Fergus was quiet for a moment.
“Good thing we came round to apologise when we did, eh?”
I frowned.
“What are you apologising for?”
Fergus frowned back.
“Oh, come on. I’m man enough to know when I’ve been a prick.” He pointed at the cactus. “Hence the prickly bastard.”
“Yeah, I got that,” I said. “I’m not exactly an angel myself.”
“He told me,” Fergus said, “after I—what I told you in the hardware store.”
Here it is. Your comeuppance. ‘We’re glad you didn’t die, but we don’t want to be mates. Please leave us alone.’
I hushed the nervous voice inside myself.
Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, it’s going to be okay.
“See, Ro has a habit of picking up strays,” Fergus said, before adding, “Probably shouldn’t have called you that.”
“I don’t mind,” I said, meaning it.
“He knows what it’s like to fuck up your life. I remember when he first moved up here. He looked haunted. I think he feels like if he can help other people avoid making the same mistakes he did, it’ll make up for—well, everything he did before he got his act together.” Fergus leaned forward. “He overdoes it a bit, though. I tell him he’s got to let people sort themselves out, but he never listens…” He sighed. “I just wanted him to focus on himself rather than running around trying to solve everyone else’s problems. And, well, I guess I took it out on you.”
I remembered the version of him back in the house. The stapler. The store raining down around us.
“I thought you hated me because I’m from the city or something,” I said.
“No, I judge you because you’re from the city,” he said, with a ghost of a smile. “But I don’t hate you. And I’m sorry I made you feel like that.”
My phone started to buzz on the side table. I reached over and looked at it. There was an alert.
TEXT ROWAN
it said and then listed Rowan’s number.
Fergus looked over my hand at the screen. “Oh, I put that one in yesterday. In case neither of us managed to make it today.”
I didn’t understand.
“You’re putting alerts on my phone?”
“Yeah,” he said, as if I’d asked the most stupid thing ever.
“Why?”
“Alerts are great. Remind you to sort out important stuff. And have I mentioned you’ve got stuff you need to get sorted?”
“No, I mean why are you helping me?”
He understood.
“We’re all we have out here. If you can’t trust your neighbours to turn up when you need them, then—” He shrugged. “And Ro’s right. You are a ranty drunk. And it amuses me.”
He looked again at my phone screen then at the clock behind him.
