He found the roasting factory in darkness, but he knocked anyway. He leaned as close to the glass door as he could without it seeming obvious and tried to stare discretely beyond his reflection into the room, searching for signs of life. His stomach looped as he recognised the table where he'd joked with Riley, on which small bags of ready-to-sell ground coffee were now neatly stacked. Nothing moved within, but he waited. The van was parked in its space in the little yard, and Riley hadn't been serving at the cafe when he'd nonchalantly staked the place out ten minutes before. He figured it was fifty-fifty whether he was in there somewhere.
The skin of his neck prickled, and he glanced round nervously. Years of combat training had left him with an intuitive sense of his own surroundings, alerting him to the presence of something out of place before his conscious brain had registered it, and it had saved his life more than once, but he couldn't see anyone, or anything, unusual in the yard. Unnerved, he turned slowly back to the door, poking at a loose cobble with the toe of his shoe, but keeping one eye on the reflection of the yard, and one ear tuned for the sound of movement.
The sense of being watched didn't help the churning anxiety in his guts. He knew apologising was the right thing to do, but that didn't make the task any more bearable. An instructive post-prandial rest spent scrolling through the internet had left him feeling more and more despondent as he learned that if he had printed out a list titled "what not to do when you find out your friend is gay" and ticked off each bullet point as he went along, he could not have fucked up more thoroughly than he had done the night before. Eventually, the guilt had worn down his denial and he'd got up, pulled a piece of scrap paper out of the recycling bin, and went to find a pen. He remembered then, about the book.
" Becoming An Emotional Genius ?"
Jocalene nodded, bathing him in the holy light of her beatific smile. "It's step 7: Improving interpersonal relationships." she explained, tapping the workbook on the table between them.
"The managerial structure of the Armed Forces is unique in its level of authoritarianism, and its assumption of automatic obedience of anyone else of lower rank, but civilians, and "Other Agencies" have a more…" She turned her hands from the air-quotes gesture, showing her open palms, mixing the empty air whilst she searched for the right words "...collaborative approach."
"It's one of the most common areas of friction, and a well-recognised factor in operational and failure. Learning how to improve your own understanding of how people tick will allow you to build more effective professional relationships, and that might save your life, and theirs, in the field."
MacTavish nodded in agreement. "That seems reasonable."
"That's before you factor in the benefits to your personal relationships."
"Personal relationships?" He snorted derisively to cover the sudden, surging embarrassment at the word "I'm not bothered about getting a girlfriend. We're away for months, lassies hate that. It's nothing but trouble."
It was more than that. After their years toiling under the yoke of military life, where every stray fart had to be approved by someone further up the chain of command, he, like many of his brothers-in-arms, considered the surrender of any more of themselves to be an affront to their remaining dignity. Most of the women that swarmed the Hereford pubs and clubs looking to subvert the physical endurance the Regiment required, using it for their own sordid pleasures, understood this, and as far as he was concerned, that worked out fine for everyone: give each other a once over in the pub, head back for a tumble in the sheets and then finish up with an exchange of thank-yous before never seeing them again.
Those that expected something more? He knew from bitter experience that they just got hurt. The boys who exhausted the novelty of the perpetually regenerating groupie buffet, and craved some kind of love connection, went off on a half-year deployment and returned to find their solemnly-sworn, faithful girlfriend working her way through the smorgasbord of lusty young men left behind. As far as MacTavish was concerned, the whole sorry subject of relationships should be filed in the drawer marked "Avoid".
A tiny frown appeared on Joceline's face, the smallest of creases between her eyebrows changing her whole expression from one of saintly radiance to one of patiently endured suffering. He knew he had given the wrong answer.
"Even accounting for the enforced long absences." She countered "There's more to these failing relationships than you might think, and this goes beyond who you take to bed." He grimaced internally as she said that. Joceline's holy saturation meant that any time she suggested something carnal, MacTavish felt like he was watching a dog piss on the baby Jesus in his manger. She didn't seem to notice his discomfort, and ploughed on regardless. " Friendships are stronger based on a well-built emotional connection."
He'd nodded begrudgingly just to get her to move on, but as soon as he got home, buried the book in the tower of magazines by the bed, where it had lurked, ignored, ever since, until he remembered the chapter entitled "Saying Sorry".
It had taken thirty excruciating minutes to work his way through it, coming to terms with the repercussions of his stupidity in minute detail, followed by another sixty minutes of sulking regret as he ploughed through several aborted drafts until the carpet at his feet was littered with crumpled up scraps. Finally, with the assistance of some more aspirin and a gallon of tea, he finally had a workable script to commit to memory.
There was still no answer at the door, so he knocked again, more forcefully this time. Mentally he ran through his prepared speech, nausea rising as he ticked off the points the book had advised were the most important, but the distracting prickling at the nape of his neck kept growing. He turned again, his eyes searching the little yard and seeing nothing. Then a tiny movement in his peripheral vision drew his gaze up and he saw Riley glaring down at him from a balcony.
The sight of him struck MacTavish like a hammer blow, all the carefully constructed words evaporating from his mind as Riley's disgusted fury froze the air between them.
Still angry then, he realised. It had been an outside chance that all would be forgiven in the sober light of the morning, or that Riley would be merely annoyed after sleeping on the experience, but from the look on his face, he was obviously still furious. Shit .
"What do you want?" Riley snapped.
MacTavish took a deep breath, and for a horrible moment could not speak. He stared: mute and gaping, until finally, the squirming anxiety in his guts hit a critical mass and all the words exploded out.
"I came to apologise." he said.
Riley frowned, his head jerking back a fraction as he blinked in surprise. Whatever he had expected MacTavish to say, this had clearly not been it.
"I was bang out of order last night." MacTavish continued, trying to press home the advantage of Riley's silence. He hadn't been told to fuck off yet, and before he did, he wanted to get as much out as possible. "If you'd not told me about…" he swallowed nervously. He had practised, but he still felt a surge of anxiety when he came to saying "gay" that he knew would make him stumble, and he scrabbled for an alternative "...what you were like, then maybe there was a reason for that and it wasn't right of me to try to get to you tell me. I don't blame you for getting angry about it."
Riley just stared at him, his throat bobbing as he swallowed, and MacTavish thought that perhaps his expression had softened a little bit: the harsh frown line between his eyebrows smoothing out. He still didn't speak.
"Look, it's not any of my business what you do with other people…. but when it got brought up, I thought surely that was something you would have mentioned…" He tailed off, his mind wandering briefly to the ex-fiancée he'd imagined before he jerked it back on track "I had this image of what you were like, and that wasn't it… And I felt like an idiot for not knowing, that's what I was annoyed about."
MacTavish took a deep breath, and tried to control the tremor that threatened to erupt in his voice. This had been the hardest bit when he'd practiced in the mirror, the bit where he got to the crux of the matter, when talked about his feelings , and it made the nausea of the morning rise all over again. "It's meant a lot to me to have someone to talk to the last few weeks. Somewhere to go that's nothing to do with my work, my fucked up leg and all the other shit…" He felt suddenly exposed in the cool of the afternoon, as if he was standing skylined on the top of a crest, snipers in the hills around him bearing down on him through their sights. His skin crawled as he continued. "... I like talking to you, and I don't want that to end like this, with you thinking I had meant something I didn't."
He took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. "So… I'm sorry"
When he opened them again, he saw that this time, Riley's face had changed. The anger had been slowly falling away as MacTavish had suffered his way through his speech, and now he regarded MacTavish with a cool, unreadable stare. He watched as Riley's chest heaved once, then twice before he turned and vanished inside.
MacTavish, who had learnt enough about retreats in his military career to recognise that this was not one, waited, and after a few moments, there was a noise from inside, a box of light appearing in the gloom as a door opened and then, stalking like a ghost through the darkness, Riley appeared suddenly in the open doorway.
"All right." he said, as he held open the door. "You can come in."
MacTavish was shocked by the change in Riley's appearance. He had always been immaculately turned out in well-fitting, stylish clothes, his hair artfully tousled and his beard smoothly trimmed, but today he answered the door in a stained, sleeveless white vest and a pair of worn, grey sweatpants. His greasy hair stuck to his forehead in clumps and his once bright eyes were sunken and dull.
He followed Riley meekly through the factory and into the passage leading to the cafe itself, a growing worry gnawing inside. Everyone had the right to slob out, he was in no position to criticise that, but there was something about Riley's appearance that went beyond just relaxing and sat ill with MacTavish. He looked like he'd just given up. Something was wrong here, something had happened to Riley, and he had a horrible feeling that it was him.
At the distant end of the passage he could hear the blast of the big coffee machine at the counter, and behind that, the faint chatter of voices. The familiar aroma of roasted coffee saturated the air he inhaled, and he felt his heart lift. He'd been compressing the fear of rejection as far down as he possibly could, and the relief of being allowed inside left him feeling light-headed. He staggered a little against the doorframe as he misjudged his movements, closed his eyes to steady himself and nearly rammed straight into Riley as he stopped and opened a door that MacTavish hadn't noticed before, set into the wall of the passage.
"You want a coffee?" Riley called back as he ascended the gloomy stair beyond.
"Yes please" MacTavish replied, and, lacking any further instruction, began to follow cautiously behind.
He came out into an unlit room, just in time to see the ghostly shape of Riley vanish into a doorway beyond, leaving MacTavish alone in the dark. He paused, not wanting to stumble ahead and crack his shin on something hidden in the shadows. Instead, he waited for his eyes to adjust. As he did, details became apparent in his surroundings. He realised that he was in a flat above the shop.
Surprisingly, no lingering odour of roasted coffee penetrated the space; instead, he inhaled the faint, sweet scent of vanilla on the stuffy air. But when he concentrated, at the very end of his indrawn breath, he could just detect the very whisper of Riley's cologne and then the understanding that he was standing in Riley's lounge, that he lived above the shop and he was standing in his flat, slammed into him like a careening truck.
The feeling started again. The odd feeling that he couldn't put a name too, but that he was now fairly sure was not the start of the feared anxiety attacks or flashbacks he'd been warned about. He wasn't afraid , standing alone in the murky gloom of Riley's lounge, he was…. excited ? He recognised it then, that Christmas Eve feeling of pure, exhilarating joy to come. That squirmy feeling in the pit of his belly that came with tinsel and fairylights and the unshakable belief that something good was waiting just beyond the horizon.
What the fuck? Why did he get this feeling when Riley appeared? Is it the coffee? He never had this problem with tea, and caffeine was a drug, after all, he worried. Am I a junkie now? A coffee junkie? A looming shape against the wall next to him resolved into a sofa, so he sat down, just in case he was wrong and things took a turn for the worst. The leather felt butter-soft beneath his hands, and he fought the urge to leap back up because nothing that felt that good could be cheap. But he didn't want to offend Riley further by refusing his hospitality, so he shifted to make himself comfortable, plumping the satin-covered cushions until they propped him up in a way that he liked, and waited.
The only light in the room came from a gap in the long curtains to his right. With a bit of mental gymnastics, he orientated himself and figured that behind them was the balcony where only a few minutes before, Riley had glared down at him. Where the light touched he could see the grey pattern of the rug at his feet resolve into its true colours: a design of interlocking triangles picked in twilight shades. Guilty, he kicked off his trainers and slid them under the coffee table in front of him. Just enough light bounced off the fancy gold-framed mirror on the wall opposite to allow him to see the display of tarot cards spread beneath the glass of the table: The Lovers , Death , The Moon . He rolled his eyes at the predictably macabre images.
Glancing curiously around, he saw a sturdy, archival box on the opposite end of the sofa, the lid removed and the contents partially eviscerated onto the coffee table. The lid rested at the side closest to MacTavish, the tape that had secured it in place snarled into a big, sticky ball that hung off the corner like a malignant growth. Someone had scored out "Commodity Futures Risk Mitigation" and scrawled several obscene insults in emphatically printed letters. Beneath this, in a more careful hand, another someone had written "Do NOT open under ANY circumstances!"
In front of him a pile of photographs and paperwork had been scattered across the glass. He moved aside a small, velvet box, and picked up the photograph beneath it, turning it over in his hands.
A phrase had been neatly scribed on the back: Anse Louis '07. He flicked it over to see the image on the reverse. He recognised Riley immediately, even though he was only partially visible in profile, eyes closed. He had a peaceful, contented smile as he nuzzled into the neck of another man, the one who, judging from the angle, was holding the camera that had been used to freeze the tender moment in perpetuity.
With a start, MacTavish realised that this was him .
Unlike the androgynous vision of MacTavish's fevered imagination, the ex-fiancé had mousey hair sticking up in salt-stiffed clumps above a sharp widow's peak. He was tanned, with the sheen of tropical heat on his sun-kissed skin. MacTavish's eyes flicked over the sharp cheekbones, strong jaw and frowned, disgusted, at the trendy handlebar moustache and scraggly beard combination. He shook his head. What a fucking wanker!
"Is this him?" he asked, when the noises in the kitchen settled and Riley returned holding a cafetiere in one hand and a mug in the other.
"That's private !" Riley snapped, and, dumping the cafetiere down hard enough on the coffee table to slop the contents over the side, he snatched the photograph from MacTavish's hand. He glowered, face flushed with indignant rage.
MacTavish paused, grabbing the anger that rose in response and shoved it back down. He didn't want a repeat of the night before, at all costs "It was on the table." he said, calmly, and nodded his head to the rest of the scattered pictures.
Riley scowled at him for a few seconds more and then deflated with a very weary sigh. He lifted the box onto the floor and sat down heavily next to MacTavish. He held the photograph up between then and tapped at the man he had been snuggled into.
"That's Xander all right." he said.
This close MacTavish could smell the sharp, herbal odour of gin on Riley's breath, strong enough to overpower the tantalising aroma of the fresh coffee in front of him. He realised that the weariness in his voice wasn't exhaustion: he was clearly drunk.
His brain caught up with his ears " Xander ?"
"Yeah. He was American." said Riley, by way of explanation. "Came over from the New York office on some temporary transatlantic experience program, but wanted to stay on account of me and took up in commodities as a strategist."
He began to gather photographs into a pile. The two of them smiling, drinking through straws from the same coconut, in sharp suits on a balcony overlooking a grey London skyline, champagne flutes in hand. He paused at a half-length shot of Xander, fashionably scruffy with his shirt rolled up to his elbows and open at the neck, the patriotically-themed sleeve of eagles and flags inked onto his forearms out on display. MacTavish wrinkled his nose in disgust.
He glanced over at Riley. With his full arms exposed, all of his tattoos were visible: the motif of dancing skeletons, the raven that disintegrated into feathers he knew, but, above this, reaching to the middle of one muscular bicep was an intricate death's head moth surrounded by the phases of the moon that he'd never seen before. Around the images freckles speckled the skin like stars. He fought a curious urge to reach out and touch them. He had his own ink, and he'd stroked enough tattooed skin over the years to know would it would feel no different to the blank areas around it, but still the yearning urge to reach out and run his fingers over the skin was inexplicably hard to suppress.
He shook himself, and focussed, looking at the new photograph being held up for him to see: a picture of a much younger Riley, and another boy. Probably just out of school by the round, cheeks, smooth skin and lack of facial hair, MacTavish thought. A thin, multicoloured band formed of skinny glowsticks was balanced on his tousled, sweaty hair like a halo. As he grinned towards whoever was holding the camera, he pulled another boy close in a friendly other boy had a round, clean-shaven face and a sallow tinge to his beige skin. He smiled groggily at the camera. A curl of dank, sweaty hair was plastered to his forehead and judging from his expansive pupils, he had been completely off his face.
"That's Hadi."
MacTavish took a moment to process this, and then remembered the circumstances under which Rileys engagement had imploded "Your... pal?"
"I'd known him since we was in the same year at LSE. He was a good laugh, and you know, up until…" he tailed off, and MacTavish nodded understanding "...until that, he was always…" He gestured with the photograph, and then tossed it onto the pile with a despondent flick of his hand. He covered his face with his hands, rubbing his fingertips into his eye sockets. He sat like this for just long enough for MacTavish to wonder, with rising horror, if he was going to start to cry, but then he shifted, dragging his hands down over his cheeks, distorting the skin until they slid off the edge of his jaw and he sighed, his whole body slumping.
MacTavish sat frozen, internally flailing, in the face of Riley's obvious distress, desperately fighting the urge to jump up and flee down the stairs. The silence between them pressed down, oppressive and suffocating. He tried to think, trawling through what he remembered of Joceline's workbook that morning and wishing he'd actually read it in the weeks it had been slowly composting in the pile of magazines. Finally, after desperately excavating almost forgotten memories he hit on something useful just as Riley twisted away and picked up the half-finished bottle of gin on the table beside him.
He'd been through mandatory unarmed combat training just under nine months ago, the last useful thing he'd done before leaving the Paras for good. The weeks afterwards had been one long, intermittent brawl where everyone took to practising their newly acquired skills whenever possible. Any unsuspecting person who didn't have proper grip on whatever they were holding found themselves relieved of their possessions with a well-executed disarm. The fact that Riley had already been working through the gin, and the slippery coating of condensation on the glass bottle gave MacTavish an advantage. In the split second that Riley reached with his other hand to pull the cork, MacTavish's hand snaked out and Riley was left grasping the empty air.
"What the fuck are you doing?" He yelled, when his brain caught up.
"It's half-past three, you've not even opened the curtains and you're drinking gin from the bottle." snapped MacTavish, as he leapt up out of Riley's reach.
"Give me that back!"
"No." said MacTavish, firmly. He was appalled at how much he sounded like his mother, but the memory of her berating her teary sisters whenever they turned up at the door complaining about their mistreatment by their latest squeeze was the only useful experience he had to hand. "I'm your pal. I'm supposed to be looking out for you, not letting you drink yourself into oblivion over some hipster arsehole."
"He's not a hipster arsehole!"
"Aye? Well he looks like a fucking hipster, and he broke your heart, so that makes him arsehole as far as I'm concerned!"
Riley stopped, as if MacTavish had reached over and slapped him. He stood gawping, slack-jawed like a drowning fish, and then, as MacTavish watched, his face contorted: his jaw clenching, and his eyes blinking rapidly as if he was having some sort of miniature seizure. Oh no. Oh shit! Oh God, no! He realised that this time, Riley really was about to cry.
What would Mum do? He racked his brains, remembering the interminable clandestine meetings that had taken place around the kitchen table. Auntie Katie, the youngest, snivelling into her tea, and his mother clattering around the kitchen as she verbally laid into her sister about her poor life choices. Then, just as she'd run out of things to criticise, Auntie Shona would pipe up, except she would take a different tack, making soothing noises, and sweeping her weeping sister up in her arms.
MacTavish swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. He understood the balance of that routine, the good cop/bad cop act designed to get their victim turned around and moving in the right direction. Except, he didn't have another person to play off, it was just him. He realised, with rising dread, that he'd backed himself into a corner, and the only way out was to change tack himself, away from aggressive confrontation and shift down into a softer gear.
He thought about all the stuff he'd read that morning, all the mistakes he'd made already. The awkward worry about touching Riley was crossing out just another on the list of avoidable fuckups, undoing all the hard work of his apology.
He knew what he had to do.
He inhaled deeply, and steeled himself, trying to staunch the breach through which the adrenaline flooded his system, to slow the thumping bassline of his racing heart as each beat pounded in his head, to quell the churning in his guts. He looked away, at the floor, as he put the bottle down on the coffee table and opened his arms, moving into a stance like he was preparing for an onrushing assault. "Come on." he said.
When nothing happened, he looked up and found Riley staring at him, a confused frown furrowing his warring features. MacTavish gestured, flapping his open arms as if encouraging an invisible congregation to stand. "Come on. " he repeated.
Riley moved tentatively, unsure, across the gap that yawned between them and then suddenly, the space between MacTavish's arms was filled with his body, his chest clasped and squeezed in a hug that would have crushed a smaller man. He had known that Riley was strong, but there was seeing this, and the reality crushing his ribs. His nose was filled with the sweet tang of his cologne. The soft bristle of his beard pressed against MacTavish's neck. No one, bar the assortment of brusque physios, had touched him for months and the marvel of warm, soft skin against his own clenched around his heart like a fist, sending a wave of surging, adrenaline-soaked blood through his body. He had to clench his eyes to keep from swaying as the room spun around him. He tried to force his heart to slow, and had just managed to wrench his body under control again when Riley broke away, wiping his eyes on the heels of his hands, sniffling slightly as he inhaled a deep, shuddering breath.
"I'm sorry" he whispered "I'm fine now."
They stared awkwardly at each other for a moment, MacTavish ashamed at the disappointment he felt at breaking contact.
"How long has this been going on?" MacTavish asked, eventually. He figured that he owed Riley, and if he was going to make it up to him, he could at least take charge of sorting him out.
"How long has what being going on?" Riley said, his voice still congested with aborted tears.
"Sitting in the dark, getting drunk and moping over pictures of these arseholes."
Riley sighed, his shoulders sagging. This time, he didn't argue with the description. "Since yesterday." he said.
MacTavish bit his lip, and wished the floor would open up and swallow him whole. It was one thing, he realised, to consider the damage he'd done as an abstract concept, but quite another to learn that he'd been the final crack in Riley's emotional defences that had resulted in him surrendering into gin-soaked oblivion.
"I went out to that place: Longworth Grange."
MacTavish frowned, and then he remembered the appearance of Effua in the factory, proffering a business card in her long, dark fingers. "The hotel?"
"We talked about business, and then they did me a tour. Showed me the big marquee all set up, all the tables laid out, the chairs done up fancy, the big balls of roses, and all these curtains of fairy lights like stars, and it was beautiful… and I thought: that was going to be me... I was going to be getting married next month. It just... Just made it hit home."
Ah . MacTavish was ashamed at the relief he felt learning that he wasn't entirely to blame for Riley's meltdown, but he kept a serious face. "Aye, well. Would you rather be a fortune out of pocket and have had a nice party when you found out?"
"No." Riley shook his head. "It's not that. Just... I think I'm doing okay, but… it still hurts."
MacTavish sighed. "Well, getting drunk on your own is not going to help that. Come on, let's do what we said we were going to do. Game kicks off in an hour. Take your mind off all this for a bit."
"I don't know." said Riley, uncertainly, screwing up his mouth as if he had bitten something sour.
"Come on . This is not healthy. You need to get up, get a shower and get your arse out of this place and into… okay, well the pub isn't fresh air, but it's not moping about on your tod in the dark. Even I know that. Look, if you want to get pissed, forget your troubles for a day, at least let's do that together, eh?"
Riley looked at him, and for another horrified moment, MacTavish thought he was really going to start crying this time. He began to wonder if he should just let him get it out, encourage it, like he did with the morning hangover vomit, but then, very slowly, like the sun peeking out after a storm, Riley smiled.
"Yeah." he said, and then more confidently. "Let's do this."