17. Morgan
Chapter 17
Morgan
“T his feels like a bit of an escalation from swimming,” I said to Jack as he unloaded the kayaks. I was looking at the murky water and trying to imagine myself getting anywhere near it. At least my cheap sunglasses gave it a bit of a blue tint, making it look less horrible than normal.
Jack dragged the kayaks down to the water, beached them on the pebbly bottom, and walked back over to me. “What are you afraid of, exactly?” he asked. I leaned back against the side of the Defender.
“Well, let’s see,” I said, holding up my hand and counting off my perfectly reasonable fears on my fingers. “There could be large debris in there, like a rusty old bicycle, and I could get scratched and contract tetanus. I could fall out and hit my head on said debris lurking under the surface. I could fall out and get dragged under by the river’s current and drown. I could get swept out to sea because I can’t make it to the side. I could knock myself out with an oar and drown. And look at that”—I wiggled my now-five raised fingers at him—“I’m all out of fingers.”
He wasn’t laughing at me, but there was definitely a hint of mockery in his mirthful smirk. “Why are you the only one meeting an untimely end in all of these scenarios?”
“Because you do shit like this all the time,” I said, gesturing to the kayaks behind him. “I’ve got ineptitude on my side.”
“I’ll have you know, I haven’t used this kind of kayak since I was a kid,” he said.
“I’m sorry, is that supposed to make me feel better?!”
Now he was laughing at me, a full-bodied, head-back laugh that carried on the wind towards the river. I was certain people miles downstream could hear him.
“You’ll be fine,” Jack said, tentatively reaching out to place one hand on the car just above my shoulder. The proximity this created caught me off guard, and I swear my whole body responded to the way he was suddenly hulking over me. I desperately tried to regulate my breathing and tried to remember what I’d had for breakfast, and if my breath would smell.
“First of all,” he said, “there probably is debris, but people swim and paddle in this river every day. It’s likely at the bottom in the middle. Which you won’t find, because it’s a lot deeper than the one we were in before. And you won’t get pulled down, because that’s not how river currents work without white water, which you won’t be encountering today. And you won’t wash out to sea, because there’s like a hundred miles of river between here and the Severn, and I promise I would rescue you at some point before then.” He smiled endearingly at that last point, the epitome of believability. Dammit, I was going to get in that awful water, wasn’t I?
I tried to maintain my pouty expression, but it was a real effort. I could feel the weight of Jack’s presence as if he were pressed up against me. It wasn’t so much claustrophobic as just close. Really close. Close enough, in fact, that if I just lifted slightly onto my toes, this outing might take a very different turn.
“Fine,” I relented, and Jack smiled victoriously.
“Good, now, let’s go,” he said, pushing away suddenly.
We put our phones in the dry bag, grabbed the oars – sorry, paddles , he’d insisted – from the boot and waded into the water once more. I followed after him, stopping every couple of strides to shake pebbles from the riverbed out of my sandals. Jack waited for me to catch up, then pointed to the empty kayak. I gave him one last reluctant look, then obediently pulled myself into the hard green plastic, though not without some manoeuvring I was sure had been thoroughly unflattering. Once I was situated, Jack handed me the paddle, then flipped it for me since I was apparently holding it the wrong way around.
“Okay, now what?” I asked, looking around, finding Jack just staring at me from the back of my kayak. “Which way?”
He shook his head, a strange expression on his face as he pushed me further into the middle of the river, trailing his own kayak behind him. Was he annoyed with me for being so inept? No, that wouldn’t have been like Jack. So why was he frowning? What was that look on his face? He looked at me almost … almost apologetically.
“I’m so sorry, Morgan,” he said, sounding almost tortured, as his hand reached under my kayak. “It’s a safety thing. You need to know how. My dad did the same to me when he first taught me…”
The penny dropped when it was way too late.
“Jack, nonononoNO— Jack!!!”
By the time I shrieked his name the second time, I was already tipping into the water, flailing to hold onto the sides even as my arm and then face made contact with the surface.
Somehow my hand stayed gripped on the paddle as I spluttered quickly to the surface. It was actually helping me float a bit, thankfully. I used my free hand to clear my eyes, realising with horror that I was floating quite quickly down the river. I swivelled my head left and right and saw my kayak floating just a couple of feet behind me, upside down. I reached back and clung to its side. I was a perfectly fine swimmer, at least by local lido standards, but I didn’t want to get separated from the kayak, and holding onto it allowed me to lift my legs, bringing my knees to my chest, avoiding all the hypothetical debris.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of bright orange – Jack’s kayak. I snapped my head to the side to see him paddling towards me, then overtaking me, then spinning around to face me so he was floating down the river backwards. He dipped his paddle expertly on either side, keeping himself perfectly aligned with me.
“What the actual fuck, Jack!” I spluttered.
“I’m so sorry,” he said again, and from what I could see of his face through my hair, which had matted down across my field of vision, he did look rather guilty, or at least concerned.
“Fat lot of good that’s doing me,” I said. “A little help here?”
“You’ve gotta be able to get yourself back up,” he said. “Flip the kayak first.”
I actually screamed out loud in frustration, but I did what he told me, shifting the paddle into the hand holding the side of the kayak so I could reach the other one over, grasping for the other side. I had to haul myself up a couple of times, which was difficult whilst managing the paddle, but eventually my hand caught the opposite edge, and I cried out “Yes!” as my momentum pulled the kayak over easily. I nearly lost hold of the paddle, but I managed to grab it and haul it up into the seat.
“What now?” I shouted to Jack as I examined the kayak, wondering how I would get back into it without any leverage. It had been hard enough when I’d had the riverbed to launch myself from.
“Really good, Morgan!” He sounded a bit like a summer camp counsellor looking after idiot children, and I vowed to exact vengeance just as soon as I got back up on the damned thing. “Just place your hands like you did to flip it, one on this side and one over the top onto the other. Then launch yourself kicking, and pull down with both hands at the same time so that your bottom arm goes straight and you’re laying stomach-down on the kayak.”
I tried to picture what he was telling me to do, and it took a moment for me to understand logistically how that was going to work. He started to talk again, but I held up a hand to shush him, and he complied. The least he could do was let me think. After all, apparently we had a hundred miles to deal with this.
Eventually it clicked in my mind, and it only took one try to salmon-flop up onto my kayak. Jack was yelling out instructions again, but I didn’t listen, instead just rolling backwards on the kayak so my bum was in the well, then sitting up with my feet hanging on either side until I could scoot into the right position. The paddle went briefly overboard, but helpfully it floated down the river at the same speed as me, so it was easy enough to rescue. I held it up the wrong way around again at first, but I remembered Jack telling me to make sure I could read the logo, so I flipped it before he could correct me.
“Well fucking done!” Jack called, and I looked up to see him pumping his paddle in the air excitedly.
“Fuck you!” I said, burying my paddles in the water over and over to try to catch him. He saw me coming and did the same, only he was paddling upstream towards me, so I overshot him and had to spin myself around, which took an embarrassingly long moment that resulted in a bit of an anticlimax to my charge.
“Wrong way,” he said over his shoulder as he passed me, giving me a taunting grin and raising his eyebrows repeatedly. So I dug deep and paddled after him, every ounce of me intending to send him overboard as soon as I got to him.
But by the time I caught up, which he’d clearly allowed me to do based on the virtually nonexistent paddling effort on his part, I was too tired to bother. We’d not only passed the spot where we’d put in, but we’d gone just as far on the other side. And kayaking, it turned out, was fucking hard . My shoulders felt like they were on fire, and not just from the hot sun beating down overhead.
“Can we please slow down?” I called, panting.
“Sure,” he called back, sounded much less strained than I did. “I want to make it to the island before we stop, so let’s pace ourselves.”
I rolled my eyes, understanding that he expressly meant that I should pace myself, but it actually was much easier when I let myself slow down.
And as my breathing eased and I started to feel less like I was dying, I was able to look around me properly and see just how much there was to enjoy. Yes, there was algae, and there were mosquitos, but there were also late-blooming rhododendron hanging over the water, as Jack informed me, and we even saw a pair of river otters bathing on the bank at one point. Jack even risked pulling his phone out of the dry bag for that one, saying it was rare to spot them during the day, and I didn’t blame him; I’d never seen one in person before, and they were even cuter than I’d imagined, flicking at their faces and at each other with their little paws.
After about forty minutes of paddling, just as my shoulders felt like they might give out, we passed through some old viaduct pillars before coming up to what looked like a narrow island in the middle of the river. Jack pulled ahead and paddled straight up onto an exposed bit of riverbed connecting the island to the bank on the right, and I copied the manoeuvre. I imagined it would normally be underwater, but with the dry weather we’d had it had been left exposed, making the island more of a weirdly shaped peninsula.
Satisfied the kayaks weren’t going anywhere, Jack marched over to the island and spread out the towel he’d brought, pulling two sandwiches out of the drybag. I dropped down next to him and accepted one as he held it out, but it was much heavier than the chicken and blue cheese baguette he’d made me last time.
“What is this monstrosity?” I asked, holding it up to Jack, who had already bitten into his.
“Ifainshub,” he said, his mouth full. I must have looked as clueless as I felt, as he made a big show of chewing and swallowing before answering again. “Italian sub.”
I opened the sandwich, which seemed to be a whole charcuterie board’s worth of meat, slices of pale white cheese, shredded lettuce, tomatoes, and some green pepper-looking things. I smelled it, and a sharp vinagery scent hit my nostrils, so strong that I reeled back. I thought about clarifying all the ingredients with Jack, but he looked so enamoured with his own sandwich that I couldn’t bring myself to question it. So I opened my mouth as wide as possible to take a bite – so wide that my jaw clicked – a necessary effort given the size of the sandwich.
At first, all I tasted was the tang of the vinaigrette and the peppers, and the crunch of the lettuce, and I began to question Jack’s sanity. But on the second bite, the meat and cheese joined the party, and it was a totally different story. It was sensational.
“Well you can’t get that in a meal deal,” I said, and I looked up at Jack, realising from the way his eyes were creased with laughter that I’d spoken with my own mouth full just like he had a moment ago. I mimicked his exaggerated chew-and-swallow routine and repeated myself.
“No you cannot,” he agreed. “I haven’t had one in years.”
“Why not?” I asked. “When did you last have it?”
“I don’t know,” he said, his grin drooping, looking down at the sandwich in his hands. “When I was in New York with Aria, I guess.”
Of course. I shook my head and laughed. “Stop trying to sound casual. We both know that breakup is why you haven’t had one since then.”
“Okay, fine,” he said. “So I haven’t had my favourite sandwich in years. Are you telling me there’s nothing from your friendship with Cara you won’t be able to do or have anymore because it’s too painful?”
“Of course there is,” I said. “But that’s because I miss her, and I wish she were here. If I were over her, if I didn’t want her in my life anymore, I don’t think there would be anything, no. Not after four years.”
It was all speculation; I’d never been in a proper relationship before, and I knew having a friend move away and breaking up with a long-term partner were worlds apart. But I could see him actually thinking about this.
“Do you want her back?”
He shook his head and grimaced; it didn’t look put on. “Hell no,” he said. “I don’t even really think about her anymore.”
I nodded. “So why don’t you eat Italian subs anymore? Why don’t you date? Or travel?”
“Because those things do make me think of her,” he admitted, looking away from me, “and I don’t like doing that.”
“Because you feel…” I prompted.
“I don’t know,” he groaned, crumpling his now-empty sandwich paper and dropping it on the ground between his legs. “I try not to look too closely at it.”
“Well, try now,” I insisted, half because he clearly needed this and half as payback for earlier. “Picture someone you really like asks you on a date. How does that make you feel?”
He looked back at me, and even though he was wearing his sunglasses, I felt like he was looking straight into my eyes, and my face went red in response.
“Anxious,” he said quietly.
“And what emotion makes us feel anxious?”
“Fear?”
“Bingo,” I said, touching one finger to my nose and pointing at him with the other hand.
He nodded as he processed what I’d said. “So you think I’ve lost my ability to do the things I want to do because I’m letting the fear stop me.”
I almost fell backwards with relief. Playing therapist was fucking exhausting. “Well done, Jack. Plus one thousand emotional XP for you.”
“You’re incorrigible,” he said as I laughed. I ate in silence for a moment.
“You know what the next step is, right?” I asked as I finished my own sandwich. He looked at me again, and I saw his shoulders drop.
“I’m not sure I want to know.”
“Exposure therapy, baby,” I said, admittedly a bit smug. “You’ve gotta do your version of what you’re making me do.”
“I’m hardly making you do this,” he said.
“You literally pushed me into the river,” I countered.
“Fair.”
“So, you and your ex,” I started, “you guys broke up what, four years ago? Where were you? Some far-flung tropical beach? Chucking coconuts at each other?”
“We were home, actually,” Jack said, looking down at his lap. “Or, at least, I was. We hadn’t been back in like a year, but we came for her dad’s birthday. I travelled home after the party, and she stayed in Kent where she’s from. We’d planned to spend the week with our separate families before flying out to Singapore. But once I was back, I couldn’t bring myself to leave.”
“Why not?” I knew I was being nosy, maybe pushing him a bit, but I couldn’t help myself.
He shrugged. “I mean, we both knew for ages that it was over. It just took us being apart for a millisecond to acknowledge it.”
He sat forward a bit and exhaled deeply. This was definitely the most open he’d been with me so far. It turned out we were actually pretty good at the talking stuff, as long as we stayed away from the touching stuff.
“When my family were asking me about my travels – I was super bad at keeping in touch, so they didn’t know anything we’d been doing – I realised that every single story I had to tell was about her. Not about me. Not about us. She’d been having all the cool experiences, and I’d just … been there. On the sidelines. And even though I’d had lots of fun travelling, it was like I was always secondary to her needs. Her career. Her agenda.”
I wanted to say something trite like Oh Jack, I’m so sorry , but I knew it wouldn’t help, so I stayed quiet.
“And when I was driving to see Chloe and Phil, a song came on, and I just started crying. Like, full-on weeping. I had to pull onto the verge and everything.”
I took a punt; the track change when he’d picked me up for our hike. “No Room In Frame?”
He nodded. “Yeah, sorry about that. It’s literally the one song I still can’t handle. There are others that remind me of Aria, but the problem is that one reminds me of myself too much. The version of me that got lost in her world.”
“It’s a good song,” I said, “but not a great one to find relatable.”
Jack laughed. “Yep. I even got a tattoo to remind me never to let another person push me out of my own life like that again.” He pulled up his t-shirt on the side closest to me, all the way over his shoulder, turning away from me so I could see his back. Across his left shoulder blade was a fine line tattoo of a camera, with a silhouette inside the lens. Not just any silhouette; I could tell just from the shape that it was meant to be Jack himself.
“That’s amazing,” I said, resisting the urge to reach out and touch it.
“I got it the day I was supposed to fly out,” he said, dropping his t-shirt and turning back to me.
“So you broke up before the trip?”
Jack cringed slightly. “Not exactly.”
“Go on…” I prompted.
“I sort of … told her I’d meet her in Singapore. And then just … didn’t.”
My mouth fell open. “That’s horrible!”
He raised his hands in front of his shoulders in surrender. “To be fair, I didn’t consciously know I wasn’t going when I said that. But I did know I wanted to break up, so it wasn’t a fair thing to promise, you’re right.”
“I’m just imagining her wandering sadly around Singapore waiting for you. Taking sad, lonely outfit-of-the-day pics at the Marina Bay Sands rooftop pool because her Instagram boyfriend wasn’t there to take them for her.”
“Don’t feel bad for her,” he said with a scoff. “By the time she got there, she already had plans to meet up with some other influencer. They’re together now, I’m pretty sure.”
“Oh my god, the GigaChad pop star wannabe she’s still with?? I didn’t know they’d been together that long.”
He nodded. “As far as I know. But to be fair, I haven’t checked in a while. Here, give me your phone and I can see.” He reached out his hand, but I shook my head.
“Can’t. I blocked her. Both of them, actually.”
He squinted at me, his head cocked to the side. “Why would you do that?”
“I’m team Jack,” I said, smiling softly.
“There’s no teams,” he said, but his grin grew, and I knew I’d done the right thing. “But thank you.”
He was opening up, finally , and I wanted to see how far I could push it. “Who have you dated since then?” I asked. “I know you said you don’t date, but I assume there have been at least some encounters?”
“Oh you do, do you?”
“Um, absolutely,” I said. “You don’t go around looking like that”—I gestured vaguely at him—“without drumming up at least a little interest.”
“Well, it’s been a pretty uneventful few years in that department,” he said with a shrug.
“No girlfriends? Or boyfriends?”
He shook his head. “It would be girlfriends, but even if I’d wanted to date, it’s pretty slim pickings around these parts.”
“What, you’re not on the apps?”
He looked at me pointedly. “Why, are you on the apps?”
“Ew, no,” I said, curling my lip in disgust. “Tried that.”
“And why did you stop?”
“Because it was mostly students and creeps. But I can’t imagine it’s anywhere near as bad for men as it is for women. Cara always told me men had much better options.”
“There just aren’t many options to begin with,” he said. “It’s like seventy per cent men on those apps. And when you take the rest, remove anyone who’s too young or too old, and anyone I’ve known since I was a kid, you’re not left with much.”
“You don’t want to give a second chance to some primary school outcast? See the glow-ups for yourself?” It felt weird, essentially pushing him to date, after what had happened on the hike. But I figured it sent a strong message that I wasn’t holding out hope that something would happen between us.
“I did try for a while, actually,” he admitted, and I cocked my head, my eyes going wide, like I couldn’t believe he’d been holding out on me. “I went on dozens of first dates from those apps once I’d finished my house. But there was never anyone I was interested in spending more time with.”
He cleared his throat, signalling that we were done talking about him, and turned his attention to me.
“What about you?” he asked.
“I haven’t been on since right after uni,” I said.
“Fair enough. But surely you’ve dated?”
I shook my head. “I never went out with anyone from the apps. It was a war zone on there. Cara tried to set me up a few times, but usually just with the friend of whatever guy she was dating so she wouldn’t feel bad for me all alone. But they never made it past one night.”
I didn’t tell Jack about how hard those nights had been – to always feel like nights out with Cara or the house parties she threw were acute reminders of the fact that she was the only real friend I’d had. She’d be bouncing around between friends, and I’d be dawdling along behind her like a lost duckling. And when she got sick of babysitting me, she’d try to fob me off on whatever single guy passed her very lax screening. As long as he was single, into women, and not an incel, she would make me his problem until I either gave up and went home or settled for a sub-par hookup to keep things ticking over. I’d never seen a single one of them past the first night.
“I find that so hard to believe,” Jack said. “Not about the war zone apps; even the way Phil behaves on those is morally reprehensible. But that no one has scooped you up.”
“Oh lovely, I see we’re doing the ‘I can’t believe you’re still single’ thing,” I said, rolling my eyes. He laughed and dropped the line of questioning, which was a relief. I didn’t really want to think about how much I’d missed out on all these years; how different my life might have been if I’d lived somewhere else, or worked somewhere else, or anything that wasn’t just doodling and clinging to my best friend.
“Do you get lonely?” I asked Jack, chancing one last probe into this landmine-laden topic.
“Sometimes,” he said, and I was surprised at how quickly – and honestly – he answered. “I mean, I really enjoy my own company. I’m actually quite happy on my own. But I do remember what it’s like to have someone to share the small joys with. The intimacy of waking up together; planning your day together. I miss that.”
I didn’t know what that felt like; I’d never had it, except maybe with Cara. But it spoke to something I’d always felt was missing when I’d tried getting to know people. Something I’d been beginning to feel with this new group of friends. And to an extent with Jack, as infuriating as he was.
After a digestion break, we took a relieving dip in the river, the hot sun having turned our shoulders a pale pink. And was I imagining things, or did Jack’s gaze linger on me a little longer and more openly than usual? We dried off and reapplied our suncream; Jack decided to go shirtless for the rest of the afternoon and asked me to do the skin he couldn’t reach. I was so cautious of being overly intimate that I had to apply twice because I’d missed so many spots, of course just prolonging my contact with his muscled back. Then we were back in the kayaks and headed downstream, side by side this time, admiring the world around us whilst we enjoyed a more relaxed return trip now that we were travelling with the current. Jack pointed out the willow trees and the pink balsam blooms, and I felt like we’d rounded a corner in our friendship. Like maybe what had happened before actually could be “water under the tree”.
As we rounded a bend in the river and the put-in came into sight, I sidled up next to Jack, one more thing I really wanted to say to him.
“Today has been great,” I said. “I mean, it’s hard, and I’ll need a shoulder replacement after this, but thanks again for bringing me. And for teaching me how to do it. Sorry I was such a wuss.”
“Don’t be silly,” he said, smiling and holding my gaze for a long moment. But he must have spotted the mischief in my eyes, because his expression turned, and it was his turn to panic.
He couldn’t even get my name out of his mouth before I tipped him unceremoniously into the river.