Page 30 of Taste

“I remember.” And goddamn it if I hadn’t just fucked up again. “Mabel. I didn’t deadname you on purpose. I’m sorry.”

“I’ll forgive you. Just this time.” They smiled and reached out a finger to stroke my cheek. “I’ll let you into a little secret—it’s not really deadnaming me. Matty will always be here, that lost boy who fell in love with the most beautiful twink in Soho. Remember that. You and I were stunning, the two of us cruising the club scene, getting into trouble. We had so much fun. Remember? You were my favourite person in the entire world, and I thought we would be together forever.”

“We were going to get a poodle,” I said, and there was a small gulp of laughter burbling in my stomach as something settled for the first time in years.

“A poodle called Chanel.” Mabel smiled. “You kept saying you’d veto it because you wouldn’t be caught dead in the park shouting that.”

“I should have bought you the flipping poodle.” I laughed. “Perhaps you would have stayed with me then.”

“I wouldn’t have stayed with you for anything, Finny.”

I smiled and reached out to stroke their arm. I didn’t dare go for a hug. Matty might have been the most tactile guy in the world, but Mabel was someone completely different.

“Mark is in love with you,” they said, so quietly I could barely make out the words. “He’s taken some time off to deal with you dumping him. He told me.”

My cheeks flamed with shame. That was so far from the truth, but it was a truth I didn’t fully understand.

“I know,” I said.

“Funny, isn’t it? Fate. Fifteen years later and Mark Quinton is still the one thing that makes the two of us argue like feral cats.

“At least you haven’t scratched me this time, thank fuck, with those talons.”

I wasn’t aiming for funny, but they smiled. “Not yet, but don’t let your guard down. Stay away from Mark. Let him get himself back up again before you attempt to kick him again, and know that when you do, I will come for you. That’s a promise, Finny.”

I nodded. “I want you to be happy, Mabel. I really do, but spending your entire life wanting someone who doesn’t want you back? It has to stop. You know that, don’t you?” I’d felt like an idiot saying those words five, ten, even fifteen years ago, and they still made Mabel cringe now. But it had to be said. Mabel was acting like they were just trying to protect Mark from big bad Finn Christensen, and I knew that simply wasn’t the case.

“Iamhappy, Finley. For the first time in my life, I actually am. I don’t depend on anyone, and yeah, I still work for Mark, and I’ll probably always nurse that tiny hope that one day he’ll turn around and miraculously ask me to be with him, but for fuck’s sake. We’re not kids anymore. We’re done, Finley. Done and dusted. So please, do me one last favour? Let Mark be happy. Whatever delusion you have of feelings for him, don’t make this worse than it already is. Please leave him alone. For me?”

“I’ll stay clear,” I said. I could try, at least. I had no idea where I stood anymore. My feelings were too muddled to think straight. “He’ll be free of me from now on, you can tell him that.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

Mabel nodded, and I left and went back to my duties, but what should have been the relief of closure felt like bleeding ulcers. However sincere my promise, I couldn’t let go. Perhaps I shouldn’t have promised freedom from myself either, because Mark just wouldn’t cut me loose. His words played on a loop in my head. My feelings battled a raging war in my chest. I worked through my shifts, exhausted and distraught.

The days passed even slower after that. He still didn’t come back.

I ached. I hurt for him. I couldn’t believe I had been so careless, so callous. I had probably destroyed him, pushed him over the edge, and in the process, I’d hurt myself. My barely-tethered-together heart was in a million pieces, and why? Because he’d said he loved me. The sheer notion of that was ridiculous.

I was eighteen when I’d met Matty, and I’d been willing to follow him to the ends of the earth. He’d shattered my heart the first time I found him balls deep in someone else in our bed, but I was an idiot, gullible and easily led with no life experience. I’d believed his excuses, fallen for every carefully planted line.

It turned out that wasn’t the first time, nor was it the last. The most handsome boy I’d ever know had broken my heart so often there was only scar tissue left when I finally gathered the strength to sayenough. Things were better for a while, but looking back, I could see the damage done, and we’d been constantly at war. A never-ending battlefield of hurt.

Back then, Mabel had only been Matty, but they’d experimented with clothing and looks. To me, it was as if the man I’d been so besotted with had started to slowly disappear. I didn’t blame them completely; even then, they’d been honest about who they were and what they wanted. Then they’d met Mark Quinton and developed this messed-up crush that was clearly not returned, and…no. I had to stop replaying this because I’d obsessed over it for years—before I took control and decided on some rules.

I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t live through another heartbreak, another betrayal cutting up my fragile heart. So, I’d turned things around and started my own transformation to become someone else. Someone who wouldn’t break down into a pile of bones on what had once beenourkitchen floor.

Mabel had been right all along, though. Iwashard. The old me had been cold-hearted, but the new me was all prickles and angles and edges. There was nothing soft about me anymore, or there hadn’t been until Mark came along and hacked away at my carefully built defences, tricked me into thinking I could do this again. He had crumbled my walls, one by one, until I had been the old me again, screaming his name as I came down his throat.

When he told me he loved me, it had taken everything I had not to say it back. In that moment, I had loved him too. I loved him more than he would ever know.

I’d left him on Christmas Day; there had been no other possible choice, no option of staying. I’d crept out of that bed, leaving him asleep in the rumpled mess of sheets, a tiny, content smile on his swollen lips.

I knew leaving would hurt him. I knew his heart would break, but I wasn’t worth it.

I would never be the man he needed, the strong person who could keep him safe and loved. I would grow older and harder and become someone like my father. It was imprinted in my genes.

---