He hadn’t wanted them in the obvious ways that other lads had, to be certain. He’d
wanted them in ways he knew better than to try to explain, even as a hormone-drunk
teenager. If his personality weren’t offensive enough, his sexual interests would
surely finish the job. Better to choose loneliness than to suffer it alongside the
official sting of another’s rejection.
And so he’d chosen loneliness his entire childhood and adolescence.
He switched arms when his wrist began to ache, the basin half full.
It was only when he’d gone off to university and learned to drink that he’d felt capable
of the socializing necessary to foster friendships. Alcohol was like a secret he’d
finally been let in on. The password that earned him admittance into the club of carefree
youth, and better late than never. A missing part, so simple and so obvious, but that
when snapped into place allowed him to function as a young man was designed to.
And he’d been good at it, to start—the drinking.
Two lagers, maybe three, and Rob could shut his brain off enough to get lost in a
conversation, like any other bloke. To make people laugh. To smile and to truly feel
the ease and happiness it reflected. All these new people who’d never met the Rob
from that previous, lonely life . . . The memory of that wretched child had begun
to fade, like a bad dream forgotten with the sunrise. A liquid sunrise, golden and
pure, poured into a glass to warm the very heart.
He’d rarely gotten drunk, those first few years. The thrill and relief of being able
to relate to people had been intoxicating enough. To see people smile when he arrived
at the pub, actually excited to see him.
Him.
To feel a girl’s hand on his arm and realize he was being
flirted
with. To be invited to explore a woman’s body, to be touched and wanted, after so
many years of feeling tolerated, at best.
And from perhaps eighteen to twenty-eight, he’d managed a balance. For that decade,
alcohol had been but a crutch, the lubrication that loosened his brain and mouth enough
for him to enjoy the company of others. To make him charming enough, calm enough,
to foster two successful businesses, to court and marry his wife.
With a final stroke, he let the pump handle go. He stripped his ripe shirt and tossed
it aside, got to his knees before the basin. His hands prickled the second they plunged
into the frigid water, but the physical discomfort was welcome, its distraction dulling
the sting of these memories.
It hadn’t been until after Rob married that things had changed. Steadily, drinking
had transformed into the means for becoming insensate, rather than merely a bit of
fuel to get the social flames to catch.
He’d gone too deep into the thing, and he could never get back to how he’d been, content
with two or three. He’d ruined it. He’d needed it too badly, sold his soul for that
fleeting sense of peace and belonging, not noticing the corrosion until it was far
too late, his body and brain chewed hollow. Not until sobriety had become the illness,
a discomfort too painful to suffer. And so the bottle, that most cherished lover,
had risen up to kiss his lips and soothe his hurt, again and again and again.
After that pain, loneliness had ceased to register.
Until Merry.
He slopped cold water down his arms, grabbed the soap and turned it around in his
hands.
Merry.
She looked at him as those girls had, back in his finest days. She looked at him as
though he were someone worth her curiosity, worth sitting down and sharing a space
with, getting to know.
And now he realized, he wanted that feeling again, so badly. To be seen as worth knowing,
if not actually known. But without a drink . . . Where to even begin? And the pain
of that uncertainty trumped the pleasure of her attention.
Except . . .
Except with her, out here, he wasn’t loose and charming from Dutch courage. He was
just his solitary, stroppy self . . . yet she seemed to want to know him, anyway.
He soaped his shoulders, chest, under his arms, and scrubbed with the washcloth. Granted,
he was literally the only human company to be had for long miles in every direction,
but still. She wanted to be friends, he thought, and not with his supposed best self,
the one filtered through a pint glass and made palatable. For reasons unfathomable
to him, she liked sober Rob, just as he was. And he didn’t think he could say that
of any woman. Not his ex-wife. Not even his mother.
And the man he was out here . . . Rob didn’t self-reflect often these days, but this
was the most he’d liked himself, ever in his life.
Well, not
liked
. But this was easily the least he’d ever loathed himself. He wasn’t the awkward,
unnerving child, or the self-medicated charmer, or the monster that charmer was doomed
to become. He was a slave to the seasons and weather, not the bottle.
Merry liked the man he’d become out here. And that made him nearly like that man,
too.
Maybe you don’t need a drink to be that way with another person.
Maybe. Just maybe. He dunked his head and came up dripping. Water in his eyes, he
felt around and found the soap, lathering his hands.
Even as his head ached from the cold, it felt so good, this wash. He worked the soap
into his hair. Christ, he must look a mess. He hadn’t seen himself in a mirror since
his last trip in the Land Rover—six weeks ago, surely. He needed a haircut. Had to
be hovering somewhere between
hippie
and
homeless
. He’d better shave, at the very least.
With his hair rinsed and dripping cold rivulets down his back, dampening the waist
of his jeans, he lathered the hand towel and scrubbed his face, hard enough to sting.
What could I talk to her about?
Anything. But his brain always seized up when the time came for actual conversation.
He’d make a list.
San Francisco.
Her plans once she reached Inverness.
Her father was gay, she’d said—was he married? That was legal some places now, and
she seemed the type who’d feel passionately about the topic. Yes. He’d get her going
about that, and surely he’d catch the thread, too. It was the initiating that was—
“Are—oh.” The unmistakable sound of female surprise.
“Hang on.”
“No, never mind.”
But Rob splashed his face and grabbed the rough old bath towel, getting to his feet.
He patted the water from his eyes, finding Merry standing just outside the back door,
eyes wide, cheeks pink.
He hazarded a smile, trying to look disarming, in case his half-nakedness was upsetting
her. Maybe she was more conservative than she let on. Or maybe his build looked as
down-and-out as his hair and beard surely did. These past two years had stripped any
softness he might’ve carried with him from the city. Perhaps he looked lean and threatening,
like a convict or a drug addict. He toweled his arms quickly, suddenly feeling vulnerable
and exposed, as though she could make out those hideous bruises he used to wear, his
liver’s desperate cries for help.
“Did you need something?” he asked, frantically faking perkiness. Probably came off
fucking manic.
Merry’s eyes snapped from his middle to his face. “Oh, no. I just heard the pump,
and I was restless. From the coffee. I thought I’d see if I could help with anything.”
“Just trying to maintain the barest semblance of hygiene.” He managed another smile.
They were getting easier.
Her posture had relaxed, gaze dropping again, only to be politely hoisted back up.
What must he look like, compared to those robust Californian men she knew back home?
Oh well. His body was what it was. Out here, function trumped form, to the nth. Plus
he was such a shit host, it’d take some serious Adonis-level attributes to offset
his personality.
Once dry, he pulled on the clean tee, and Merry seemed to relax further.
Rob strode to the edge of the garden, gathering scattered tools. With the plots spent
until spring, these could be stowed for the time being. He dropped them into the basin
and turned to Merry. She lingered still, uncharacteristically quiet.
“Would you mind grabbing me a scrubbing brush from the shelf just inside?”
She seemed to awaken at the request, disappearing through the back door.
Rob got to his knees, and was surprised when Merry reappeared and did the same on
the other side of the basin. She’d brought two brushes, and he accepted the one she
handed him. “Ta.”
“Oh, brrr.” She flexed her hands after their initial dunk. “Jeez. You’re a masochist.”
Rob started, realizing too late what she’d meant.
“Tell me you take the time to heat your bath water in the winter,” Merry went on,
too busy scrubbing the crusted grit from his trowel to notice how that word had knocked
him sideways.
Masochist.
“I do,” he said quickly. “I was just too lazy today.”
“Does it ever get so frigid you hole up in the Land Rover with the radiator on?”
“Not yet, no. The cottage stays warm, what with the stone walls. Tempting, though.”
He set a clean pair of shears on the slate slab and felt for the next implement. Merry
did the same, and their knuckles touched. His neck and cheeks burned hot even as his
hands stung with cold. He stole a glance at Merry’s face, but she was already busy
scrubbing at a plastic garden stake.
She probably touches people all the time.
Just casual. A clap on the arm, a kiss on the cheek, a chiding punch on the shoulder
when someone told an off-color joke. Seemed like how she’d be, back home with her
cheerful American mates.
Rob hadn’t been raised that way. He was Northern to the marrow. He’d not said “I love
you” aloud until he’d met his wife. He’d not been told that by his parents or brother
or nan or anyone else, growing up. It wasn’t done in his family.
His father had managed the words a little over three years ago, but not until the
final hour of his life. A chore, procrastinated to the last possible moment? No. Just
too scary, too vulnerable and soft for a man of his upbringing and generation. He’d
said the words to Rob with his eyes shut, the two of them alone, late at night. They’d
sounded painful, gurgling around the breathing tube snaked down his throat. But he’d
meant them.
And Rob had felt them, real as a hand on his arm. He’d said them back, eyes wide open,
breath surely smelling as antiseptic as everything else in that awful hospital room.
Fucking drunk at your father’s bedside.
But that was the only way he’d been able to function by then.
Get yourself sorted, Rob.
Those had been his father’s final words, to Rob or to anyone. Soft, sad words, raw
with heartache.
And have I? Have I got myself sorted?
He wasn’t committing slow-motion suicide anymore, that much was true. He was sober.
He wasn’t hurting a woman he’d vowed to cherish and protect. But this couldn’t have
been what his father had wanted for him—exile. Hiding away in this place, a coward
taking refuge in his only fond childhood memories.
He glanced at Merry, her attention cast down at her fingers, picking dirt from the
grooves of another stake. For as long as she was here with him, he was duty-bound
to protect her. But he had no doubt this woman was stronger than him by leagues.
Tell her so, you cagey twat.
“I . . .”
She glanced up, and it was Rob’s gaze that fled to the basin now.
“I think it’s very impressive of you,” he managed, and met her eyes. “All this that
you’re doing.”
“Really?” She grinned, her lost sunniness returning. “Coming from you, King Badass,
that’s high praise indeed.”
“I’m not impressive. I’m just some grumpy old man trapped in a thirtysomething’s body.”
She laughed.
“You came out here for the challenge,” he said. “I’m just hiding from the responsibilities
of twenty-first century adulthood.”
“Hiding?” She groped through the now-muddy water, coming up empty. She swished the
brush clean and stood, drying her hands on the towel. “You swore you weren’t a fugitive,”
she teased.
“Not in the legal sense. Just, you know. What you said about my dropping out of the
rat race.”
“I don’t think that’s hiding,” she said, wandering around the yard. She picked up
a mallet from beside the fence, giving a wooden post a couple of limp thumps. “I think
that’s escaping. Why bother even completing a race if there’s no satisfaction in crossing
the finish line, right?”
“Maybe.” Rob set the final stake on the pile of clean tools and ran his brush around
the basin. “You seem determined to give me far too much credit.” He looked up, mustering
the warmest smile he could, but it wilted in an instant.
She’d picked up the end of an old rope that had been tangled by the side of the cottage.
As she toyed with the fray, she looked pensive. She said something, but Rob didn’t
hear. His entire world had shrunk small enough to fit in her fist—the same fist clasping
that length of coarse hemp. She drew it through her hands, meter by meter, working
out the knots.
“. . . free will,” she was saying, the words reaching Rob’s brain through a dreamlike
fog, thin and watery. “We just do as we’re told we should. High school, college, job,
marriage, kids. Like, one size fits all.” She met his eyes expectantly.
“True,” he said, at a loss for anything else. All the blood had left his head, surging
southward. Thank goodness he was kneeling—his cock was hard, pounding hot and angry.
Fuck.
Merry kept talking, but he lost the thread. She wandered closer. With the knots banished,
she gripped the tail of the rope in her fist, making an L of her arm and winding the
length around her elbow in uniform loops. Rough, rasping rope against that smooth,
perfect skin. And Rob on his knees. Under the water, he pressed his wrists flush,
scraping his thumbs over the coarse bristles of his brush, watching as she coiled,
coiled, coiled.