Page 68 of Beautiful Losers

He leans his hand high on the door frame and looks at me wearily.

‘Fiadh, I …’

‘Please, Jack?’ I plead, terrified of what he might say next. ‘I’ll go easy on you.’

I stick my tongue out playfully. He sighs.

‘Wait here while I get dressed.’

Twenty-four hours ago, I’d have been invited to the disrobing party, but I’ll take what I can get at this stage. Jack appears a few minutes later in his running gear and sprints ahead of me out the gate. I charge after him, determined to keep pace.We jog briskly up the lane towards town, waving at Sabrina and Theo inside Utopie as we pass. Reaching the far end of the village, Jack turns right and takes us up a hill leading deep into the countryside. After ten minutes, sweat is pouring from every orifice in my body.

‘You alright back there, Murphy?’ says Jack, with an air of satisfaction. He turns to run backwards as I bend over with my hands on my knees, looking deeply constipated.

‘Never better,’ I say, red-faced and out of breath. ‘Could do this all day!’

We keep going for another thirty seconds before I concede.

‘Alright, you win! Can we please take a break now?’

He stops and waits for me to catch up, handing me his water bottle when I reach him.

‘Come on,’ he says, leading me to a grassy patch off the road. We sit on the ground, the orange rooftops of Cordes gleaming in the sun in the distance.

‘Jesus, how far did we climb?’ I say when I get my breath back.

‘Enough for me to realise you were talking out of your backside when you said you were a cross-country champion,’ Jack says.

‘I had to get you out of your room somehow,’ I say sheepishly.

‘Well, you got me here. What is it you want to say?’

His expression is unreadable. I can’t tell if he’s pissed off or enjoying my discomfort.

‘Jack, I’m so sorry,’ I grovel. ‘I said some truly awful things, things I didn’t mean. I was an arsehole.’

‘You were a huge arsehole,’ he says, removing his hoodie.

‘The world’s biggest,’ I say.

‘It’s nice we can agree on something.’

He smiles at me affably, a truce on the horizon.

‘When I read that letter from Leonard’s daughter, I felt like, “Oh here’s another person I trusted and didn’t actually know at all”. It just gets tiring being disappointed all the time.’

‘There’s not a conspiracy here, Fiadh,’ Jack says, massaging his shoulder. ‘People disappoint one another. And I hate to break it to you, but we do it over and over again. Human growth isn’t an increasing slope on an exponential graph. We do good, we fuck up. And repeat.’

I raise my knees up to my chest and pull a tuft of grass out of the ground.

‘You’re right,’ I say in a half-whisper.

Jack raises his eyebrows. ‘Sorry, can I get that again?’

‘I know, I know. I can’t believe I’m saying it either. But it’s true. What you said about me blaming others to avoid taking responsibility for my fuck-ups, you were right. I guess it’s easier highlighting other people’s shortcomings than owning your failures.’

Jack looks at me with a serious expression and takes a drink from his water bottle, passing it to me when he’s done.

‘Helen wants to make another go of it.’

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