Page 55 of Merry & Bright
There was a brief silence, then Val said, her voice subdued, “You’re annoyed.” Her deely-boppers were flickering red-green-red-green in Rob’s peripheral vision but he didn’t glance her way, or answer her at all.
“What happened?” she asked after another pause.
“Nothing.” He could feel her gaze on him, wary and careful.
“If nothing happened,” she said quietly, “why are you giving off angry vibes?”
Rob sighed at that, not a soft sigh but a hard, impatient exhalation of air. “Because I feel shitty,” he bit out. “Cam was—I don’t know, he just seemed really down.”
“Since when do you call himCam?” Val asked, somehow managing to home in on the least relevant part of what he’d said.
“That’s what his sister calls him.”
“The girl who was with him, you mean?” Without waiting for a reply, she added, “Well, I don’t see why you should feel bad about him feeling down. How is it your fault?”
“Jesus, Val,” Rob snapped. “Don’t you feelat allbad about what happened?”
“What do you mean?”
Rob set down the cutlery he’d been wrapping. “His sister—the woman he was having lunch with? She was making conversation with me and then suddenly she comes out with all this stuff about how nice it is to meet one of Cam’s friends at last.” Rob rubbed the back of his neck. “I could’ve died when she said that. You know what, Val? I don’t think Cam’s got a single friend in Inverbechie.”
“Well, that’s not your bloody fault!”
“Yes, it is!” Rob exclaimed, frustrated. “Mineandyours! If you’dspokento me instead of taking it upon yourself to make a fuss with Pete Bruce over that coffee nonsense, I’d’ve gone to see Cam and sorted it out like a normal person. But no, you had to make a huge drama out of it.”
“I don’t see what that’s got to do with having no friends,” Val muttered mulishly.
“Really? Are you forgetting that after our fight, you went gossiping about him to everyone that would listen? He couldn’t come in here after, and it wasn’t long before he stopped going in The Stag too.”
“Well, he shouldn’t have come in here throwing his weight around, should he?”
“What did you expect him to do?” Rob asked, throwing his hands up. “You called the bloody Council on him!”
“Well, he started it!” Val exclaimed. “What about our café?”
For a moment Rob was silent, then he said quietly, “It’s notourcafé. It’smycafé.”
Val just stared at him, seeming wounded, but for once Rob didn’t care about her feelings. Not enough to let this thing with Cam go on any longer. He liked Val a lot—she was a loyal friend and a bloody good manager—but she’d made a mistake in calling Pete Bruce and he’d made a worse one when he’d not admitted as much to Cam McMorrow.
“You know what else his sister said?” he asked her.
Val looked wary. “What?”
“She asked what I was doing for Hogmanay. I didn’t even think about it before I spoke—I just blabbed out that I was going to The Stag for a lock-inwith the rest of the locals.” Rob sighed. “It couldn’t have been more obvious that Cam knew nothing about it.”
Val’s face fell then. As much as she could be a gossipy old drama queen, she was a softie at heart and Rob knew that the thought of anyone, even Cam McMorrow, being excluded would bother her.
“Kenny wouldn’t have deliberately not asked him to the lock-in,” she said, a little defensively. “He’s not like that. It’s just that he only asks the regulars and Cameron doesn’t go to The Stag.”
“Not anymore,” Rob agreed, “but he used to. And the only reason he stopped is because of our argument. Before that, he used to go in for a couple of pints every Friday night.”
“Oh, yeah. He did, didn’t he?” Val frowned. “Now you mention it, I seem to remember him looking your way a few times. I wondered if he might fancy you, actually.”
Rob huffed out a laugh, though it sounded unconvincing even to him.
Thankfully, Val didn’t press the point. “Maybe we should invite him to come to The Stag on Hogmanay with us?” she said instead, her tone tentative. “That would be an olive branch, wouldn’t it?”
“I gather he’s got other plans for Hogmanay,” Rob said. “But let’s ask him to come with us another time. New Year’s a good time to make changes.”