He thought of Freddie's door. Four fingers. The hall light.
‘You did a good job,’ Neil said.
It came out unfiltered. But it was true.
He held Neil's eyes. A current passed between them that wasn't attraction, or wasn't only attraction.
Then Rory's expression shifted. Neil read it as detachment, the shutting of a door, he'd offered too much and was pulling back. A man regretting the landing light and the peas.
He was wrong.
He straightened from the counter. Reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. From it, a card. Small, well-designed. Neil caught the text, Rory Cavanaugh, Artist. A gallery address. A professional number.
Rory took a pen from the counter. Turned the card over. Wrote on the back in his slanted hand: an address and a mobilenumber, different from the ones on the front. He held the card out between two fingers.
‘Home studio. And my personal contacts.’ His voice had dropped below the banter, to the register that had talked about the landing light and the peas. ‘For emergencies. Or if you change your mind about that coffee. Or if you just want to see where the real work happens.’
Neil's eyes dropped to the card. White rectangle, black text, the handwriting on the back still glistening where the ink was wet.
‘No pressure, Neil.’
Neil. Slower. The sound of his own name in that mouth was different. Lower. Warmer. A word to be held rather than spoken.
‘Just an open door.’
Neil took the card. A clean exchange. Fingers didn't brush, hands didn't linger. But the cardboard was warm from Rory's pocket and he felt the temperature against his fingertips and knew he'd remember it.
‘Thanks, Rory.’ Low. Eyes down.
Rory picked up the takeaway cup. Empty now. Crushed it once before dropping it into the bin by the kettle. Rinsed his own mug at the sink. Dried it. Screwed the lid back on. Ordinary movements that had no right being loaded but were.
‘See you, Neil.’
He left. The staff room door swung shut. Neil was standing by the counter holding a business card with a man's home address on the back and the faint press of his pocket on his fingers.
He should bin it.
Instead he turned the card over. Read the address. Read it again. The handwriting, slanted, fast, the pen pressing harder on downstrokes. Matt finish, slight tooth to it. Chosen with care.
Into the wallet. Behind the bank cards, behind the driving licence, in the narrow slot where he kept nothing.
That evening. Freddie at the kitchen table, felt-tips, tongue poking out, the paper more green than white. Pasta on the hob, garlic and tinned tomatoes, the default meal. The one he could make with his eyes closed and his mind forty minutes down the A-road in a building he'd never entered.
‘Dad.’
‘Mm.’
‘Can I have more green paint? Mr Cavanaugh says I can have the big brushes again if I bring my own green because the school green's gone all murky.’
‘I'll get some this weekend.’
‘The good kind. He says acrylic's better because it doesn't go crumbly.’
‘Acrylic it is.’
‘Dad?’
‘What.’
