Page 48 of Taste

“I don’t think I’m cut out for…I don’t.”

“Finn. Listen. This is not some goddamn movie. This is real life, and you said it yourself. Trust. We need to build it. I’m not going to have sex with you when you can’t even trust yourself. You’re terrified of this, and we’re gonna have to figure that one out. But it’s not a bad thing.”

“I can’t even—” I froze. There was a red scratch mark down his arm. “I don’t know what happened.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere, darling. You’re okay. I’m right here.”

As I started to puzzle reality back together, curled up in his arms, focusing on the warm flow of his breath on my neck, his fingers stroking my back, I stared at the destruction I’d caused. His arm. My life. This whole fucked-up situation.

I’d thought I could do this. Surely I’d grown up enough to handle a…whatever this was. Well, apparently not. I sniffled helplessly into his shoulder. All that false bravado I usually pulled out when it came to sex, and here I was, limp as a bad sausage and whining like an injured child.

We sat there in silence, the only sound being the odd car passing in the street outside and my wheezing breaths as I tried to reoxygenate my stupid brain.

“I’ve never reacted like that before,” I admitted amid my growing sense of embarrassed doom as I started to realise what I’d done.

“You had a small panic attack. Finn. That’s nothing to be ashamed of. This? What we have here?” He changed his hold on me, stroked my cheek and half turned me around so I could lay my head on his chest. He tucked a blanket over my shoulder and flipped his phone over on the bedside table to check the time. “As I was saying. You and me. This, whatever we’re making here, is not straightforward. We can’t just rush in and think we’ll live happily ever after, because we won’t. We’ll have times when we’re happy, other times when we’re sad. We’re only human. We are going to hurt each other and make mistakes, and things will never be perfect. That’s where we need to start, at an imperfect baseline. This is going to be messy. Brutal. One small disaster after another. But we’ll learn and grow. Agree?”

“Yeah.” I got what he was saying.

“Small things like freaking out because one of us is pushing and the other isn’t on that same page? Those are good. That’s how we’ll learn. We have a lot of getting to know each other to do, and I’m happy you said stop. If you hadn’t…”

“Consent,” I said. “I know that.” I eased my hand out from under the warm blanket and rubbed my eyes. They were burning, tears threatening to overflow because I was again, out of my depth. This was nothing I could read up on in a manual. There was no rulebook for being a partner to someone like Mark. This was the part where I struggled. I could read him; I knew what he was saying. I just couldn’t make sense of how I’d reacted.

“I hate what we did in the club. I hate that I forced myself on you. I do stupid things when I’m out of control, and you…I was so angry, and I suppose…I should never have done that.”

“Finn.” He grabbed my chin. Placed a small, soft kiss on my lips. “I could have said no. I could have pushed you off me. I wasn’tthatdrunk. If I hadn’t wanted you, I would’ve caused a scene. It’s nothing I haven’t done before at that club, and anyway, it happened. It led to good things. Please don’t dwell on shit that wasn’t actually a problem. I don’t let people force themselves on me. I knew you were watching me because I’d been watching you all night too, just waiting for you to make the next move. If you hadn’t, I would no doubt have found you and ended up sucking you dry up there on the balcony.”

“It’s a problem for me,” I said. “I was an arse, and now we’re breaking Mabel’s heart, and I think I have issues that I haven’t really dealt with. I realised that today, and…it just became…”

“Yeah.” He laughed. “We both have issues. Big ones.”

“Abandonment issues, Mabel always says. I push people away because I think everyone is out to get me.”

“Don’t come talk to me about abandonment issues. Talk to fourteen-year-old Mark whose dad took on a whole new family and took them on holiday and left him behind. My dad has never, ever taken me abroad, but he took all these kids and his new wife to fucking Bali. And you wonder why I’m still on antidepressants.”

“Spoilt brat.” I smiled into his chest. I couldn’t look at him. This all felt far too weird.

“I was a bit of a spoilt brat,” he admitted. “But he was my dad, and it felt as if he liked this new family better than me and my mum and my sister. Didn’t last, by the way. He’s on his third family now. I refuse to meet any of them and only speak to my dad on the phone. See? We’ve both got issues, and we can deal with those. But if we’re going to make a go of this, we have to put small mistakes in the past and not let things that don’t matter cause problems that don’t exist. No more. Issues we work through. Mistakes we forgive. Deal?”

“My dad was an alcoholic hobby preacher who ran a farm really badly. His methods were questionable, his temper was vile, and he got done for drink driving and lost his licence when I was twelve. I learnt to drive the tractor after that, and there isn’t a field up in our valley that I haven’t ploughed. Badly.”

He said nothing, and I cautiously glanced up to gauge his reaction. My impromptu confession made him smile. I couldn’t help but smile too.

“You on a tractor.”

“Yup.” I actually chuckled at the memories, even though I never wanted to see a tractor ever again. “Hated the bloody things.”

“I take it we’re not buying a farm when we retire then.”

“Absolutely not.”

“But can we agree on something?” He kissed the tip of my nose. Wiped a stray tear from my cheek.

“Onwards and upwards?” I managed to hiccup out. Oh God, I was a mess.

“Onwards and upwards,” he said quietly. “You know, I think we should just lie here. Talk about things. Perhaps sleep.”

He grabbed my chin and looked at me. Really looked at me.

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