“Lie on the sofa then.”
“And do what?”
“Watch TV?”
Sol grunts, and I almost laugh.
“Okay, how about this?” I turn to face him. “Go watch thatWindjammersDVD you keep under your bed until the evening shift comes in. Then I’ll come join you, eh?”
“You want to watch TV, love?”
“I want to be with you. I don’t care what else is going on.”
The pub is quiet anyway, but as I hold Sol’s gaze and he holds mine we might as well be on our own planet.
He takes a slow breath. “I want that too.”
It’s early evening when I get off work. Mal has committed to loitering downstairs until I come back down to close the pub, and even offers to do it for me.
“I’ve done it before. No one died.”
All right then. I take him up on the offer and go upstairs.
I half expect to find Sol flaked out, but he’s up and about, pushing a broom around the flat.
Absolutely not. I confiscate it. Immediately. Then I realise he’s made dinner and I’m already losing the battle to keep him resting.
We sit and eat, the conversations we need to have hanging thick enough in the air that we’re both finished pretty quick, and that shunt I need in my brain to get this done—it finally happens.
I lean back in my seat. “Let’s talk.”
Wariness flickers in Sol’s deep eyes. He glances at the sink, as if the dishes might be his escape, but I pre-empt that shit by tugging him out of his chair and steering him towards his bedroom.
Towards his bed, and the tiny package under his pillow I forgot about until this exact second.
I retrieve it and hand it to him. “Merry Christmas.”
Sol blinks, turning the package over in his hands as if he’s caught a bit of me and can’t remember what it means. Then it clicks and he spins around, vanishing into my room.
A moment later, he’s back with a brown paper parcel of his own. One that’s stupidly similar to the one I’ve given him. “Back at you.”
We open the gifts.
Leather. Pewter charms.
Matching bracelets.
Christ.
For a long beat we stare at them. Then Sol laughs, soft and incredulous, and for the first time in a week, I feel like I have all of him back.
“Thought you didn’t like Mary Mad Scarf?”
“I don’t.” Sol fastens the bracelet he bought from the same stall I did last summer. “She chucks her coffee cups over the sea wall.”
“Why’d you give her your money then?”
“Didn’t. I stole it.”