Page 51 of Vine

He studied a piece of driftwood bleached to a dry bone by salt and the sun, running his fingertips over the ridges. Hesitantly, he passed it to me before picking a rock to sit on a few feet away. Turning the wood over, I tried to think of a use for it, getting as far as kindling material. In Max’s mind it was already a rustic coat hook or a candle holder or one side of a bespoke picture frame.

“I’m trying to understand you, Caspian,” he said. “It’s hard.”

“Why are you bothering?”

“Because I like you. And because you have perfectly shaped earlobes.”

He mocked himself with a gentle shyness and a strained smile on his lips.

I liked him, too. For what it was worth. “You have perfectly shaped forearms.”

“I know.” He examined them, bare below his rolled-up sleeves. “I’m very muscly.”

Was Max the only person in my life totally incapable of deceit? Probably.

“You need to see somebody who can help you stop hurting yourself, Caspian.”

“I do,” I agreed. “And I did for a while, back in England. And then I quit because it wasn’t working. Because all my problems were still there. Until I find a way through those, my urge to cut will always be there.”

“Do you want to cut yourself now.”

I blew out a sigh, wishing I could blow out the nagging ache behind my ribs alongside it. What must I look like to a guy like Max? I had it all, didn’t I? A career, education, enough money, physical health, and passable features when I wasn’t strung out on anxiety. And yet here I was, chasing this elusive, ethereal, fragile thing called happiness. Or at least contentment.

However it was labelled, it was wrapped up in a sense of self-worth and self-love. And until I found and dealt with those, I might as well be chasing a mirage.

“Not right now, no. You’ve… distracted me. The feeling inside is… it’s hard to explain, but it’s like a pressure cooker—the valve needs releasing. And that’s when I cut.”

“But I turned it off at the switch on the wall.”

In surprise, I glanced up at him. Max and metaphors didn’t mix, but here he was, producing a great one out of the blue and frowning at me uncertainly, worried he might have got it wrong.

Tears pricked at my eyes. “You did,” I managed. “I’m grateful. I think.”

“Why do you still take the tablets if they don’t stop you hurting yourself.”

That was a very good question. “They help with mood.” I glanced up at him. “Believe it or not.”

His brows pinched together, he studied a shell from his pocket, rubbing his thumbnail across the smooth edge. Plotting its future, maybe. The raw material for a keyring, or, as it had apink hue, a friend for all the other pink-hued shells stored in an old jam jar on his desk, next to another jar of blue-tinged ones.

Resting back on my elbows, I closed my eyes and tilted my face up to the sun. Then restlessly sat forward again. Even sunshine sparked irritation in me. “Christ, Max, I’m so fucking tired of feeling like this. You know that second of fear when you’re walking down a flight of stairs and you misjudge a step? That lurch?”

He didn’t look up from his shell, but he was listening. “Well, I feel that in my stomach all the time. I can be minding my own business, standing in line at a café for a muffin or filling out my taxes, and I’m battling pulses of adrenaline like I’ve been rear-ended driving seventy down the motorway.”

A few seconds ticked by before he answered. “That’s irrational, Caspian.”

“Tell me about it. I don’t sleep. I’m on edge—I can’t get off the edge. And it makes me a self-centred dick.”

“Yeah. Sometimes.” For reasons only known to Max, the shell failed to make the grade, and he tossed it aside.

“You’re supposed to disagree.”

“Okay. You’re not a self-centred dick.” That shy smile again.

“I let Leigh—that’s my ex—get under my skin. Partly because we’ve created this fictional double act which pays the bills, so I can’t fucking escape him. But also,

I can see all the things I loved about him. All of them, from his confidence to go out and take what he wants, to his... I dunno... hatred of Pepsi because he thinks it has a weird texture. And I absolutely don’t love those things about him anymore. But I miss them. And more than that, I miss the person I used to be before all this television shite got in the way. The ambitions I used to have.”

“You don’t like the television stuff.”

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