Chapter Seventy-Eight
Seventy-Eight
Whiskey
It was Caleb’s idea and his choice of place. I’m here at 6.58 p.m., because being late is apparently impossible for me. By 7.17 p.m., he’s still not here.
I pick up my bag, about to leave, having eaten three different flavours of ice cream because Lenny – AKA Halloon – has a business to run and I’m not going to sit at a table and sip a Coke, when I see Caleb coming towards me, lurching from side to side.
There’s no glancing away now, he stares at me through half-open eyes, and I see straight away that he’s drunk.
He looks as if he’s about to bump into the booth. Exhaling dramatically, I get up and push him towards one of the red plastic benches. He nearly falls clean off, but I manage to shunt him into the middle of it.
He blows me a kiss.
‘I bumped into Joshua at the Merry Maid. He insisted we shoot a few whiskeys.’
‘You’ve been drinking with Joshua?’ I say, frankly amazed at this development, since I had the distinct impression that they didn’t even like each other.
‘Yeah, he suddenly decided he needed to be my best friend.’
‘Why?’
Is this some sort of macho thing?
‘Oh, and he says to tell you that he didn’t mean to call you “tortoise”. That was an accident.’
Why would Joshua bring that up with Caleb?’
‘Yeah, I can totally see how easily an accident like that could happen; I call people tortoises all the time.’
‘It was an autocorrect fail. He was trying to call you “gorgeous”.’
‘Oh,’ I say. This has genuinely never occurred to me.
‘And he said to tell you that when he saw you in those white shorts the other day, and texted “great hams” he meant “great gams”.’
That had also puzzled me, but I hadn’t enquired further. Perhaps my bemused silence is the reason Joshua hasn’t asked me out yet.
‘The man needs reading glasses,’ he says, slurring. ‘But he won’t wear them.’
‘So, you and Joshua are drinking buddies now?’ I say.
‘I only had a few drinks. I’m sober,’ Caleb says. ‘Icily, icily sober.’
‘Give me a break,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘You’re pissed as a fart.’
‘I’m not,’ he says, resting his forehead on the table, as if that’s a normal thing to do to prove sobriety.
I can see two members of staff looking over at us and saying something about Caleb, probably wondering how long it’ll be before they have to haul him out of here.
My main thought is that I really hope he doesn’t puke.
He closes his eyes and mumbles, ‘I’ll take a vanilla, thanks.’
‘Why would anyone order vanilla when there are a hundred other flavours on the menu?’ I say. ‘Anyway, you are not eating anything because you’re just going to throw it up. You should drink coffee.’
‘Coffee is caffeinated, brown poison. Why is everyone so obsessed with the caffeinated,brownpoison?’
I’ve noticed this about him. He never drinks coffee. He’s pretty much the opposite of Scotty, and Max.
‘Be brave. Take it like medicine,’ I say.
‘Tea is my drink, and after seven o’clock, cocoa.’
‘Both also brown,’ I point out. ‘And caffeinated.’
‘There’s no caffeine in hot chocolate,’ he says, slurring again.
‘There’s caffeine in the cocoa bean, so if your evening cocoa is made from cocoa powder, there’s caffeine in it.’
I’ve gone back into ‘correcting mode’, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
‘I’m googling it.’
He goes quiet as he reads the first results.
‘Damn, you’re right.’
I preen. ‘Told you so.’
‘Tea has antioxidants,’ he says.
He’s holding up his index finger, but he looks confused, as if he’s forgotten why he’s doing that.
I pull out my wallet to see if I have enough cash left to buy him a double espresso, but he’s out of his chair and weaving towards the counter, asking for a triple scoop of vanilla with blue sprinkles. He catches his trainer on the corner of a tall stool and stumbles. I see him lunge for the counter but his hand misses and he knocks over a Loor leaflet display, the papers fanning out all over the floor tiles.
Throughout all of this, Caleb is smiling, but the counter staff – a teenage boy and a woman in her twenties – look like they want to drown him in a vat of Chunky Monkey.
Halloon emerges from a back room, takes one glance at us, and says, ‘Lundy Island, your man needs to leave.’
‘Oh, come on, it’s some leaflets,’ I say. ‘I’ll pick them up. And he isn’t my man,’ I say. ‘He’s my neighbour.’
‘Yeah, she’s another man’s tortoise. And it’s LINDY, not Lundy,’ Caleb says pedantically, but what with his slurring, both words sound exactly the same.
‘Go before he chunders,’ Halloon says, handing me a paper cup of water.
We sit outside on a wooden bench as the drizzle comes down and Caleb turns to me and looks into my eyes.
‘So… do you wanna do this thing?’ he says.
‘What? Eat ice cream?’
He’s staring at me, waiting for an answer.
‘Yes, if we can find somewhere that won’t chuck you out.’
‘Not that,’ he murmurs, getting quiet all of a sudden, getting serious.
‘What are you saying? I don’t understand you, Caleb.’
He runs his fingers through his hair and makes a dramatic ‘aaargh’ noise.
‘Jesus, I’m sorry,’ he says.
‘For what?’
‘Everything. I’ve been a dickhead since you got here. I’ve been going through some stuff, and it hasn’t brought out the best in me.’
‘I haven’t exactly been having a jolly good time either,’ I say.
‘I know.’
‘I’m a failure who’s messed up her whole life – I don’t have a career or any real plan to get one; I’m still just drifting. Down even deeper.’
He goes quiet for a solid two minutes, and I wonder if he’s done a Goodithea and is sleeping with his eyes open.
‘I don’t think you’ve messed up anything,’ he says, startling me. ‘Maybe at this point in your life, it’s good to drift a bit. You don’t need to have worked everything out at twenty-six. Maybe not even at any age. This is life, not Instagram. You have work that you like, a roof over your head, enough money to pay your way. Where’s the failure in that?’
Maybe he’s right, but I can’t make myself believe it.
‘Easy for you to say, living in your fancy villa.’
He laughs, a little bitterly. ‘I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing.’
He goes to pick up the paper cup of water that Halloon gave him, and accidentally knocks it to the ground.
‘Sorry, passion fingers,’ he says, as if in explanation.
‘What?’ I say.
‘As in: everything I touch, I fuck.’
There’s a charged moment between us, when I almost want to reach out and touch him, whatever that leads to, but I can’t. We share another moment of intense eye contact, and for a second, I think he might be about to lean in and kiss me.
Then his phone rings and he looks at the screen.
‘I have to take this, but I’m sorry, Lindy. I really am.’
‘No reason to apologise to me,’ I say. ‘We’re neighbours. That’s it.’
He looks stricken, but answers his phone anyway, and walks towards the twilight beach.