‘Will you be okay?’ he asks, pressing a kiss against the top of my head.
‘I think so,’ I say, after a pause. ‘Will you?’
He holds me closer still and breathes a sigh into my hair. ‘I think so.’
‘I’ll miss you,’ I say, even though I’m determined not to let melancholic shadows darken the time we have left together.
I feel his nod. ‘I’ll miss you too,’ he says. ‘These last few weeks have been some of the best of my life.’
I lift my face to look at him. ‘I know you mean finally coming to Salvation as much as meeting me,’ I say, to lighten the mood. ‘But … more me, right?’
He laughs. ‘More you. Definitely more you.’
Time is an unequal thing. A minute waiting on a cold train platform feels like an hour; other times, an hour can pass in a blink. These last days and hours with Mack have raced by at warp speed – every time I look at the kitchen clock it’s as if the fingers are a tag team dashing around the face with more speed than they’re entitled to. We were walking on the beach after breakfast, and then I blinked and we were on the sofa by the fire at dusk. We clutched steaming mugs of coffee outside on the steps at daybreak, I blinked and it was whiskey in my hands under a sky full of stars.
I have something that feels much like a hangover, post-birthday blues mixed with post-ceremony relief shot through with anxiety about the changed landscape ahead.
We sit side by side on the low sea wall, our eyes watchful for the boat that’s going to take him away. It’s only Tuesday; the boat is making a rare out-of-sequence visit to deliver a haul of pumpkins, one for every household in the village, a long-standing annual tradition courtesy of Raff. They could probably have been sent over last Friday but I get the impression Raff made the arrangements for Mack’s benefit. Trust Raff to be the only one important enough to mess around with the schedule. Mack’s bags, stuffed to the seams, are on the damp sand at our feet. Only his camera remains unpacked, around his neck on its frayed leather strap as always. He has a slice of pale skin just there; I shouldn’t imagine it ever sees enough sunlight to match in. It will no doubt be the same when – if – he removes his wedding band. His skin is criss-crossed with tracks that tell his story.
‘I’m not going to cry,’ I say, knowing I probably am.
‘Man, I hate goodbyes,’ he says.
‘Everyone does,’ I say.
There are a million things I want to say, but all of the words feel trapped in my chest. It was written into the terms and conditions of our agreement that this has to end. There will be no Facebook friend requests or drunken late-night ‘miss you’ texts. These words right now matter more because they’re our last ones to each other.
‘Should we shake hands?’ he jokes, his smile too distressed.
I hold my hand out. ‘Why not.’
‘I was a broken, sad guy when I got here,’ he says, taking my hand and not letting go. ‘I don’t feel like that any more.’ He rubs his thumb back and forth over my knuckles as he speaks. ‘You fixed me.’
‘Jesus, Mack,’ I say, swiping the heel of my palm over my eyes. ‘Not yet.’ I’m so perilously close to crying it’s actually hurting my throat to speak. ‘What if I never feel like this again?’
I know. I sound as if I’ve stolen Jennifer Grey’s best line, telling Patrick Swayze that she’s scared of walking out of that room and never feeling the same way for anyone else again. She delivered hers with far more passion and far fewer snotty tears, though.
‘You told me the other night that you love me a little bit,’ he says. ‘I didn’t say it back at the time, and I should have, because your honesty deserved mine. I love you a little bit too.’ He kisses my forehead. ‘You are so entirely fucking lovable, Cleo Wilder.’
It’s such a Mack thing to say.
‘And you know something else?’ He saves me from having to pull myself together enough to reply. ‘A little bit might be better than a lot because this way we get to walk away remembering only the best of each other.’
‘Maybe a lifetime of micro-love affairs is the way forward,’ I smile, trying to put a brave face on it. ‘I might put that in my final piece, a bit of sign-off advice.’
‘It could be the next big thing in dating,’ he says, forlorn. ‘You could start a micro-love movement.’
‘You’ll be a legend in my head for ever,’ I say.