Chapter 25 #3
‘I really am sorry about your grandmother’s decoration,’ he suddenly felt moved to say, and she met this with a moment of silent remembrance, probably replaying the awful moment when it broke.
‘It’s OK,’ she said, a little sadly, before looking towards his own neat Christmas tree at the foot of his bed and in front of the bathroom door.
‘When I first came in here, I assumed someone else decorated this place for you.’ She evidently did not want to talk about anything to do with last night.
Hamish slid a little down into his pillows. ‘Why would you think that?’
‘I thought a girlfriend, or a wife, or somebody…’ she said with a shrug, turning away from the window and uncurling her body so that their legs lay alongside each other’s.
‘No, I’ve been single for a while.’
‘A long while?’ she asked.
‘A long while.’
‘But why? When you’re so…’ Instead of using words, she gestured with her bandaged hands up and down his body and then at the room and in the air as if to say you’re all this.
He sniffed a wry laugh. ‘Well, I work four nights out of seven behind the bar and seven days a week in the ski centre. I may well be…’ He flowed his own hands over himself and his room, mimicking Florrie, ‘but I’m what you might call married to my work.
Or I was.’ He allowed himself another dry laugh.
‘But you do date, right?’
She seemed very keen to get to the bottom of this, so Hamish had to admit the thing he never shared with anyone. Probably only Kenneth knew the truth about Peaches McDowell.
‘The truth is I had a girlfriend years ago, like a sort of end of high school sweetheart sort of thing, you know the kind of thing you have in that special summer when everyone’s about to go their own ways and it’s all big and intense?’
Florrie snorted. ‘Ah, like a Lukas sort of thing?’
‘Yours was called Lukas?’
‘Yes he was,’ she said, before blowing through pursed lips at the memory like it was too hot. ‘I thought we’d be together forever.’
‘What happened?’
‘He went to uni in Dublin and immediately dumped me for a girl he met on Freshers’ night. You?’
‘Not quite the same, but she did dump me. We were together a while, but her mother didn’t approve of me, and I couldn’t compete with that.’
‘What? Why?’
‘Again… it was all this,’ he said, showing her the room with a sweep of his hand. ‘I was getting started here, doing my job. Mrs McDowell must have known I wasn’t going anywhere.’
‘Hey,’ Florrie nudged his hip with her foot. ‘Less of that kind of talk. You’re a good businessman. You did well here.’
‘Hmm.’ He reached for her foot and rubbed it absently.
‘I mean it. You can’t help snow patterns, or recessions, or big resorts nearby getting even bigger.’
‘I know.’
‘But you’ve dated since her, right?’ she asked, and he felt glad she hadn’t asked Peaches’ name. It would have felt odd going into more detail.
With his newfound perspective of the last few days, Peaches seemed more like a crush than ever.
Now that he’d met Florrie, kissed Florrie, carried her twice in his arms, once as he helped her down off the dry slope, not knowing the extent of her injuries, when he’d felt sick with fear for her, and again when he’d lifted her away from the shattered glass around her bare feet and she’d cried like it was her heart that had shattered, he’d changed.
He’d learned what it meant to care only for another person.
He’d learned how much he was capable of enduring.
None of which he was at liberty to tell Florrie.
Instead he determined that she was going to enjoy her last night in Scotland without being burdened with more of his feelings.
She was waiting for an answer.
‘I run a bar,’ he said, shrugging with a little bravado. ‘Women like men who run bars. I’ve had a fair few… I wouldn’t call them relationships, but fun things.’ He shrugged like none of it had impacted him. ‘They always seemed to leave town in the end.’
‘Me too. Nothing but short-term fun things,’ Florrie agreed quickly. ‘Moving around a lot isn’t great for long-term relationships.’
‘Neither, it seems, is staying in one place all your life.’
‘So, what’s the answer?’ she asked, as she wriggled lower on the bed and he surrendered one of his pillows, throwing it so she could drop it behind her head.
He turned on his side, taking hold of her feet again, so they both lay curled on top of the covers, growing sleepy, like kids sharing a bed at a sleepover.
‘The answer to finding someone?’ he said. ‘I have absolutely no idea.’
She smiled with her eyes closed and hugged her pillow, her cast sticking out above it. ‘Can you see the northern lights?’ she slurred sleepily, reaching out her splinted hand so her fingers wrapped around his toes.
Hamish glanced to the window where the candle glowed.
‘Hey! Would you look at that!’
There, outside the window, glimmered not a green curtain of dancing borealis lights but a few fluffy white snowflakes drifting lazily down from the blackness. ‘Hey, Florrie?’
She hadn’t heard him. She was already asleep.