Page 9 of Vine

Emma laughed again. Bloody hell, I’d made a joke.

All thanks to the slab of a man swaggering across the pub. Wordlessly, he deposited his catch on the bar. Then, as if alone in the privacy of his bedroom, one big mitt clasped the zip at his neck and pulled.

I whistled softly. “People pay very good money for shows like this.”

Disappointingly, the tight white T-shirt underneath the rubber stayed put. As did the lower half of the waders, empty armholes dangling loosely around his waist. Nonetheless, the T-shirt did an excellent job outlining his physique. The guy wasn’t ripped; there were no V-cuts or cheese-grater abs. Just pure, solid man muscle. The fabulously honest old-fashioned sort, my absolute favourite type, honed from a lifetime of meat-and-gravy dinners after a hard day’s graft. The sort withsafe harbourtattooed across them.

After giving his beard a leisurely scratch, the man raised his thick arms above his head to stretch out his upper back, twisting his neck from side to side a couple of times, ironing out kinks. As though he’d wrestled a shoal of fish all day, limbering up to wrestle a shoal of twinks all night. Even my jaded dick took notice.Eviscerate me, Daddy.

As if by magic, a pint of beer appeared at his elbow, and the back stretches came to an end. He stomped off to an empty corner and flopped down in the shadows. The dog made a nest under his chair. Show over.

Emma curled her lip. “Working in that rubber can’t be comfortable. I bet it really chafes when it’s wet. Hot too, in the summer.”

“Totally agree. He’d be much better out of it.”

She giggled, instantly girlish and a lot younger. For most of the journey, she’d been annoyingly upbeat, but a few surreptitious checks of her phone had been followed by a few seconds of disappointment.

Like a good boy, I savoured a sip of rosé. “I never asked you, Emma. How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Oh. I had you pegged as a few years older.”

She chuckled again. “Thanks! No wonder you’re on your own.”

“And are you… um… single?”

Her shrewd blue eyes regarded me. “Yes, but given that you’re salivating over Mr Atlas up the corner and was recently married to your male co-presenter, I’m fairly sure I’m not your type. And you’re certainly not mine. Why do you ask?”

God, I was so digging myself a hole. “You’re here because you’re escaping something, aren’t you? A failed or troubled relationship, maybe?” Takes one to know one.

Her eyes dropped to the table, and she fiddled with a drinks mat. “I’m… um… not exactly, but close enough. It’s complicated.”

My first impressions of Emma had been spot on. We were going to get on wonderfully. “Babe, complicated is my modus operandi. Let’s order another bottle.”

CHAPTER 3

MAX

By the time I reached home, a couple of cars were parked on the drive, and strips of light glowed from behind the shuttered windows of the main house. The remainder of my little empire, my silent rows of hibernating vines, was cloaked in darkness.

Having neighbours again would take some getting used to. Living with my dad was fine, but the gatehouse where everything belonged to me and everything had its place, was much better. My dad wasn't especially untidy, but I appreciated my routines, and he disrupted them without warning. Such as taking it upon himself to empty out the garden shed and chuck things away, then putting stuff back but in a different order. Or suddenly inviting his lady friend, Colette, over for dinner without telling me first. (Don’t get me wrong. I liked her a lot, and I knew she wouldn’t replace my mum. Her and my dad knew it too.)

I fed Noir some of last night’s leftover casserole, then heated up my own. I was a hardworking man with a big appetite, so I followed up with most of this morning’s baguette and a hunk of cheese. My home was basically one hexagonal room, with abedroom shielded behind a wall and a bathroom off to the side, so I had to keep everything tidy.

Seeing as my table was always taken up with my latest whittling or beach treasures I’d brought back from work, I ate my dinner balanced on my lap. This week, I was making a plant pot for Colette from a length of faded rope found over at La Couarde. The twine was originally a deep purple, but half of it had sat in the sun and half under a rock, so now it was a mix of turquoise and a brilliant blue, like the sea and the sky meeting at the horizon on a sunny day. I was coiling it into a spherical pot, giving the layers stability by looping fishing net around them. The base was some old driftwood I had lying around, cut into a circle.

When I finished, Colette would think it was very cool. She’d add it to the others in her office. She’s a psychologist and also worked as a grief counsellor. That was how she met my dad after my mum died; for a few years, they were just friends. She helped me, too, in the beginning. Being differently normal, living in a world designed for other people, most folks didn’t get me, and I didn’t expect them to. But Colette did. My mum’s death triggered one of my hyperfixation episodes—coral species of the Great Barrier Reef that time. If she hadn’t given me tips on how to manage them, I’d be making her thirty pots a week, not just a couple every year.

I stopped work at eleven, when the church clock in the marketplace chimed. The gatehouse was a quarter mile away, but sound travelled well this far back from the ocean. Time to sweep the table clean, wipe myself down, and tidy away my tools where they belonged. Noir had gone to bed ages ago, his ruffling snores my regular late-night radio show. After all of that, I washed off the dirt of the day in the shower, lathering up with my preferred cheap supermarket soap bar and ignoring the expensive zingy mint gel Colette had bought me for my birthday.I kept it visible, in case she visited and needed to use the toilet, but I reckoned rubbing napalm on my balls would sting less.

My bed greeted me like a well-worn old friend. When I moved in, I purchased a big one, on an optimistic whim that maybe someone would want to help me fill it. That night hadn’t come yet. As Noir settled down at my feet, I had a strong suspicion my dog preferred it that way.

Éti, my sister-in-law, promised that night wasn’t too far away, that true love would soon find me, like it had found her, with my brother, Nico, of all people! And then, in a confusing non sequitur, she’d added that every saucepan had a lid. Which seemed a bit random. I deduced her clever brain had moved on to plotting dinner. A great example of why I favoured dogs.

Though I preferred listening to nature podcasts, I recently purchased a book calledPlucking a Perfect Peachand read from it each night. Like Éti’s saucepan comment, the title didn’t make sense. No fruits were referenced throughout the entire book. The author must have used that title to disguise the content, a self-help book for gay men trying to find a boyfriend. So far, I’d not had much success; my hard-wired social difficulties exponentially raised the bar.

But as I settled down for the night, I remained optimistic.

---