Page 43 of Dirty Rotten Love

That is absolutely the sensible option, but it sits in my chest like a stone.

I know how he is. I know he knows how he is and how other people see him, and I’m pretty sure he has made his peace with it. I know that the rig is the shape of his life and that he has chosen it deliberately and carefully and that this is fine and sustainable and completely his business and not mine. I know all of this.

The stone doesn’t move.

Dazza says something that makes Whelan inhale his drink. The resulting chaos takes up approximately forty-five seconds and involves a lot of napkins and some swearing. I contribute to the chaos at the appropriate level. I am present and easy and completely normal.

I glance back across the mess hall.

Mac is still there. Still alone. He has finished eating and is nursing his mug with both hands and looking at the middle distance and there is something about the stillness of him that makes my chest do a thing I cannot name and do not want to examine too closely right now in the middle of a table full of people.

At the end of the table, Brockie puts his fork down and says something quietly to Spanner that I don’t catch over the noise. Spanner turns and looks at him properly, the way Spanner looks at things, with complete and unhurried attention, and says something back. Brockie looks at his empty plate for a moment. Then he looks up at Spanner and something in his face is fractionally less uncertain than it usually is, just a degree, just enough to notice if you are paying attention.

I am only half paying attention because Mac is across the room and I am trying not to look at him again and failing.

I look at him again.

And Mac looks up.

I don’t know why. There is no reason for it, no sound I made, nothing to draw his attention across a busy mess hall to one specific table. He just looks up, the way you sometimes do when someone is looking at you even when you can’t see them, and his eyes find mine across the noise and the distance and the six tables between us.

I don’t look away. I should look away. I should pick up my fork or turn to Dazza or do any of the seventeen things available to me that would constitute looking away, but I don’t do any of them. I just look back at Mac across the mess hall and feel the thing in my chest get bigger and more complicated and less possible to put in a box.

Mac doesn’t look away either.

It lasts maybe three seconds. Maybe four. Long enough that it is no longer accidental and not quite long enough that anyone at my table would notice. Just the two of us looking at each other across a loud, warm room, and something passing between us that I don’t have a name for yet.

Then Tam says my name, and I turn and the moment is gone.

I tell the next joke. I laugh at Dazza’s thing. I respond to Frasier with something that makes Whelan snort. I do all of this with the practiced ease of someone who has been performing warmth since he was seven years old and knows exactly how it is supposed to look, and it works, it always works, and tonight it costs me something it doesn’t usually cost me.

“You alright?” says Tam, eventually. Not the casual version. The other version, the one with the slightly different quality that means he is actually asking.

“Grand,” I say, and pick up my fork, and am completely normal for the rest of dinner.

I don’t look across the mess hall again.

I don’t need to. The image of Mac sitting alone in the corner with his mug and his middle distance is already somewhere it is not going to leave in a hurry, filed somewhere complicated and right next to everything else I am not examining.

I eat my pudding.

It doesn’t taste as sweet as it normally does.

Chapter eighteen

Rory

I’m in Mac’s bed and I can’t breathe. He just fucked my brains out and now I’m lying here, boneless, sweaty and panting. He is in a similar state beside me.

The wind is howling against the walls. Far below us, the North Sea is crashing against the chords of the rig. Metal is clanging. The rig is humming. But here, in this cabin with Mac, I feel perfectly safe. Cozy, warm and content.

The ache I felt in my chest since seeing him alone in the mess hall has gone. This is better. This is right. This is the antidote to being across the room from him and leaving him in solitude.

I roll onto my side and snuggle up to him, pressing my body to every inch of his that I can reach. I rest my head on his broad shoulder and fling my arm over his delightfully hairy chest.

My lungs freeze. Oh. What am I doing? Why am I doing this? We never agreed to this kind of intimacy.

The universe pauses for a nanosecond, then Mac wraps his arm around me and pulls me even closer.