28. Bash
28
BASH
It was at times like these when Bash remembered what it was like to sit around a dinner table as a family. He didn’t get that kind of thing in his house except for when his friends were there. And he missed it – the simplicity.
Like when they were young, it was his and Matt’s jobs to set the silverware and crockery on the decorated dinner table. Bash laid down the red placemats whilst Matt followed with the plates. They took their time. The more they stayed out of the organised operation that was the kitchen, the better.
“Did I hear some arguing coming from your side of the house last night?” Matt asked quietly.
Bash passed a glance over his shoulder. “It wasn’t an argument. Faye found out about an offer I’ve had to go and work for an American team.”
The shuffling stopped.
“What offer?” Matt already sounded angered. Now that one cat was out of the bag, Bash might as well let them all go.
“Don’t get mad at me for not telling you?”
“Can’t promise I won’t. ”
Bash didn’t go into all of the details as they continued circling the table, manoeuvring around the high backed chairs.
“But Faye actually is moving away?” Another plate softly settled on a red, faux-leather placemat.
“Seems so.” Bash had tried not to think about it today, because every time he did, his heart hurt.
She’d pulled him aside earlier and apologised again for everything last night; her reactions, her emotion. She was still overly concerned for his phone’s wellbeing.
“And you’re … upset?”
“Of course I’m upset.” Bash gathered up a pile of cutlery from the sideboard to place with the settings. “She didn’t tell me, which, hypocritical , I know, since I didn’t tell her about my offer either. But mine has fallen dead which is what I wanted and she’s actually going away.”
He was happy for Faye. She worked so hard and she deserved the opportunity to expand her bakery. But why Manchester? Why so far from London, from her family, her friends? From him …
Matt had gone too silent. The kind of silence Bash imagined his brother held right before delivering bad news to a patient.
“Will you say something ?”
Matt sighed. “Do you want my opinion?”
“Sure.” Bash braced himself for god knows what was coming.
“This is the first moment in a decade where you’ve had a blip in your friendship?”
He nodded, listening as he lay down more cutlery.
“So you’ve hit a bump in the road. Do you not trust her anymore?”
“I trust Faye with my life.” His heart too.
He’d loved that for the last few days, the first and only thing he saw when he woke up, was her. Dreaming it could be that way for the rest of his life.
“Look, I know that there are feelings involved here,” Matt said. “Certain five-foot-five reasons why you wouldn’t want to leave. But … all I’m wondering is if perhaps you’ve become codependent on that five-foot-five reason.”
Codependent?
Bash frowned. “I exist outside of my friendship with—” Matt’s brow slowly rose in contradiction and he huffed with a tilt of his head. “ … Matt. I’m a whole person. There isn’t anything missing from me. I?—”
He choked up as a wave of realisation crested.
There isn’t anything missing. It was the first time that thought had ever crossed his mind or lips - and it was right.
Maybe he should’ve been telling himself this all along.
Matt slowly began to smile. “No, there isn’t, Seb.”
Bash felt his heart beating in his chest. All of his longing for a wife and family because he thought that’s what he lacked in himself, weren’t missing pieces at all.
“What Faye and I have … it’s the extra that takes my life from good to amazing.”
“Which is great. But you’re in stagnant waters, Bash. You won’t move forwards and search for those extra things. You can’t go back ten years to act when you should’ve done. And you won’t risk the vulnerability that you open yourself up to to even try and grab what’s right in front of you.”
The reality check hit Bash straight in the chest; right in the tender spot beneath his sternum. By his soft expression, Matt knew exactly what he’d done. How long had he planned to say those things to his face?
Matt set down the last plate, placing him by Bash’s side. “I’m your brother, and I want for you to have everything in the world, but there’s only so much I can tell you to do before you need to act on it yourself.”
Reasons for holding back that Bash had never voiced before clouded his already juggling thoughts.
He inhaled, eyes squeezing shut. “I … can’t . And I can’t explain why. It’s like I’m scared that the answer I don’t want to hear will make me retreat after it comes. The gut-destroying feeling I lived with for so long of not being wanted anywhere growing up I know will come right back. And it won’t be her fault, it’ll be mine for still letting things from the past have a hold over me.”
Matt let him speak, listening to his feelings that didn’t match the festiveness around them.
“I barely survived that feeling back then, you know that,” Bash said. “I don’t think I can do it a second time. And now that she’s moving away … Faye won’t take a chance on what we have.” There was no sense in adding to Faye’s impending stress by taking that risk, as if she would even want to anyway.
“Have you spoken with Doctor Palmer about that recently?” Matt asked.
“I’ve not been low for a long time, Matt. I’m okay. You know I’d tell you if I wasn’t.”
“I believe you.”
“And I’ve been healthy, too, for years. My relationship with food is completely normal and healed.”
“Oh, I know, Bash. I wasn’t worried about that.”
“Then what are you trying to say? For once you’re not joking around and I need you to be my brother and help me, here. Because I don’t know what to do with all of” – Bash gestured around his chest – “ this , anymore.”
“The timing is never going to be right,” Matt said after giving himself a second to think. “You just have to tell her. And if she feels the same, which I really think that she does, then it's not going to matter whether you’re standing under glittering lights or some decrepit old tree in the rain when you do . If Faye wants to hear those words from you then it's not going to matter when or where or how, so long as you speak from in here—” He pressed his finger to Bash’s heart.
Bash’s eyes had gone wet. Ugh . When had he turned into such a mess? Where was a tissue when he needed one ?
“Uncle Bash?” Neither of them had noticed the nosy nelly that’d crept in the corner. Maya hugged her stuffed elephant teddy that was falling apart against her. “You look sad.”
Despite the loud awakening his youngest niece had given him that morning, Bash couldn’t be annoyed at her big brown eyes. He scooped her up to sit on his hip.
“I’m not sad, sweetheart.” The palm of her hand didn’t even cover half of his stubbly cheek when she touched him.
“But you’re crying,” Maya said sweetly as she played with the coarse hairs on his jaw.
Damn it, don’t sniffle. Bash had never been too good at hiding his emotions, so he didn’t try to. Maya was allowed to see the men in her life be vulnerable.
“Because Papa has been helping me decide something that I need to do.”
“Oh. Okay.” The girl had no idea what he was going on about, but she smiled like she did.
The dining room was decorated with festive opulence, candles shaped like spruce trees and a twinkling winter garland down the centre of the table. Serving bowls and jugs of sauces squeezed into every available space on the chequered runner cloth. Pieces of cardboard in neat little piles and the lingering smoky scent of popped Christmas crackers. Arthur’s paper crown sat askew and Imara’s, being far too big for her, had fallen around her neck.
The Christmas dinner itself had been lovely … until Uncle Mortimer opened his mouth, insisting he sat at one head of the table, unfortunately right next to Bash.
“You could’ve done this beef a little better, Shelly.”
Oh, and after refusing turkey and insisting upon a beef wellington, which three of the nine around the table could not eat for their religious rights, all he’d done was complain about one thing or another. First the wine was wrong for the meal that only he ate. Then the vegetables weren’t al dente enough for his taste. And now this.
Bash had had enough.
He put his cutlery down on his plate and leant to Faye. “Would you take the girls out? I don’t want them or you to hear this.”
“What are you doing?” she whispered, threads of worry working into her voice. This wasn’t usual for him, he knew.
“Finally standing up for this family.”
The main meal was nearly done anyway and both Maya and Imara had finished their smaller portions of turkey and roasted potatoes. They were across the table from Faye so Bash didn’t know how she would get them out with a smooth excuse. He just needed her to do it.
She must have read the frustration simmering in his eyes, because she placed her knife and fork down neatly at the edge of her almost empty plate and removed the napkin from her lap. Beyond her, Bash could see his mother’s jaw grinding.
“Girls?” Faye stood. “Why don’t you come and take the trifle out of the fridge with me? You can help me sprinkle the last bit of chocolate on top and tell me how much we need to put in everybody’s bowls.”
Both Maya and Imara’s ears perked up at the word “trifle.” They hadn’t needed to hear the rest of Faye’s sentence before pushing back their chairs.
As they left, the silence of the remaining diners felt far too loud against the festive jazz that quietly played.
“What’s all the dramatics about, boy?” For someone who wasn’t happy with his meal, Uncle Mortimer surely chewed it loudly.
Bash locked eyes with Matt opposite from him. There was no shake of his brother’s head, no look of warning in Matt’s eyes to put him off from doing this .
His hands were steady, pressed flat against the table as he sneered, “Ever since you arrived here you have offended all of us.”
Mortimer froze, his boiling glare raising through his brow.
“You ignore Matt and Saira completely,” Bash continued. “You looked Faye over like she was a prize for you to win. Then you insulted my mother and decided to ruin her cake by not asking if you could eat it first. You refused to come along with us when you were invited, even though you turned up here uninvited. And now you insult the dinner you did nothing to contribute to. I don’t care what you say about me, you don’t get to insult this family any more.”
When Bash was done, his breaths were ragged, chest tight and rising in a hot flush underneath his shirt and jumper. The chair beneath him was suddenly too solid, and the bulging vein in his forehead gave him a headache.
Fuck, he’d never done anything like that in his life. And it felt so damn good.
The table slammed into deafening silence. Given the lack of tinkling of crockery, everyone had stopped eating. Bash didn’t look down the table to see if his parents were horrified or proud. Arthur was too gentle to have ever said such a thing like that and Michèle was always too concerned with keeping the peace.
And here he was, making a scene.
What a way to ruin Christmas.
Mortimer’s hands formed fists around his cutlery, his wrinkled mouth curling around his comeback. “You dare to speak to me that way?” The fire flaring in his eyes could scorch track marks into Bash’s face.
His back teeth ground down. “If you had ever given me reason to respect you more, I might not have.”
Mortimer pressed his lips together.
“Sébastien is right.”
Bash’s head spun to where his father stood up, face calm and betraying nothing except for disappointment as he looked down the length of the table.
Arthur released a deep breath that definitely finally let go of frustration that had gathered and festered for years. “I should have said something a long time ago to you, Morty,” he said. “You are my only brother and I haven’t wanted to lose you, but that will happen if you continue to act towards us as you do.”
Bash couldn’t quite believe what he’d heard.
“I suppose that this is how you all feel,” Mortimer mused, swilling his wine around and around dangerously close to letting it spill upon the pristine cream tablecloth.
No one shied away from Mortimer’s gaze. Between them all, serving bowls still held the leftovers of their dinner, though Bash had lost his appetite.
“You have never once spoken to me kindly,” Saira said, her chin high. Matt’s hand slipped into hers though not to hold her back. “I’ve tolerated enough because I did not want to fight with the rest of this wonderful family who’ve welcomed me.”
For years Saira had taken a brunt of Mortimer’s bullishness, and it sickened Bash to think of the reasons why – things that only ever mattered to the brute at the end of the table. As ever, Mortimer hadn’t been outlandish with his comments. They were subtle digs and word choices which others might easily miss that’d allowed him to get away with it for so long. The fucking racist . Add in misogynistic, and Mortimer was the definition of problematic.
But no more.
Matt looked to Mortimer, next. “I stand with my wife, and my brother. And my mother too. I’ve never wanted the girls to be around your attitude and they won’t be unless it changes.”
“Hm.” Mortimer pulled back his shoulders. It didn’t look like he was going to change at all, but Bash had pride glittering in his veins for his brother. “And you, Shelly?”
Michèle gracefully rose from her seat. Inhaling, Bash held that breath. His mother wasn’t a particularly tall woman, but at that moment she was the tallest in the room. Centred.
“There is nothing that I need to say.” Her steady voice and unyielding eyes said it all. Bash wanted to punch his fist in the air but kept it firmly pressed against the table instead.
The jazz still playing quietly in the background did nothing to help the air about to crack with whatever came from Mortimer next.
“Well then, if you are all quite done with blaming me … ”
“How about dessert in the living room?” Michèle shut him down, attention moving between her sons and Saira. “The girls already chose what game they want to play, earlier.”
Matt stood and, hand-in-hand, brought Saira up with him, holding out her chair. “Dessert sounds good, Maman .”
One by one the dining room emptied. Arthur lingered, and Bash suspected there was more his father wanted to say without the rest of them to overhear. He hoped this sort of thing wouldn't ever happen between him and Matt, but if it did, he’d want privacy too.
Bash pushed his chair back and dropped his cloth napkin onto the table, giving Mortimer one last look.
“Enjoy your dessert. I think it’ll taste rather just to me.”
His gaze stayed long enough to catch the furious flare of his uncle’s nose.
In the kitchen, Faye had set up a production line of bowls and spoons, all leading towards the one big bowl of trifle at the end.
As though she’d known Bash was there, she looked up and found his eyes straight away. She gave him a questioning thumbs up and he found the effort to shallowly smile.
He didn’t expect to feel so much guilt for speaking up to Mortimer, though the man had had it coming for years. Doing so unsettled the dinner sitting in his stomach, not because what he’d done was wrong, but because the adrenaline of it wasn’t wearing off. Handling difficult clients was a weekly occurrence for him, but as Maya a nd Imara wandered around handing out bowls of trifle, this Bash couldn’t seem to shake.
He’d done the right thing. None of his family here would blame him for calling out Mortimer on his shit.
Bash didn’t say much of anything in the lull of conversation that picked up, and he dodged more of Faye’s looks too. Michèle had prepared such an amazing meal and all he’d had to do was open his mouth to ruin it.
What was supposed to be a meal in celebration had turned into a depressing shitshow. What was Faye going to think of him?
Arthur slipped into the kitchen without saying a word regarding the shuffling in the hallway. Bash caught Faye’s concerned eye but it was his father who he moved to be beside.
“Dad, I’m?—”
“Don’t ever apologise for saying what you feel.”
Bash closed his mouth.
“I should have set a better example and better boundaries on behalf of this family a lot earlier. You did it for me just now and I am proud of you.” His father’s hand that aged right before Bash’s eyes cupped his cheek and gently patted. The sad smile on Arthur’s face made his eyes sting.
“We have agreed to talk about Morty’s behaviour in the new year, when tensions have settled,” Arthur added.
Bash finally breathed.