Page 67 of Vine

But this one was the prettiest. Especially at this time of day, when the sun hung low in the sky and the wading birds chattered non-stop to each other. Dusk was no more than an hour or so from touching down. If we were lucky, we might spot a few dolphins enjoying an early evening frolic.

As Caspian was about to find out, I’d already visited here once today. Hidden from nosy parkers on three sides by a dense strip of woodland, the fourth side of my cousin’s flat square of tufty grass sloped down to a stretch of unworked salt marsh and a shallow bay beyond. All the patches along this stretch were designated floodplains, useless for building on. The council members turned a blind eye when locals rough-camped on them, seeing as half of them owned one too.

I couldn’t make someone love me. Éti was right about that.Perfect Peachstressed it too. But neither said anything about using a host of underhand tricks to showcase your wares. And this beauty spot was one of the best.

Clambering down from my tractor, Caspian paced in a slow circle. He absorbed the strings of fairy lights twinkling between the trees, the plump cushions and soft blankets spread out on the ground, the incredible colours painting all those things in a dreamy haze, courtesy of the low orange sun beyond.

His mouth spread impossibly wider. “Is this… have you done all this for me?”

“Yeah. And for me too,” I added quickly, to make clear I wasn’t just dropping him off.

“This is like something out of a tourism brochure photoshoot, Max.”

“Better, I think.”

His hand found mine without me noticing, and he raised himself on tiptoe to give me a peck on the cheek. I adored when he did that. It made me feel big and strong and protective all at once. “Is this our bed for the night?”

His lips trailed down to behind my jaw, to where his kisses tickled, except it was the kind of tickling I didn’t want to stop.

“If you want it to be. It’s warm enough for you. Lowest temperatures tonight are expected to be at least 18.4 degrees Celsius with negligible wind chill. And Noir is safe with my dad, and I have wipes and bottled water, a change of socks and underwear each, toilet paper and mosquito spray. Though the mozzies aren’t that bad here—the sea breeze keeps them away. And I brought my radio, too, so we can listen to the shipping forecast in the morning. And also a podcast on slow worms that I want to hear. We could listen to that tonight, if you like.”

I silently congratulated myself. I’d absolutely thought of everything.

“Is the podcast during sex or afterwards?”

“Afterwards,” I answered immediately. “I can’t concentrate on slow worms if my penis is erect.”

People think of laughing as a noise that comes from the mouth. When Caspian laughed, when heproperlylaughed, it was nothing like that. It was as if his heart was laughing, as if the dusty corners of his lungs were laughing, and all the broken fractals within him were mending. Every time it happened, alittle bit more knitted together; his cuts scabbed, old scars sealed over for good, never to be reopened.

We didn’t have sex straight away. And although I thought about having it pretty much every five minutes, I was glad we didn’t. We wandered down to the water’s edge instead. I showed Caspian which shells to keep for creating things and which to throw away. We collected some driftwood too, for kindling. After we hauled it back to our nest, I showed him how to set a responsible campfire, by digging out the dirt and creating a low rocky wall around it, how to arrange the kindling, how to make a safe spill. And then we sat next to it as it crackled and spat, with Caspian between my legs and wrapped in my arms, his beautiful pale face shimmering in the orangey glow.

As we ate my Comte cheese sandwiches with a beer each and watched the sun sink even lower, he told me about some of the wonderful meals he’d learned how to cook from his time at the fancy restaurant in Paris, and how he’d cook them all for me one day. Which felt very much like he was thinking about hanging around after the filming stopped, but I didn’t mention it.

When we’d done all that, when we’d finished eating, drunk all the beer and run out of talking, I told him what I’d needed to tell him for days. “I maybe-love you.” I used my quietest, most gentle voice. “But I don’t know why.

“I mean, you’re pretty to look at,” I explained, because he was. “But so are strawberries. And I don’t love strawberries. They make me come out in hives. You could be the ripest, juiciest strawberry ever grown, and I wouldn’t ever like you. And though we have great sex, I could find someone else to have great sex with now I’ve practised it with you. So it’s not that either. And I even think I maybe-love your pale cheeks and your perfect earlobes even more than I love my blue mugs. Which is a lot.”

Putain, that might be the longest speech I’d ever made. For some reason, Caspian found my declaration of maybe-love amusing.

“Being maybe-loved by you is a drug, Max—it’s addicting.”

More addicting than the cutting, I hoped, but didn’t say so. He snuggled closer, tipping his head onto my shoulder.

“You know, you weren’t supposed to be this.” He gestured towards the sea and also around our private patch of land. Fortunately, he clarified. “This thing between us. This… thismaybe-love.”

He kissed my neck. “You were supposed to be a distraction, just a big hunky guy to fondle. A means of getting my rocks off. And now…” he sighed, and his gaze drifted back to the sea, “now you seem to be an indispensable piece of my life. I feel I have started to depend on you. That my day-to-day wellbeing depends on you. And I… I’m not sure if that will prove to be a good thing.”

In my opinion, it was an excellent thing, so his mouth turning down at the corners was puzzling. “Why?”

“Why?” he repeated, then laughed, only a little, but it was not a laugh I liked very much. For the first time, his skin touching mine prickled. I pushed myself back from him a couple of centimetres.

“Yes, tell me.”

“Why? Because I’m a full-grown man, Max! My ability to get through the day without resorting to self-harm shouldn’t ever depend on someone like you.”

I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly.

“Someone likeme?What the fuck do you mean by that?” In the blink of an eye, I maybe-loved him a bit less. “Do you mean a man diagnosed withpervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified,but which now falls under the umbrella of autism spectrum disorders?”

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