Chapter 17 Sab
Sab
I don’t open FlingIt for three whole days. Don’t allow myself to contemplate that a swingers app is the only way I have of contacting Galen unless I chuck rocks at his windows. There’s a reason he’s never given me his number. A reason I’ve never given him mine. The sooner I accept that the better.
Replaying the awkwardness we parted on helps, even though I die a little every time I do it. Why am I so bad at this? Why can’t I stick to the fucking script?
“Are you cooking that or abusing it?”
Tam’s voice is as familiar to me as my own. But I’ve zoned out enough that he makes me jump, and uncharacteristic irritation burns my throat. “You want these for the church or not?”
The sablés we donate to St Mark’s festive feast each year, along with the fuck-ton of calligraphy Tam’s already delivered.
I don’t usually get involved, but the alternative to mauling shortbread while he growls at me is waking Esme up and going home to my empty house, which I want to do as much as I want to have the conversation Tam’s been gearing up for since I rolled home from work a few hours ago.
Sablé dough is delicate. Just flour and sugar rubbed into an obscene amount of butter until it resembles sablé—sand. You bring it together with light hands, then you leave it alone, to chill, and become something magic.
You don’t poke at it.
Overwork it.
Overthink it.
Can a life lesson be found in buttery biscuits?
“Putain de merde.” Tam nudges me aside. “I preferred you celibate.”
“What makes you think I’m not fucking celibate?”
Tam eyes me as he rescues the fragile sablé mix. “So…you’re not hooking up with that hot fireman?”
“Galen. You know his name.”
“Oui-oui. Still don’t know why you do, though.”
Tam’s asking—again—because he cares. But I’m not in the fucking mood. I leave the room and stomp upstairs to wash my hands when there’s a perfectly good sink in the kitchen. Check on Esme in the room Tam’s decided is hers.
He’s left the walls blanc cassé—off-white—but painted all kinds of weird and wonderful calligraphy over the top in her favourite colours.
Soft pink and emerald green. She loves the fairy best, the wings crafted from gold-flecked streams of mon petit c?ur.
Dors bien in every curl of dark, Dubois hair.
It looks different every time I see it, as if he’s added more, but he swears he hasn’t.
“Did something happen?”
Of course he’s followed me upstairs. I tear my gaze from the fairy. “With what?”
“With Galen.”
“Nothing happened.”
“You didn’t hook up?”
“Why do you want to know so much?”
“Because I’m fucking confused.”
He’s said that already. More than once. And the thing about my brother is that he’s even worse at containing his emotions than I am.
His frustration wakes Esme.
She rolls over, tipping her tiny body off the bed and toddles to me, rubbing her eyes. “Papa? Is it Christmas Day?”
“Not yet. Why are you awake?”
“You’re loud.”
“Uncle Tam is loud.”
She shakes her head, fairy curls bouncing. “No, I heard you. And you smell like biscuits.”
“He shouldn’t.” Tam appears at my shoulder. “Papa squished everything. Come and see.”
He takes Esme from me and pads downstairs.
I should follow and make sure she doesn’t eat too much sugar to go back to bed, but I linger on the landing and drift to the window made famous by the anecdote I told Galen about catching an eyeful of Tam and Bhodi.
Remembering how I felt that night two years ago and trying to mould it to how I feel now, with the imprint of Galen’s touch all over me.
Inside me with such sweet pleasure-pain I can’t stop thinking about what it would be like if he fucked me with that big—
“Papa! Moi, je suis du sucre et des cerises!”
I am sugar and cherries. God knows what that means. I can’t wake Esme up in the dead of night and feed her treats, but Uncle Tam can, and sometimes I’m better off not knowing these things.
But she calls for me again. So I go downstairs and let her stuff warm sablés in my mouth, and then we leave, so Tam can’t ask me any more questions.
It takes me a while to settle her at home, and we have to be up early in the morning so I can take her to nursery before I spend the day slamming through flatpack kitchens. Easy cash that’ll buy me the tools and insurance I need to strike out on my own for good.
Long days.
Soulless, if I don’t count the cat keeping me company in the house I’m currently working in.
But it’s consuming enough that I don’t look at FlingIt for another two days.
I see Galen in my dreams instead, while I get sweaty and annoyed, until my subconscious takes matters into its own hands, and I wake up clutching my phone, the app already open.
It’s Saturday. Esme’s with Tam and Bhodi because they love her and I love them enough to have spent last night on my own, pacing my house, fixing things I’ve already fixed, hiding my phone under cushions and pillows like a bona fide lunatic, only to rebel in my sleep.
FlingIt is wide open, my feed full of Santa-themed dick pics and tits. In the top corner, the DM icon is showing seventy-three unread messages, but given how we left things, I’m willing to bet none of them are from Galen.
And I’m right…until I get to the very bottom of the list and see he messaged me ten minutes after I left his house and all he’s had in return is five days of utter silence.
I click on the message.
HotCraic97: Hope you got home okay. Sorry if I made things weird. I really want to see you again…maybe we can arrange a meet with a couple? xx
Shit.
I swallow thickly.
There’s so much in the short message that makes my stomach clench, but my foolish heart latches onto the seven words in the middle that make it fucking sing.
I really want to see you again.
With other people that he’ll likely fuck. That might fuck him, or want to fuck me, and everything about the prospect feels so wrong, except…
Galen.
I want him.
And if this is the only way I get him, I’d be an idiot to blow him off.
A ludicrous way of thinking, I’m aware. Dangerous, even.
The kind of fucked-up rationale I used to chase with powder and adrenaline, misery and self-loathing my constant companions.
But the trouble with an addiction-riddled brain is that it never quits.
Never shuts the fuck up. Tricks. Lies. Whatever it takes to convince you what you want most in the world won’t fucking kill you.
This isn’t quite that. But I want Galen enough that the worst parts of my brain swing into action, the familiar tattoo of failure, and I’m powerless to stop it.
I swipe through FlingIt, turning the DM notification function to on for the first time ever.
Then I message Galen back.
LeLionDuBois96: Let’s do it
Nothing happens straight away.
Galen doesn’t reply.
Hours pass and I convince myself he won’t. That he’s done with me and the message I sent from my bed will wither and die without him reading it.
By the time the evening rolls around, I think I might’ve dreamed the whole thing, and I’m too gutless to go back into FlingIt and check.
I know the notifications are working. My phone lights up all day with new DMs and updates, but none of them are the one I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life for.
Christmas is close. My festive shopping is done, but I take Esme into town anyway.
She likes the decorations, I like her face when she sees them.
A win-win, even if she does bully me into buying another set of lights for the tree in the back garden.
At this point, I’m pretty sure it can be seen from Mars.
Fuck knows what it’s doing to Galen’s living room, and when we get home, I tell myself that’s why my gaze keeps straying to the gap in the trees.
Why I notice when his bedroom light turns off.
Why I can’t stop wondering if he’s thinking about me too.
Esme falls asleep in my bed watching L'Enfant au grelot. I tuck her up and go downstairs, taking my phone with me, turning off lights as I pass.
It leaves me in the dark, staring out at the ridiculous tree, but I leave those lights be…
So Galen knows you’re here?
No.
No.
Because they make me think of Esme and how happy she is when we turn them on every night.
There’s no room for recalling the graveness in Galen’s bright green eyes when he’d told me to throw the old set away.
Or how it was the first time he ever looked at me without a killer smile on his face.
There’s no fucking room for how I feel about him at all, and that’s what I try to remember when a FlingIt notification comes through around the same time the lights go on in Galen’s house.
HotCraic97: Okay…maybe we should sit down one night and look at some profiles together?
That lump comes back to my throat. My thumbs hover over the screen, but Galen’s typing again, gifting me a reprieve.
HotCraic97: It’s worth taking the time to find the right couple/people…especially for your first meet xx
I take a slow breath, trying to match what he’s saying with everything that’s gone before, both real and imagined.
And merde, it’s a mess. All of it. I don’t want to meet other people.
I don’t want to fuck other people or have them fuck me, whether Galen’s there or not. So how the hell did I wind up here?
You know how.
Right. Because I haven’t had the balls to say what I want—what I need—and live with any rejection that comes my way.
And it’s so fucking stupid I feel like throwing my phone at the wall.
Only the fact that Galen’s still typing stops me.
That he’s typing for so long I know I’m about to get an essay, or he’s measuring his words.
Unless he’s confused about what he wants to say, but that’s my role in this.
Galen’s not confused.
He knows who he is and what he wants, and he doesn’t need me for any of it.
The last part hits like a stone, and I hate the cast iron certainty that washes over me. It roils in my belly and renews the compulsion to be violent, a trait more Tam’s than mine, but my grip tightens on my phone all the same.
Bordel…je suis trop con.
Yup. I really am a fucking idiot, but that was a given before I met Galen.
His message flashes up.
Not an essay, but still a lot of words that give me way too much scope for overthinking.
HotCraic97: Let’s take our time. Maybe set a meet for after Christmas? Or after NY? xx
I’m torn between the visceral fear Galen’s putting me off and gearing up to ghost me, and relief he’ll still be in my life after Christmas. And both takes on this messed-up situation have enough flaws that any reasonable person would turn away from them.
But I’m not feeling reasonable.
I’m feeling—
Fuck. I have no idea. I tap a response as my head fills with white noise and I have no idea who I am anymore.
LeLionDuBois96: Sounds good. Let me know when you’re free x
I shut down the app and sit back on the couch, almost sure Galen won’t reply.
Why would he?
What else is there to say?
I need to move on. To dial out of this version of myself that’s such a fucking mess.
But just as I get to thinking it’s time I hustled Esme to her own bed, so I don’t have to sleep with her tiny toes wedged in my ear, my phone flashes again.
It’s Galen.
HotCraic97: I’m free now