Toby settled back on the branch too. His arm touched mine, and I absorbed the warmth from his body as if I was drowning and he was my life raft.
“We’re friends, though, aren’t we?” I whispered.
He leaned harder against me and dropped his head on my shoulder. “Yeah. I think so.”
“Does that mean you’re going to tell me how you came to be sleeping up a giant tree?”
“It’s comfortable.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask if his bed wasn’t. But I swallowed it down as I realised I’d never asked him about his own bed. I’d been too busy holding him hostage in mine.You’re a terrible friend.
True facts. “It is comfortable,” I conceded. “I’ll give you that. But how did you ever find out? I only climbed up because of you.”
“And I only climbed up because of Harry. When he first came here, before he was with Joe, he used to exercise at weird times of the day. I saw him once, and he taught me to climb trees. It was such a strange thing for a city bloke to teach a farm boy, but there you go. One day, I climbed up here and realised I could see the whole farm without having to run around checking on everything. It’s a timesaver, really.”
“At one o’clock in the morning?”
“I guess.” He didn’t ask me what I was doing roaming the farm at this ghostly hour, and I was glad of it. If he had, I’d have had to tell him I’d been watching him through my bedroom window for hours, wishing he was in my bed, all the while contemplating how to give voice to the reality that he deserved so much better.
I rubbed my cheek on the top of his head, just for a moment. “So... if it’s dark, what can you see?”
“Erm, well. I saw Joe fall asleep on the couch earlier and Harry wake him up and hustle him upstairs. Then I saw Angelo get up and go out to feed the donkeys some sneaky treats, and that’s always nice to see because he thinks we don’t know he does it.”
“Nice to see him up too, eh?”
“He said you helped him with that.”
“Not really. There’s nothing I can do for him that he can’t do for himself.”
“Yeah, but everything’s easier when you have someone who understands along for the ride.”
Were we still talking about Angelo? I had no idea. And as long as Toby had his head on my shoulder, it didn’t matter.
Nothing did.
* * *
I was worried I wouldn’t see Toby again. That he’d go back to working all over the farm while I hid in the clinic and in the cottage with Ella.
But it didn’t happen. A newfound resolve to be a better human being saw me rock up for my free dinner every night. Some nights I even brought Ella, and I was getting better at letting other people take her from me. Three nights in a row, I watched Toby feed her spoonfuls of the green veg he didn’t want to eat, and it warmed my bones more than I could say.
Three weeks after our tree encounter, I took Ella back to Bude and drove home via the beach. I hadn’t been there alone since I’d given myself heart failure over Toby catching hypothermia, but for reasons I couldn’t explain, the sand and the sea were calling my name.
I parked up by the dunes, instinctively looking for Joe’s van, for Toby’s strong shoulders and his mop of dark hair. But the car park was quiet, save a few surfers I didn’t recognise, and no one looked my way.
Despite the fading summer, it was a warm afternoon. The sand was toasty beneath my bare feet, and even the sea lacked its usual arctic edge as it lapped over my toes. I walked the entire length of the beach, from the river-like bay to the cliffs below the pub. The tide was out, and it had left pools of warm water in the rocks that Ella would’ve loved to sit in and throw sand at me. I dipped my feet into them with zero responsibilities, and damn, if it didn’t feel good.
Father of the year.
But maybe I was learning I didn’t have to be, as long as we both had fun.
I still couldn’t help looking for Toby, though, in spite of knowing full well he’d be hard at work on the farm like he always was, dawn to dusk, seven days a week. The farm was his blood, and a few months into my time there, I was starting to see why.
I’d never had friends like Toby’s. Mates that didn’t need to know every detail of your life to have your back, though I was fairly sure at least Joe and Angelo knew we’d hooked up. Harry probably knew too, but his poker face was epic, and he’d always been a man who kept his smirks to himself.
And he’s been your friend for years. Why do you always forget that?
Because I was good, apparently, at being a pessimistic fuckwit.