Page 32 of Tribute Act
He turned to me then, and I saw his throat bob. “I should head off. I need to get back to earning. I’m almost out of cash.”
I blinked at him. “You can’t . . . you can’t seriously be thinking about working, Mack?”
He immediately looked away, eyes on the horizon again. “Why not?”
“It’s only been three weeks since the op!” I exclaimed. “You’re not fit!”
“It’ll be a month by next week,” he said stubbornly.
I huffed out a breath. “The doctors said you needed six weeks to recover. At least six weeks and not going back to work for eight to twelve weeks. You need to wait for the all-clear scan too. You know all this, Mack. You shouldn’t be thinking of working yet.”
“Yeah, well, I’m skint, okay?” he shot back, cheeks flushing. “So I need to get on my feet a bit quicker.”
“No, you don’t. You’re staying with me, so you’ve got no bills to worry about.”
He shook his head in swift negation. “I can’t leech off you—”
“It’s not leeching!” I protested. “Mack, you can’t think that!” It genuinely upset me that he thought that way, and the surprise on his face told me he saw how horrified I was.
He stared at me helplessly. “I feel like I’m taking advantage, living here, eating your food, using your stuff.”
“Mack, you’re family,” I said again, laying my hand on his knee. Even as I did so, I was aware of a frisson of excitement, just from that simple touch, and I cursed inwardly because, yeah, my attraction to him complicated this. At my end, anyway. At his end—who knew? I couldn’t tell.
He sighed, as though in acknowledgement of all I’d said, but he still looked unhappy. And I knew why. He clearly found it hard to accept things from others. It had been nothing to him to give away half his liver to Rosie, but he’d rather flog himself to death, working for minimum wage, than live rent-free at my place.
I said, searching for some kind of fix, “Listen, how about if you help me out?”
“Doing what?”
He had me there. I racked my brains, thinking of all the stuff I did for Dilly’s week in, week out. Trying to think of something Mack could do from the flat without tiring himself too much.
“I could help out in the café, I suppose,” he offered, tentatively. “I’ve done tons of waiting and kitchen work. And I was a barista for a few months—you do coffee, don’t you?”
I frowned. “That’s work, Mack! You’d be on your feet all day. It’d be way too much for you right now.”
He looked weirdly gutted. Maybe he felt excluded from the whole Dilly’s thing? After all, me, Mum, and Derek all worked there, and Rosie had talked about doing some shifts in the summer holidays in one of her brighter moments recently.
“Could you—” I began, and then inspiration struck. “Could you come and play sometimes?”
“Play,” he said flatly. Then, “What, my guitar?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Why not? Some low-key music would be nice. If you’re up to it, that is. We’d need to get you sitting down though. Like when you play at home.”
He scowled. “I can play fine, but don’t you think it would be weird? In an ice cream parlour?”
I shook my head. “Not at all, I was thinking late weekday afternoons—that’s our quietest time off-season. It might bring in a few more customers at the end of the day. A bit of entertainment. What do you say?”
He stared at me, unyielding. “I think it’s weird.”
I laughed. “Well, maybe it is—but is that a reason not to do it? I’m prepared to give something weird a go to see if we can get a little business in the door. I’d rather do that than close earlier Monday to Wednesday, which is the other option I was considering now that tourist season is winding up. Earlier closing means cutting the part-timers’ hours, and I don’t like doing that if I can help it.” That much was true.
Mack studied me, his expression serious. At last he shrugged. “Okay, fine. If that’s what you want.”
“Great,” I said, grinning at him. “It is.”
Mack gave his first café performance a week later. We picked Wednesday afternoon, from four till five. After I suggested the slot, I worried I might be asking too much—what if he didn’t have enough polished material for a whole hour? Was I making unfair assumptions just because he carried a guitar around with him? He hadn’t seemed perturbed by performing when I’d suggested it though, so I had to assume it would be okay.
I left Katie holding the fort while I popped back to the flat to carry Mack’s gear for him—I still wouldn’t let him lift anything heavier than a mug of tea, much to his frustration. He was tucking his arms through the straps of his guitar case when I got there. We tussled over it for a few seconds till he eventually gave up with a sigh and let me have my way.