepting he’s the kind of man no one will ever know everything about.
The kind that can turn love to hate with a few taps on a cracked phone screen.
I shut off the shower, dripping water the only sound in the room, save the forlorn rumble in my belly.
Eat something.
No. Not tonight. The fresh start comes tomorrow. For now, there’s just this—there’s just me —and the company is shit.
I need music.
The sanctuary of my bedroom.
After nineteen hours in A&E, I need quiet .
It’s perverse that music helps with that, but it’s how I’m wired. Maybe because I was born into carnage and metal, and I still crave that chaos. Still find comfort in nasty bass and violent guitars, even though it holds some of my worst and best memories.
My AirPods are in my work bag. I dig them out, throw some sweats on, and absolutely do not glance into Mal’s empty room as I venture out for water to choke down some supplements.
The pills fester in my hollow stomach. I go back to my room and find myself at my window, scanning the frothy tempest the ocean has become tonight.
Still no Sol.
No Mal.
I should check on Jack.
I want to.
But wherever his head is at right now, he’ll spot the spiral in mine and I can’t placate us both.
Sleep .
Right. Not happening. I feel as wired as Mal the other night, his brain firing every synapse at once, a thousand thoughts a minute. I don’t know how my presence made it better. We’re abrasive when we’re together. When we’re not touching . And then?
Fuck.
I don’t need those thoughts.
I don’t want them.
We’re never going to happen.
So where’s the harm in thinking about it?
In too many places to contemplate when the real question is where the hell is Mal?
I swipe my phone screen, checking Sol’s online status. Calling him again. No luck, but it’s not that late. It’s not that rough.
They’ll be okay.
But still I watch the waves, locked on the horizon, caught between a deeper kind of worry I’ve never felt before and my spasming gut, Porth Luck’s history of freak storms and giant waves rolling through my brain.
The empty ocean taunts me.
I shut the blinds and lie on my bed, AirPods jammed in my ears, Sleep Token blasting my brain.
It’s dark, the way I like it, but for the first time in forever—since Jack last had a major seizure—I leave my door open, gaze fixed on the moonlight flooding in from Mal’s window, on high alert for shadows in the hallway.
Him.
Jack.
Sol.
It’s late when Jack comes upstairs alone and goes to bed.
He always leaves his door open if Sol’s not home.
I get up an hour later to check on him. He’s asleep, his rugged face folded into the same smooth lines as when I’d found him in a coma in Birmingham, not a mark on him, save the taped gash on his temple.
The same smooth lines I saw on Mal’s face a few nights ago.
But I don’t want to scratch my fingers through the scruff on Jack’s jaw. I don’t want to kiss him. I don’t want to press my face to his neck and breathe. I want Mal . And somehow his prolonged absence has that want hooking sharper claws into me.
It’s gone midnight.
Eat.
It’s the last thing I feel like doing. But I can’t regress to where I was the night I met Mal. It’ll make it too real—that he saw me like that. Empty. Screaming. Even if I never made a fucking sound.
In the kitchen, I eat protein bars and yoghurt in the dark. Drink more water. Consider the white ice cream desserts Sol buys when he’s worried about me. There’s a fresh one, which means where I was a few weeks ago didn’t pass him by.
I hate that as much as I love him.
And I don’t eat the ice cream.
But the rest of it stays down and I go back to bed. Back to my angsty playlist and my open door. To the cold as the temperature drops. I have no idea what time it is when a shadow that isn’t Sol finally darkens the hallway.