Tea, page 24
John didn’t know whether to laugh or grimace at the mental picture.
“I wasn’t really very good at auras either. I think it’s because I’m not conscious when I have a seizure, so it doesn’t hurt until afterwards, when I’ve sprained something. So, I’d be feeling unwell, but I wouldn’t say anything. I didn’t figure it would be a bad thing. So…”
“So you’d just…start having one, and nobody would know it was coming?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.” John had a faint idea he knew where this was going.
“So that day, Aunt Kelly had picked me up from school. Dad’s sister. She used to come and pick me up, and we’d walk home via the park and through the estate to the house. There was this wall I used to like to run along, maybe five feet off the ground.”
Oh, God.
“That day, I’d not been feeling well at school, but I ignored it. And Aunt Kelly came to collect me, and we walked home. And I was standing on the wall waiting for Aunt Kelly to catch up and watch me jump down—I was proud I could jump that far—and the seizure hit.”
John clenched his hands around the wheel until his knuckles went white.
“I bashed my head open on the brick wall and then again on the paving slabs when I fell off.”
“Jesus.”
“I had brain damage. The epilepsy was worse, after. I had to relearn how to speak, and I talked funny well into my teens. I was in a wheelchair for three years because I had to relearn how to use my arms and legs properly, like a baby. Years of physio to get control back. It’s why I still walk so slowly, even with the cane and when I had Sam. My brain still can’t handle holding things and walking quickly at the same time; my hands just open like they’re paralysed. I should have died. It should have killed me.”
John’s throat closed up, and he wordlessly reached down and held the hand in his lap tightly.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Sorry. Go—go on.”
“Mum blamed Aunt Kelly. Dad didn’t. They fought over it like mad—Mum didn’t want Aunt Kelly anywhere near me ever again, but Dad said it was a silly accident, and they’d both let me run along the same wall before. And in the end, Mum couldn’t forgive her, and Dad couldn’t tolerate her blame.”
“So they divorced?”
“Yeah.”
“Christ. With you in the middle?”
“Oh, no, that part they were very careful with. They don’t talk now, but all the time I was growing up, you’d never have guessed they weren’t still married.”
“What—what about your aunt?”
Chris went very quiet.
“Chris?”
“We don’t talk about Aunt Kelly,” he said eventually, and John’s heart nearly stopped beating. He knew that tone of voice. They used it at home, about his uncle. Dad’s brother. Nan and Granddad’s younger son. Who’d lost a lot of money at the greyhound tracks one day and shot himself the next.
“Oh,” John breathed.
The hand in his rubbed at his knuckles. “Hey. It was a long time ago. So, yeah, she can be a little touchy about new people. But she’s not that bad. She’ll warm up to you just fine.”
“You…you sure?”
“Positive.”
John took a shaky breath and exhaled. “Okay. Um. So. Chips? Want me to drive on, or park up and walk?”
“Park up and walk,” Chris said. “I want a hand in my back pocket.”
The sudden levity was startling.
“You what?”
“I want a hand in my back pocket. I want us to share chips on the way back. And then I want you to take me into my flat, strip us both naked, and cuddle up in bed together. And in the morning, you can shag me.”
“Make—”
“No. Shag me.”
A tiny smile playing about the corner of his mouth as John pulled into the little parking area and found his now-usual spot beside the fluffy nipples.
“Sleep with—”
“Shag me.”
CHRIS WAS AFFECTIONATE, and John felt oddly clingy after the story in the car, so he found himself not going home. He went to work from Chris’s flat in the morning and returned in the evening armed with takeaway coffees and kisses.
And he did again the next day.
And the next.
The weekend was the most obvious change. John woke up on Saturday morning without his rugby or gym kit, and having no idea of a running route around the flat. He lay there pondering his options for a good few minutes before rolling over, kissing the back of Chris’s neck, and whispering, “Hey. Want to come to rugby practice?”
It took a bit of cajoling and the promise of company before Chris would agree. He rang Luke, and John was shooed out of the door with a vague, “We might stop by, we might not.”
Might won—John looked up halfway through practice to see two figures in the stands, clutching cups of coffee, one blond and one dark.
“That your girlfriend?” one of the lads asked.
“Nah,” John said.
But—why not explain?
Watching Chris and Luke watch him, heads bent together and Luke probably translating the random shouting and colourful language into what was actually happening, John suddenly wondered what the hell he’d been afraid of. This was rugby. It wasn’t work. It wasn’t like he’d lose his job or get kicked out of his flat if the lads knew. Maybe they’d be fine with it, and nothing would change. Maybe they’d be shits, and John could quit and get back to swimming again in the freed up time. He liked swimming but hadn’t done it regularly for years.
So, after practice, he waved off the offer of a post-practice pint and jogged up the stands.
“Hey, beautiful!”
Chris beamed. John caught it with his mouth.
“I’m going to be sick,” Luke proclaimed loudly.
“Then fuck off,” Chris said, and John laughed.
“Enjoy it?”
“Enjoyed Luke’s commentary.”
Luke grinned. “I made up names for everyone.”
“What’s mine?” John asked.
“You don’t want to know,” Chris said and rapped the cane on the ground. “We going?”
“I need to shower and change quickly.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Charming.”
“I love you, John, but right now, you’re humming a bit.”
John scoffed but peeled away after another quick kiss. Shower, change, then maybe whisk Chris off for lunch somewhere.
“Ey-up, Shrek, thought you said that wasn’t your girlfriend?” came the shout as he ducked into the changing rooms.
To hell with it.
“Try the other one.”
“Eh?”
“The lad with the curly hair,” John said, stripping off his kit. “He’s my boyfriend.”
He ducked into the showers to a short, sharp silence.
Then Slag barked a laugh and shouted, “Fuck me, we got it wrong, lads! Shrek’s swinging for the other side!”
“You what? We’re not playing ‘til next month.”
“Fuck off, Baby Spice. Blokes, you tit. He’s into blokes.”
John tipped his head back under the spray, heart hammering. Slag was all right. Slag was on his side. So the other lads—
“A fairy in our midst. Oi, Tinkerbell, no cheeky groping, a’ight?”
—followed.
John grinned. “I’m gay, not sick, Baby Spice!”
And that was it. He was renamed Tinkerbell. A towel got whipped his way when he stepped out. And then Andy ‘Twilight’ Cullen let rip a stinker of a fart, and everyone ignored the development in favour of throwing water bottles at Twilight until he took his offensive smell somewhere else.
So John was grinning when he left the changing room, sports bag over his shoulder and a spring in his step. Chris and Luke were waiting on the wall by the car park, and John ducked in for another kiss, flipping off a couple of the lads for wolf-whistling.
“What’s that all about?” Chris asked, smiling.
“Nothing. Them being twats.”
Only it wasn’t. He’d come out, really, and it felt right. Just right. Like everything was sliding into place.
Life felt like that in general, that week. And the following, when John more or less continued to live at Chris’s flat, only popping back to his own for clothes. It felt—domestic.
It was certainly headed that way. Chris refused to let John disturb his space or routine, so John got used to spending the evening in front of the TV, watching Chris cook or do his laundry, and waiting until he could be snagged and cuddled for a bit in front of the evening news. Sometimes, he was even sent out on a shop run, or told to fix something like he lived there.
Like he belonged there.
His toothbrush moved into Chris’s bathroom cabinet. A drawer was suddenly his. He was allowed control of the remote if Chris was in the bathroom or making dinner.
Other things started to look long-term, too. His negative test results from the STI clinic came back, with a Braille version as John had asked for, and he was permitted to use rubbers a bit more sparingly. Chris started to sleep without a bra on. John was allowed to take him to the doctor’s surgery for his hormone injection.
They were a thing.
And Chris had said I love you.
Just once, but he had. Not passion. Love. John knew it to be true, now. In the way cold feet ended up in his lap on the sofa, and how Chris made pizza the way John liked it best.
Knew it in the way he murmured and soothed, gentle and patient, when Lauren left a message on Chris’s phone threatening to invade the flat if he didn’t bring his new boyfriend round soon, and John had a panic attack out of nowhere.
Knew it in that he said, “It’s okay,” and deleted the message without a word. And, for the following week, answered the doorbell instead of releasing the buzzer without checking.
The first session with Nadia came at the end of February. They talked mostly about the visit, and how John had changed how he viewed boyfriends’ families from before—when they hadn’t mattered, who cared if they liked him—to this fear of not measuring up.
“You’re still afraid they could persuade him you’re bad news,” Nadia surmised, and John resolved to work on it. To absorb the easy way Chris had moulded John into his flat and life, and the way he smiled when John touched him, even something so innocent as a hand in the small of his back. The way he’d said I love you, because it was what John had needed to hear. And the way John didn’t quite need it, right now. Then the first of March arrived, and John went to work with a knot in his gut the size of a football.
One year.
One year since he’d heard the words, “I am arresting you on suspicion of rape.”
One year since Daniel had brought the world crashing down.
John didn’t know what to do that morning. It had snuck up on him so much. It was only on the way to the house that he and Rhodri were doing up that it hit him, and he had to pull over into a layby and pause for a moment.
What the hell was he supposed to do?
It was an anniversary of sorts.
John had never had a bad anniversary before. His heart felt achey. His chest felt tight. The anxiety balloon was absent, but he felt oddly fragile, like his ribs could break at any minute. But why the hell would he feel bad? Daniel had completely screwed him over, and now he was getting help from Nadia, and he had Chris.
He tightened his fingers on the wheel and pulled back out into the traffic.
No.
He wasn’t going to let Daniel run things anymore. He was done with that tosser. It had all been lies, every last bit of it, and he was going to go to work, have a good time with Rhodri, then go back to Chris’s flat and take him out for dinner. Proper fancy dinner, with dress shirts and everything.
Rhodri was waiting outside, smoking, when John pulled up. He grunted a greeting, and the day began by hefting wood up into the back bedroom to fix the hole in the floor. They worked in relative ease and quiet, exchanging insults occasionally and scathing commentary on last night’s match, and the sick feeling began to ease.
And then, out of nowhere, Rhodri said, “So how’s yer Chrissie?”
John blinked. “Eh?”
“Yer lass.”
John opened his mouth.
“Take it yer still dating? Been bloody hard to get you out fer drinks after work, any’ow.”
“Yeah. Yeah, we’re still a thing.”
“So? She all right?”
She.
It wasn’t Daniel, standing in his way.
“He.”
“What?”
“He.”
Rhodri glanced up from the joists. “Who?”
“Chris.”
“What, Chrissie?”
“Yeah. Chris. He.”
Rhodri’s face screwed up. “You what?”
“I don’t have a lass, Rhod,” John said carefully. “Chris is a bloke.”
There was a long, pregnant pause.
Then: “Yer shagging a bloke?”
“Yeah.”
Another pause.
“As in, gay, like?”
“Er. Yeah.”
“As in—”
“As in, I’ve never slept with a woman in my life.”
“You bloody ‘ave.”
“I haven’t.”
“Yes, you ‘ave. Leanne. And Jess. And—”
“Lee. And Jason.”
“What?”
John felt himself going red. “They’ve all been men, mate.”
The next silence was even longer. John itched to move. He wanted madly to backtrack and laugh it off as a joke, yet he also wanted to shake Rhodri and tell him if he had a problem working with a faggot, better say it so John could deck him and then they could part ways properly.
“Yer mean to tell me,” Rhodri said, “tha’ when we was training with old Whittaker, and you used to drive his snot-nosed little shit of a lad up th’ wall by bragging you did more birds in a week than he’d managed in his life, you were shagging blokes instead o’ birds?”
“Yeah,” John said.
Rhodri…laughed. Rolled up onto his heels and started to laugh. A deep belly laugh, shaking the fag end loose from between his teeth and rumbling the belly rolls that swelled over the belt of his trousers.
The tight feeling in John’s chest eased.
“Fark me, classic!” Rhodri chortled. “Farking classic!”
John smiled thinly and returned to hammering the planks down.
“So,” Rhodri said when he’d recovered. “‘Ow’s yer Chris, then? Yer bloke?”
The smile widened.
“He’s fine,” John said. “We’re just fine.”
Chapter Thirty
“WAIT,” CHRIS SAID, “so you’ve been friends for like a decade, and he didn’t know?”
John rolled his eyes.
“Yes,” he said. “And trust me, it’s not unusual for me. Nobody’s ever guessed.”
“Your mum did, you said so.”
“Okay, yeah, but only her.”
“And I took the chance.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t know.”
“I suspected, though.”
“But you didn’t know. And Rhodri’s not exactly your bleeding-heart-liberal type. He wouldn’t guess a Dancing on Ice judge was gay.”
Chris laughed.
“I don’t know…”
“You don’t see me,” John said.
“I see you fine.”
“Okay, then you don’t see what other people see. You never had that first ‘oh shit’ impression.”
“I did. It was when you splashed scalding coffee on me.”
“Please,” John said loftily. “You drink it like that, no way that burned you.”
Chris laughed, but then his face softened.
“Still,” he said. “I’m kind of proud right now.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Reward time. What do you want?”
They were in a quiet corner of the café. Chris had been out in town all day, and John had gone to join him for a drink after work. A pint each in a nearby pub and several cups of tea later in the café, and John was still a bit loathe to move.
“I don’t know,” he said, stroking his fingers over Chris’s. “This is kind of nice on its own.”
“You did a big thing today. You’ve earned something special.”
“You’re something special.”
“Oh, that was bad.”
“Like you can talk, some of the lines you come out with!”
“Those are about sex,” Chris defended himself. “That was just pure cheese. Smelly, awful, stinking cheese.”
“It was wonderful, and you’re blushing. That’s proof.”
“That’s humiliation I’m seen in public with you.”
John laughed and squeezed the hand he’d caught on the table.
“If you really want to reward me,” he said quietly, “then…well, it’s your birthday next week.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So, I was hoping maybe you’d let me take you back to the coast?”
Chris’s smile was very soft. He propped a hand on his chin.
“That sounds like a reward for me, not you.”
“Trust me, New Year’s at the coast with you was definitely a reward for me.”
“Hmm…”
“Please? It’d make my month.”
“Only your month?”
“You already made my year.”
“I did? When?”
“When you kissed me on the harbourfront at midnight.”
“Oh my God.” Chris threw a napkin at him. He missed spectacularly, as usual. “You’re really full of it this evening, aren’t you?”
“Well, yeah. I realised I’m standing in my own way,” John said.
Chris paused.
“Daniel’s gone. It’s just me that’s carrying this around. And I’m done. I love you, more than anything, and this is— I know it’s still kind of early, but I love you, I really do, and I think this could really be something, you and me.”
“If you dare say—”
“You might be the one.”
