I didn’t expect an answer and my father didn’t give one, his expression back to being blank. Turning on my heel, I flung the curtain open and exited the ward without saying anything more.
Mac caught up with me at the drinks machine at the end of the corridor as I fed coins into it. “Do you want anything?” I asked as he appeared at my shoulder.
“No. I’m not thirsty.”
“Me neither,” I said with a strangled laugh. “I think I just craved something normal to do.” I jabbed my finger on the button for hot chocolate, figuring at this time of night that was the best option if I intended to get any sleep. Mac leaned silently against the wall as the machine released the hot spurt of liquid and the paper cup started to fill in the infinitesimally slow way only drinks machines can.
“Actually, I will have one,” Mac announced when it had finally inched its way to being half full.
I dutifully handed the first one over when it finally reached the point of being full before we started the whole process again, both of us staring at the machine like it was the latest blockbuster movie and we didn’t want to miss a single second of it.
We’d gotten as far as the car park when Mac finally voiced what was on his mind. “Is it always like that between the two of you?”
I rounded on him immediately, not caring about the young couple unstrapping a baby from the car seat in our direct vicinity. Or the man on crutches, making his painstaking way across the tarmac, one foot encased in a cast that reached to his knee. “I’m a terrible son, I know. I visit my father in hospital and instead of telling him I’m glad he’s still alive, I have a go at him.”
Mac couldn’t have looked any more surprised if I’d snatched the crutch from the man who hadn’t gotten much farther and clubbed Mac over the head with it. “That’s not what I said.”
“It’s what you were thinking.”
“Thanks for telling me what I’m thinking. I’ve no idea how I navigated the complexities of my own brain before I met you.” When I went to walk away, he grabbed my arm, both of us cursing as hot chocolate splashed over our sleeves. “Neither of you were better or worse than the other,” Mac explained as we dabbed ineffectually at the mess we’d made before giving it up as a bad job. “It’s just that you could have cut the tension in that room with a knife. It’s…”
“It’s what?” I demanded when he went silent.
“It’s a shame. I thought me and Cillian were bad, but?”
“You are,” I said, somewhat meanly and keenly aware that I would have said anything in that moment to divert the attention from me
“But… We’re nothing compared to that.”
“That’s your opinion. It doesn’t make it fact.” I headed for the place where taxis picked up, half hoping that Mac wouldn’t follow. He did. If it’d been my lucky day, there would have been a car already waiting there that I could have jumped straight in the back of. There wasn’t, the patch of tarmac mocking me with its emptiness.
“You should go home,” I said when Mac came to stand next to me.
“London?”
“Cillian’s.”
“No.”
“No?” I scoured his face, Mac as good as my father at hiding his feelings. He met my gaze without blinking and shook his head. “I want to be alone.”
He took a sip of his hot chocolate, the action reminding me that apart from the liquid that had spilled over both of us, I’d barely touched mine. I considered drinking it and then upended the cup over the pavement instead, rivulets of it snaking off in different directions. A flick of my wrist landed the cup in a nearby bin, my thoughts and emotions too much of a twisted mass to gain any pleasure from the accuracy of the shot.
“You mightwantto be alone,” Mac said slowly. “But it’s not what you need.”
“You don’t know me well enough to know what I need.” Silence followed my statement. “Nothing to say to that?”
“You want an argument. I’m not going to give you one.”
“How angelic of you.”
“Whatever you say to me, I’m still coming home with you.”
A taxi chose that moment to pull alongside, Mac giving me a pointed look that warned me not to argue as he clambered in after me. Pride said I needed to get at least one more dig in. “I’m not being told what to do by a twenty-three-year-old.” All I got for that was an eye roll. “I never asked you to come to the hospital with me.”
“You’re right. You didn’t.”
“And I never asked you to come in with me. You could have waited outside and avoided all the awkwardness.”
