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I couldn’t argue with that. At least he would be getting his rocks off later. I was going home to a muddled octogenarian and my lonely right hand. “But why are you looking so shifty about it?”
His mouth twisted into the same sickly inane grin it used to when Léa flicked her eraser at him in geography. “Because she’s ten weeks’ pregnant, that’s why. I’m going to be a papa, Florian!”
“Oh!”
I was a gay single man. Intuiting whether this was good news didn’t come easily. Tossing a mental coin, I crossed my fingers and hoped. “Putain, congratulations!”
The grin stretched even wider, now a little bashful and proud. I’d chosen right. “I’m excited but scared shitless, to be honest, Florian. I’ve been holding it in for days and absolutely dying to tell someone. We thought we’d start trying about three months ago and um… we didn’t have to try very hard.”
“Great! Papa Jerome! It suits you. And your dad’s going to be a papi! It might cheer him up a little.”
“Hah! Don’t hold your breath.”
CHAPTER 7
CHARLES
Florian must be starting to wonder whether he’d got himself a stalker, but I owed him some sort of apology after my meltdown yesterday. And my thanks for not asking any questions. He’d said nothing, in fact, offered no suggestions, not a hint of judgement. He’d just waited it out.
I came upon him shortly after lunch, in a quiet window before the afternoon cyclists littered the path. With an oversized metal paddle, like bakers used to slide loaves in and out of ovens, he was shovelling a row of his perfect salt pyramids into the back of a trailer, pausing between every two or three piles to inch the small tractor and trailer forwards. Hot, tedious work; he’d stripped down to his waist and a sheen of sweat glistened across his shoulders. The contents of the full trailer, I assumed, would be added to the salt mountain growing at the back of Florian’s square of marshland, now standing at the height of a single-storey building. Of course, if my brain had been working during yesterday’s tour, I’d have more of an idea of where it all went after that. I waited until he paused between mounds.
“Hi!”
Florian seemed pleased when he looked up, either that or his thespian abilities extended beyond forming a pretty silhouette against a setting sun. Smoky silver fluttered around his lithe form and an unfamiliar sensation of pleasure washed over me.
“Charles! How are you feeling today?”
I felt my face flush. “Much better thank you. Sorry about yesterday.”
“No need to apologise. Have you come for your private tour?”
Adjusting his Panama, he wiped at a trickle of sweat working its way down his temple. A lick of dark hair lay plastered to it as he grinned at me. I envied him, unable to recall the last time I’d rolled up my sleeves and put in a solid day of honest labour. Not since working on a building site in my university holidays perhaps. A sudden impulse struck me.
“Do you need a hand?” I quickly clarified. “If I’m allowed, of course. I never see more than one person working a… a…”
The French word for his patch of salt marsh escaped me—to be honest, so did the English one. I’d never discussed salt harvesting in either language until this summer.
“A tile,” he corrected, and laughed. “Two people are allowed, yes. Although any more and the gendarmes arrest us for collusion.”
“Really?”
Oh my God, I’d fallen for it. He laughed again and his silver shone brighter, sparkling, as if magnified by the sun’s rays. “Of course not. Here.” He handed me his spade. “You dig, I’ll drive the tractor.”
I smiled at his skewed division of labour, and he eyed my leather loafers, his forehead pinching in a frown. “You may want to take those off and work barefoot, though. The salty mud will ruin them.”
Florian managed to make rolled-up trousers and bare toes very sexy. My vibe was more of a toddler about to go for a paddle. Next to his tanned, hardened ones, my soft feet were as white as cottage-cheese and similarly attractive. The spade had a thick wooden handle and was heavier than I’d appreciated. “Is there a knack to the shovelling, or do you just… shovel?”
“Years of intense training required.”
He threw me a wink. Ask a dumb question, get a dumb answer. Unaccustomed to being winked at, I felt my cheeks redden.
Twenty minutes in and I was regretting my offer. No wonder salt harvesters worked solo—no one else was foolhardy enough to help. Already, a row of blisters bubbled under my palms and my lumbar spine was storing up a litany of complaints for later. Florian, however, appeared to be thoroughly enjoying the break. Sitting atop his tractor, he was whistling a jaunty tune, waving at an occasional cycling acquaintance, and then talking on his phone to his friend Jerome. The conversation was lost over the thrum of the engine—no doubt he was telling him an English mug had volunteered to do his shovelling for the afternoon.
“Ça va, Charles?” he called after a half hour or so. Are you okay?
His question felt weightier than a casual query, more as though he might care about the answer. I didn’t respond straight away; instead, I examined the dense forest of green behind my eyes. Flat and untroubled. I hadn’t pondered work, Marcus, or my mother once. The painful blisters stomping on my soul were being drowned out by the screaming ones on my palms. “Yes. Yes, I think am.”
We exchanged a smile. He had no idea much that meant to me. I sensed that Florian smiled a lot.
