Page 25 of Taste

“How lovely for you. I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time, especially dressed in that cheaptastic suit.” He averted his gaze to his desk, fiddling mindlessly with some papers.

“Finn, I just wanted to say that I’m…” I stopped myself. Iwasn’tsorry. I wasn’t going to take the bait from his lame insult. Instead, I said, “I wonder if things between us could have been different. If we’d met under different circumstances, rather than here.”

“Why would you even say that? And what exactly do you mean by things being different?” he replied, looking riled one minute, resigned the next. The paperwork in his hand dropped onto the table. His glasses aged him a little, something I found myself approving of.

“Maybe in a different place, in a different time, you and I could have been…” I struggled to find the right words to describe the pictures forming in my mind. “Perhaps I would be sitting here waiting for you to finish what you’re doing so we could walk home together since we’ve missed the last Tube. Takes about an hour at this time of night, if we take the shortcut through the park, maybe stop by the off-licence, pick up a bottle or two of red wine. I’d carry them in one hand, hold your hand in the other, and we’d go back to our flat, you and me on the sofa, all cuddled up with some crap on TV and you falling asleep on my chest as I stroked your hair. And tomorrow, while our Christmas dinner was cooking, we’d go for a walk or maybe I’d take you ice skating up by the National History Museum. The weather’s supposed to be good.” I shut up, realising I’d let myself get carried away with rubbish ideas and juvenile daydreams.

He looked stunned, as if I’d told him I liked being tied up and spanked into a pulp or confessed I’d kicked his puppy. Whatever.

“You want to go ice skating with me?” he asked, and damn him if there wasn’t a tiny glimmer of a smile in the corner of his eye. Just a twinkle but it spurred me on.

“Why not? We could do that.” I loved ice skating. I was crap at it, but it was fun and would make us laugh, being silly and falling over and holding onto each other. I was sure beneath my ‘cheaptastic’ suit my stomach was glowing with warmth at the thought of it.

Then he sighed, said, “Go home, Mark,” and let his head fall into his hands, his elbows thudding against the desk. “Just go home.”

“What are your grand plans for Christmas then? If you won’t come ice skating with me?”

“I’m going to follow my own brilliant advice and go home and forget you exist, Quinton. Forget this whole shithole of a place exists. I’m going to get shitfaced on my own in my flat and sleep until my alarm goes off, and then I’ll drag myself out of bed to come back here and deal with arseholes like you. So please, just get out of my sight and piss off home.”

I couldn’t figure out where the sudden hostility had come from. The anger. “You really do hate me, don’t you?” I said quietly. I truly didn’t get it.

“I don’t hate you, Mark.” His voice was as quiet as mine. “I just don’t want to have anything to do with you. Unless it’s to do with this evening’s unsigned cheque or the rejected credit card for the Princess Anne Suite, I don’t want to talk to you or interact with you or have you anywhere near me. Just leave me alone and disappear. Or do I have to send you an official memo to get that message through?”

Rejected and scolded. Reprimanded like a naughty schoolboy.

I supposed this was the end. A final answer. There would never be anything else, and I would have to learn to deal with that, because it wasn’t like I had a choice, did I?

I took my boots off his desk, one by one, before I stood up and gave him my most disappointed sigh, wrapping it up in disapproval and finishing off with a reluctant stare, like a Christmas gift wrapped in dull brown paper and frayed string.

“I don’t hate you either,” I said. “I actually like you. You make me feel… Fuck, Finn. I like you, and we fancy each other. You know we do, and when things are good between us, it’s like bloody magic.”

“Magic.” His sigh was of exhaustion and something else. He seemed almost distraught. “Just because we half fancy each other in those…insane… moments don’t mean we will live happily ever after. Because we won’t. Ever.”

“But those momentsaremagic. And do you want to know the truth? Finley? I think you’re a coward, because you know it too. You know how good we could be together, how happy we could be if we just gave this a bloody chance. If you took the time to get to know me, and if we actually sat down and talked, I think you would fall in love with me, as much as I would fall in love with you. It’s all out in the open already. You’re just being a dick about admitting it to yourself. A dickanda coward.”

Those were my parting words as I stomped out of his office. I didn’t give him a chance to respond, but I knew what he would have said. He’d have told me to get out, and I didn’t want to give him the pleasure of delivering his final insult to my face.

I pulled on my beanie and headed out the main entrance with tears stinging in my eyes as I started my lonesome walk home in the crisp winter air.

“Merry Christmas,” I whispered to myself. “Merry freaking Christmas.”

FINN

I didn’t understand why I’d lashed out at him like that, because he surely didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve my anger and self-hatred. He didn’t deserve the angst that lived in my chest when I remembered that I was once again alone at Christmas.

I hadn’t seen my family for many years, and to be honest, I didn’t even know if they were still alive. I couldn’t imagine going back now or even begin to explain why. Things you grew up with became your baseline, and when normality turned out to be crazily abnormal and borderline abusive, it was hard to figure out who the hell you were supposed to be.

Whatever. I had made a life for myself, but it wasn’t really a life. It was a prison. I kept everyone at arm’s length, to protect myself from what I could only think of as accountability—who I’d once been and who I could so easily become. All the muddled feelings. All the regret. I wasn’t worthy of friendship, and I definitely wasn’t worthy of someone to walk me home holding my hand.

But those thoughts were destructive. I was fully aware of that and should probably have hurled my beaten-up ass into therapy years ago because I was a product of my environment and truly my father’s son. I was the king of my castle, and the imaginary protective knights from my childhood were all long gone.

My office walls laughed at me within the silence screaming in my head. I banged my fists against the table and kicked the chair as I stood up. Then I sat down again, but I was too restless. On my feet once more, I took two steps out into the corridor and turned back again.

Slumping into my chair, I logged into the hotel system, and in another Mark Quinton inspired move of pure madness, I broke all the rules and did the unthinkable, the whole time blaming him with strings of violent curse words churning around in my head.

His name appeared in the search bar, and with a swift tap, I pulled up his personnel file, clicked on the tab revealing his home address with my heart beating out of my throat. It wasn’t too far, just a few stops on the Tube. I knew the area and could probably catch up with him if I grabbed an Uber, but the still sane part of me yearned for the solitude of a long, brisk walk to clear this madness taking over my thoughts. Every word he’d said had stung, every syllable throwing the truth in my face. I was a despicable human being. A coward and a liar. And I was, and always would be, stupidly and irrevocably in lust with Mark Quinton.

I walked through the lobby without so much as a goodbye or festive greeting to the team standing behind the reception desk in their cheery Santa hats and jingle-bell-earrings and all that shit. Pulling my hat over my head and wrapping my scarf tightly under my chin, I stepped out into the chilly darkness of Christmas Eve.

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