Murray made his way to the passenger door, more out of duty than desire. It was going to be a long morning, and now that he had a date to prepare for in a week, time was going to go even slower.
14
‘Why aren’t you stopping?’ Murray said as Finlay stuck to the sixty-mile limit and not a bit over.
‘Eh?’ He hadn’t a clue what Murray was on about.
‘That was the entrance to the garden centre back there. You’ll have to turn around.’
Again, Finlay didn’t get it. ‘Fillbarrows Garden Centre? Who said we were going there?’
‘You did!’
Murray had seemed agitated since getting in the truck, but now he simply wasn’t making sense. Maybe it had something to do with that lanky fellow kissing him. It had turned him stupid. Finlay had been given all of one second to disguise the shock of seeing it happening right in front of his eyes. A kiss that they’d probably have preferred to go unwitnessed.
He had felt their kiss like it was his own mouth warm against Murray’s chilled cheek, aimed right at the spot below the wide cuff of his black Swiss flag beanie where auburn curls spilled out in every direction. Finlay had felt that kiss in his gut, had wanted it – in the simplest, most primal way – to be his, and yes, he’d immediately added that tall, handsome fellow in orange to his long list of people he would not get along with.
He’d sort of guessed Murray was gay or, at least, deep down, he’d hoped he was, but why hadn’t he considered the possibility that he would already be with someone? Stupid, really, considering. Not that Finlay had any plans of actuallytryinganything, obviously, and as this morning proved, he’d been completely correct in that decision. He wouldn’t have stood a chance. Naturally.
‘Where arewe going, then?’ There was a note of alarm in Murray’s voice.
‘Right enough, I never said.’ This was his way of yielding. He was being generous because Murray had assumed when he’d mentioned picking up plants he meant the giant commercial place with all the imported bedding and ornamentals that had travelled further than Finlay himself had in his whole lifetime. ‘I booked us in for a visit to the Snow Road Native Plant Nursery.’
Murray pulled a face. Clearly he’d never heard of the place.
‘Nae reason you should know it. It’s the only place round here that grows Cairngorm montane trees and species on the rare plant register.’
‘Montane?’
‘You know? Upland species?’ Murray really did need his help if he didn’t know something as simple as that. ‘I thought you wanted this garden to reflect the botany of the region?’
‘I’d assumed we were going to turn up at the garden centre and put in an order for a few trays of…’ Murray paused.
Finlay simplyhad totear his eyes away from the road, just for a second, not something he’d usually do, just so he could see Murray flailing, searching his brain for the name of literally any plant. Sure enough, he was puffing his cheeks, eyes screwed in meditation.
A tiny glow sparked into life inside Finlay’s chest. Regardless, he wasn’t about to help the guy out. ‘Go on,’ he prompted, actually at risk of enjoying himself.
‘Petunias!’ Murray announced in triumph.
Finlay sniffed a laugh, but soon after, silence fell and Murray took to adjusting the cuffs of his sporty white jacket with the expensive European logo that Finlay, of course, hadn’t recognised.
Murray seemed put out. Was he? The regret flooded in. He hadn’t been trying to upset him. He’d assumed they were participating in the kind of ‘banter’ these town folk went in for, but which, more often than not, left Finlay wondering what exactly was required of him.
He resolved not to say anything else. Stupid of him to think he could compete with… well, with anyone, in the flirty patter stakes. What had come over him?No more getting carried away, he told himself.
Finlay carefully mirror, signal, manoeuvred on the deserted stretch of road and turned slowly into the nursery carpark, empty save for an ancient Collie dog with grizzled white chops who was bouncing with excitement all of one centimetre off the hardened mud yard where he seemed to roam freely.
‘Is this it?’ Murray said, peering through the windscreen at the polytunnels behind fencing. ‘Bet they don’t have a coffee shop or houseplants or nice cookware stuff here.’
Finlay yanked at the handbrake. He didn’t know if Murray’s petulance was in jest or serious.
‘We’re no’ here for galivanting,’ he snapped.
Murray’s face snapped into a look of irritation. Good.
Sticking to his old tried and true defences was by far the safest way of navigating this excursion, and yet the pinch at Finlay’s heart made him regret his charmless ways, and, not for the first time, he wished himself a different, easier-to-like person altogether.
* * *
