He turned his head and stared at me, seeming stunned—though really, was it such a surprising suggestion? I barrelled on, not giving him a chance to disagree.
“I won’t be able to wait on you hand and foot, like Mum would,” I said, keeping my tone casual and unconcerned. “In fact, I won’t even be in most of the time, but I assume you’re okay to entertain yourself, till you’re feeling well enough to get out and about, yeah?”
I’ll leave you in peace.
You’re free to go when you want.
I saw a little of the tension leaching out of him as I gave those throwaway assurances, the tight set of his shoulders slowly easing, the firm set of his jaw unclenching. He remained silent though, watching me with that dark, wary gaze.
God, those eyes, dark as bitter chocolate. He must’ve got them from his mother, because Derek’s were a startling blue, but he was like Derek in other ways. In height and build, and both of them with the same thick, shiny hair, even if Derek’s was almost entirely silver now.
Both of them clamming up whenever conversations got difficult.
“Please, Dylan. Say you’ll stay with Nathan.” That was Rosie, perched now on the edge of her chair, her worried gaze fixed on Mack.
He said, almost imploringly, “Rosie, I don’t think—”
“Please,” she repeated, and her eyes filled with tears. “I’ll worry if you’re on your own.”
Good old emotional blackmail.
Mack held out for about five seconds, expression torn. Then he sighed, long and hard. “Okay, you win.” He turned to me then, and his smile was careful. “Thanks for the offer, Nathan. I reckon I’ll be taking you up on it.”
He didn’t look thankful though—he looked wary. And he wasn’t the only one.
Mack moved into my place the next day, while I was working at the café. Mum gave him the spare key and he brought his stuff over. By the time I got home at six, he seemed to have settled in—not that there was much settling in a guy with one rucksack and a guitar case needed to do.
I found him in the living room, bent over his guitar and half humming, half singing under his breath as he worked through a song I recognised but couldn’t put name to. His long, agile fingers coaxed the melody from the strings with the casual ease of long experience, and even mumble-singing as he was, I could tell his voice was a low baritone with a promise of richness.
He mustn’t have heard me come in. I stood in the living room doorway for a couple of minutes listening to him play before he clocked me and abruptly stopped.
“Oh, hi!” He looked flustered, setting the guitar down on the empty half of the sofa beside him and standing up. “Sorry, I didn’t see you there.”
“Sit down,” I said, stepping further into the room. “You don’t have to stop playing. I was enjoying it. What was that song?” I settled myself into my favourite chair, toeing off my beat-up Nikes.
He sat slowly, almost reluctantly. “It’s a Blur song. I was just messing about.”
“Oh yeah,” I said, recognition dawning. “I know the one you mean now—it sounded really nice like that. Acoustic, I mean.”
He gave me a stiff half smile. “Thanks.” He didn’t move to pick up the guitar again though.
“So, did you find your room?” I asked.
“Uh, yeah, I think so. Lorraine said to use the one next to the bathroom?”
“That’s right.” I attempted breezy good humour. “Got everything you need?”
“Yeah, course, I don’t need much. Just a bed, really.” He visibly cringed then, as though I might think this bland remark was a come-on. “That is—” he rubbed at the back of his neck and cleared his throat “—um, you know.”
Yeah, I did. At least I knew that this weird awkwardness arose out of our mutual awareness that we’d slept together not so long ago. And now we were going to be living together in this compact space. Passing each other on the way to and from the shower in the morning. Sharing the sofa if we both wanted to watch TV in the evening.
My living room suddenly felt tiny.
I lurched to my feet, plastering what felt like a very fake smile across my face. “I’m going to make a cuppa,” I announced. “Do you want one?”
He blinked at me, as though surprised by my surge of energy. “Um, sure, okay.”
“Great,” I said, too brightly. “Back in a mo.”
I headed into the kitchen, closed the door behind me, rested my forehead against the hard wood, and groaned.
Fuck my life.
The surgery was scheduled for first thing on Tuesday morning when I was due to open up the café. Tuesdays were quiet and usually I opened up by myself, but that day I asked Katie to come in—and thank god I did. I was a mess all day, totally distracted and fit for nothing.
Mum and Derek were at the hospital while the surgery was happening. We exchanged texts throughout the day as I waited impatiently for news. When my phone finally rang just after three, I jumped, fumbling it with shaking fingers, my heart already pounding.
“Mum?”
“It’s me,” Derek said. “Everything’s fine. The surgeon said it went well. Rosie’s just been taken to Recovery.”
The relief was intense. “What about Mack?”
“He’s in Recovery too. He’s okay.”
I let out a hard sigh. “Can I come up now? I haven’t been able to concentrate all day.”
“She’s going to be out of it for a while,” Derek said. “Why don’t you come for visiting hours tonight? Seven?”
I was silent for a moment. Derek’s assumption that Rosie was my only concern annoyed me.
“Will it be the same visiting hours for both of them?” I asked calmly.
“I think so. Are you going to look in on Dylan too?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”
There was a brief silence.
“Well, good,” he said at last. “Lorraine will appreciate that. She wants to be there for him, but she can’t quite bring herself to leave Rosie’s side right now.”
I paused, debating whether to say anything else. This probably wasn’t easy for Derek. It might not be the best time to raise the topic of how things stood between him and Mack. Nevertheless, I found myself asking slowly, “Aren’t you going to see him?”
“The last person he’ll want to see is me,” Derek replied, his tone flat and certain.
“I’m sure—”
“I’ll see you here at seven, Nathan.”
He hung up without waiting for a response.
That evening, I went to see Rosie first. She was still groggy and looked small and very wan in her hospital bed. Mum sat on a plastic chair at the head of the bed holding her hand—the one without the tube sticking in the back of it—and Derek sat on her other side, stroking her hair. They’d both clearly been through the mill today, faces drawn with lack of sleep and worry, but there was a peace to them now that hadn’t been there before the operation.
“Hey, Ro!” I called softly as I approached the bed, setting a cuddly gorilla on the cabinet beside the bed.
She smiled weakly. “Hey!”
“How you doing?”
“Oh, great!” She chuckled at her own sarcasm.
Derek said in a wry tone, “She’s all drugged up. Take a seat.”
He gestured at the last remaining chair, which was larger and more comfortable than the basic ones he and Mum were sitting on, though further from Rosie. The patient’s chair. As I sat myself down, I met Mum’s gaze.
“You okay?” I asked.
She nodded and smiled. “I am now. This morning was hell though.”
For the next half hour we were all pretty quiet and subdued, content just to sit with each other, be with each other. At last though, I stood.
“I’m going to look in on Mack.”
Mum smiled, seeming relieved. “Oh, would you love? I popped down earlier when he was first coming round but I’m not sure he’ll remember. I’ll go and see him again in a little while, but I want to sit w
ith Rosie while she’s awake.”
“Course,” I said. “It’s not a problem.” I glanced at Derek. He was staring at the floor.
“He’s in Ward Fourteen,” Mum said. “Just say you’re family if anyone asks. You are brothers after all.”
“Stepbrothers,” I blurted. “And it’s not like I even met him till a month ago.”
She didn’t seem to find my comment odd. “Well the nurses aren’t to know, are they?”
I sighed. “I suppose not.”
I left the three of them in their quiet huddle and headed for Ward Fourteen, following the faded yellow arrows painted on the worn, hospital-blue floor.
Unlike Rosie’s single-occupancy room, this was a four-bed ward. Three of the four beds were occupied. The two nearest the door, facing each other, were taken up by a sleeping elderly gent and a faded man in late middle age who lay, helplessly listening to the monologue of a woman of around the same age. The bed beside him was empty, and Mack was in the one opposite that, semireclined on a pile of pillows, his face turned to the window.
“Hi,” I said as I drew near. “How are you feeling?”
His head jerked towards me—he was clearly taken aback. “Nathan? I wasn’t expecting to see you.” His voice was slightly slurred.
I laughed but I was frowning a little too. “Really?”
He didn’t answer that, brows pleated with confusion, and his honest bemusement at my arrival bothered me somehow. Were his expectations of us all really so low? Then again, should that surprise me given Derek’s behaviour?
“Do you mind?” I asked, hovering uncertainly. “I wanted to check on how you’re doing, but if you’d rather be alone . . .”
He looked at me blankly, then down at his own body, as though wondering how to answer, and I realised that, despite seeming far more alert than Rosie, he was still pretty out of it, probably with some strong drugs in his system.
“Tell you what—I’ll sit with you for a bit,” I said gently. “But just tell me to go anytime you want. I won’t be offended, okay?”
Something in his expression softened, and it made me feel like I’d said the right thing—made me feel good out of all proportion.
“’Kay,” he breathed.
He had the same big patient chair Rosie had, next to his bed. I tugged it round to face him so he wouldn’t have to move his head to look at me, and sat down.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“I actually feel really good.” He added by way of explanation, “I’ve had a lot of drugs.”
“Tomorrow might be a different story,” I warned.
He smiled. “Yeah, I know.”
I wondered if he’d had surgery before, or if he’d read up on the procedure. There was so much I didn’t know about him.
“How’s Rosie?” he asked.
“Good,” I said, smiling. “All drugged up, just like you.”
He gave a laugh, then winced, then laughed again at his own wince, which made me chuckle too, even as I said, “You okay? You need anything?”
“Nah.” But he smiled and his eyes, all dark and melty, were gentle on mine. It felt like his inhibitions had relaxed for the first time since he’d come to Porthkennack, and okay, it was probably the drugs, but it still made me happy. Made me feel like I could look at him the way I wanted to look at him all the time.
“You’ve done a really good thing,” I said.
He gave a little sigh. “I wish everyone would stop saying that. I just did what anyone would, getting a letter like that.”
I watched him for a moment. “I don’t think that’s true, you know. You’ve not seen Derek for years—in all the time he’s been married to my mum, you and I have never met till now, and that’s been, what? Sixteen years? You could easily have turned round and told Derek you wanted nothing to do with him or Rosie.”
He glanced at me. His expression was thoughtful, but I couldn’t read it. Couldn’t guess what he was thinking.
“Why would I do that?”
I paused. “Mum told me that the last time you saw Derek, you said you didn’t want to see him anymore. That sounds like a reason.”
For a long while, he didn’t say anything—his expression didn’t even alter. Then he sighed. “Is that what he told her?”
It was then I knew I’d made a mistake. This was not the time to be asking him about this stuff. I opened my mouth to change the subject, but he spoke before I could get a word out.
“I suppose I did say that.” His voice was oddly dreamy. “But that last time . . . it was at my mum’s funeral. He sat at the back. Then, after the service, he came up and asked me if I was okay. We’d had this big argument the night before, and I just . . . well, I just lost it. Screamed at him to fuck off.” He gave a short laugh, then winced again.
I knew I should stop him, but I wanted to hear this, wanted to know the worst, so I stayed quiet and let him go on.
“I’d never got angry like that at my dad before, but once I started, I couldn’t stop. It all came out. I told him I hated him, said I never wanted to see him again.” He paused. “I remember I told him that he hadn’t acted like a dad to me for years so what was the point pretending he cared because Mum had died?”
Abruptly he fell silent. My throat felt thick with emotion, and I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t imagine what that must have been like for him. To be fifteen and feel so alone.
Mack said, “He didn’t even argue with me, you know? Just . . . stared at me. Then he turned round and walked out the church. And that was the last time I saw him.” He sighed. “Till now.”
“Jesus, Mack,” I muttered. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
I couldn’t comprehend it, couldn’t take it in. That Derek had been so easily turned away by his own son, a boy whose words had obviously been prompted by grief and hurt—it shocked me.
Derek had been a good stepdad to me, and he was a pretty great dad to Rosie. But to Mack?
Fuck.
Was it fair to judge Derek? Maybe not, but I couldn’t help doing just that.
I thought back to that long-ago conversation with Mum and wondered how much she knew about what had really happened between Derek and Mack. Had Derek shared all the details with her? Surely she’d known he’d gone up there for his ex’s funeral?
Had she?
One thing about my mum—she adored Derek. At the height of the Dilly’s crisis, we’d had a few arguments over how unreliable he was, and she’d always defended him and expected me to excuse his behaviour. She used to say privately to me that he was like a little boy beneath the confident exterior: easily hurt, deceptively soft. She’d mentioned that his own childhood had been somehow, mysteriously, “difficult.” And maybe it had. What did I know? Could someone like me, secure and happy and doted on by two parents, ever really understand?
But when I saw Mack, half-reclining against the mound of pillows in his hospital bed, eyes closed, I felt so angry on his behalf. Not to mention guilty. Guilty that, while Derek had been playing happy families with Mum and me and Rosie, Mack had been left behind. Forgotten.
Mack’s lashes quivered, and he opened his eyes again. He looked right at me, oddly unguarded in this moment. It seemed that exhaustion was setting in now—there were shadows under his eyes, weariness in every line of his body.
“Do you want me to go?” I asked.
For several beats, he said nothing, then he murmured through barely moving lips, “You can stay a little longer.” Pause. “If you like.”
“Hold me.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll stay till you fall asleep.”
For a while we sat quietly, then he said, “I was okay after the funeral, you know.”
“Were you?”
“Course. I had my gran and grandad.”
“In Perth?”
“Nah, they lived in Glasgow.” So that had been another move for him.
Mack’s eyes tracked my face unselfconsciously. Right now, there was no awkwardnes
s between us. The wariness I’d grown used to seeing on his face was gone, and his mouth had an uncharacteristically relaxed set that made his lips soft and kissable.
And, Christ, why was I letting my mind go there?
I cleared my throat. “Did you get on with your grandparents?”
“They were okay,” he said, his tone noncommittal. “They made sure I had everything I needed. They were just set in their ways. They didn’t approve of me being gay. Anyway, it wasn’t for that long. I left when I was seventeen.”
Not exactly a glowing reference. The renewed burst of rage I felt towards Derek startled me. Because really, why should it bother me so much that Mack had been neglected by his dad? Mack himself seemed pretty philosophical about it, even with his inhibitions down.
Was he though?
“I’m not here for a reunion, Dad.”
Since the day he’d arrived in Porthkennack, Mack had avoided spending any time with Derek, to the extent that even when Derek was around, he would address most of his remarks to Mum.
No, he probably wasn’t philosophical about the situation with Derek. Not deep down.
I couldn’t help wondering how he felt about me. While he’d been left to his own devices, I’d had the benefit of both my own parents and Derek in my life. Mack had had no one by the sounds of it.
Mack closed his eyes again. He was pale with exhaustion. I was surprised he’d stayed awake as long he had, looking as tired as he did, and with all the drugs in his system. Even like this though, looking far from his best, I still found him unbelievably appealing. There was something about Mack MacKenzie that just got to me. It wasn’t only his appearance—though yeah, I liked the way he looked a lot—it was something about the man underneath. He had to have strength of character to have come here, to Porthkennack, to help the sister he’d never met, despite his history with his dad. I admired that a lot. And then there were those hints of fragility he occasionally showed. That he was showing right now. Those got to me in a different way.
Damn, I really was a fixer.
More than anything, I wanted to drive away the shadows that I saw in his eyes. Wanted to mend the rift between him and Derek. Wanted to see if I could coax him to smile, genuinely smile. Laugh too, raucously, holding nothing back. I wondered if he ever did that. It occurred to me that I’d give a lot to see that.
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