Redemption's A Bitch - 7. Pretty Beat Up Soul

“TRISTAN!”

It was three in the afternoon, and there was no better place for Kieran to be than standing at the school gates, hiding behind his sunglasses and trying to ignore the throbbing hangover in his skull. Vuka barked happily, dancing on all four feet, while Shadow sat patiently beside his master, tail curved neatly around his paws. In the three years Kieran had looked after Katy, Bailey, and Benji, he had never shown up with a hangover. If he’d been out, he would force himself out and out into the world and fresh air, take all the right combinations of painkillers and anti-inflammatories, and get himself set for the afternoon. Today was not so.

“Hey buddy!” Kieran put on a happy voice to cover the fact that his head was trying to kill him, and hugged Katy to his side quickly. “How’s my best girl?”

“That offer to be my boyfriend still available?” Katy smiled ruefully, “hey Shadow.”

“Vuka! Vuka!” Benji, who had shouted, was already cuddled up to the wolf-dog. “Vuka wants ice-cream.”

“Does he now?” Kieran raised an eyebrow at Benji as Bailey walked up. “You guys just hold tight while I talk with your sister.”

“It’s about Dennis,” Bailey rolled his eyes, “this is gonna take a while.”

Kieran, his head throbbing, walked with Katy slightly into the playground and away from her brothers. Shadow went with them.

“What’s the matter Katy? What happened?”

Katy bit her lip, blinking hard.

“Katy?”

“Dennis and his friends made fun of me because I wouldn’t go out with him. He said I was a prude and all the other girls laughed at me,” Katy dragged her knuckles over her eyes without looking up, “he dared me to kiss him and I didn’t.”

Kieran’s shoulders tensed. His head hurt, for a variety of reasons, and though it was only stupid schoolyard teasing, all forgotten by next week and never spoken of after the end of term, Katy was the closest thing he would ever know to having a daughter. And she was ten. Even he wasn’t kissing boys at ten.

“Which one is he?”

“Tristan…”

“Which one?”

“Over by the tree, with the football.”

Kieran locked onto the brown haired boy blink-fast.

“Go wait with your brothers, I’ll be right back. Shadow, come with me.”

Kieran knew how he looked, even though he was walking across a playground with a splitting headache and massive hangover: he was wearing all black, dark sunglasses, imposingly tall, with a huge all-black husky walking at his side. He watched Dennis watching him, and boy grabbed up his football, and then stupidly, tried to puff out his chest, pulling all his brand new testosterone together to face off the intruder.

“You Dennis?”

“Yeah. Who are you?”

“I’m with Katy.” Kieran grinned lazily, and Shadow growled as he spoke, reading his master’s body language. “I hear you’ve been making fun of my girl.”

“Yeah well, just ‘cause she’s not grown up enough to be with me-” Shadow cut him off with a snarl.

“Trust me pipsqueak, she wouldn’t be kissing you if you were the last boy on earth. You bother her again, and I’ll just tell Shadow here,” the husky barked in place of punctuation, “to give you a kiss of his own, right boy?” Shadow grinned, baring all his very long, very pointy teeth. “You have a nice afternoon now.” Kieran turned and walked away. Half way across the playground he clicked his tongue and Shadow turned and began to lope after him. Kieran was intimidating in his own way, but there was nothing like being stared down by a canine nearly as tall as you were.

“Right then my little cherubs, who wants to go see the fishes?”

“AQUARIUM!” Benji squealed excitedly. Katy laughed, and Kieran smiled softly. Hung over or not, it was nice to see the kids.

Benji walked with his sister and Vuka, and Shadow took point and made sure that everyone stopped and looked both ways when crossing the road. The big dog might not have had all the patience in the universe, but he was an old hand at looking after children. He might’ve been Kieran’s fifteenth birthday present as a puppy, but by the time the dog had been six months old, he was already looking out for his master. Even three small children couldn’t get into as much trouble as Kieran had done. Bailey fell into step beside him.

“The aquarium?” he questioned.

“Well did you not mention that your last project of the term is all about life under the sea?” Kieran smiled, happy that the place where it was cool and dark was also educationally useful. He just couldn’t deal with being out in the sun all afternoon. “And I know the school will take you here, but I’ll bet when they do it’ll be busy and crowded and you won’t get your very own special guide.”

“Really, Uncle Tristan?” Bailey looked up at him with a wide open smile, “you’re the most awesome ever.” Bailey hugged his legs, which made it hard to walk, and Kieran laughed.

“I just do my best.”

They were met outside the sea-life centre by the head cold-water keeper, and he was sweet to the kids, and didn’t make a big deal out of the fact that Kieran had hired out the entire place with half an hour’s notice for three children and two dogs. Kieran promised the dogs would behave, and so they were let in. The money didn’t hurt either. He gave each of the three children a semi-disposable digital camera each, and with their guide in tow, they sprang off around the aquarium. Shadow lay down near the main entrance, watching piranhas swim back and forth in their enormous tank with no apparent interest, and Vuka did his very best to herd three children who were happy to run in opposite directions.

Kieran liked the aquarium, partly because it was cool, dimly lit, and largely quiet, and partly because the motions of the fish were distracting and relaxing. While other people, Katy, Bailey and Benji included, loved the shark tunnel the most, Kieran enjoyed the koi carp. They had such good faces with their inquisitive little whiskers. He took a seat by the huge corner tank while their guide explained everything there was to know about sting rays to the children, and Bailey was brave enough to stroke their bellies as they circled the tank.

So he was hung over during what was ordinarily the best part of his day. He loved being with the kids, and hated that he wasn’t over there now, getting involved in everything, teasing Katy gently about being squeamish and playing tickle with Benji. But it wasn’t just his head distracting him.

He had gone out with the sole intention of getting as wasted as possible in as short a time as possible, something he hadn’t done since he was seventeen. He’d walked the dogs, given them their dinner, taken a city cab into town, walked straight into The Waterfront and got the main barman to hand over an entire bottle of whiskey while Ralph was distracted. Kieran had poured his shots in a double line of fifteen glasses, and proceeded to drink his way through the thirty shots in slightly less than an hour. He remembered flirting distractedly with… the drinks runner whose name he had been unable to recall at the time, though Matty didn’t seem to mind that someone who’d fucked him hadn’t been able to even label him correctly. When Ralph had come around the end of the bar, Kieran had stood up to give his friend a hug, and ended up on the floor.

Not only was passing out cold stone dead in the middle of one of his favourite clubs embarrassing, the reason he was there was even worse. When he’d come round, Ralph had tried to get some sense out of him, some cold water and ice chips into him, and Kieran had spent the next couple of hours in a storage room throwing up alcoholic bile into a trash can. He hadn’t eaten anything since the previous day, so while upchucking was vile, it wasn’t hugely messy.

And it was all because of Robin. Things had been looking up, sort of, when he had picked the little Sparrow up for the rehearsal dinner. Kieran had looked nice, been civil and charming, done his very best not to invade Robin’s personal space in the manner to which he was often inclined, and then the kid had turned him down flat, as though no consideration was needed and Kieran wasn’t even worthy to lick his shoe. He was not proud of what he’d done next.

He stole Shastan’s phone, and quelle surprise, Robin’s number had been in his contacts list. Kieran has sent the number to himself, wiped all traces of the text and replaced Shastan’s phone before his cousin had even known it was gone. As soon as it could’ve been considered a decent hour to ring, he’d rung.

The first conversation had gone something like this.

Kieran: Hi.

Robin: Hello? Sorry, I don’t think I have your number.

Kieran: It’s Kieran, I-

Robin: Who gave you my number? What the hell do you want?

Kieran: Come for a drink with me.

Robin: No.

Kieran: Please.

And then Robin had hung up. The next five or so calls went unanswered, until the one where Kieran was lying in the grass with the dogs, not expecting Robin to pick up and half looking forwards to the soft recording of his voice on the messaging system, when Robin had answered the phone, told him in very clear words to fuck off out of his life, and hung up.

Kieran had spent the afternoon with the kids at the park, tried to think of anything other than Robin all the way home, and then jerked off in his bathroom, guiltily imagining what would have happened if that first kiss had gone the way he’d planned. When his brain woke up and told him that if Robin had responded the way Kieran had first hoped, he’d have dropped the boy a week ago, he got angry with himself. The bathroom mirror and the ceramic cup which held his toothbrush had paid the price, and after that he had gone into the city to get totally wasted.

Admitting he couldn’t get Robin out of his head was bad enough, but feeling guilty about what he’d said to the boy was even worse. Kieran thought he might have a name for the hot, twisted and all-consuming emotion that was building between his chest and the pit of his stomach, but of the two choices available, he wasn’t sure which he preferred. And it wasn’t like he could talk to Shastan, because if he did, Rebecca would find out, and then all hell would break loose. There was no fury quite like that of A Bride To Be.

When Benji came to drag him off, Kieran laughed and went willingly, whistling to Shadow as they left the main room. The shark tunnel was a wonderful thing, and Katy sighed, because she had used almost all the memory in her digital camera already. Bailey was listening raptly to their guide, and Kieran loved the way the eight year old soaked up information like a sponge. He ruffled his hair softly as he passed him, and Bailey shot him a smile full of wonder and adoration. One day, they would be old enough not to need him picking them up, and the thought scared Kieran right down to his toes. He couldn’t imagine life without them. Vuka and Shadow on the other hand, were fully distracted by the fish.

“Kieran look.” Katy pointed.

Vuka had his front paws up on the side of the tunnel, staring into the water, his eyes following a dog shark as it wove around between a few large rocks. Shadow was lying pressed against the floor as sharks swam up to the tunnel and passed overhead, and on his belly he crawled to the bench where Kieran was sitting and wriggled under his legs.

“Oh Shadow…” Katy crouched down and stroked the normally fearless husky. “Is being underwater just a bit too much for you?”

After the sharks, the crustaceans failed to impress anyone except Bailey, who decided he wanted to own a horseshoe crab if such a thing was ever possible, and Kieran let the dogs steer the three children away from all the things in the gift shop which made a noise. He bought them a realistically modelled plastic shark each, and while Katy and Benji both demanded a Great White, a breed they had not actually seen, Bailey smiled happily when Kieran handed him the long tailed spotted dog shark. Shadow growled at the poster with the huge shark on, and Kieran thanked their host and tipped him rather heavily as they left.

It was still sunny outside, and being in the cool and dark had done good things for Kieran’s hang over, so the six of them took the bus home from the seafront to Katy, Bailey and Benji’s house. The three children instantly fell to drawing sharks and sea creatures, and Kieran left them happily arranged around the living room with Vuka acting as both pillow and angled drawing table for Benji, and went to the kitchen.

Callé had a lovely modern kitchen, with a central island and all the standard mod-cons. Whenever Kieran stood in it, he couldn’t help but wonder what it would have been like to have a normal upbringing. The family weren’t poor by a long shot, but if their wealth had been compared by a percentage against Kieran’s… he knew he was obscenely rich. And he was pleased that, even if he did buy a lot of fast four and two wheeled toys, lived in an enormous mock-Tudor mansion and spent frivolous amounts in clubs and bars, he did not do with his money what a lot of people did with theirs. Kieran was never the subject of paparazzi interest. He didn’t get into drugs or drunken brawls. He bought fast cars, but he didn’t wreck them on a weekly basis, and he hadn’t decided at any point to have anything he owned entirely gold or platinum plated. He supported a vast number of charities and causes, and there were many students on specific scholarships at schools across the city which all had his name somewhere in the fine print. But standing at Callé’s ordinary four ringed hob, making pancakes in the shape of fish, Kieran couldn’t help but wonder. People said he was lucky, but Kieran would have traded money for parents in a heartbeat.

Callé arrived home to a crowd of happy shouting and pictures of fish.

“Well aren’t you lucky things?” She was laughing as she wandered into the kitchen: half of the island was now covered with sharks, and the models of sharks Kieran had bought them, the other half was strewn with Kieran’s prep. “Oh my, that smells wonderful.”

“Tristan’s making dinner,” Katy sing-songed, “we’re having tagine bil…” She looked appealing at Kieran.”

“Tajine bil mashmash wal barkok.” Kieran smiled as he lifted the lid of heavy cast iron casserole dish. “Moroccan lamb with apricots, honey, and prunes.” Callé was about to admonish him for spending his free time shopping for them, he could tell. “I had my guy deliver. It’s no big deal.”

“Oh Tristan,” Callé smiled, “what would we do without you?”

“Starve?” Katy offered. “C’mon mum! Come see my painting. I drew Vuka and Benji.”

“OK sweetie. You will stay for dinner, won’t you Tristan?” She was dragged away bodily by her daughter, and Kieran went back to stirring his dish. He hadn’t planned to stay, but he could almost never resist when asked. He texted Shastan while standing at the hob to let him know, and his cousin replied with a picture of Inu and Suk sitting in the garden gnawing things. The dogs were fine, and that was the main thing.

Rob was home by the time Kieran poured boiling water onto the salted couscous, and while the food was resting, Kieran chased Benji to wash up for dinner, gathered up the sketches from around the house and pinned the best from each of his wards to the fridge. Rob changed into jeans and shirtsleeves and came to help him serve up, combing the buttery couscous with a fork until it was an enormous pile of yellow fluff. Katy and Bailey laid the table, hindered rather than helped by their little brother, and Callé came in a light weight sweater with her hair pulled up in a messy bun.

“Oh Tristan, you’re such an angel,” Callé kissed his cheek quickly, “you’re the best.”

Kieran smiled at her briefly. He might have been standing in her kitchen with two very patient dogs at his feet while he finished stirring honey into the tagine, but his mind was a long way away.

“Are you OK? You’re never this quiet sweetie.”

“Callé?” Kieran took a deep breath, “how do you know when you’re in love?”

It got silent in the kitchen very quickly, and Kieran stopped stirring the dinner to look at his host. Callé was smiling at him.

“Oh hun. If you’re in love, believe me your heart knows it. You met someone special?”

“Yeah,” Kieran sighed, “but it didn’t quite go how I planned.”

“We’ll talk after dinner, leave Rob to wash up.” She nodded and rubbed his shoulder before turning to the dogs. “Now I wonder what treats I’ve got in the drawer for you two? C’mon boys.”

Kieran had never known his dogs to go with anyone as easily as they went with Callé, and while they lay on the stained beech decking chewing on rawhide, Kieran sat with his surrogate family, eating, trying to get Benji not to spill couscous everywhere, and filling in the blanks from their trip that the three overexcited children readily skipped over in favour of more exciting titbits. True to her word, Callé organised her husband and children to assist in washing up and clearing the table, and she accompanied Kieran out to his dogs.

“So…” Callé sat on the edge of the decking, slipped off her shoes and wiggled her toes in the soft green grass. “Tell me all about it.”

“It didn’t go how I wanted.” Kieran collapsed next to her. “I got cocky, and now he hates me.”

“Oh Tristan, no one could hate you.”

“Yes, they could. And he does.” Kieran sighed. “And I don’t so much blame him either. I was an ass to him.”

“Sweetie?”

“I screwed up. And now I can’t think of anything else.”

“And you think you’re in love?”

Kieran kicked a small stone away, and watched it skitter over the grass. Vuka abandoned his chew toy to sniff about, investigating the noise.

“I don’t know. I feel rotten for what I did to him, and guilty as hell now. I can’t get him out of my head and I just never felt… judged like that by anyone before. Ever.”

“I have noticed that you do tend to get what you want Tristan. That’s not a trend that can last forever.”

“Why not?” Kieran knew he sounded sulky, but right then he didn’t care. “Callé, I don’t know what to do.”

“Well, why don’t you try talking to him again, offer to take him somewhere nice. What kind of stuff is he into?”

“I…” Kieran paused, dumfounded. “I have no idea.”

Callé frowned, and laid her hand on Kieran’s shoulder.

“Hun, you know I love you, and in the years you’ve been with us, there hasn’t ever been someone special in your life. Yes, I can tell. I know what love is sweetie. It’s a big overpowering thing that drives you crazy in all the right ways. But you don’t even know this guy. Tristan, obsession and a guilty conscious does not add up to true love. Sorry.”

“But I want him to like me.”

Callé stood, brushing down her jeans, and bent to collect her shoes. She was the picture of happiness, and while Kieran adored the time he spent with her children, he never forgot that the family he’d found was borrowed. Callé would go inside kiss Rob for doing such a good job of cleaning up, chat to the children about their day. Benji would get put to bed, Katy would have a bath and borrow her mother’s expensive shampoo, and Bailey would cuddle on the sofa with his father, researching deep sea creatures until he yawned. When the children were asleep, Callé and Rob would snuggle up together, maybe have a quiet little drink and a chat, trade soft kisses in between anecdotes about their days. They would sleep together, safe in each other’s arms until morning, or until one of the children had a bad dream and came in to join them under the duvet. It was a good life. Kieran would go home, hug the dogs, and then he’d have a choice of going out to flirt, or be flirted with, and drink; or he could stay home and avoid the universe. Either way, he was going to end up sleeping in his big bed alone. No one who would ask about his day would actually care about the answer.

Callé smiled at him.

“Maybe you should just try to be his friend first. Get to know him a bit better. After all, expanding your horizons is fun.”