by Con Riley
Rob’s expression shifted much like the weight in Jude’s chest, his discomfort visible. “But yesterday was intense. I don’t expect you to…”
“You don’t expect what?”
“Listen.” Rob paused for a long moment. “I… I know I’m full-on,” he said, as if that was a bad thing. “I know that. I throw myself at new interests—people, projects—that burn out as quickly as they started.” That wasn’t what Jude had seen so far. In fact it sounded like someone else speaking for him. “I fancied you from the get-go.” Now that at least sounded genuine. “But add in everything recently, like all the high-pressure stuff at the Anchor on top of not finding your— I mean, you have a lot to deal with, and then you’ll be leaving again. I don’t expect….” His exhale was a frustrated gust. “Ignore me. I don’t even know what I’m trying to tell you.” He slipped out of Jude’s hold, smile just as bright as ever, but now that Jude was paying attention, not even coming close to reaching his eyes. “We shouldn’t keep Trevor waiting. Unless...”
“Unless what?”
This morning’s new-found awareness also meant Jude heard the change in Rob’s voice, his phrasing much more hesitant. “Unless you want to see him on your own, of course,” he said, careful, as though Jude’s reply might break something fragile.
“Why would I do that?” Jude matched his words with actions, pulling back the curtains he’d closed. Light spilt in so brightly, nothing on his face could be hidden. “Why would I do this on my own when I could have you right there with me?”
The corners of Rob’s eyes crinkled, the last wisps of worry fading like the sea mist outside.
“We’re in this together,” Jude said, and Rob’s smile finally brightened.
28
“You were talking to someone when I woke up. Was it someone from the hotel?” Jude asked as they retraced yesterday’s steps, heading downhill straight for Trevor’s place this time despite the green glinting distraction of the sea that Jude could usually waste time watching. “Or was it Lou on the phone?” He snagged Rob’s hand in his and held it just to see his pleased reaction, then added, “I like how close you are to her, how you talk to her so often.” The more he made himself talk, the easier it was, Rob’s visible pleasure a feedback loop that urged him to continue, if a little gruffly. “She loves you.” And there it was, another smile, brighter than the glinting water. Fuck it, Jude decided. Fuck keeping what he thought to himself. He could spill whatever he was thinking to Rob all day long, and it wouldn’t even be work, not when Rob bumped his hip with his own as they walked, hand-in-hand.
“Sweet-talker.”
“Just telling the truth.”
“There’s no need, you know?” Rob’s grumble was almost authentic.
There was every need, as Jude saw it, that strange moment this morning still gnawing at him. If Rob carried a weight anything like the one he’d helped Jude to shoulder, Jude would absolutely return the favour. Carry it all for Rob, if he had that option, chip it out with one of his dad’s chisels, or drill it out with one of the power tools he’d taught Jude how to handle. Do something practical to remove that whisper of Rob’s self-doubt when Rob was so exactly what they’d all needed. Jude said so. “We’re both lucky to have you. Can’t imagine where we’d be without you.” The Anchor sold at auction, no doubt, and no work for Lou in a village left close to dying. And nothing for him to come home to. That last thought had him squeezing Rob’s hand tight.
“Wow.” Rob took a minute to process, nearly walking into a lamppost until Jude pulled him closer, arm around his waist now, eyes only for him regardless of people who shared the same pavement. “And yes. I was talking to her about redecorating the bedrooms when we get back.”
“Redecorating? But we just finished? Or…. Or did you mean Mum and Dad’s?” Maybe it was time both him and Lou faced facts: One storm here had washed away a whole beach. A typhoon on the far side of the planet had to have done much more damage. He’d read as much on Trevor’s navigation website where images showed whole tankers listing sideways, cargos unbalanced by strong winds then sunk by treacherous currents. Some huge ships sank entirely even with a navigator to steer them around disaster. The chances of the One for Luck surviving were negligible, he knew; they’d always known, both of them. Preserving their bedroom as if they’d walk in the next minute was foolish when, if they were really lucky, they’d have guests soon wanting to book it. “I’ll clear it out when we get back.”
Rob stopped at a spot where the road was only separated from the beach by a rail, the sand a twenty-foot drop below them. “Oh, Jude. No, I didn’t mean that,” he said, shock widening his eyes.
“Well, I do,” Jude said firmly. “It’s time, Rob. I’ll still look for evidence… for wreckage,” Jude admitted. “But they’d want us to be realistic. That means making as much cash as we can this summer. Having another room for guests to rent makes sense.”
“Listen,” Rob turned and pointed, the hotel they’d come from visible up the hill, the windows of their suite postage-stamp-sized from this distance. “I only meant that I love what they’ve done. The owners let me sneak a look in a couple of other rooms this morning. Each one’s completely different to the other, and to what I suggested at the Anchor.” His lips narrowed, pressed tight together. “I thought I knew what five-star meant, but….” He looked Jude’s way before his gaze darted elsewhere. “I feel like I wasted our money making the rooms all so plain and simple.”
Our.
Such a small word for cash Jude had no real claim on that Rob had spent on the Anchor when he didn’t have to.
“No way am I doing it to your parents’ room too. It’s…”
“A mess? Full of clutter?”
“Magic,” Rob said, honest. His head dropped for a moment. “Your mum has the same perfume my mum used.” He swallowed. “Sometimes I go in there just to smell it.”
For the second time in twenty-four hours, Jude spoke around a huge lump in his throat. “Okay,” he finally managed. “So not that room, yet. What were you thinking of changing in the others?”
“You… you don’t mind if I do?” Rob asked, a hint of relief audible now that Jude was listening for it. “Redecorate when we get back, if the rooms aren’t booked already.” His eye-roll was a shared joke; they hadn’t a single booking when they’d left.
“I trust your judgement.” He did, God help him. “Completely.”
And for the second time that morning, Rob seemed close to speechless.
Jude summoned some self-forgiveness and hoped that Rob would hear it. “Listen, you’re not the only one who threw themselves at solving a problem without thinking. I flew around the world with no plan and then spent too many months getting nowhere. You stayed here and helped Lou paint everything that wasn’t nailed down with a coat of white emulsion. Changing tack now doesn’t mean either of us was wrong. We’re adjusting course, that’s all. And we might have to again.” A lot hung on whether Guy Parsons would write a review. The jury was still out on whether he would, and if it would be a curse or a much-needed blessing. “Believe me, everything feels easier the minute you admit you might have been wrong. I’ve been there and done that, so maybe just let me help you?”
It didn’t matter that the moon was long gone, the sky blue instead of last night’s inky, Rob still looked at Jude as though he was star-struck.
They were met with delight, this time, rather than shock. Trevor pulled his front door wide open, his hand a welcoming weight on Jude’s shoulder as he drew him inside. “Good to see you again,” he murmured when Jude offered him a hug as if he was an uncle instead of a man he’d only met once. “Breakfast’s ready in the courtyard,” he got out, holding on to Jude just as tightly. “Come on through,” he said once Jude’s grip loosened.
Trevor showed them the way, walking through the living room with its low ceiling and wood stove that they’d visited yesterday, and through a study housing several PC monitors, maps on their screens covered in red and gr
een dots, tracking shipping movements.
“You still work?” Jude lingered there instead of heading out into a courtyard where breakfast was visible, spread out on a table.
“A little. Needs must, you know?” Trevor said, still holding the door to the outside open. “I don’t have much of a pension and my husband was all about living rather than saving.” His smile was smaller in a way Jude had recently come to read well. “I wouldn’t have changed a single minute.” His gaze drifted to a wall full of photos similar to ones in Jude’s father’s study, only these featured the man Trevor had married. “Besides, it’s better to keep busy.”
Loneliness wouldn’t be a neat fit, Jude imagined, for someone like Trevor, living alone after sharing decades with a partner. He glanced at Rob who met his gaze and nodded like he knew what Jude was thinking. “You should come to visit us.” Trevor’s smile of surprise encouraged Jude to insist. “Soon. Next week, maybe? Come and meet Lou. Stay. We’ve got space.” Lord knew those empty rooms might as well see some use.
Trevor came back to where Jude stood, Rob right behind him. “At the Anchor? I’d... I’d love to visit. Heard a lot about it. It would be quite something to finally see it.”
“You really haven’t been there before?” Rob tapped one of the PC screens showing the Cornish coast in craggy detail. He spread his thumb and finger between St Ives and Porthperrin. The distance was nothing compared to that between the Far East ports shown on the other monitors. “It’s hardly far from here.”
“I wouldn’t go where I wasn’t invited.” Trevor studied the screen rather than look at either of them.
Jude had some new insight into that reticence, as well. “Once I left for London, I never wanted to go back. Not if I couldn’t feel….” Accepted wasn’t exactly the right word. He said, “Wanted,” and that fit much better. What this man had shown him yesterday had been life-changing, transformative in a way that flayed him. “I wanted to meet you when I was a kid,” he admitted. “I always wondered about you. While I have anything to do with the Anchor, you’ll always be welcome.”
If Rob noticed their damp eyes he ignored it, a blessing when speaking again right then was beyond Jude. “Are all of these dots ships?” His eyes widened as Trevor nodded and touched the mouse, zooming in over a shipping lane that suddenly looked cluttered. “How the hell do they not hit each other? There’s so many of them. Can you see every ship that’s at sea, this way?”
“If they use AIS. That’s real-time tracking, although to be true, that’s a bit of a misnomer. Not all systems are accurate.”
Jude knew that much already, satellite records showing that the dot charting the One for Luck’s direction had blinked its last well before the typhoon, leaving them no way to pinpoint her last location.
Maybe Trevor heard the sigh he couldn’t keep in. “I’m guessing you know a bit about this, Jude.” He moved the mouse again to zoom out, and then asked, “Yesterday, you said you been crewing out there while searching? Where were you, exactly?”
“All around here,” Jude pointed, then rattled off the Aphrodite’s details only to watch Trevor type them. As the screen zoomed in a new direction, a green dot blinked, showing her safe and sound and almost back to where Jude’s nightmare had first started.
Rob’s frown asked a silent question that Jude made himself answer. “We tried tracking Mum and Dad’s yacht. I flew out to where their signal cut off, but when you don’t exactly know when or where a boat went missing, it’s….”
Trevor’s nod came with a hand on Jude’s shoulder again. “If I’d known at the time… if you’d had more details, even a sighting of some—” He didn’t have to say wreckage aloud. Jude had searched as many beaches for flotsam as he’d scanned horizons for sails. Trevor did say, “I have used marine debris before to track backwards, lots of times in fact for insurance companies, but without a clear starting point to work back from, it’s….” He didn’t have to finish that sentence either; Jude had thought the word hopeless a thousand times, it seemed, before he’d come anywhere close to the same acceptance.
“I do know, but thank you. It means a lot to know that you would have, despite—”
“Despite nothing,” Trevor insisted fiercely, mirroring the same expression Jude was growing used to seeing on Rob’s face lately. “Despite absolutely nothing.” Trevor’s gaze was sure and steady. “Simon was my very best friend. He was for years, and he did more for me than I should ever have asked of him, Jude. I want you to know that like I want both you and your sister to know that I would chart the entire Indian Ocean to find him and your mum, if I had a point to start from.”
Thousands of dots still scattered the screen—yachts and fishing vessels, lone travellers and crowded cruise ships—all sharing the shark-filled waters that his parents had last sailed.
Maybe it didn’t matter that Jude had only vainly followed.
Perhaps following Rob and Trevor out to his courtyard today was more important, going forwards.
Jude sat quietly, and almost at peace, as those ships still made their blinking progress on the PC screen inside, sure as they shared breakfast—these were two men he wanted to keep track of.
29
They checked out of the hotel later with Jude carrying just a little more than he’d arrived with. Rather than stow away the package Trevor had given him to take home with him, he held it close to his chest, not ready yet to set it aside when it contained all the postcards his father had written since leaving Porthperrin. Each one that he’d read so far felt charged with static, his fingers prickling as well as his eyes just to know who wrote them. Letting go of them now felt risky, as though some enchanted connection to his parents might cut off.
Rob, on the other hand, was all business. He sat with his hands at ten-to-two on Betsy’s steering wheel, seatbelt already fastened, a touch impatient and determined to get going. That serious mien only made him sexier. “You ready?”
“Nope.” Jude didn’t fasten his seatbelt. Instead, he leaned over the gearstick. “Not yet, anyway,” he said pulling Rob into a kiss that Jude was in no hurry to finish given that this parking spot was private and shady. There was no one around to witness him fumbling one-handed to unfasten Rob’s seatbelt before pulling him as close as he could manage, no one to break the spell cast by twenty-four hours of being Rob’s sole focus. It wasn’t only the package that Trevor had given him that was packed to the brim with magic, Jude decided. St Ives was bewitched as well, like this jewel of a hotel. Getting to have all of this and Rob, who shifted closer, his mouth opening so easily for him, was another spell Jude would do anything right then to prolong. “Let’s stay,” he whispered against Rob’s mouth.
“No.” Rob pulled back a scant inch, just enough that Jude could see his colour had risen. “Now I’ve had my wicked way with you, you bore me.” He had to be straight-up lying. That rare serious expression cracking confirmed it.
Jude leaned in again, only Rob leaned farther back this time, out of his reach while listing reasons to leave in a way that left Jude’s heart, like the package of postcards in his lap, brimful too. Rob put Louise first, like usual. “If we stay, your sister will have my guts for garters. She called to say we’ve actually got tables booked tonight for dinner.”
“We do?”
“We do.”
“Locals?” Jude asked, dubious. Rushing home to cook at a massive discount to make the pub look busy didn’t seem like a good reason to race off, not when the room was paid for until noon, that glorious bed with its soft sheets calling to him like a siren.
A robin landed on Rob’s wing mirror, red chest as puffed up as Rob’s when he said, “Some of my networking must have paid off. The bookings are for two tables of brand-new customers.”
“Paying ones?” Jude narrowed his eyes.
Rob winced and tried to change the subject. “Buckle up, buttercup,” Rob said as he refastened his seatbelt before coming clean. “Okay, okay. They’re not exactly paying.” He gestured for Jude to
hurry up as he keyed the ignition, the lovely roar of Betsy’s engine almost muffling his explanation. “One table’s booked for a local festival committee, and the other is for the farmers’ market collective.” He started to back out of their parking space, serious again as he frowned, thoughtful. “There’s no harm in giving them a free meal if that means they’ll consider adding us to their rotation. I put out some feelers that day we went out to breakfast,” he added. “Seems like they might be interested in giving Porthperrin a trial.” His incisors dug into a lower lip still reddened by Jude’s kiss, a paler indent remaining when he glanced in his direction. “Even if it’s only a couple of times in the summer, it could bring in a lot of trade that usually bypasses the village.”
They left the hotel behind, winding their way back to the main road.
Jude couldn’t help looking over his shoulder as the cove diminished.
He’d come back in a heartbeat.
“That’s what I want,” Rob said quietly, his gaze sliding Jude’s way after stopping the car at a junction.
“What?”
“For people to only leave the Anchor with that look on their faces. You’d do pretty much anything to go back right now, wouldn’t you.”
“I had a good time.” A hard time as well, but worth it for this outcome, even if it left his chest feeling cracked wide open. “Didn’t you?”
“The best,” Rob said simply. “I wouldn’t have missed a single minute.” He pulled out, slotting Betsy between RVs, caravans, and cars crammed with vacationers’ luggage. “But I’m not actually made of money, these days.” His gaze slid sideways again. “I saw how much they charge per night for that suite. Staying for longer is out of my budget.”
“Sure, Mr Fancy-Pants sports car,” Jude grumbled.
