Chapter Seventeen Mind Your Own Business #3
He abandoned his drink and circumnavigated the neon-lit dance floor, searching for them over the heads of clubgoers. When he finally clocked them across the floor in a dark corner, he wasn’t too proud to admit that he was absolutely gutted.
Julian was hoisted up against the wall, legs wrapped quite willingly around Michael’s waist while the latter gnawed hungrily at his neck.
Julian cradled his head, his own thrown back in ecstasy, mouth hanging open.
Rahul had never seen him like this. He had to swallow heavily, even as his stomach sank to the floor.
He was Goddamned beautiful, Julian was. He looked the way Rahul had always dreamed he would, all lost and unpretentious.
Entirely himself. Entirely gorgeous. It added an extra layer of hurt to Rahul’s already aching heart that he should see Julian like this with another man.
There had been some small comfort in the fact that Julian hadn’t been interested in men. At least Rahul would get to be the most important man in Julian’s life. There had been that at least. But now? Fuck. He couldn’t even be that.
It was at that moment that Rahul realised what he was.
He was a pathetic man who was stalking his best mate, the boy he’d been gone on since he was fourteen years old.
He was a loser who was watching his crush get off with a bloke in the middle of a gay club.
Disgusted with himself, he began to turn away, intending to leave altogether and never insert himself in his best mate’s love life ever again.
Julian’s eyes suddenly opened and found him, of all people, across the club. Locking eyes had never before caused Rahul’s heart to explode in his chest the way it did just then. He saw Julian mouth his name moments before Rahul’s fight or flight instinct kicked in and he legged it.
He practically ran for the door. He felt the bitter cold hit his cheeks as he burst onto the street but not even that could cool the blistering fever in his face.
Shame, embarrassment, that particular brand of gut-wrenching horror at being caught doing something very wrong.
Rahul wanted the pavement to open up and swallow him whole. Especially when he heard --
“Rahul!”
The voice was like a lead. He reached the end of it and stalled, unable to move forwards.
“Rahul!”
He turned, powerless against the pull of that voice.
Julian was stood there, arms hugged around himself to ward off the chill. The naked betrayal in his face was enough to send Rahul’s already low self-esteem straight into the gutter.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Julian asked. “You following me?”
“No, no, I…” Rahul began lamely. “I, uh, I come here all the time. Yeah. I just popped it for a night cap.”
A few paces behind Julian, Michael appeared carrying Julian’s coat. The look that Michael gave Julian was one of concern. A genuine look of concern. He did care about Julian. Bollocks. Rahul had been wrong. And now he’d been found out. What a bloody shambles.
“Piss off,” Julian countered. “What are you really doing here?”
Fuck it. If he was here, he was here. There was nothing else for it.
He might as well let it all out. “He’s a creeper, all right?
He’s trying to get into your pants. I just wanted to keep an eye on you, make sure he didn’t try anything.
” Julian rolled his eyes and Rahul felt a deep need to defend himself.
Behind him, Michael’s expression hardened but Rahul attempted to ignore it.
“He’s not the knight in shining armour you think he is, all right?
He followed Aisling. Threatened her. She told me herself.
And the bloke he allegedly saved you from in the pub?
There weren’t no bloke, mate. He saw you were pissed and took you back to his so he could get with you, simple as that. ”
“He’s not like that!” Julian protested.
“Oh and you know how he is? A bloke you’ve known all of five minutes?”
“I know him well enough to know he wouldn’t go and do something like that.”
“Do you, now? And what makes you so bloody sure?”
“We’re dating, you bellend!” Julian cried.
The words hit Rahul in the chest like a ton of bricks. He was winded by them, gutted by them. He looked over Julian’s shoulder at Michael, who looked back at him with the solemn impassivity of a man who’d been vindicated by the truth. What was worse, there was a trace of pity in his eyes.
Dating. They were dating. Julian wasn’t being taken advantage of.
He hadn’t been hoodwinked. He wasn’t just experimenting.
Dating. They were dating. They were together.
Why were there tears prickling the corners of his eyes?
Why should he cry? So what if they were dating.
That didn’t have a thing to do with him, did it?
They’d never promised themselves to each other.
They’d never made a pact that if Julian ever decided to go gay it would be with the obvious choice, Rahul Chaand, standing right here and pining away after him since eighth year.
So what if they’d nearly kissed on the dingy carpet of Julian’s flat only a few hours ago?
They’d been caught up in the moment. Maybe there hadn’t even been a moment.
Maybe it’d all been wishful thinking on Rahul’s part like it had been so many times before.
Like it had been that one night in their first year of uni.
It had meant nothing. It had been an empty, meaningless experience, the only kind Julian was capable of giving.
And Rahul had known this. He’d come to expect it.
So why, then, did it feel like his heart was being summarily crushed to bits in the back of a bin lorry?
Julian must have seen something in Rahul’s expression because his own turned soft and -- for God’s sake -- pitying. More so even than Michael’s.
“Just… go home, Rahul,” Julian said, sounding as world-weary as Rahul had ever heard him.
He turned away, back towards Michael, who draped his coat over his narrow shoulders, and as he did so Rahul watched the carefully reconstructed Jenga tower of their friendship collapse brick by brick.
The look Michael gave Rahul before he turned away was so understanding that Rahul wanted to lunge forwards and pummel him in that perfect square jaw of his.
Don’t understand me, sir. I can’t be understood.
I’m an enigma. I’m Rahul Chaand. Coming at you like -- like a metric tonne of bricks.
I’ll flatten you out, sir. They call me The Flattener.
“Squish you down into a mince pie. Squish you flatter than a pound note. Yes, sir,” Rahul mumbled to himself, furiously wiping at his wet cheeks before taking off down the cold, damp street.