Chapter 12 – Simo
Luca’s breath brushes the fine hair on my neck.
His forehead is against the base of my skull, lips inches from my skin.
He is fast asleep. My mind is in a dreamlike state that allows me not to think about Luca’s proximity, about his hands folded over my shoulder blades.
I float in the comfort of his touch and the knowledge that he seeks mine, even when he’s unaware of doing so.
Irritation rises in my chest and unravels the blanket of obliviousness I’ve wrapped myself in.
My body anticipates the buzz of Luca’s phone before I do.
The alarm is aggressive enough in broad daylight, but now it splits the room’s drowsy silence like an axe.
I reach out and quash the loathsome sound before it has a chance to build.
It makes no difference; Luca would sleep through it regardless.
The alarm only serves to wake me so I can wake him.
I nudge him with my shoulder, not that anything comes of it.
The back of my T-shirt is trapped beneath Luca’s unconscious body.
I wear it, not because I get cold, but because Luca sleeps without one, and I need a safety layer between us.
His nose nuzzles my arm, and it takes extreme effort to pry myself away and create the distance required for two boys sharing one bed and absolutely no romantic feelings.
I inhale. Luca smells drowsy, of sweat and sleep.
My chest expands as I take several more breaths, until I realise what I’m doing.
He looks so peaceful that I don’t have it in me to use any of my more brutal methods.
I tickle the spot where his jaw meets his neck and feel the softest stubble beneath my fingertips.
He scrunches his brow, but I don’t stop until he groans, eyelids twitching, and swats my hand away.
‘Simo, no,’ he mumbles, and something flutters in my ribcage, knowing that his day starts with my name on his lips.
‘Luca, yes,’ I reply, and take his pillow away when he attempts to bury his head beneath it.
When he’s finally up and has gone to lend a hand in the cafe, I seek and find the pocket of warmth where his body was and doze for another hour.
‘Before you leave, could you do me a favour?’ Maz asks when I enter the cafe, where the morning bustle is in full swing.
A queue of bright-eyed customers clogs the space between door and counter, and Luca dances around them, balancing dirty plates.
‘Could you deliver a coffee to her majesty Miss M? I’ve not had a bathroom break in hours and if I pour another drink, I might have an accident I’ll never live down. ’
I grin and nod.
‘My saviour, my hero,’ Maz shouts as he hands me the cup and runs for his life.
Two floors up, I knock, and a regal voice commands me to enter. I’ve been here before, but always with Luca. When we were little we’d visit when Maz refused us sweets, so we’d turn to Miss M, with her stash of cookie tins always ready for us.
‘Simo Lorca,’ she says when I deliver the drink, ‘my, you’ve grown even prettier than when I last saw you.
You’ve got the eyes of Scheherazade and her lashes too.
The girls at school must love and loathe you.
’ I almost blush at the flattery. ‘Now don’t just simper there like a docile English rose, sit and chat with this old woman. ’
She slurps the coffee and smacks her lips in delight. ‘But maybe you don’t care for these girls. Maybe you’re far too preoccupied with someone else, hmm?’
There’s zero chance I’m having this conversation. ‘Sorry, Miss M, I have to—’
But before I can finish my excuse, she ploughs on. ‘Tell me, have you discovered who pulled that noticeboard trick on you and Luca?’
I try to keep my face composed, because I’m not in the habit of giving old ladies the evil eye, even when they’re prying into things that are none of their business.
‘We haven’t, no,’ I snap.
‘Hmm, it would be easier to narrow down the suspects if we knew whether they were motivated by good intentions or malevolence,’ she ponders, and takes another sip.
‘Good intentions?’ I snort, and jump up, desperate to end our chat. She grabs my wrist before I make it any further.
‘Simo, darling boy, a word of advice. If you truly want to know how someone feels about you, take a petal from the bloom of an apple tree and hide it beneath their pillow. If they smell of it the next day, they reciprocate your desire.’
‘Right,’ I reply, because that’s all I can come up with in the face of such bollocks.
She pats my cheek and finally lets go. ‘Cherry blossom works too.’
‘Have a wonderful Saturday, Miss M,’ I say, and escape as quickly as my legs allow.
At the bottom of the stairs, I run into Luca, who’s got a kitchen towel over one shoulder and a smudge of something on his cheek. I fight the urge to brush it off.
‘You look spooked,’ he says.
‘I’m not.’
‘Did you get stuck in the supplies closet again?’
‘I’m not spooked.’
‘You can admit it, you know.’
‘Just drop it, OK?’ It comes out harsher than intended.
He takes a step back. ‘Fine,’ he says, but I can tell he’s hurt. I should apologise, but that would require an explanation, and I barely understand the source of my irritation.
‘I’m gonna go for a run,’ I say. I’m almost at the back door when I turn around, unable to leave him like this. ‘Are we going to the harvest festival tomorrow? Betsy will be selling her pumpkin-pie ice cream.’
In the dark of the hallway, Luca’s features blur into shadow. ‘I don’t think I can. I’ve got that lunch with, well, you know.’
‘Ah, the grandparents,’ I say. Luca squirms at the word, like it’s a stiff shirt he’s not used to wearing. I feel for him – I’m still getting used to being a cousin, nephew, grandson. Then again, my father never tried to hide his family; they were just too far to reach.
‘If you go, could you save me some?’ Luca asks, sounding hopeful.
‘Pumpkin-pie ice cream?’
‘Please, I’ll hate myself for missing out.’
‘I’ll try,’ I say, and by that I mean I will, because it’s Luca.
On the walk home, I study the lawns and gardens I pass, unsure what it is I’m looking for.
Only when I reach the apple tree that stands guard on the corner of my street, I realise that Miss M successfully snuck her way into my head.
Rotting fruit is scattered across the grass verge, but it’s early autumn, so heck knows where I’d get hold of blossoms. Not that I have a need for them.
I quicken my step and seconds later I cross our front yard, hundreds of daisies nodding their hellos.
After a quick change, I head back out in my running gear.
I pick up speed and allow the soles of my shoes to slap the concrete.
It’s the outlet I need, a steady rhythm I can follow while sorting the mess in my head, the knots in my chest. I take the back route, a gravel path that circles Lombard, often used by hikers making their way across the hills from the nearest city to our shore.
Tall beeches rustle in the breeze, and the berries of the rowan trees glow like rubies whenever the sun pierces the clouds.
They remind me of the pomegranate trees of Granada, the fruit hanging heavy and low, daring passers-by to pluck them.
Which we did, plenty of times, because Luca loves eating the seeds, his lips and fingers stained red from the juice.
There’s a pull in my chest, a sweet pain that hasn’t left me since I said goodbye to my tío at the airport.
If I give in to it, follow the pain to its source, I’ll find myself back there, that much I know.
What do you call homesickness for a place that’s not your home?
Even if I returned, I wouldn’t recognise the place, not without Luca. Imagining myself in Granada without him makes me feel unbalanced. It’s the last place where he and I were just boys, just friends. Now I don’t know what we are. And I don’t know if I want us to be just that – just friends.
I reach the end of the gravel path and skirt the town’s back streets, the little cottages and parks, until I cross the main street and find myself on the promenade.
I’ve drawn a semicircle around Lombard, never straying far from its heart – the cafe, with Luca in it.
Knowing he’s there should fill me with calm, but lately doubt gnaws at me.
Since the day we met over ten years ago, he’s been my centre of gravity.
I never considered this to be a bad thing, because that’s how it was with Hamza.
I have always been wary of my parents; they’re solitary creatures, unable to let others in.
Hamza, though, was everything they were not – open and affectionate – so I naturally gravitated towards him.
He was the best big brother a boy could have.
When he was gone, I only found my feet again with Luca.
I wrapped my life around him. Frankly, it’s the only way I knew how to survive.
I can’t lose Luca. And I’m slowly waking up to the reality that this might be a problem.
Hamza’s death, sudden and brutal, ripped a hole in my side that Luca stitched up.
I needed him to save me, and save me he did, even if he didn’t know it at the time.
Ten years later, I live and breathe, but I can’t be ripped apart twice over.
All my life I have existed as part of someone else, so much so that I can’t imagine being on my own, and neither can anyone else, it appears.
For a long time, my parents couldn’t look at me without being reminded of the son they’d lost. There was no Simo without Hamza, a unit so tight it couldn’t exist without its other half.
They got better at hiding it, but occasionally when Mum stares at me, deep in thought, I see a glimpse of the old pain.
Even now, running past the familiar faces of this town, their eyes scan the air around me, searching for someone that isn’t there, searching for Luca.
Paul’s kiosk comes into view, signalling the end of my route, but my head is still brimming, thoughts running wilder than my pounding heart.
I know how to drown them out. Without stopping, I make a break for the beach.
Sand flies, fills my shoes, so I throw them off and run on, run until my feet hit water, until the waves beat my thighs, swallow my hips.
I dive and fill my ears with the ever-roaring sea.
The first blow is a shock, but a welcome one.
The drop in temperature means I’m surrounded by cold.
It brings clarity, and what follows is a soft lifting by the waves.
The salt holds my body and soothes my joints.
I’m on my back, staring into blinding clouds.
When all I see is sky, and all I feel is ocean, my mind finally relents.
It takes but a few minutes before the cold seeps into me, driving me out of the water.
I feel lighter, as if the sea caught some of my heavier thoughts and bore them away.
My feet carry me back towards where I dropped my shoes, leaving a wet trail as the saltwater pours off my body and soaks into the sand.
I peel the wet T-shirt off and wring it out, then shake the sea out of my hair.
Instead of my shoes, I find a figure sitting cross-legged in the spot where I left them.
A book rests open on her bare legs, and she looks up at me with a smile caught somewhere between amusement and disbelief.
‘Is it a new thing, some sort of fitness craze where people go swimming fully clothed? Because it looks silly.’ Mairi shuts the book, and I recognise the cover of a Bernardine Evaristo novel.
I plonk myself next to her, not minding that I’ll be caked in sand and will get told off by Mum later.
‘Not a trend. Just a good way to cool off after a run.’
‘Good, cos I was worried. You ran past me with this look on your face, like you planned to drown yourself. You didn’t, did you?’
‘Nothing of the sort.’
‘Phew. Honestly, I can barely keep myself above water, so I wouldn’t have been able to save you.’
‘Noted,’ I say. Mairi and I don’t tend to speak much outside of school, but I’m enjoying the banter. I do wonder what’s happened to my shoes though.
‘I saved these from a dog who thought it was a funny-looking ball,’ Mairi says, and produces them from behind her back.
‘Might have something to do with the smell,’ I say, taking them from her. ‘Sorry you had to guard them. And thanks.’
‘Any time.’ She gets up. ‘I have brothers, so I’ve smelt far worse.’ She brushes the sand from her long legs and a braid falls into her eyes.
I want to tell her about my brother, and the impulse is so new that I almost give in to it, but I bite my tongue.
I don’t know where it came from. I don’t even talk to Luca about him.
In the beginning I didn’t bring him up because I missed him too much to speak his name, and now I’m not sure how to break that habit.
But something about Mairi makes me want to open up.
She understands what it’s like to grow up with brothers, so she might understand missing them.
‘Hey, you coming to the festival tomorrow?’ she asks, pulling me out of my thoughts.
‘Not sure. I know Luca isn’t,’ I reply.
‘I wasn’t asking about him,’ she says, and twists the stray braid back into the knot. ‘You should come. It might even be fun hanging out with us.’
‘OK, thanks, I will,’ I say, without overthinking it. I squash the little seed of guilt – it’s not like I’m doing something behind Luca’s back. If I’m worried about getting lost in someone else, I need to learn to stand on my own feet. And maybe that will finally put the rumours about us to rest.
‘See you there, Simo,’ Mairi says. She sends me this look, and for a second it feels like she’s checking me out. I realise that my T-shirt is still in my hand and I’m only wearing a pair of wet shorts. But then she turns and stalks up the beach. I shake my head, certain that I was imagining things.
I recognise that look because Luca wears it too. It’s not like it means anything. I think I would know.