‘What is it about sweeties that you love so much?’ said Murray, perching on the bed with his own tea.
‘Dunno.’ Finlay turned even sleepier with the warm drink in his hand. ‘Suppose I was never allowed them when I was wee, except on Sundays when the Sunday School tuck shop was on.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Murray listened, fixing a smile on his face, but deep down he could feel a sadness in Finlay as he reminisced.
‘That’s when I got my pocket money and I loaded up on cola bottles, strawberry bootlaces… fudge… peanut brittle…’
‘All right, all right, you’re just listing confectionary now.’ Murray left the bed for a moment and headed for the small cupboard where he’d hidden the treats. ‘Kit Kat?’
Finlay didn’t need asking twice and they split it between them, making it disappear in two bites each.
‘I know it’s no good for me,’ Finlay said, washing the chocolate away with a drink of his tea. ‘But I know folks that drink a bottle of wine every night, or scroll for hours until they nod off and their phone falls on their face. We all have our thing.’
This hit Murray harder than he’d have liked.He claspedthe tin mug in both hands, shifting on the bed until he was leaning against the rough stone wall.
‘What’s yours?’ Finlay was asking.
‘I suppose…’ Murray searched himself, wanting to strike upon the truth, thinking Finlay deserved it after sharing so much of his life with him. ‘Hitchin’ myself to unavailable, cold men?’
Finlay was looking at him with questioning eyes.
‘That and electronics, new clothes, shoes?’ he threw in. ‘I guess we all self-medicate in our own ways.’
‘My treats don’t seem so bad now,’ Finlay was saying. Murray read it as a way of lightening the mood, so he smiled, but there was a sorry little flickering in his brain, something not quite happy.
‘That builder doesn’t seem unavailable or cold,’ Finlay said out of nowhere.
‘The builder? You mean Kurt?’
‘Aye, your… boyfriend, I think?’ Finlay was looking down at the sheets.
‘No, not my boyfriend. No.’ Murray turned bodily on the bed, folding his legs beneath him. ‘We tried a date but it was a bit of a flop.’
‘Why? He seemed that keen.’ Finlay looked as though he wasn’t buying any of this.
‘I don’t like keen men, usually. And at first that’s what put me off about him, but then we had our date and it turns out he’s really nice, perfect, in fact, but I still couldn’t let myself go, because… because it didn’t feel…’ Murray stopped there.Like this, he wanted to say.It hadn’t felt like this. He shrugged instead of finishing his sentence. Finlay had been thinking he was with Kurt all this time. Why did that thought make him giddy? ‘So,’ Murray said sneakily. ‘I’m not seeing anybody.’
‘Right,’ Finlay said. ‘Probably for the best, with you leaving soon? Off to Mali or Bali? Somewhere braw.’
If he hadn’t got used to Finlay’s ways, that would have felt jarring.
‘Somewhere braw,’ Murray echoed with a smile.
Finlay understood too that a job was a job and of course he was going to take the contracts.
‘I’m running out of money, if I’m honest,’ Murray told him.
But Finlay was thinking. A crinkle had formed between his brows. Murray let him formulate the question he knew was coming.
‘What were you even doing back here, when you could have stayed in Switzerland?’ he asked at last.
Bingo!The big question. One he needed to answer truthfully.
‘My unavailable, cold boss boyfriend dumped me, and I ran back home, leaving my job behind, trying to save face.’
Finlay was looking at him still. ‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said. ‘But if you dinnae mind me saying so, he sounds like a right balloon.’
The laugh this provoked in Murray set off the feeling of wanting to cry, somehow. ‘Hesowas. Anabsoluteballoon.’
