by Con Riley
“Hey, don’t mistake me for my dad. Cut off, remember? Besides, someone talked me into investing all my winnings and then some in an amazing hotel you might have heard of. A place called the New Anchor? I heard it’s got the best new chef in the country, and”—he tapped the walnut of the dashboard for luck—“it might not get completely eviscerated by Guy Parsons.” The thick, dark sweep of Rob’s eyelashes shouldn’t have been so appealing as he fluttered them Jude’s way. “You thought that hotel in St Ives was something? The New Anchor’s going to knock your socks off.”
Jude would have appreciated Rob’s confidence if it wasn’t for a few facts: they’d yet to take any money, and Guy Parsons’ review might still hamstring them. He held Trevor’s postcards close to his chest as they crawled back, none of the traffic taking the Porthperrin turn-off, all heading for vacation spots that had much more to offer.
“Hey,” Rob demanded a few minutes later. “Are you listening to me, fish face?”
Jude tuned back in as Rob negotiated the last tight bend before returning to Porthperrin’s empty car park. “Yeah?”
“I said, there’s one more reason why we needed to get back in a hurry.” Now, with his car safely parked, and this car park private for very different reasons to the one they last kissed in, it was Rob’s turn to unfasten both their seat belts and lean into Jude’s space. His kiss was sweet and slow and drugging. “Will you do something for me?”
Something?
After finding Trevor for him and Lou, he’d have done anything Rob wanted.
“Well, two things, actually.”
The first request was sobering. Rob slid his hand from Jude’s shoulder to press the postcards more firmly against Jude’s chest. “Can you warn Marc that Lou’s going to need him when she reads these?”
“Can’t you?”
“Yes, I can,” Rob said. “But I’m not going to. You are. And you’re going to act happy about it.”
Jude couldn’t help the sigh that slipped out. He wasn’t unhappy exactly; being around Marc was awkward, that was all, tangled with Jude’s response to his dad’s avoidance, none of which was Marc’s fault in the slightest.
“Jude,” Rob said, patient. “Did you notice anything about the paintings in Marc’s studio when we were there?”
Jude shook his head. He’d been too intent on begging Lou’s forgiveness to pay much attention. Then he nodded slowly. “They weren’t seascapes, like in the gallery, were they?” Or like on the walls of each room at the pub. “The colours were different,” all soft shades of gold and rose. “Were they sunsets?”
“They were all of Louise.”
“What?”
“He paints seascapes for money, but he paints her because he’s in love with her.” How Rob could blend humour with a warning, Jude still couldn’t fathom, but he did it as he added, “Some of them are abstract, but in some of them he paints her like a French girl, so don’t ever look at them too closely,” and then let out a chuckle. “So, if he seems protective, remember who stayed in Porthperrin when their family went back to France, and who Lou ran straight to when she needed someone to trust.”
“Yeah, okay. I’ll go see him.” Jude dug deep into that tender new place in his chest. “I’ll clear the air if I can. Explain why I was such a dick around him,” and stop any wedge from forming between Jude and his sister, if he was lucky. “What’s the second thing you wanted?”
Rob answered with a question. “Did you really help your dad build both of the bunks in the boat shed?”
Jude nodded, the memory of sawing the wood suddenly so fresh he could almost smell the sawdust. “Yeah, when Lou and I outgrew the first ones Dad built. We both helped, only I had to build hers and she had to build mine. It took us ages.” God, his dad had been so patient, only helping them fix their mistakes rather than take over.
Missing him at that moment had Jude clutching his package even closer. “I guess that’s why we’ve always got on when some siblings can’t stand each other. He made us think of each other, and then gave us the tools to do it.”
Rob’s tone was so soft. He said, “Good because I want you to take them apart all over again,” like another chore was good news. He continued with, “And then build one we can stretch out in,” and Jude cheered up in a hurry.
Much later that evening, after a successful service that should have made him happy, Jude’s mood wasn’t exactly lower, but his feelings were mixed as Louise sat down to read the postcards.
Watching her holding back tears was just as hard as he’d anticipated, but her turning her face into Marc’s shoulder, postcards spread out on the desk before her, only made him pull back, silent. Then he stopped at the office doorway, knowing now that his withdrawal response was a learned one, a legacy he didn’t have to continue when his dad had written as plain as day that he’d do things differently, in hindsight.
Jude came back and faced Marc. “I’m sorry about when you first came to Porthperrin.” Rob’s nod encouraged him to add detail. “Dad always withdrew from gay people.”
“But I’m not.” Marc’s arm tightened around Lou. “Gay, I mean. Wait. Was it the lip ring?” Marc pondered. “Or was it the black nail polish?”
“It was the eyeliner, I reckon.” Jude nudged the pile of postcards. “I’d had years of seeing the way he’d get all quiet, and look so….” He didn’t know how to explain it, but, thank goodness, Lou did.
“Marc, have you ever seen one of those ferns that curl up when you brush past its leaves?”
Marc nodded.
“He was like that. He was perfectly fine with tourists, but he’d kind of retract around anyone who pinged his radar.”
“Turns out it must have been guilt,” Jude said. Hauling such heavy thoughts to the surface was hard. “Back when it all kicked off for Trevor, Dad did what he told him. But Dad was a better man than that.” He knew that for certain. Every single lesson his father had taught him had been about pulling together. “He was a much better man, only he was pulled in two directions, and then lying as Trevor told him to only got him nowhere. All that guilt at what he’d said festered.”
“Until now,” Louise said.
Rob’s arm around Jude helped him let out more of his own poison. “That’s why I avoided you when you hung around here so often. Dad reacted like one of those ferns because he thought the way you looked meant something that I wanted to avoid him thinking about me. None of that was your fault. I’m sorry I wasn’t friendlier when you first got here, and I’m glad you stayed.”
Marc’s gaze was level, thoughtful. “I get it, but I stayed for my own reasons.” His gaze swung to Louise, whose blush was vivid. “I’m not going anywhere while you’re here, Lou.”
Rob nudged Jude and whispered, “I think this is where they finally make out. We should leave them to it.” He pulled the office door closed behind them before asking Jude, “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Jude said before shaking his head and getting honest. “No, not really.”
Rob’s hug was so easy to lean into, his pat on his shoulder the kind of simple support Jude had just witnessed Marc offer. Rob steered him into the kitchen, which was full of shadows. The darkness made speaking easier, for some reason.
“Every time I think about Dad bottling up feeling ashamed for so long, I don’t know what I’m pissed off about most. The time I wasted worrying that he’d hate me, the friendships I avoided, all the distance I put between us...” It was a list that would unspool for longer if he let it. Instead, he let Rob kiss him, his mouth so gentle in contrast to the prickle of his stubble, his hands firm on Jude’s hips another grounding contrast.
“It’s over,” Rob said when they parted.
Jude nodded.
Or maybe it wasn’t.
The kitchen door swung open, Marc’s expression shadowed even after he turned on the light. “You need to come and see this.”
Had Jude missed something important that his dad had written?
Rob got back to the o
ffice before him, reading over Lou’s shoulder, but they both looked at the laptop screen rather than the stack of postcards that now stood abandoned.
“We just got an alert that the website’s down. Too much traffic. It must be a glitch,” Louise said, scrolling down the online booking system. “There’s nothing here.”
“Let me.” Rob opened a new tab and typed two words—Porthperrin Anchor—before adding two more—Guy Parsons.
“It’s too early for a review,” Lou insisted. “He said there was a six-week lead time for the Sunday papers.”
“But it’s not too early for him to post on all his social media.” Rob clicked on a link that started with a single sentence that made Louise gasp.
Don’t go to the New Anchor at Porthperrin.
“Fuck.” Jude closed his eyes for a long moment. A picture had loaded below that statement when he dared to open them again. “Wait… is that—?”
“Us,” Rob said simply. “It’s us, together.”
Ian must have caught a moment right after they’d kissed, Rob’s smile was purely joy-filled, Jude’s its perfect mirror. He couldn’t drag his gaze from it.
Lou read aloud as she scrolled down. “Don’t go to the New Anchor at Porthperrin,” she said, her voice doleful until it suddenly picked up. “You’ll only fall hopelessly in love with the glorious food, the charming location, and the lovers who run it!” Her eyes were wide when she turned. “Oh my God!”
“Scroll down,” Jude demanded. Another photo loaded, this time of the meal he’d cooked, along with a caption.
The secret ingredient for this hidden gem’s success is the love each meal is cooked with.
“The secret was seaweed, actually.” Rob joked, but his voice shook. “What does he say about the bedrooms? Oh.” They were all silent for a long moment. Somehow, Ian had snuck a photo of his parents’ haven, walls papered with maps, shelves crammed with his mum’s treasures. “There’s no doubt that eclectic taste runs in this tight-knit family business,” Rob read.
Jude featured in the next photo, or rather a fragment of his face did, light catching the stubble on the square of his jaw, turning it golden, his eye the same shade as the batik fabric he shook out. The sky framed by the bedroom window was the exact same colour. “That’s got to be photoshopped. No way are my eyes that blue.”
“They didn’t photoshop the next photo,” Lou said, teary again. “Look. That’s the end of the sea wall, and the photo credits Susan.” A slightly blurred Guy Parsons knelt in front of Ian, who had a hand over his mouth as if shocked. “Wow. He proposed to his photographer while he was here.”
Rob refreshed the booking website. This time, the page loaded correctly, colours changing from yellow to blue on its built-in calendar for June, July and August.
Lou leaned forward. “Wait…. Doesn’t that mean…?”
“Yeah,” Rob said faintly, only standing because Jude braced him. “We’re fully booked for the whole summer.”
30
Later, slightly tipsy on terrible cognac they’d shared to toast the New Anchor’s bookings, Louise caught up with Jude as he washed the glasses in the kitchen. She wrapped her arms tight around his middle, her face pressed into his back, so her voice was muffled. “Leave the pans to soak. I’ll do them first thing tomorrow.”
“No need.” Jude couldn’t imagine ever sleeping. Not after watching their bookings spill over into September and October, the office phone ringing off the hook with hopeful enquiries that they might conjure more rooms out of nowhere. “Besides, I’ll be up before you. I want to catch Carl.” He’d already mentally run through what increased bookings meant to his fish order. At least now they could pay him market value.
“I’ll be up just as early,” she said, her tone dreamy, her head a dead weight between the blades of his shoulder, suggesting that might be wishful thinking until she added, “Marc’s got some canvasses arriving on the early train.”
“What does him getting up early have to do with you?” Jude teased until she landed a headbutt. “Ow! Okay, okay. You’re going to his place tonight. I get it.” He glanced over his shoulder where only the top of her hair was visible. Marc clearly saw something different to the unruly frizz she hated, if those images in his studio truly were of her, Jude remembered. Marc had painted it as shimmering and stunning. Of course she’d want to spend the night—this amazing night—with someone who saw her as special. This much joy and relief was meant to be shared with someone who mattered.
She read his mind. “Where’s Rob?”
“He went back to the office. Said something about making changes to that business plan of his.” Jude added more hot water to his sink of dishes, then stood, doing nothing except enjoy the weight of his sister leaning on him. She seemed relaxed for once, boneless and trusting that he’d stick around to support her for as long as she needed, maybe for the first time since he’d come back. Perhaps that was down to the booze he’d sipped while she gulped, gasping and laughing as she finally agreed that it did taste awful. No matter the reason, Jude also found it easier to set down his armour. He dropped a mental shield he’d held for too long and said exactly what he was thinking. “Did I tell you that you’re amazing?” She was, securing the Anchor’s transformation so much better than he ever could have during a crisis.
What had he done when he’d felt pressurised in this same place?
He’d put as much distance between him and home as he could manage. Fuck it; hadn’t he done that twice, running first to London before hiding out in the Aphrodite’s galley?
He could have come home so much sooner.
Should have.
Louise read his mind a second time in as many minutes. “You would have done the same if I hadn’t been here to keep the business running. And before that, you had other reasons not to be here. Understandable ones.” This time, the knock of her forehead against his shoulder blade was gentle. “I get that now.” She went quiet, perhaps recalling the postcard Jude had saved showing her until last. She said, “Anyway, I couldn’t have done what you did either. Any of it. Be seasick twenty-four-seven while on a hopeless search? No thanks.” Her voice was hoarse and her grip around his middle tightened. “I’m sorry you had to do that alone. It must have been so hard.”
They both stood in reflective silence while soapsuds in the sink clustered like the islands he’d scoured from shore to shore while searching. Each island of suds diminished, individual bubbles popping as Louise leaned and Jude let her, for once the quiet not loaded with secrets. Eventually, she unpeeled herself and brought him back to the present by saying, “We do need to talk about the bedroom situation, Jude. I bet I know which numbers Rob’s running, right now.”
Jude dried his hands and waited. If he’d learned one thing lately it was that tipsy or not, those two knew this business.
“The photos... the ones with the review? They made it look like Mum and Dad’s room was available to book. That’s what the majority of phone callers wanted. To book their bedroom, I mean. ‘That bohemian room’, one of them called it,” she said. “And another caller called it ‘unique’, instead of full of Mum’s tat. Who knew that would be what people would be prepared to pay the most for?”
Jude did, after St Ives. “Should we?” he asked, aware even as he spoke that he sounded strangled. “Should we let it out like the others?”
For a moment she looked all of fourteen again, instead of a businesswoman. “What do you think?”
Letting go was still so hard. Only seeing her eyes well let him. A line mooring him to the reunion he’d hoped for with their parents finally uncoiled, slipping through fingers that he couldn’t clasp any longer. “They’d understand,” he said, his voice now a dry rasp. “They’d want us to do whatever we thought was best. Best for us, not for them. Whatever we can live with, long-term, Lou.” And this was a gift Trevor’s postcards had offered. “They were happy. Despite everything. They were happy at the end, and they’d want us to do whatever made us happy as well.”
He waited as Louise blinked fast a few times. “You want to stay here, don’t you? At the Anchor? Even if it’s different to how they ran it?”
“Yes.” Louise blotted her face with a tea towel. “Of course I do. And of course I’d rather I didn’t have to run it without them. Not yet, anyway.” It was her turn to struggle to speak. “I thought there would be more years.”
Jude tugged the cloth away and surveyed her face. The same passion his parents had for the Anchor was right there on its surface. “Then we should go ahead and let out their room. Ask twice as much for it as any of the others.”
“My room too,” Louise said, rushing to add, “Might as well make hay while the sun shines. M-Marc said I could stay at the gallery with him for the summer. ”
“Just for the summer?” Jude could hardly tease her when sharing the boatshed with Rob was the best part of this whole situation. If Marc gave her even a fraction of the same comfort, Jude would do anything to help her grab it while he was home. “Or for longer?”
Lou looked up, most of her make-up cried off, and she nodded.
“Then let’s all four of us make a start tomorrow.”
After Louise left for the night, Rob found Jude still leaning against the sink in the kitchen, the last of the soapsuds gone. He didn’t speak. Instead, he corralled Jude, standing behind him like Lou had, only Rob reached around to unbutton his chef’s jacket, slipping a hand inside and under his T-shirt to map Jude’s belly and chest. His mouth was as warm as his palm and roaming fingers, lips soft at the side of his throat while his hold on Jude’s hip was firm. He moved his other hand even lower.
“H- hello to you, too,” Jude stuttered, his cock firming fast under the grazing press of Rob’s palm, his inhale sharp when Rob let go of his hip to tug at his belt, unfastening it fast.
Jude turned in Rob’s arms. “You in a rush for some reason?”
Rob didn’t answer, the residual cognac flavour heady rather than cheap when shared via a deep kiss, his mouth opening right away, nothing light or teasing about the insistent, slick slide of his tongue or the grip he now had on Jude’s hair, hemming him against the counter with an intent that had Jude’s knees weakening. It felt like hours rather than minutes before they broke for breath, Jude’s chest rising and falling as fast as Rob’s.
