“It’s easily fixed,” Laura said lightly. “Talk to your brother if you have ideas. You know he’d love to have you work with him.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
I left my vague answer hanging, but later, over dinner, my irritation with wicker-gate got the better of me, and I found myself beside Gaz, grilling him on his plans for organic interior design.
“Piss off, mate.” Gaz shovelled mashed potato into his mouth and pointed his fork at me. “This ain’t London. Folk round here don’t want tiny candles and fancy bollocks.”
“Who said anything about tea lights? I just think you should incorporate the décor into the whole project. What’s the point of marketing the food as organic and wholesome, then serving it up on a load of plastic crap?”
“What do you care?”
He had a point, but with Kim still fresh in my mind, I had an idea percolating. “What about some of that recycled stuff from the crusty-fest last weekend?”
Gaz eyed me like I was off my rocker. “Recycled stuff? Like what? Tables made from bog roll?”
“Stop being a twat. No, I mean like the stall in the back field. The one with all the stuff made from pallets.”
“Didn’t see it. I worked all day and didn’t get the chance to swan around browsing.”
I wanted to clobber him. There were four years between Gaz, Nicky, and me, which meant we knew just how to wind each other up. “Fine. You’re right. Idon’tcare. Have it your way and dress the whole thing up like an eighties jumble sale.”
Gaz sniggered and went back to his pie. I glowered at him, then spent the rest of the evening ignoring him. Childish? Probably, but being at the farm had that effect on me. Crammed around the kitchen table, stuffing my face, and up to my ears in the family business, it felt like I’d never been away.
I made my excuses around ten and headed out to my car. It wasn’t that late and it would be the wee hours before I crawled into my bed, but I’d had enough for one night. Nicky called me a miserable bastard, but I didn’t care. So what if I preferred my own company? At home, there was no one to piss me off, save my downstairs neighbours, who liked to have makeup sex as loudly as they tore lumps out of each other. Besides, I needed a fucking fag.
“Jas! Wait up.”
I turned, cigarette in hand. Gaz jogged out of the gloom, a conciliatory grin warming his face.
“Don’t let Ma catch you with that.”
“Piss off.” I rolled my eyes and lit up anyway. “What do you want?”
“Erm, I was thinking about apologising for winding you up about Kim, but I wouldn’t mean it, so I’m not going to bother.”
The casual mention of Kim caught me off guard. “You know Kim?”
“Only in passing. He works at that tattoo place, Blood Rush. Brix Lusmoore gave me his card when I told him we were scouting for furniture.” Gaz pulled a small wooden disc from his back pocket. “Though Kim’s stuff looks more like junk to me.”
And that was the beauty of it. I held the disc up to the faint moonlight. Both sides had a simple logo carved into it, but the details I’d been ruminating on all week were inscribed around the edge: a name, an address, and eleven magic numbers.
“Thought you might like it.”
I glanced back at Gaz. Somehow, I’d forgotten he was here. “Meaning?”
“Meaning I saw you chatting him up in the beer tent. That why you want me to use his furniture in the barn?
“I never said you should use it. Just that your ideas were shite.”
“Yeah, yeah. Listen, from what little I know of him, he seems like a nice bloke, and I was only joking about his work being junk. How about you give him a call, see if he can do us a quote? Might get yourself a reason to paint a smile on that ugly mug.”
A facetious retort played on my tongue, but I bit it back as I considered Gaz’s proposal. The address on the wooden disc was in town, not far from my flat. What was to stop me passing by, sticking my head in the door, and pretending I gave enough of a shit about the barn project to seek out his work?
Nothing and everything was the simple answer. Kim had been an awesome fuck, but that was about all I was good for these days. All Iwantedto be good for. Getting close to people, close enough to bang them more than once, was overrated. Despite angsting over not grabbing Kim’s details when I’d seen him, now that I had them, reality kicked in. No good ever came from returning to the scene of the crime—not even one as hot as my encounter with Kim.
I passed the disc back. “No, thanks, mate. Just stick to the wicker, eh? What’s the worst that can happen?”
A week later, I found myself loitering outside the address I’d memorised from Kim’s calling card. The exterior of the building was nondescript, but wood scented the cool breeze and, though it was daft, I sensed Kim’s presence. Felt it tickling my skin and warming my bones.