Work for it, p.8
Work for It, page 8
When I’m done, I put my journal aside and run my thumb over the splotches of ink on my fingertips. The night is quiet and patient, as if waiting for something. Maybe for me. I don’t know where the impulse comes from, but suddenly I’m reaching for the empty leather duffel at the foot of my bed. There is a box of Amitriptyline at the bottom with my full name printed on the label, taking up a majestic amount of space. I focus on the familiar letters and tell myself, These are mine. They’re for me. Nothing wrong with that. Then I count out five tiny pills, just as I’m supposed to, and swallow them with a glass of water.
I don’t feel any different.
“Of course you don’t feel any different,” I mutter into the silence, rolling my eyes at myself. But it doesn’t help. I’m on edge and uncertain now, waiting for some monumental shift in my mind that, logically, I know isn’t going to come. I search for something else to think of, and my focus wanders, predictably, to Griff. I see him on his knees before me. I feel his knuckles grazing my ribs as he helps me put on my clothes, as he protects the proud, fragile parts of me without being asked. He didn’t even make me ask. My body tightens in that hot, reckless way I no longer thought I was capable of.
Fuck. None of my thoughts are safe or simple tonight. And now I hear my father’s voice, telling me I think too much, I feel too much, I should just be a man. Whatever the fuck that means.
I shove the voice away, get up, and throw on some clothes, hissing when I forget my ribs and move too fast—which Lizzie explicitly warned me not to do, during our call this afternoon. I creep out of the flat, careful to lock up well behind me. Then I go for a peaceful night time walk—the perfect antidote for a man whose confusion is a cage and whose unexpected need is a shock of white-hot, jittering heat that refuses to leave his body.
A man who’s afraid the need will disappear eventually, replaced by disgust again.
Fernley is the pitch-black of true, empty night, silent except for atmospheric hoots and the rustles of bunnies frolicking in the bushes. Or whatever. Do bunnies frolic at night? Moles, then—I don’t bloody know. I wander on to the main road, which runs parallel to the woods. The trees beside me are taller than three grown men or five Griffins, stacked one on top of the other. Perhaps they should intimidate me, but they feel oddly protective.
Then the night is shredded by the rusty, hacking roar of an engine pushed to its brink, punctuated by youthful, clearly drunken whoops and yells. Headlights flick into view, glowing bright white and moving closer at a disturbing speed. It all seems so out of place that I take a long moment to grasp what I’m witnessing: an old, green, box-shaped Punto with a monstrous exhaust, covered in obnoxious stickers and stuffed to the brim with grinning yobs, the Northern Countryside Edition.
I shudder as they race by me; surely Theo and I weren’t that awful when we were young? Then I think back and remember tragic, mildly misogynistic poetry and all the rent money we wasted on speed. Hm. Perhaps we were. Still, at least we kept our foolishness indoors.
I’m still thinking boring, dated, In my day thoughts five minutes later, when the youths are long gone and I’ve continued my walk. I turn a corner and stumble into what might be a very solid child, or a rather strangely situated brick wall. “Oof,” I grunt, all elegance and wit, as my knee connects with a concrete skull.
“Watch it,” mutters a familiar voice. A voice that sends a ripple of awareness over my body, catching me off guard.
Surely not. Surely fucking not. I wrestle my reaction under control and croak, “Griff?”
“Keynes?” Because of course it’s him. Not for the first time, I find myself thinking—ridiculously—that he should call me Olu.
I don’t know why. Even Theo rarely calls me Olu.
A light appears out of nowhere, slicing through my thoughts. I wince, squint, and raise a hand to protect myself from the sudden brightness of a phone screen. There’s Griff, behind the light, crouching at the edge of the pavement, looking dark and wild in the shadows. And next to him…
“Those lads clipped a fox,” he says, nodding at the too-still heap of orange fur on the ground. It has a face neither feline nor canine, one that seems like it should be mischievous but is instead blank with shocked exhaustion. Only the creature’s ribcage is moving, a slow, laborious shift with each breath. Those breaths disturb me.
I’m horrified in a way I can’t explain. “Fuck.” The word slips from my numb lips. I’ve never been big on animals—I simply wasn’t raised that way—but this living being is hurting in front of me, and I… “What can we do?”
I can’t quite make out Griffin’s features, but the sudden jerk of his head suggests that he’s surprised—which, in turn, makes me embarrassed. Irritated. I may not be Mr. Care and Concern, but for God’s sake, surely I don’t come off as a completely selfish monster.
Or maybe I do. Maybe I am. The jury, at present, is out.
Griff doesn’t say anything to spike my sudden temper further, thank God. Just hands me his phone and says grimly, “Hold the light.” I do as I’m told—I am capable of that, occasionally—while he begins to unbutton his shirt.
My mouth runs dry. I shift my weight to one leg. “Ah… hm… Griffin, what are you—?”
“Don’t suppose you have your phone on you, too?” he asks, cutting through my stumbling with clinical precision.
“No. I just came out to… no.”
“Alright.” His shirt’s off completely now. His chest is like a hunk of concrete, only softer, covered with crisp, dark hair. That hair arrows over the curve of his belly and disappears beneath the waistline of his jeans in a taunting path that I refuse to follow. He looks as if he might be part-bear. He looks as if he’d be rather comfortable to lie on.
And I’m clearly losing it, possibly experiencing some sort of sympathetic shock reaction that’s tangling up all my thought processes. Who knew I was so sensitive to poor little injured foxes?
I drag my eyes off Griffin’s body, watching his hands instead. With slow, easy caution, but not an ounce of fear, he covers the injured fox in his shirt, making a little nest around the creature. Then he holds out his hand and says, “Phone.”
I pass it in silence, and he taps at the screen before bringing it to his ear. The light disappears. After a long moment, the person he called picks up.
“Yeah,” Griff says. A pause. “Sorry. Yeah.” A longer pause. Then, “Fox. East end of the main road.”
I’m not sure why he bothered giving instructions. He could’ve just said, “Fernley,” and whoever’s flying to our rescue would’ve found us in 0.5 seconds flat.
“Yeah,” Griff says again. “Bye.” He ends the call, but the light doesn’t come back.
“Who was that?” I ask, mostly to soften the silence.
“Mandy Benn. She’s a nurse at the wildlife centre over in Rodham.”
“Oh?”
“Lives five minutes away. Nowhere’s open round here at this time, so she’ll take the fox home and keep an eye until morning.”
“I see.” For once, I have run out of things to say. So, sue me. I’m tired, and oddly worried about this wounded outdoor creature. Plus, something about the texture of Griff’s quiet makes it alright not to talk.
We wait in silence until a car, bigger and slower and quieter than the one that caused all this, arrives. Its headlights illuminate the scene, and the driver leaves them on as she gets out. Mandy Benn is a tall, stately woman with near-white hair and a grim face that softens when she smiles. But there’s nothing soft about her when she lays eyes on the fox.
“Those fucking lads again,” she snaps after Griff fills her in. “I’ll be on at Chris about them in the morning, see if I’m not.”
Griff just grunts.
“I don’t know why he never listens when you tell him.”
Griff says nothing.
“Well, I do,” Mandy mutters, clearly furious as she expertly manoeuvres the fox into a little carrier. “Because he’s a fucking twat, same as everyone ‘round here, that’s why. But let him ignore me,” she huffs, rising slowly with the carrier, fox firmly ensconced.
Griff thanks her, she thanks him, then it’s a storm of people thanking each other and me standing in the midst of it all, uncharacteristically statue-like. I don’t know why I can’t seem to speak. I can’t stop thinking about the fox.
Mandy is gone before I know it, and then it’s just Griff and I again, staring at the darkness in front of each other’s faces. I wish I could see his eyes. It took me a while to notice, but they’re quite… compelling. That’s the only word for them. They grab you and hold you and fill you with the urge to work out what’s behind those midnight mirrors.
But since I can’t see his eyes, there’s nothing to stop me from fixating on the fox. I remember the heavy rise and fall of its ribs, and feel a stab of pain in my own. I think I’m breathing too hard. I’m not sure why.
After a moment, Griffin says, “Come ‘round mine for a cuppa.”
So, I do.
Griff
Keynes, I’ve noticed, is never delicate—until he is. I wouldn’t have guessed a hurt fox would mess him up like this, but here we are. I guess I don’t know him very well.
I almost trip over my own feet when I realise how much I want to change that.
Clearing my throat, I unlock my back door and lead him through it, into the kitchen, searching for something to say. My mum used to get like this when animals were hurt—people too, but with Keynes, the issue seems to be animals. His silence and the sound of his ragged breathing is unsettling me. But I rarely knew what to say to my mother, when she was sad, and I don’t know what to say to him either.
Luckily, when I switch on the kitchen light, he starts talking again.
“Good Lord.” He folds his arms over his chest and looks around with shameless interest, chewing his bottom lip. “I won’t bother to ask if you enjoy your job.”
My cheeks heat a little at that, maybe because his voice—beneath the strain he’s trying to hide—is almost teasing. I turn away from him, toward the kettle. “I like plants.” It’s an unnecessary statement. I don’t usually share those, but something tells me Keynes doesn’t usually hyperventilate, and he’s done it twice around me, so…
So, I suppose this is how things go with us. Different than usual, I mean.
I hear him wandering around behind me and imagine what he’s doing, what he’ll look at first. The rubber trees growing either side of the door like sentries? Their leaves do need dusting. Or maybe he’ll head to the ferns in hanging baskets I rigged up over the kitchen table. Don’t ask. I have a feeling he’ll like the bright, spiky petals of the bird of paradise on the counter, or the little chili and lemon trees lining the windowsill, but I’m standing next to those right now and something tells me he’s trying for distance.
I let myself take one quick look over my shoulder as I fill the kettle. I was right. He’s as far away from me as he can get, his hands hovering over the thick leaves of a rubber tree. “You can touch,” I blurt, then look back to the sink.
There’s a pause that feels years long before he murmurs, “Thank you. I don’t want any tea.”
I blink at the herbs in the window, thrown off. What the fuck am I supposed to do with him if he doesn’t want tea? He’s just exhausted my social knowhow with five words. Typical bloody Keynes.
“You grow your own herbs,” he says. Four steps, I count them, and he’s standing at the counter, a metre of space between us. I watch him from the corner of my eye. He’s not impeccably dressed tonight: he’s in a creased, white shirt that’s buttoned up wrong (yes, I noticed, don’t judge me), some grass-stained jeans I know he wore to work (I remember the way they fit his… well, never mind), and the kind of fancy shoes I’m pretty sure don’t match the outfit. I’m suddenly desperate to know what made him leave the house looking like anything other than himself.
Instead of asking, I put the kettle down and answer his statement like it’s a question. “Yeah. I grow everything I can.”
“You cook?”
I shrug. “Don’t want to die of starvation, do I?”
His lips quirk. He’s not biting the bottom one anymore, and I’m glad to see it. “What a sensible attitude.”
I’m fighting a smile now, too. “Surprised?”
“Oh, no. One thing I will say for you, Griff: you are eminently sensible.”
I wonder at all the things he apparently won’t say for me. If I were smarter with the way I speak, maybe I’d ask him. Maybe I’d coax more kind-of-compliments from his soft mouth. Another time, I might give it a try, but right now he still looks shaken under his smile. He’s thinking so hard I can almost hear it, and breathing so hard that the movement of his chest reminds me of that poor fox.
I ask, “Doesn’t that hurt?”
He follows my gaze, looking down at himself with the strangest expression. “I… yes.” He seems almost lost.
“Can’t stop?”
His eyes meet mine. I see winter firs and ruefulness. “Can’t stop,” he confirms softly, and I finally know what to do. It’s what my mum would do for me—what she did do, when I needed it. When she could.
“Hang on.” I grab two paring knives from the drawer, then find two hands of ginger in the fridge. “Here we go.” I give one to him, along with a knife. Then I take one for myself and start peeling, focusing on the movement—not just for safety reasons, but because you don’t stare at unnerved creatures while you’re trying to coax them. You look away, act casual, give them space. My mother taught me that, too, during our midnight rambles under the moon.
After a long moment, Keynes says, “Don’t we need chopping boards?”
I snort. “Look like I use chopping boards to you?”
He must study the scarred wooden surface of my kitchen counter. He sounds almost amused when he murmurs, “No, indeed.” Another long moment, and then… then, though I refuse to look, I hear the slow, harsh sound of him peeling the root. I roll my lips inward to control the little smile that wants to sprout.
Minutes pass in solid, steady silence. He doesn’t ask for help, and I don’t think it’s because he’s proud. His hands are moving just as fast as mine, just as efficiently. I find myself asking the same question he did, curiosity nibbling at my insides like an excited puppy. “You cook?”
“I suppose you could call it a hobby,” he says. He sounds better now. Calmer, more like himself.
And I’m so pleased by that, I lose my fucking marbles for a minute and tease, “You can cook for me, then.”
The sound of his slicing knife stumbles, then restarts almost instantly. “I’m a guest in this humble village, Griffin. I rather think you should be cooking for me.”
When I slide a sneaky look at him, his lips are curling at the corners. It’s not his charming smile, not the one that stuns like a camera flash. It’s a quiet, secret one that exists on its own, even when others aren’t looking. There’s a warmth in my chest, like I already turned this ginger into tea and downed it all.
I force myself to focus on peeling again. “Truth is, I’m an okay cook, but you’re probably better.”
“I’m glad to hear you recognise my general superiority.”
I don’t mean to let a laugh escape; I have this weird feeling, like if I’m going to express emotion, he’s got to do it first. But my weird feeling doesn’t matter because a chuckle bubbles up anyway. I barely even regret it.
“If you’re not a chef,” he says, “what do you do with all these spices?” The sound of his knife changes. He’s chopping, now, which means he’s beaten me at the peeling. He really does cook.
“I—” Telling him feels easier than it should, which is surprising. This is the sort of topic that usually makes me go silent, one I’m careful not to get anywhere near. Except I brought him home, and let him touch, and told him things, and here we are. I find myself clearing my throat and starting again. “I make drinks. Tea and cordial and…” And that’s it, genius.
Keynes doesn’t let my silence go on; he’s right there, like he knows I’m done. “For yourself?” he asks. “Or for work?” He actually sounds interested. He’s asking questions about me. I wonder what that means.
I don’t dare believe I know.
To fight off ridiculous fantasies, I shoot a question back. “You’re very interested in my work. Why are you here, again?”
He stops chopping abruptly. Says, slow and uncertain, “You… That is, I thought—”
“Fernley,” I clarify. “Why are you in Fernley?” Because there was an odd, lost hesitance in his voice, like he thought I meant, Why are you in my house?
As if I’d ever ask him that, even as a joke. Keynes is here because he needs looking after, whether he wants it or not.
The chopping continues, like he’s settled again. “You still believe I’m here for secret and nefarious purposes? You’re a very suspicious man, Griff.”
Now, that’s the truth. “Just making sure.”
He sighs. “I find this topic dull. Let’s change it.” But there’s an edginess hiding beneath his disdain. Maybe it’s because I’m right and he’s a sleeper agent sent to smuggle secret codes in our bottles of elderflower bubbly, or maybe he’s just irritated by my questions. He’d be well within his rights, but…
“I just don’t believe in coincidences.”
“Well,” he says, “you should. The world is huge. The universe is huger. There are so many tiny, ridiculous, random events happening and independent choices being made each second, we couldn’t possibly count them all. It makes statistical sense for coincidences to occur all the time.”
I pause in my own chopping, the scent of ginger sharp. He’s got me there. “But that doesn’t explain why you act so shifty every time I mention it.”
“Shifty?” he echoes, clearly outraged. “I am not, nor have I ever been, shifty.”
“You seem pretty shifty to me.” I look up at him and realise I’m enjoying himself. There’s a gleam in his green eyes that makes me wonder if he is too.
