Chapter 19 #2
“Jon… Listen, things are…” I just didn’t see myself breaking his heart right now, in front of all his friends.
Equally, something catches at my words before I can say, ‘Sorry, I choose August.’ Because does August choose me?
Does he even want me? Was that just some dumb, tipsy moment, fuelled by jealousy and a good song?
“He certainly doesn’t choose you,” August quips, like a complete shit, and I still admire his confidence, even as Jon leaps up from the floor, grabs his shirt instead of mine, and wrenches him towards the van door.
“Stop it!” Richie shouts, moving himself between the door and the two men I’m inexplicably tangled with.
“You can’t throw him out in Camden,” mutters Shashi, ever the voice of reason. “At least drive on a little bit, away from the gunman.”
“You can’t throw him out at all,” I shout, shoving Jon off, back into Richie, where he stares at me, open-mouthed.
“He’s my… He’s…” My heart’s beating so fast. What I’d give for one word from August, one statement to let me know this is something—something material that I can fall back on when I’m throwing one of my oldest friends away over him.
When nothing comes, I latch onto the coward’s way out. “Who bought you this van? You think you can just throw my cousin out on the road like yesterday’s garbage? You can fucking not. Tico, drive the car!”
“Don’t drive the fucking car,” Jon yells, and the van stays resolutely still. “I told you, it’s him or me. You put him out, or I’m going back to Koko.”
There’s a communal groan, but I’m the only one to say, “Don’t be so fucking stupid, Jon.”
“You are all I live for,” he cries, and I really think he believes it right now.
He’s so caught up in himself, in his drama, that he’s forgotten every night he left me at home to go and fuck some groupie.
Every time he said I was holding him back because I wanted him to make us public, and not pretend I was just some roadie tagging along for the ride because he wanted someone else for the evening.
“You’re every breath I take, August.” And my heart sinks as we dip into his usual butchering of Bon Jovi lyrics. “You’re my wine, and my water, and…”
“Jon, let it go,” I sigh out. “Just sit down.”
“I can’t ever sit down again!”
But August does, a tired flop into the seat with his hand rubbing over his brow, a gesture which is touching on how I’m beginning to feel.
“If I can’t have you, I’m going back to Koko. I’m going back there, and I’m getting myself shot! Right here!” Jon slams a hand down on his chest. “You wouldn’t leave me for your cousin. Of all the people in the world, your cousin?”
The look Richie shoots at Amber and Shashi drives home the general abhorrence of my actions.
“He’s not…” is my very best defence. And we all know it’s an intolerably weak one.
“Your cousin!” Jon reiterates. “Do you know that’s illegal most places?”
“Is it?” August goads him. “Like where? Not London, I’m sure.”
“Like…” Jon splutters to a stop. “Anywhere civilised! It’s disgusting!”
“We don’t think so,” August prods, and right about now, I want to slap him.
I know he likes getting under Jon’s skin, and I’ll admit, some part of me finds that incredibly attractive, and quite funny, but not like this.
Not with everyone else in the van shrinking from me, looking at me like I really am kissing my cousin, whatever shred of respect any of them had left for me after everything Jon’s done dwindling away like so many streetlights in the distance.
“It’s sick, man,” Jon declares. But he lunges forward, slipping his hand like a snake around my waist. “Let me help you. I’ll take you away from him. I don’t know what he’s done to you, what your family situation was like—”
“Oh Jesus. It’s not like that, Jon.”
“He’s a predator. A sicko. And I won’t let him touch you ever—”
“He’s me!” I cry, shoving him off, stepping back so violently I almost fall.
“He’s me, alright? He’s me and I’m him and look at us!
” I fling my hand back and forth between us, August’s lips tight and tilted to one side, his dark eyes on me.
Was I not supposed to say that? He never explicitly said I wasn’t supposed to say that.
“What the fuck are you on about?” shouts Jon. “He’s not your soulmate. I’m your soulmate! It’s me! Your other half—you and me!”
“No, Jon. Not like that.” I slam my head into my hand, frustration rising with every second. “He’s me. Look at him. He’s an exact match for me.”
“I knew it!” Shashi exclaims, and for the first time since she met August, her wariness drops, and she rushes forward from the back of the van to sit opposite him.
“What do you mean you knew?” August asks, perfectly shocked at her reaction.
“It’s so obvious,” she declares. “Cousins don’t look like this. Twins don’t look like this. It’s everything. Even the freckles are a perfect match.”
Jon must take Shashi’s words more seriously than mine, because he slips down into the seat next to her and stares hard at August, then me, then August. “No. That one has glasses.”
A cackle rips out of August, so I drop onto the seat next to him, letting my hand fall on his knee to quiet him. His eyes shift down to it, Jon’s eyes shift down to it, then I scrunch it into a ball and put it back on my own knee.
“He’s me, alright? A lot of weird shit has been going on lately, and I tried to tell you on the phone, and you wouldn’t listen.”
“So…” Jon stares at the pair of us. “You kissed yourself?”
“Is that better or worse?”
“I don’t know!”
“Well, I don’t know! But he’s not my cousin!”
“How the hell did this happen? What’s even going on?”
“It’s…” Where to even start? “It’s complicated. Too complicated. I don’t even know what to tell you. Just that… it’s been a really hard time, alright?”
The van moves up the street, lights and cars flashing by while he stares hard, making up his mind. Then, eventually… “I’m sorry.” The first words that aren’t a drama swirling around Jon are spoken quietly, and the first genuine apology he’s given me in months rips away the tension between us.
“It’s alright.”
I’m guessing it’s the calm moment between us that finally prompts August to speak in a way not directly intentioned to piss Jon off. “I came to August for help. And back there, those people…” He breaks off, looking at me with a hesitance I’m unaccustomed to in him.
“Was it us?” I ask. “Did we do that?”
“It’s… I-I think it’s just the coffee thing.”
“The coffee thing? Really? It’s not because we… Because…”
Because you kissed me.
Why am I too shy to say this?
“No.” He says it so firmly, I can’t doubt him.
Why would I doubt him?
August wouldn’t be leading me into some universe-ending catastrophe just because he fancies me, of course not. He’s literally me, and I would never do that to me.
I feel so stupid for having even thought it. Of course it’s the coffee thing. He told me weird stuff would happen with us both in this universe.
“And the shooter?” Like he’s going to have an answer for that, but as my trust’s restored, so is my faith that he’s both hot and smart and has an answer for everything.
“Ask your ex,” he defers, handing Jon his dream of a dangerous stalker on a platter.
But Jon seems to have only heard the final word in that sentence, and he focuses a hate-filled glare on August. “I won’t be his ex for long. We’re going to talk.”
“We will,” I tell him. Because we need to break up properly. And because I need my key back. Because we’re over. “But not tonight. August and I have work to do.”
“Work?” he rasps out. “What work can you possibly have to do at this time of night?”
“Science,” I reply. And I’m well aware there’s a touch of smugness in my voice when I add, “You can drop us at Imperial College.”