You’d think that after spending all evening talking about it, we’d have spent the rest of the night fucking. We didn’t. After a kiss that went on far longer than any in my adult life, I drove Kim home and left him at the end of the path that led to the commune.
And tried not to wonder if there’d be a light on in his trailer when he walked into the orchard, because as much as I wanted to deny it, I was still too intrigued by the idea of Kim and Red together—her curves against his slender bones. To me, he was a dominant lover. Was he the same with her? Or did he lie at her mercy? And why did it even matter? Kim was Kim, and if we had any chance of making our own brand of friendship work, I had to accept that. I wanted to accept it, and I did.
I was curious, though, which outweighed my brief period of jealousy. And I wanted to know Red better, know the woman Kim couldn’t give up. All I had to do was find a way to spend time with her without getting booted in the shin.
A few days after Kim and I had been to the cliffs, I met him at Belly Acre Farm. He’d come to see the progress in the barn, and I’d pretty much ditched everything to be there to show him around, a turn of events that amused my brothers to no end.
“You’re blatantly shagging him,” Gaz said. “Can’t think of another reason you’d be mooning around at the gatepost.”
I gave him the finger, unwilling to admit that he’d caught me loitering at the top of the driveway doing just that. “Perhaps he’s blatantly shagging me.”
Predictably, Gaz cringed and wandered off. Nicky, a few years younger and far less freaked out by the idea of man sex, wasn’t so easily dismissed. “Is he doing the doors as well as the furniture?”
“No idea. Ask Dad.”
Nicky leaned on the fence beside me. “You know he’s got a girlfriend, right?”
“Dad has? Damn, that mean you’ve got another illegitimate sibling on the way?”
“Don’t be a dick.”
“Don’t you be a dick. If you’re talking about Kim, don’t bother. I know about him and Red.”
“Who the fuck’s Red? I’m talking about Lena Gordon. Her and Kim have been together for years, everyone knows.”
I snorted. “Everyone knows? Since when did everyone know anything about anyone? Grow up, Nicky.”
“Suit yourself.” Nicky pushed himself off the fence as a vehicle engine rumbled at the end of the driveway. “Just saying what I heard.”
He walked away, leaving me to feel bad about being such a prick. I hadn’t had many relationships, but every other bisexual I’d known had suffered through the same thing—the insistence from society that you had to choose one way or the other, that you couldn’t commit to another soul without drawing a line under your sexuality, and that all men who claimed to swing both ways were likely living the same life as Rich.
Briefly, I felt bad for Rich too, because there was no doubt in my mind that his lovely wife had no idea that he liked a bit of cock on the side, but that shit didn’t last long. I was learning to curb the negativity that came with any thought of Rich, but he wasn’t getting my sympathy. Fuck no.
A Fiat 500 pulled up in front of me. I couldn’t contain my amusement as Kim practically fell out the driver door. “I don’t think I’ve seen you drive the same car twice. Don’t tell me this is yours?”
Kim laughed, regaining his trademark grace as he straightened up. “It’s Lena’s. She’s leaving it with me when she goes back to Bristol, so I figured I should get used to driving it.”
“It’s pink.”
“I know. It’s my punishment for tipping her Golf convertible into a ditch when I was pissed.”
“Oh. When was this?”
“A long time ago. I only got my licence back last month.”
Sometimes I chose to forget the destruction Kim’s addiction must have wreaked on those around him. I waited until he got close enough and then pulled him in for a quick hug, brushing his cheek with a kiss. “It suits you, the pink, I mean. Not many blokes could own it.”
“You could.”
“Thanks.”
Kim shrugged. “You’re the coolest motherfucker I’ve ever known.”
He thinks I’m cool? As hard as I tried, I couldn’t quite believe it. I was a nerd—tied to my computer when I wasn’t surgically attached to my camera—and no match for the mellow poise that rolled off Kim. “So . . . you wanna see the barn?”
“Lead on.”
I took Kim to the barn, which, minus the furniture and some new doors, was well on its way to being finished. The kitchen was up and running too.
Kim sniffed the air. “Pasties?”
“You Porthkennack boys can smell them a mile off, eh?”
Kim’s grin concurred. I rolled my eyes and meandered to the kitchen to swipe him one from the plate Laura was bound to have left out for inevitable thieving fingers.
I came back with a plain pasty and one of the spicy variations. Kim pulled a face at the latter and opted for the plain one. “Dude, I like my curry, but you don’t mess with tradition.”
“No?” I was secretly pleased. The keema pasty rocked, especially with the dollop of Gaz’s ginger-mango chutney on the side. “Oh well. Guess I’ll have to eat it, then.”
Kim eyed me with obvious suspicion. “Must be an emmet thing. Calum loves that shit too.”
Emmet. It had been a while since I’d last been called that, though I’d spent most of my childhood refuting my brothers’ claims that I wasn’t Porthkennack enough to be truly Cornish. And the city-boy mockney accent I’d acquired since then probably didn’t help. Gaz said I spoke like a hipster in a beetroot bar.
Still, I was Cornish enough to ride Kim’s dick, so he could jog on with his emmet bullshit.
I poked my tongue out at him and turned away, drifting towards the area of the barn that had been designated as the canteen. “The rest of your tables and chairs will go here.”
Kim nodded. “And I’ve got three weeks to finish them, right?”
“If you say so.” Unforgivably, I’d been so caught up in my own deadlines that the barn’s schedule had slipped my mind. “Are you on track?”
“As much as I ever am with anything.”
Kim’s tone spun me around. He was brushing crumbs from his hands—eyes down, head slightly bowed—and his expression was hard to gauge, but something was clearly off.
I came back to him and nudged his arm. “Everything okay?”
“Hmm?” Kim jumped, apparently startled by my touch. “Sorry, what?”
“Checking you’re okay. Got a weight on your mind?”
He offered me a weak half smile that did nothing to ease my concern. “No more than usual. Ignore me, mate. Probably hungry.”
“You just ate.”
“Be right as rain soon enough, then, won’t I?”
I wasn’t convinced. Perhaps I’d been spoiled by his—up until now—terminally easy disposition. Still, there wasn’t much I could do if he wasn’t prepared to tell me. Maybe a distraction would help. “Do you want to see my dad’s veg field? The lettuces are done, but the raspberries and pumpkins are looking good. There’s tomatoes in the poly-tunnels too.”
The genuine enthusiasm that brightened Kim’s face was so endearing it hurt, and I couldn’t resist taking his hand as we left the barn and walked through the yard towards the fields.
He didn’t object, and the way he laced his fingers with mine took me back to our cliff-top evening a few days ago, reminding me that I had seen him somewhat off-colour before. He’d vaguely blamed drink-demons then. Was that the problem now? It felt a little rude to ask.
So I didn’t. I took him to my dad’s fruit and veg fields and tried not to jump him while he examined each and every plant and asked me a million questions about soil and seasonal watering. Questions I had no idea how to answer.
Which was, apparently, enough to cheer him up. “How can you live here and not have a clue how anything works?”
“I don’t live here.”
“Yeah, but you were raised here . . . kinda. How can you be so detached?”
Detached. Huh. The playful accusation stung, though I couldn’t say why. “I know where the kitchen is, if you fancy a cuppa. That do you?”
The humour in Kim’s beautiful face faded. “Actually, I should be getting back. I’ve left the lads sanding the tabletops so I can paint them tonight.”
“Sure? There’s plum cake?”
Kim growled low in his throat. “You’re a fucker, you know that?”
“What?”
Kim shook his head. “Never mind.”
“Fuck, no. Don’t pull that shit on me. If I’ve pissed you off, tell me. I can’t fix it otherwise.”
“Do you want to fix it?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Kim stood from where he’d been studying the soil around my dad’s biggest pumpkin. “What are we doing, Jas? Every time I think I know, five minutes with you confuses the fuck out of me.”
“I thought we were friends?”
“Friends that fuck, but we don’t do a whole lot of that either.”
“You’re pissed off because we don’t fuck enough?”
If Kim was confused, I was nothing short of bewildered. Our friendship was complicated, but it had seemed like we’d made progress in recent days.
Kim sighed. “I . . . Fuck, I don’t know. I think I’m just tired. I don’t sleep much when I’m on my own.”
“Red not with you?”
“Nah, she doesn’t stay with me. I thought you knew that?”
Neither one of them had given me the impression that Red lived with Kim, but subconsciously, I’d kind of assumed that Kim was never alone. Dickhead. Alone the other night, wasn’t he?
And, twat that I was, I couldn’t seem to help sticking my foot in it further. “My brother told me that you and Red are still together.”
“Your brother? Which one?”
“Nicky.”
“I’ve never met the bloke. What the fuck does he know about my life?”
“Nothing, I’d imagine. Just putting it out there that it’s not only me who’s sending mixed messages.”
Something akin to rage flashed in Kim’s suddenly piercing gaze. “What mixed messages? I was honest about Lena, and I haven’t been with her since I met you. What more do you want from me?”
“Been with her? As in—”
“As in shagged her, Jas. ’Cause that’s all you’re bothered about, right? Who screws who? Not that she’s my best friend in the world? Not that it’s really fucking hard to let go of the one person who’s always had my back? Who’s forgiven me for every fuckup I’ve had?”
The fury in his rant caught me off guard. “I’ve never asked you to give her up.”
“Why not?”
He had me there. Even if he had slept with Red in the time since we’d met, he hadn’t cheated on me, because I’d given him nothing to be unfaithful to. “Because I don’t want you to give her up.”
“Because you don’t want me?”
“No, because I don’t . . . I can’t . . . feel threatened by something that means so much. Kim—”
“Fuck this.” Kim dodged me as I reached for him. “Look, just forget it, okay? It is what it is between us—some shit-hot sex and mates, yeah? Shame we can’t have a pint together. We’d be laughing then.”
“Kim.”
“Jas, please. I gotta go, okay? I’ve got loads to do tonight, and I reckon you’ve seen enough of me for one day.”
That would never happen, but instead of saying so, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, and Kim was halfway to Red’s ridiculous pink car before I took a step forward.
And by then it was too late. Kim was out of earshot and, it seemed, out of the flawed brand of friendship I’d kidded myself that I could handle.
Kim didn’t call. And I didn’t call him, which meant we were back in the silent phase of our never-ending cycle of bullshit and miscommunication.
I blamed myself. How could I not? Everything Kim had said to me was true. I’d asked to be friends, and then screwed him on the floor of my old flat, then I’d asked him to be a friend I could fuck, only to drive him home with no more than a snog on the doorstep, all the while letting on no indication that I gave a shit what became of us.
The Red thing wasn’t quite as he saw it, though, but it would take a hell of a conversation for him to believe that. Despite what Rich had put me through, I truly had no problem with the bond Kim and Red had forged long before I knew them. How could I, when he’d been so honest about it? Because it wasn’t Rich’s wife who had hurt me so much, it had been the lies, the deception . . . the hidden side of a man I’d believed I would spend the rest of my life with. I didn’t know Kim as well as I wanted to, and I didn’t know Red at all, but somehow I believed in them, a notion that made little sense as I threw myself into my work in an effort to give Kim some space.
Space. Ha. Would I never fucking learn? When a week of silence turned into ten long days, it appeared not. Tail between my legs, I got in my car one Saturday afternoon and drove to the commune, but there was no one there, and no sign of Red’s pink car.
Deflated and slightly desperate, I wound up at the farm, seeking shelter in Laura’s kitchen while the others were all out painting the barn to match the new doors Kim had apparently delivered the day before.
“We honestly didn’t expect him to have them finished so soon.” Laura set her gigantic teapot on the table. “He surprised us when he turned up last night.”
“Was he okay?”
Laura arched an eyebrow. “Okay? Yes, he seemed to be, not that he said much. We couldn’t even tempt him in with a glass of your dad’s blackberry wine.”
“He doesn’t drink, Ma. He’s an alcoholic.”
“Oh.” For once, my wonderful stepmother appeared lost for words. “Well, he doesn’t look like one.”
I rolled my eyes. “Who does?”
“Is he a functioning alcoholic? I’ve read about those.”
“Ma, I have no idea what you read about in those daft magazines of yours.”
“Cheeky.” Laura cuffed my ear as she claimed the seat beside me, softening the blow with a plate of jam-filled shortbread. “But I’m sorry if I’ve put my foot in my mouth. Us old fogies have to work hard to keep up.”
“You’re not that old.”
“Old enough to know better than to talk when I should be listening.”
Knowing that resistance was futile, I took my cue. Besides, I couldn’t stand any more silence. “I think I’ve fucked up.”
“How?”
I reached for a biscuit and set about crumbling it into sticky dust. “Me and Kim . . . we, um—”
“Hooked up? I read about that too, in Heat.”
“Ma! Heat magazine, seriously? But, yeah, if we’re being millennial about it, we met at that hippie fest a while back, and then at a gig in Bude. We hooked up and things have been, uh, complicated ever since.”
Laura poured tea. “Because of his drinking?”
“He doesn’t drink, Ma, I told you, and it’s me, not him.”
“Ah.” Laura stirred milk slowly into a rose-adorned mug that was older than me. “Does this have anything to do with what happened with Rich?”
I cast her a sideways glance. I’d never gone into detail with my family about why Rich and I had split, but I wasn’t naïve enough to believe I’d hidden the resulting carnage from them. “Kind of. After Rich, I didn’t think I was ready for more than sex, and I liked Kim too much to just have that with him, so we agreed to be friends.”
“Friends is nice,” Laura said. “What went wrong?”
“Oh God.” I flung my elbows on the table. “Everything, really. For one, we kept having sex, and then there’s Red to consider.”
“Red?”
“His missus, well . . . ex-missus, but they’re still—”
“Hooking up?”
Hooking up seemed a crass way to describe the lingering relationship between Kim and Red, but I nodded anyway. “He says he hasn’t since he met me, but they’re still close. He loves her.”
“I see. Is that a bad thing?”
And that, right there, was why I’d come to Laura. Her unconditional love for my father was the reason my childhood had been so full and bright, instead of tinged grey by the monotony of living with a woman who’d barely tolerated the space I’d taken up in her lonely life. “No, actually, and whether he fucks her or not doesn’t make a huge amount of difference.”
Laura sipped at her tea. “Would you like to sleep with her too?”
“I don’t think so.” And of that I was almost certain. I’d been sexually attracted to women in the past, and Red was stunning, but my fascination with her was all about Kim. “I don’t know her, to be honest.”
“But you like her?”
I nodded, because it was true. My encounters with Red had endeared me to her, even if she had left a vicious bruise on my shin. How could it not, when it was clear her frustration had stemmed from a primal instinct to protect Kim? “I just don’t know where we go from here. I’m a mess, Ma. What if I screw his life up? Mess with his recovery? Or him and Red?”
“What makes you think your presence in his life will be negative? What happened with Rich wasn’t your fault.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“No, it bloody wasn’t.”
I blinked. Laura rarely swore, even in a house full of blokes who cursed like sailors. “Why are you so sure?”
“Because, Jasper, I raised you every summer your mother saw fit to let me, and I know you only show your affection when you truly mean it. You loved that man, and he hurt you. That wasn’t your fault. My concern now is that you’ve taken it to mean that’s all you’re good for.”
“. . . all my junkyard heart is good for . . .”
“I don’t think that.”
“No? Then what’s keeping you and Kim apart?”
I shrugged. “Everything. Nothing. I don’t know if he wants to be with me, I just know that what we have at the moment is hurting him.”
“Because it’s making him feel like he’s not good enough.”
It wasn’t a question, and she was on the money. I put my head in my hands. “God, I fucking hate myself for making him feel that way.”
“I’d imagine there’s more to it, if he’s struggling with other things.”
“He probably wouldn’t tell me if he was. He’s so easygoing, Ma, but he doesn’t talk . . . he’s like, I don’t know, a perfect contradiction.”
Laura smiled. “All the best men are, dear. They’d be boring if you always knew what they were thinking.”
“What should I do?”
“Whatever feels right, and no one knows that but you.”
If only it were that easy. I drank the rest of my tea, only half listening to Laura talk about how her unconventional relationship with my father had made Belly Acre Farm the gossip of Porthkennack when I’d been born. I envied her, I truly did. She’d always been so sure of her path, so sure that her soul told her the truth—that no matter what, or who, crossed into her life, my father’s heart was hers.
On cue, my dad came in from the barn, paint splattered all over him, a crate of potatoes in his arms. “Okay, son?”
I nodded. I loved him dearly, but I couldn’t talk to him like I could Laura, and he respected that, trusting that I would come to him if I needed him.
I rarely did.
Still, his hand on my arm as he passed was comforting, though the smell of freshly dug potatoes reminded me that, in a fit of Kim-fuelled madness, I’d agreed to help Nicky at the imminent autumn country craft fair. Great. Kim’s workshop had a stall not far from ours. Whether he wanted to see me or not, he’d be spending most of that day staring right at me. Could I wait that long?
My heart said no.