7. Chapter 6 #2
“Heroic.”
“And yet here we are, having feelings in my kitchen. Hydration may become necessary.”
I laugh, and this time it feels less forced.
She folds her arms. “Tell me the bit you keep circling.”
I look at her. “Do you ever stop being a doctor?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“When people stop standing in front of me pretending they are fine.”
I get up and pace. Sitting down feels too formal. Standing still feels worse. Mandy watches me walking the length of the kitchen exactly once, then raises an eyebrow.
I stop.
“The job sounds sensible,” I say.
“That is not usually a bad thing.”
“It might be in my case.”
“Why?”
“Because sensible is what you do when the better option is gone.”
Mandy tilts her head. “Is it?”
“It feels like it.”
“Does it feel sensible because it is smaller, or because you might actually want it?”
I do not answer.
That is the problem with Mandy. She skips straight past the safer arguments and puts her hand on the bruise.
“I do not know,” I say eventually.
“Yes, you do.”
“Do I?”
“I think you know enough to be uncomfortable.”
I look away.
There is a faint reflection of us in the kitchen window. Me in my half-open shirt, hair disordered from her hands. Mandy at the table, composed enough to pass for calm unless you know where to look.
I know where to look now.
That might be another problem.
“I keep hearing my own voice,” I say.
Mandy does not move. “Saying what?”
“That I should be aiming higher.”
“Higher than what?”
I gesture vaguely, because apparently my future now lives somewhere near her ceiling. “This. A hotel accounts job. Day-to-day finance. Normal hours. A salary I can live on, but not one I would brag about.”
“Were you planning to brag?”
“No.”
“Then that is one problem solved.”
I give her a look.
She lifts one shoulder. “You invited honesty.”
“I absolutely did not.”
“You stayed in my kitchen.”
“That was a tactical error.”
Her mouth curves, but she lets the silence come back.
I pull out one of the chairs and sit before my legs decide to do something dramatic, like carry me back outside. The wood creaks beneath me.
“Dad and Mum spent years making that place theirs. Half the village still calls it my mother’s cottage, as if I am only looking after it until she comes back and tells me I have put the mugs in the wrong cupboard.”
Mandy’s face softens, but she does not interrupt.
“When they died, Lexi had the pub. I had the cottage. It was not that neat, obviously, but that is how it felt. She had her place, I had mine.” I rub my palms over my thighs.
“I have complained about that house for years. The roof, the boiler, the garden, the fact that every door sticks depending on the weather. But the thought of selling it because the bank decided St Claire was no longer worth a branch?”
My throat goes rough.
I stop and look at the table.
There is a small scratch in the wood beside my hand. A pale line, thin as a thread.
“That feels like losing more than a job,” Mandy says.
I breathe out slowly. “Yes.”
There. One word. No joke to soften it. No clever little escape hatch.
Just yes.
Mandy reaches across the table and squeezes my hand.
“I do not want Leeds,” I say before she can touch me. “I do not want the regional job. I do not want hotels and motorway coffee and pretending I am excited about a promotion that would make me miserable. But I also do not want to be the man who took the easy option because he was scared.”
She rests one hand on the back of the chair. “What if it is not the easy option?”
I look up at her.
“What if choosing the life you want is harder because it does not sound impressive when you describe it to someone else?”
“That is annoyingly plausible.”
“I have hidden depths.”
“You really do.”
Her fingers brush my shoulder, light enough that I could pretend not to notice.
I notice.
“I liked being good at my job,” I say. “I liked people knowing they could come to me. Not just customers. Staff, too. I liked being useful.”
“You would still be useful.”
“In a less shiny way.”
“Most useful things are not shiny.”
I huff a laugh. “That sounds like something from a motivational calendar in a dentist’s waiting room.”
“It does, unfortunately.”
“Very disappointing from you.”
“I will try to be more cutting edge next time.”
“Thank you.”
Her hand settles fully on my shoulder then.
Steady. Warm.
“You are allowed to take a job because it lets you keep the home you love,” she says. “You are allowed to choose work that gives you time to have an actual life. You are allowed to earn less money if it is still enough and the alternative makes you miserable.”
I look at her hand before I look at her face.
“And if people think I have taken a step down?”
“Then they are not paying your bills, living in your house or waking up in your life.”
The words are blunt.
They are also kind.
Trust Mandy to make kindness sound as if it has sensible shoes and a clipboard.
“I do not think less of you,” she says.
I meet her eyes.
“I did not ask that.”
“No,” she says. “But you wanted to.”
I could deny it.
I do not.
Instead, I reach for her hand, draw it from my shoulder and hold it between both of mine. Her fingers are cool. I rub my thumb once across her knuckles.
“You have a very inconvenient habit of being right,” I say.
“I know.”
“And making it difficult for me to sulk.”
“That is a medical service.”
“Is it?”
“Preventative care.”
I look up at her. “Well, if the doctor says so.”
Before she can answer, I tug gently.
She comes towards me with a surprised little sound, and I pull her down onto my lap, one arm around her waist to steady her. She lands sideways across my thighs, one hand gripping my shoulder, her knees pressing against the outside of mine.
“Peter.”
“Yes?”
“That was not clinical.”
“I am seeking further treatment.”
Her mouth twitches. “You are ridiculous.”
“Your diagnosis has been noted.”
I expect her to make another joke. To tell me I am heavy-handed, or impossible, or about to be charged a consultation fee.
She does not.
Her fingers move into my hair instead, sliding through the mess she made earlier. I tip my face up, and she looks at me for a second longer than usual.
Then she kisses me.
It is not a frenzy kiss.
This is slower.
Her mouth moves over mine with a softness that makes me tighten my arm around her waist without meaning to. I kiss her back carefully, because the conversation is still there between us, tucked into every pause. The cottage. Monday. Her saying she does not think less of me.
Her hand cups my jaw.
I turn into it and kiss the inside of her wrist.
Mandy goes very still.
Not tense. Not pulling away.
Still in the way someone becomes when they have heard a note they were not expecting.
I look at her. “All right?”
“Yes.”
The word is quiet.
I believe it.
I kiss her again, and this time she shifts closer, her body softening against mine.
Her fingers curl at the back of my neck.
My hand moves over her back, slower than it would have earlier, learning the shape of her through her top as if I have not already had her beneath me, around me, saying my name in the dark.
Even if we had spent a million nights together by now, I still want to take my time this time.