“So we can look at ways you could perhaps reciprocate. Sometimes identifying the smaller things helps us see the bigger things.”
“Did you read that in a Christmas cracker?”
“Humour me. What has Sid done for you recently that made you feel valued and safe?”
He shared his weed with me and blew me in the woods. “He cooked me dinner.”
“At his house?”
“Yeah. He lives on-site too. I can see his bungalow from mine.”
“What did he cook?”
“Vegetables. Lots of them. He’s obsessed with me eating them.”
“Why?”
“I have no fucking idea.”
“He likes you,” Rami guessed. “And he enjoys your company. There’s no reason for him to want to spend time with you outside work otherwise.”
Dante couldn’t argue with that because he knew it was true. Sid did like Dante. The question waswhy? No one else did.
“Okay,” Rami said. “Working with that, have you thought about maybe returning the favour? You could cook dinner for Sid, right? I’m sure he’d like that.”
“You’re out of your mind.” Dante spoke, again, without thinking. “You think he wants to eat whatever shitty can of crap I open and tip into a saucepan?”
“Probably, yes. But it doesn’t have to be like that. You could open a book and find something to cook. Or google it. Or make sandwiches. It’s not the food that’s important. It’s the gesture.”
Dante’s glower deepened as Rami kept talking, but his capacity for listening dried up. By the time he left a little while later, his responses had slowed to monosyllabic grunts.
He escaped the stuffy building that housed the probation service and hit the streets, winding his way to the bus stop that would take him back to Wilburn.
It was a hot day. Humid. Dante recalled the last day it had been so hot and immediately wished he hadn’t. His stomach churned, and not just because of the jostling crowds around him. Fighting his third panic attack of the day, he fished his phone from his pocket—a phone that had once buzzed and vibrated twenty-four seven but now never rang.
The blank screen was his constant companion, so the message that lit up the screen caught him off guard.
Sid:wanna meet in the city?
Dante frowned and found a wall to lean against while he tapped out a reply.
Dante:why?
Sid:need some stuff from the shops
Dante:I can get it for you?
Sid:or you could meet me and have lunch with me
Dante:where?
Sid sent a location pin for a pub half a mile away. Dante cringed and fired back the most awkward message ever.
Dante:I’m barred from pubs and clubs as a condition of my release. Two years.
Three dots appeared on the screen as Sid typed a reply. It seemed to take forever, and Dante tried to remember it was likely more that Sid struggled to focus on his phone screen than the fact he had every reason to think Dante was a dirtbag loser who couldn’t buy him a drink in a pub.
He doesn’t drink. Neither do you.