But Calum didn’t have time to dwell on it if he wanted to sleep in a Porthkennack bed that night. He shoved his phone in his pocket and backed out of Brix’s bedroom. Downstairs, he gave Dennis a final stroke, then stamped into his shoes. Here goes nothing.
The bus stop was a five-minute walk along the seafront. On the way, Calum looked up each time a vehicle passed, half expecting to see Brix’s van rumbling back into town, but it didn’t happen, and as the bus left Porthkennack behind a while later, the pang in his heart was almost too much to bear.
Calum had little memory of Truro train station, save the smell of chicken shit seeping from the van that stopped to save him. He braved the ticket machine and bought a return ticket to Paddington. Just seeing it on the screen felt wrong; from the moment Brix had pulled him from that damn fucking bench, he’d truly believed he’d never go back. But he had to go back, because if he didn’t, a part of his soul would die in London, and the future, whatever it held, would be bleak without it.
On the train, he found a window seat and slumped down as the doors closed and the train moved off, settling in for the long haul. He’d caught a fast service, but it would still take more than four hours to reach the city. Thankfully, he’d had the foresight to stuff a pad and pencil in his bag so he could prepare for his upcoming appointments—all dot work now word had got out that he specialised in it. He drafted an elephant mandala, and then a tree of life. An hour or so later, he was shading around the trunk when his phone buzzed in his pocket.
Brix. Calum’s heart stuttered. He swiped the screen, but Brix rang off before the call connected. Calum frowned and pressed Redial, his stomach doing an uncomfortable flip, but silence greeted him as the train zoomed through a tunnel. He cancelled the call and glared at the screen, waiting for his signal to return. It didn’t. After some protracted staring, he gave up and tossed the phone on the table in front of him. His work forgotten, he sat back in his seat and closed his eyes. It was gone ten in the morning. If Brix had gone into work, he’d be at the studio by now, which meant he’d know Calum had cancelled his appointments.
Would he care? The cynic Rob had created doubted it, but Calum’s heart said yes.
Paddington Station was as hellish as Calum remembered. Worse. The smell, the crowds, and the cold draft that whistled around every corner, reminding him how much he’d grown to despise city life. The station’s saving grace was the bassoonist outside WHSmith, a busker who’d been there as long as Calum had lived in London. But you don’t live here anymore. The errant thought startled Calum as he pulled his gaze from the old man. He’d been gone from the city for months, and the bustling station around him was like another world—a world he needed to escape again as soon as possible.
Resolved, he left the station behind and ventured out onto the streets of Paddington. The set of keys he’d shoved in his bag felt suddenly heavier, and it wasn’t long before the building that had once housed Black Star Ink loomed into view. As Calum got closer, it appeared the shop was being converted into a café. His heart sank. He’d known from the client who’d appeared in Porthkennack that the shop had been stripped, and with builders already at work, there was little chance that anything left inside had survived the renovations.
Calum approached the studio he’d briefly been proud of. With its new hot-pink colour scheme, he hardly recognised the place—even the girls in the nail bar next door were different.
“All right there, mate?”
Calum turned to the builder who’d called out. “Yeah, I used to work here. Just looking for some stuff. Seen any tattoo equipment lying around?”
“Tattoo equipment? You mean needles and shit?”
“Nah. It’s an old tattoo machine, a heap of crap, really, but it has sentimental value, so I’m hoping it got left behind.”
The workman jumped down from his stepladder and hollered into the back of the shop. “Oi! Curly! Get out here, dick-splash.”
A younger man—Curly, presumably—appeared, covered in paint and dust. “What’s all the shouting?”
“Him over there used to work here. Says he’s looking for some tattoo shit. What happened to that box we found in the office a few days ago?”
“It’s in the skip, innit.”
“Where’s the skip?” Calum asked. He hadn’t seen one outside.
“It’s at our other site down the road,” the first man said. “The barber’s next to the Abbey National.”
Calum frowned. Where the fuck was the Abbey National? He’d never heard—
“He means Santander,” Curly said. “Stev’s stuck in the nineties. We’ve had the bloody Charlatans on repeat all fucking day.”
Calum thanked the builders and left them to their bickering. Santander was in sight of the studio, and it didn’t take long to spot the skip outside.
He approached it with wary hope. Dottie was a vintage machine, worth more than three of the sleek new ones Brix had at Blood Rush, but—and it was a big but—as far as Calum knew, Rob had no idea of her value, so there was a chance that he hadn’t flogged her on eBay.
The skip was full, piled high with rubble and junk. Calum peered over the side, then caught the eye of a workman. “Stev and Curly sent me to look for something.”
“Have at it, mate.” The workman nodded disinterestedly. “It’s being collected tonight.”
Calum climbed over the side of the skip and rummaged around, seizing any scrap of cardboard he came across in case it was the elusive box. He’d about given up hope by the time his hands scraped the side of the battered Amazon box he’d once kept flash posters in.
Stomach in his mouth, he eased the box out from beneath a pile of broken bricks. At the top, he found mostly parts to the sterilising machine Rob must’ve taken, and then damaged packs of gloves and antiseptic. The hope in his chest faded, but then, right at the bottom, was the scuffed tattoo gun he’d carried since his apprentice days. Dottie. Calum’s heart leapt. She was in many bits, but he’d found her, and now that she was safe in his arms, there was no reason for him to stay in London a moment longer.
He wrapped Dottie in his coat and scrambled out of the skip, ignoring the curious gaze of a nearby plumber. His phone buzzed as his feet hit the ground: a message . . . from Brix.
Calum activated the phone. With all the trepidation of returning to London, he’d forgotten to call Brix back. Though it wasn’t Brix’s way, he half expected to see a barrage of abuse on the screen, but as he touched the message to open it, perspective prevailed. Despite how complicated their friendship had become, this was Brix, not Rob, and always would be. Calum read the message and the metaphorical door on London closed a little bit more, even as he turned towards the station, and Brix’s text message set off a chain reaction in his overstimulated mind.
Pls come home. So much to tell u
Calum didn’t doubt it, and as he replayed every moment he’d spent with Brix in Porthkennack, pushing the magic of the sea aside, tiny pieces of a puzzle he’d never thought to look for slotted into place.
Oh, Brix.
Brix sat in the idling van, tracking the trickle of commuters who periodically emerged from Truro train station, and ignoring the strongest urge he’d had to smoke in months. An urge that kept his fingers busy tapping the dashboard, his knee, and anything else he touched.
“Take a minute. Calm yourself, lad. You’re like a cat in heat.”
“You shouldn’t have gone out, Dad. Not at your age.”
“Oh aye? Well, if you’d bought me a few ales like you’d said you would, I’d have been too bloody drunk, eh?”
John Lusmoore’s logic had made a sick kind of sense, though Brix had found himself unable to heed the snark-hidden pearl of wisdom.
“Take a minute. Calm yourself, lad.”
Yeah, right.
Brix got out of the van and opened the back, for once not noticing the waft of stale chicken shit. Instead, he grabbed the roll of refuse sacks from the foot-well and set about gathering up the newspapers and st
raw left over from the last rescue run, a job he should’ve done weeks ago.
Unfortunately, it didn’t take as long as he hoped. He dumped the bag in a nearby bin, and then glanced north for the millionth time, searching for any sign of an incoming train. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Calum had gone back to London, a notion that made Brix sick to his stomach. I should’ve been with him. But hindsight was a wonderful thing. And while Brix regretted running out on Calum without telling him how much the night they’d spent together meant to him, he couldn’t bring himself to regret anything else, even though what had passed between them could never happen again.
Despite his diligent vigil, a train pulled into the station on the London line without him noticing its approach. His heart flipped. Calum’s train. It had to be. Calum’s text had said he’d be home by ten, a prospect that, six hours ago, had seemed like an unbearably long wait. So why was Brix’s heart in his throat now? When Calum was likely just a few minutes away? Because you’re about to tell him, on a scale of one to ten, how fucked up you really are.
“Brix?”
Brix jumped, though he’d been expecting Calum to appear at any moment. Idiot. “Hey.”
Calum grinned a little, though his dark eyes were wary. “Hey yourself. You all right?”
“Aye, I think so.”
“Did you get some sleep?”
“Nope. You?”
“Hell yeah. Slept like a baby on the train. Don’t worry about me, Brix. I’m fine.”
And as Brix stared at Calum, he saw that he really was. Though wary, Calum’s gaze was steady and strong, his half smile honest and true. He looked . . . lighter? Like a burden had slipped from his shoulders, despite the fact that he was carrying a box Brix hadn’t seen before.
Brix inclined his head towards it. “What you got there?”
“Dottie.”
“Dottie?”
“My coil from Black Star. Found her in a skip down the road from the shop.”
So he had been back to his old home in London. “Oh yeah? What else did you find?”
“Nothing that mattered. Rob was long gone, but I wasn’t after him anyway. Just wanted Dottie safe.”
“You look happy.”
Calum shrugged. “I am. I feel free . . . at least as free as I can be while you’re being so bloody vague.”
From anyone else, Calum’s statement would’ve seemed combative, but as Brix searched his face, he found nothing but concern-laced curiosity, and his own heart broke a little more. “I’m sorry, Cal. Guess you think I’m a bit mental, eh?”
“No, I think there’s something I don’t know, because that’s what you’ve told me, and I believe you. Progress, eh?”
It was indeed, but Brix found no joy in Calum’s acceptance, not yet, when it had still to face its greatest test. “Are you coming home?”
“Mate, I never really left. I only went out for the day.” Calum stepped forward when Brix didn’t respond, and took his hands. “Course I’m coming home. If you’ll have me?”
“Can we go for a drive first?”
“Whatever you need, Brix. I’m here.”
They drove out to some picturesque moorland, ten miles inland from Porthkennack. Calum watched the hills and fields slip by, and then cocked Brix a quizzical grin. “We’re not going to the sea?”
“Not this time. There’s more to Cornwall than getting wet, you know.”
It seemed answer enough for Calum. He settled in his seat, companionably silent, until Brix pulled into a deserted car park that looked out over the moors.
“There’s an old Porthkennack rumour that my dad buried my mum out there.” Brix gestured absently at the expanse of flat ground.
“Your mum left twenty years ago. That’s not old by Porthkennack standards. Some geezer was telling me about his uncle the other day. Took me ages to realise he was talking about a dude from the sixteenth century. You seafolk have no concept of time.”
Brix couldn’t argue with him there. How often had his family torn themselves apart over a slight that had happened before any of them were born? “It’s a good place, really. Healing. I don’t know what would’ve happened to me if I hadn’t come back here.”
“It’s magic,” Calum said, his eyes still on the moorland. Then he turned to Brix, and his gaze held a probing intensity that pierced Brix’s soul. “But it didn’t heal you completely, did it?”
“No.”
Calum’s gaze flickered to the moors and back again before he seemed to steel himself with a deep, cleansing breath. “I think I know what you’re going to tell me.”
“I doubt it.”
Calum shook his head. “So did I when it came to me, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. You’ve told me so much already. I can’t think of much else you’d truly believe you had to hide.”
“Believe? Jesus—”
“Brix.”
Brix closed his eyes as Calum’s hands closed around his, warmth seeping into his bones and spreading to his heart, if only for a moment. “Cal, please . . . I can’t—”
“Brix, you can tell me anything, even that, and I’ll never turn away from you, I promise.”
Calum’s promises were worth so much more than anyone else’s, and when Brix opened his eyes, he was immediately lost in Calum’s dark gaze. “I can’t say it.”
“Yes, you can.”
“I’ve never tried.”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Brix.”
Brix snorted softly. “Easy for you to say.”
“Is it?” Calum’s eyes flashed, and his grip on Brix’s hands tightened, twisting Brix’s fingers. “You think I’m not hurting inside, knowing you’ve been dealing with this on your own all that time I wasted with Rob? That it’s not fucking torturing me that you can’t look me in the eye and just bloody tell me you’re—”
“Living with HIV.” The words were out before Brix could stop them. He wrenched his hands from Calum and pressed them briefly over his mouth, like he could push his confession back in, but it was too late . . . far too late, if the lack of surprise in Calum’s face was anything to go by. “You knew?”
“Not for sure. It kinda came to me when I started joining the dots.”
“The dots?” Brix felt sick. If Calum had worked it out, who else had? Kim? Lee? Dad? Brix swallowed. Shame had long ago left him, chased away by time and hard-won perspective, but the thought of anyone he loved guessing his status without his knowledge made him feel slightly ill.
Calum reclaimed Brix’s hands. “It wasn’t obvious, if that’s what you’re worried about. I doubt anyone obsesses over you quite the way I do. Like I said, I wasn’t certain, it was just the sex, the blood thing . . . the pills you hide in your washbag.”
“You weren’t certain,” Brix repeated dully.
“No.”
“And now you are.”
It wasn’t a question, but Calum nodded anyway. “I’m not going to say it’s not a big deal, because it’s fucking huge, but it doesn’t change anything for me, Brix, and I’m glad I know.”
Brix had no words. He stared out over the moors, grounded only by Calum’s hands on his shoulders, pulling him into the embrace he’d needed four years ago when his life as he’d known it had come to an end, albeit one-armed and compounded in the cramped van.
Calum held him for a long time, wrapping him in warmth and a silence that healed the lightest cracks in his soul. Only the intrusive cold drove them apart, and Calum pulled away, rubbing Brix’s arms. “How ’bout you crank the heat up in this thing and I’ll drive us home, eh? We can talk more on the way.”
He got out of the van without waiting for Brix’s answer. Lacking any better ideas, Brix unbuckled his seat belt and scooted across to the passenger side so Calum could haul himself into the driver’s seat. Brix eyed him and fiddled with the heating dial. “I didn’t even know you had a license.”
“Maybe I haven’t.” Calum shot him a rakish grin as he turned the key in the igni
tion. “You’re just gonna have to trust me.”
“I trust you, Cal. You’re my best friend . . . you always were.”
Calum backed the van out of the space and spun around towards the road. “Some best friend. I wasn’t with you when you needed me most. You were in London when you found out, weren’t you? That’s why you came back here?”
Brix waited until Calum pulled onto the deserted road before he let out a sigh so deep it seemed like he’d been holding it for a hundred years. “Would you believe my dad came across me in much the same state as I did you? Except I made it to Ladock bus station. I wasn’t drunk, mind, though I imagine he thought I was, given the state I was in.”
“Had you just found out?” Calum kept his eyes on the road, easing the van around the tight, Cornish corners. “I mean—been diagnosed—is that the right word?”
Brix shrugged. “I don’t think it matters, but I’d known a few weeks by the time I crawled back down here. Do you remember that ink convention in Croydon? When Two-Minute Tony won?”
“No, I remember hearing about it, but I wasn’t there. It was my parents’ silver wedding anniversary.”
“Oh.” Brix sifted through memories that often felt like they belonged to someone else. “You weren’t there?”
“No, I was away for a week or so. You were gone when I came back, and no one seemed to know where.”
“I’m sorry.”
Calum’s hand briefly left the steering wheel and touched Brix’s, his fingertips tracing a burning trail across Brix’s knuckles. “Don’t be sorry. Just keep talking, eh? For as long as you need.”
“For as long as you need.” Brix felt numb. “I’ve never told anyone . . . except Jordan.”
Calum shot him another sideways glance. “Jordan?”
“Yeah. I was supposed to compete at Croydon, but I woke up that morning feeling like shit, so I didn’t go. Jordan went to work while I stayed in bed at his place. I thought it was just a hangover or something, but when he got home, I had a headache so bad I was screaming.”
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