Page 51 of Taste

“Careful with the tea,” he whispered in my ear.

“Fuck the tea.”

“I love you too.”

“Good,” I said and finally let go. Not of him. Of my emotions. A small tear rolled down my cheek as I held him, tighter than I ever had before.

“Good,” he said back. “Now let’s go get into bed before we grow icicles on our balls. Tea, snuggles, and you’re up in less than four hours.”

“I fucking hope this is decaf then.”

“Fuck off. I don’t keep decaf in the house.” He picked up the blanket and draped it around my shoulders. “But I’ll buy some just for you. Because I do fucking love you.”

MARK

“What time is it?” He sat up in bed, grappling with the duvet, back in full panic mode. “Shit.” It took all of my strength and a fair bit of willpower to hang on to his waist as he tried to get out of bed.

“Get back here, you fool,” I grunted, tugging at his leg with one hand, pushing his chest back down onto the bed with the other. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“It’s ten-thirty, for fuck’s sake, Mark!”

Shouting this early in the morning was definitelynotmy cup of tea, so I rolled on top of him, forcing him to lie back down. I snuggled into the little comforting space against his neck and pretended to go back to sleep.

“MARK!”

“Finley.” I did a mean impression of my senior school maths teacher. Mr Powers could have caused earthquakes with his deep, thunderous voice, and Finn needed to lie down and just bloody chill.

“What have you done?” He wasn’t calming down, scrolling on his phone and doing that stupid panic thing with his legs again. There was no need to. None at all. Because he was staying right here. With me.

“I called Mabel at six-thirty, and they have everything under control. Do you really think I’d be letting you go to work on forty minutes’ sleep? You had a panic attack last night because you’re so stressed out that you can’t function. So, you, young man, are staying right here today so we can get you nicely on track to figuring out where we go from here.”

“You have to go to work,” he tried, but I knew all his tricks. He wasn’t going anywhere.

“If I went, you would be hot on my heels, and I would find you in that back office running the yields before I even had my system up and running. No, Finley, you are taking the day off. See?”

I could read the messages on his phone. Eddie was on duty, running the show. Get-well-soon messages. Updates from Mabel. Crap that didn’t matter.

“Hope your stomach is better?” he shrieked in confusion.

“Told Mabel to say you’d reported a nasty case of food poisoning. Dodgy takeaway on the way home. Remind me to never order kebabs from that dive ever again.”

“Mark, we didn’t have any kebabs—”

“We did, and we’ve been ill all night. I’m a food handler, you know the rules. I can’t go to work. That would be a terrible breach of protocol. I should legally stay away from our premises for at least forty-eight hours after this serious bout of diarrhoea and vomiting.”

“Baby, you don’t have diarrhoea or vomiting.”

“Neither do you.” I smooched into his skin. “But you need to rest, and I need to be with you. So, we are staying put for the next forty-eight hours. Those are Dr Mabel’s orders.”

“And of course you had to tell Mabel.”

There it was again, the eternal guilt trip. It was one he would have to learn to control, because Mabel was Mabel, and neither of us owed them anything, apart from kindness and respect. If I had to spend the rest of my life tiptoeing around them, weighing every word that came out of my mouth against the risk of causing them harm, then our friendship wouldn’t last, and neither would Finn and me. We would all have to grow up here, and that was a conversation I planned to have with him over the next couple of days. Along with…

Yeah.

“I had to tell them. They can take it. So should you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He rolled me off him in a show of sudden strength, and I bounced awkwardly against the pillows as he sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands.

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