Jory’s stomach lurched. Kirsty was beaming down at him. She was alone, which was the smallest of mercies. Her hair was up in a headscarf, wrapped African style, and she was wearing a pair of voluminous harem pants printed with brightly coloured elephants. Her shoulder bag looked like she’d crocheted it, possibly while drunk, and incorporated little mirrors that caught the light and flung it back at him, accusingly.
Oh God, why now? This was terrible timing. “Kirsty. Hi. Um. Yes. Fancy.” Jory cringed internally at himself.
Kirsty pulled out a chair with an obnoxious scrape on the ground, and sat down. “So who’s your mate?”
“Oh, this is, um, Mal.” Jory swallowed.
Kirsty leaned forward on the table and smiled up at him. “Mal? Now, would that be short for Malachi, Malcolm, Malik . . . or something I haven’t thought of?”
“More fun to keep you guessing, innit?” Mal, who didn’t seem the slightest bit bothered by her appearance, flashed her a wink that left Jory feeling even less at ease. “So how do you know Jory, then?”
“Me?” she said with an easy smile. “I’m his missus. Been married twelve years, we have.”
Mal had had half his mind on how he was going to answer his latest text from Dev, and if he ought to mention meeting Jory just in case Tasha did. He hadn’t thought twice when the woman had joined them.
Well, all right, maybe he had. Stuff like, Huh, she’s not what I’d have expected one of Jory’s mates to be like. And, So how come he ain’t that pleased to see her?
Then she dropped her bombshell, and it was like, What the actual, literal, honest-to-God fuck?
He stared at her.
She made a face. “Aw, you’re gonna be one of those blokes who don’t go for married women, aren’t you?”
“We’re separated,” Jory blurted out, loud and awkward and all red in the face, and shit, this woman really was his missus, wasn’t she?
Mal stood up, cos while there were some things you could deal with on an empty stomach, finding out the bloke you fancied—even if you’d been trying not to on account of reasons—who you’d spent the whole morning talking to about childhood and families and all that shit, had somehow forgotten to mention he was sodding well married was not one of them.
Kirsty stood up too. “Oh my God, were you two on a date? Oh my God. Fucked that right up, didn’t I? Seriously, though, who goes on a date at eleven o’clock in the morning? Oh my God, it’s a morning after, innit? Jory, you sly shit. You never told me you were seeing someone.”
Okay, so yeah, that fit with the whole separated thing, but why the hell hadn’t Jory just told him about her?
“It’s not— We’re not seeing each other,” Jory said, looking so bloody miserable Mal almost started feeling sorry for him. Bastard.
She arched an eyebrow. “Uh-huh?” If the sarcasm had come any thicker, they could’ve slapped it on a scone and served it with a nice cup of tea.
“It’s . . . complicated,” Jory told the table, cos he still wasn’t meeting Mal’s gaze.
“Too fucking right it is,” Mal had to agree. He wasn’t sure whether to sit down again or just get out of this mess, but then the waitress turned up with a couple of piled-up plates of full Cornish breakfast. His stomach decided it was giving the orders, and his bum hit the seat before his brain could get a word in edgewise.
“Will you be eating too?” the waitress asked Kirsty.
“Oh no. I’m out of here. You two have a good time. Jory, I’ll catch you later.” She hitched her bag up on her shoulder and walked off.
Jory was staring down at his plate as if he was worried another ex-wife was going to jump out from behind a slice of bacon and shout, Surprise!
“So, anything else you forgot to mention to me?” Mal asked, then tucked into his food, just in case this all went even more tits up and he ended up walking out before they’d finished.
Not that he’d, like, had any experience of that sort of thing happening.
Jory’s face was defeated when he finally met Mal’s gaze, and when he spoke, his tone matched it. “You mean, apart from the fact I’m married with a child?”
Mal choked on his sausage. “You got a kid?”
“Gawen. He’s twelve.”
“Bloody hell.” Twelve? She hadn’t been joking about how long they’d been together.
It was well weird when Jory answered the thought. “We’re not together—we never have been.”
“Uh, yeah, mate. See, that don’t exactly fit in with the whole having-a-kid thing. Way I’ve heard it, that usually takes at least a little bit of togetherness. And yeah, married? This ain’t 1950, and she don’t look like the sort who’s got a dad with a shotgun.”
“No, that was Bran.”
“Seriously? Your big bruv came over all big brother on you?” Then Mal’s brain finally managed to do the sums. “Hang about, how flippin’ old were you twelve years ago?”
“Nineteen. Kirsty was twenty-one.” Jory pushed a fried egg around his plate. The yolk broke and started to spill all over the white. “I was in my first year at uni, and I met her when I was home for the holidays.”
“You mean ‘met’ as in ‘shagged,’ don’t you?” Mal threw up a hand at Jory’s flinch. “Nah, don’t tell me. None of my beeswax, innit?”
“Yes, it is.” Jory’s eyes were wide, and his gaze fixed on Mal. His expression was open, honest, and vulnerable all at the same time, and it did weird things to Mal’s insides. “I should have told you.”
Yeah, he should have. Except . . . should he? Because if they were just . . . just two blokes, going for breakfast together (and the voice inside Mal that said When does that ever happen if it ain’t a date? could just fuck off right now, yeah?), it shouldn’t matter if he was
