Page 65 of Ex With Regrets

I know it the moment we enter a museum workshop just in time for the start of his presentation. This room isn’t just crowded with rowdy kids and the craftsmen here to assess his work. Exes are also here to support him, only Blake and Adey missing. I can’t focus on the faces of the ones who are here, or on Harry who crosses the room to join us. I’m locked on Vincent, who had been scratching his chest. He spots me, and his hand lowers. So do his shoulders. He takes a deep breath and then does what we practised at home in a pair of armchairs that we shifted to face each other.

He starts by speaking directly to me.

His gaze doesn’t waver, and I could mouth this first line along with him, I’ve heard it so often.

“My talk today is about why restoration matters.”

Like he matters to me.

“It can be a long process,” Vincent tells disinterested teens. “But that’s good.” He stands beside a rickety table, his current work in progress. “This is damaged. Something caused that. I need to figure out what happened and why before I can look ahead and plan how to restore it.”

I’m looking ahead right now at a future with him in it. He’s everything I never thought I’d get to keep when each home I had was temporary.

“Restoration matters,” he repeats right in front of kids who won’t stop whispering with their neighbours. Vincent does what a teaching expert said would get easier the more times he did it. He’s brutally honest. “I love it, but I’ll tell you what I hated when I was your age. Having brain damage.”

That gets their attention. Vincent’s eyes lock with mine again as he pushes aside black hair to show off a slight depression. Adey has similar low points inked into his skin. I hope he gets to map a brand-new high point at the summer school he’sattending. It’s designed to get him back into classrooms. For now, everyone inside this one listens to Vincent, and I’ve never felt pride like it.

“I can’t read or write because of that brain damage. Made me think I ain’t worth nothing.”

He’s worth so much more to me than that hoarsenuffin,but it does spark discussion. The students fire questions. It also prompts one of Vincent’s assessors to scribble down some notes, and I hope to hell that he’s adding to a pass mark as Vincent strips back more layers. “Some people would say the same about this table. That it’s worthless.” He touches a piece of furniture we found at the back of a cluttered workshop. “See these dents in the wood? These dinks where paint has chipped off? All they make me is curious.”

I’m pretty sure he gets that curiosity from his aunt Stacey. I hope she and his mam are somehow watching. One of them created this man. The other taught him how to see value in broken pieces. They’re both the reason he learned this lesson. “If I want to know what’s underneath the surface, I have to work harder.”

It’s my imagination that I hear an ice cream van’s tinkling tune. This room is pin-drop silent, everyone here hanging on Vincent’s next questions. “You got a few dents and dinks too? Stuff that happened to you to make you feel like you ain’t got a future? Damage that means your story will have an unhappy ending?”

Some students nod.

“I can’t read or write, but I do know it’s never too late to tell yourself a different story. Start by changing a single word that describes you. Mine used to bedamaged. Now I’ve taken the time to look back, I can see a better one for me islucky.” His gaze darts to one side of me. “I always had family in my corner. Still do.”

Kev and Marilyn.

He looks to the other side of me. “And people who thought I had potential.”

Harry.

“Your teachers think you got potential too. Are prepared to work hard for you. Look what might happen if you join in with their restoration process.” He touches the dinked and dented table that he’s halfway through restoring. “This side looks worthless, don’t it?” He moves to the restored side of the table, fingers tracing mahogany swirls. “This side looks priceless, and it was there the whole time, just waiting for someone to care enough to find it.”

He looks directly at me, and my eyes well.

Face it, we all knew that would happen.

I sniff and Kev passes me a tissue. Harry’s arm comes around me, and Vincent doesn’t only spend the next half hour facing an old fear with all of us watching.

He slays it.

I know he has even before his assessors decide on a grade. Vincent meets me outside that workshop while they huddle over score sheets, and maybe it’s fate that we end up under a familiar portrait. It’s the perfect place to tell him, “I love you so much,” like he told me over and over during his presentation. I also give him what I brought all the way from Cornwall.

These keys to my home are new and shiny.

I want him to keep them for so long that they’ll tarnish.

For now, all I can do is kiss him behind a shield of Exes until the assessors come to their decision.

And when they do, Vincent’s smile tells me his story does come with a happy ending, which means mine will too.

I’ll get to take him home forever.

The End.