One Small Mistake(64)

‘You know the motto I live by. How far will you go?’

‘How far won’t I go?’ I parry.

This time, my smile is genuine.

‘Got another motto?’ he asks.

‘Never thought about it.’

‘Here’s your opportunity.’

Through the gap in the door, a fine mist of rain comes in, smelling like sea-salt. ‘Go to bed with dreams, wake up with purpose.’

‘Apt.’

‘My mum has loads of those fridge magnets with sayings on them. Whenever we went on holiday – or came here for the summer – we’d pop into town and Dad would treat her to a magnet from the little gift shop on the High Street.’ I can still hear the bell ring above the door as I push it open, smell the clotted cream fudge as I step inside.

‘I know Ada’s motto,’ he says. ‘Why be the understudy when you can be the star?’

I smile but, just for a beat, I get a wave of longing for my sister. ‘I think Charlie’s would be something like … Kindness is free. Throw it around like glitter.’

‘My brother has a good heart,’ he says with envy. Or sadness.

‘So do you.’

‘Jeffrey’s little motto was Hardship breeds strength of character.’

I’m not sure Jack’s aware that, as he says this, his thumb moves over the scar lacing through his eyebrow. I still don’t understand why Jeffrey treated his sons so differently. If either of them was to be the target of his aggression, I’d have put my money on Charlie. Where Jack is granite, Charlie is candle wax. Jeffrey was so accepting when Charlie came out, he treated him with a kindness Charlie deserved but Jack never received.

‘So, your motto – is it Don’t take no for an answer?’

‘Actually, that’s a close second.’ He reaches into his back pocket and produces his wallet. Carefully, he slides out a small, folded square of paper, smiles down at it and hands it to me. ‘This is a solid first.’

It is a doodle of a wolf howling at a moon with the uneven script of a child’s hand looping above: ‘When we’re together, you’re never alone … wolf.’

I grin. ‘I did this.’

‘You were nine, maybe ten. I’d had another row with Jeffrey and turned up at your door.’

It was winter, the December cold like iron in your chest, and there was Jack in a T-shirt and jeans, too desperate to get away from his dad to think of grabbing up a coat. We sat on my floor, huddled together beneath the duvet I’d dragged from my bed. Jack was quiet and shivering. There was a new cut above his eye, the corner of a book maybe, or an ashtray like last time. He whispered, ‘I don’t belong in that family.’ And I didn’t just hear the pain and rejection and loneliness in his voice, I saw it in his face too. So I tore a page out of my English book, took my blackberry gel pen, drew the wolf and scribbled the caption.

‘Jack,’ I am breathless with incredulity. ‘You’ve had this in your wallet for almost twenty years?’

‘It goes everywhere with me. It’s a piece of history. Of us.’

My heart leaps in my chest. I turn the paper over in my hands. It’s proof that I am important to someone. Important enough to be gently rehomed, again and again, in a lineage of wallets, and while they became weather-worn and battered over time, thrown out and replaced, my drawing was not.

Jack reaches out to take it. Our fingers touch. Our eyes lock. I can’t tell what he’s thinking, but he’s watching my mouth with an intensity that makes heat pool low in my stomach. I could kiss him. Right now. This moment is pulsating with possibility if only I am brave enough, bold enough, to lean forward, to tilt my mouth to his; but I know a butterfly beating its wings in China can cause a hurricane in Texas weeks later, and I am not enough of either to risk a swarm of butterflies sweeping chaos across the serendipity of our friendship. So I let go of the paper, breaking our connection.

Keeping my eyes averted, I reach for my hot chocolate and watch the lightning set the sky on fire, illuminating the sea below, white with foam and spray.

‘What’re you thinking?’ he asks.

I’m thinking about the petite blonde again. About him slipping in and out of her. About the musty smell of sweat and sex. And though I don’t want to lie, I don’t want to be honest either, so I plump for somewhere in the middle. ‘Why don’t you ever let those girls get close?’

‘What girls?’

‘Ones like the blonde I saw you with.’

‘I guess I’m just waiting.’

‘For?’

Silence.

I glance at him. He’s smiling like he has a secret. His eyes on mine are too much so I look away again. ‘Don’t you want to know love?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘I have.’

‘With?’

‘Noah.’

I feel him shrug. The scent of him, sandalwood and leather, mixing with sea salt and rain. ‘That might be the kind of love you know, but it’s not the kind you want. Or need.’

Eyebrow arched, I turn my face slowly to his. ‘And what do I need, Jack?’

His breath is on my lips. I glance down; he has a beautiful mouth. I watch as it curves into an easy smile. ‘You need a love that burns,’ he tells me. ‘A love that consumes. Something exciting, unpredictable. Maybe even a little dangerous.’