Sol shrugs, drinking more rum. “Missed the tide now.”
He doesn’t seem to give much of a fuck. Which should get me thinking about more than how beautiful he is with his wild hair, his face alive with pure emotion. But I’m frayed and so is he. SoI hug him as hard as I hugged Mal and bury my face in his neck, breathing him in as I try to compute everything I woke up to.
Try and fail.
Mal’s home. That’s all I’ve got. That and a list of shit that needs doing before I open the pub for Christmas Eve.
And Sol. I have Sol.
I kiss the sensitive skin on his bared throat. Because I know he likes it. And I love the low sound he makes in response. The full body shiver that rocks him.
It’s pure magic.
I don’t love that my mind won’t stay still long enough to revel in it. That I draw back from him without pressing him against the wall and let my gaze ping-pong around the bar, my eyes moving too fast for me to process what I’m seeing.
“Hey.” Sol holds my face in a gentle grip and coaxes my attention back to him. “We shut at four today, right?”
I nod.
He grins. “Good. And you know what you get to do after?”
“You?”
Sol’s grin widens a touch before he contains it. “If that’s something you want, we can talk about it later. I actually meant you get to spend Christmas with your brother for the first time since you were teenagers. That matters to you, Jackie. Always has.”
My brain shunts and I remember.
I remember missing Mal on a day that meant pretty much nothing to me without him. I remember missing my mam. I remember missing Sol when I was on the other side of the world and he was right here, in Porth Luck, all along.
“I didn’t get him a present,” I say instead of any of that.
“Doubt he got you one either.” Sol releases my face from his soft hold. “We don’t do presents in this house, love. It’s enough that we’re here. All of us, eh? Even Skylar.”
Another shunt and it all comes back to me. The Christmas Eve dinner we’re having with Oscar later, before he and Sol sail out early on Christmas Day to haul a catch for their next pop-up while every other fisherman sleeps. The no-presents rule that’s been in place since…actually, I don’t know. All I truly recall is the certainty that Sol’s broken that rule and left something under my pillow. And that I have something for him in the gym I need to retrieve when he’s not looking.
Which turns out to be harder than I anticipate. Sol’s abandoned fishing trip means he works in the pub instead, at my side all morning as we prep the Joker for a crazy afternoon. As we open the pub doors and revellers crowd in for one more mad session before we close until Boxing Day evening.
We haven’t worked the bar together like this in a while, and I’ve forgotten how much I love it. The light brush of our fingers as we reach for the same glass. The skim of his body against mine as we squeeze past each other in the narrow space.
It’s Christmas Eve.
Sea fog hangs over the lazy waves of the day and Porth Luck has turned into a postcard. The Joker has holly tucked into the beams, old Cornish ribbon around the brass taps, and the soft glow of candles in jam jars. Rowdy. Alive. Music from two fiddles and a bodhrán. Shanty tunes older than the walls around us, and it’s not noise. Not today. It’s community, and belongs to every soul in here.
Songs drift through the pub like smoke. Ending and beginning again without anyone deciding what comes next. It sucks Sol in—this music, it’s in his blood and he sings with the old fishermen as though he’s been doing it since he was born.
Because he has.
I’m watching him when Oscar rolls in and joins him. When Mal and Skylar come downstairs and don’t punch anyone. The music shifts. A livelier stomp lifts the crowd and Sol’s laughterfills my senses. His broad grin as Oscar lifts him clean off the floor and spins him around as they sing about joy and life, a friendship kept safe by ancient walls and wood and steamed-up windows that make the sea a distant gunmetal smear beyond the glass.
It’s a moment where I really miss beer. But it’s cut short by…actually, I don’t know what. Just that I hear something above the singing raising the leaky pub roof. A voice from outside that has Sol turning on the chair he’s wound up standing on, cupping his hands around his mouth and calling back.
The voice answers and the pub door opens. And like this morning, a familiar silhouette fills the doorway.
Shorter than Mal.
Slimmer too—slender, almost—as cold air floods in and fog curls at the threshold of the Joker like a living, breathing thing.
For a second, I can’t place the man. Which is stupid. It’s been months, not years. And yet my mind skips past the shape of him, past the city boy coat and skinny jeans. Past the dark hair that lands in waves far looser than Sol’s wild curls.