Chapter 16
“So Ash, you’re visiting your best friend tomorrow, huh?”
“Why are you both in my room?”
It’s a stupid question. I know perfectly why.
I met Morgan and Preston on my first day at university.
For some reason out of all students in Birmingham, I had to end up living with a short American who is scared of darkness and England’s number one Drag Race fan.
The moment Morgan and Preston discovered they were sharing a flat with a fellow queer, they had adopted me in their group.
“Your family is from Norway?” Preston asked the first day as he sat on my bed.
“Do you speak Norwegian?” Morgan added before I could even reply.
“I wish. My parents stopped speaking to me in Norwegian when we first came to England. Apparently I was too stubborn to speak both. So of course I ended up never learning the language nor getting rid of the accent,” I explained.
“Don’t know what accent you’re talking about, man.”
“It’s hot. I would be an unstoppable whore with your accent.”
“You already are an unstoppable whore, Morgan,” Preston noted, peeling off his socks and hiding his feet under my blanket as if it belonged to him. They never left after that.
The three of us spent hours in my tiny room together, chatting, studying, napping.
Morgan made sure to appear with her laptop every night, determined to have us learn the names of every drag queen to ever appear on her favourite TV show.
Preston always brought wine along, because “it is classy as fuck and I gotta pass as a real Brit.”
And I was happy to simply exist in their shadow. “I really need to sleep, you guys. Tomorrow is going to be a long day.” I come back to the present, hoping they will get a hint this time.
“Not a guy. And fat chance, we gotta watch this. I mean, look at that gown.” Morgan slams a manicured finger to the laptop, making the image ripple, and Preston hums in agreement.
“Besides, fuckboy has a girl over. I shall not be listening to the straight shagging.”
Preston shares a wall with our fourth flat-mate, who is very straight, very sexually active, and very into grunting and moaning. Barf.
“Not again,” I lament.
“I actually introduced them. Thought he needed a win this week.”
Preston glares at Morgan as I resign myself to sleeping later, or tomorrow on the train to Sheffield. Or never. I kick off my shoes and sit on my usual spot on the carpet, watching the drag queens prance down the runway.
“He already had three wins this week, Morgan. How about you hook me up with one of your sexy boyfriends?”
“Shut your mouth, Pres. So are we buzzing about tomorrow?” Morgan asks me, eyes fixed on the laptop.
“Yep. I can’t believe Ford is actually done with university. He used to be so bad at school. And now he’s all done, I’m so proud of him.”
“Well I can’t believe you still call him your best friend, instead of me,” Preston points out, and I never know if he’s joking or not.
“Let the man be,” Morgan defends me. “You can’t be everyone’s best friend.”
Widening his eyes, Preston shoots her a scandalised look. “Excuse you. Everyone loves me.”
“Dude, nobody loves you. You came all the way to England to study English, and you still refer to us as y’all.”
“Hey, at least it’s gender neutral.”
“It’s also Midwestern as fuck.”
They keep bickering as Drag Race keeps playing in the background. With Morgan and Preston, my tiny university room feels complete.
It must be late when I fall asleep, squished between the wall and Preston’s bony body.
When I wake up the sun is just rising and both he and Morgan are still asleep.
Not for the first time, I wonder why the hell we pay for three rooms when we always end up sleeping in one.
I get ready quickly in our shared bathroom and only tiptoe back to the room to pick up my bag, happy I’m already all packed.
Morgan blinks her drowsy eyes open from the chair and looks at me confused.
“Sorry. Go back to sleep, it’s early,” I whisper.
“Ash.” Cracking her neck, Morgan stretches her long arms out, requesting a hug that I provide immediately.
“Come on.” I help her up the chair and guide her towards my bed, carefully pushing Preston to the side so that Morgan can lay next to him.
“Safe trip, babes,” she wishes, snuggling closer to Preston and that reminds me why I let them crash in my room almost every night. They’re my family. They’re the siblings I wish I had: caring and affectionate and present.
???
The way to the station is quick and the train is deserted. It’s a fast ride to Sheffield station but I still decide I deserve a nap. I set three alarms so I don’t miss my stop and when I wake up, I’m starving, drowsy, and in dire need of caffeine.
I’m at Ford’s house by 8:00 a.m. and I have no idea why I’m nervous, like it’s the first day of school. I ring the doorbell anyway, sweaty from the walk uphill.
“Hello?” a feminine voice answers and without waiting for my response, the door opens.
I take the stairs two at a time until I reach the second floor, where a young woman wearing all black is waiting for me.
Her expression is serious as she lets me in without greeting me or introducing herself.
She keeps inspecting me as if I’m a painting behind a protective glass or some sort of extra-terrestrial creature.
When she does not say a word, I break the silence.
“Hi, you must be Vicky. Nice to meet you.” Ford has told me about his new roommate and almost-girlfriend.
“You must be Ashley.”
“You can call me Ash.” I smile at her, but she does not return it. Perhaps she’s not a morning person.
Shaking her head, she says, “No, I don’t think I will.”
And I guess that is the end of it. Vicky leads me down a corridor, and I can only hope Ford is awake. He has not replied to any of my messages.
“Ashford told me everything about you,” Vicky announces, stopping before a closed door.
“Everything?”
“Everything. He even told me about that one time you pushed your tongue down his throat. Told me all the details,” she confirms.
I doubt he did, but I decide to play along. “I might need to kill him, then.”
“I wish you wouldn’t. I rather care about him.”
Without knocking, Vicky opens the door letting me into Ford’s room before she disappears.
The curtains are half closed, but even in the dark room, I spot Ford immediately.
He’s in a small single bed, legs tangled messily around the blanket.
There’s a book by his bed, and another one open in front of him.
His old guitar is discarded on the floor and the new shiny viola is carefully perched against the wall.
“Finally!” Ford gets up and out of bed, throwing everything down. With bare feet and a black pyjama shirt he walks to me and wraps his strong arms around my shoulders. “Good morning.”
Leaning into the hug, I take a deep inhale of sweet Ford scent. He chuckles, smelling me back. That’s when he notices.
“Whoa. Hair.”
Ford pulls back and holds me in place, then proceeds to closely inspect my face and my new hairstyle.
“Do you like it?” I’ve let my hair grow for the past six months, and just yesterday I got a haircut to fix the shape. Now it barely touches my shoulders, the front pieces are shorter but long enough that I can tuck them behind my ears and pull it all in a bun.
“I love it, man. Wow. Your face looks, like, so different, like,” Ford stumbles, looking for words. “You look handsome.”
“My jawline, right? And what about this?” Grabbing the elastic band around my wrist, I gather the hair and tie them up as messily as I can.
Ford takes a couple of steps back and assesses the situation.
“Yep,” he grants. “Yep.” It’s softer, the second time the word escapes his lips.
The entire day, Ford stares at me. He stares as we walk around the city and Ford shows me that one store and that one pub, as we climb up the highest hill to the university library to return a textbook, breaths short and temples sweaty.
I feel his eyes on me as we go through the Winter Garden, an indoor area in the middle of the city where trees are growing freely, and I catch Ford staring in the reflection on the glass.
His cheeks turn rosy but he doesn’t look away.
Ford’s eyes are on me as we share a coffee and a sausage roll, and when it gets dark and we decide to meet his friends at the pub, I’m exhausted from all the attention.
The pub is full and loud and hot, and there’s a live band playing. Ford points me to a group of people and the only person I recognise is Vicky, who blows Ford an air kiss.
He blows one back, and the act seems sincere. I have never seen Ford really infatuated with someone, and it makes me nauseous. I don’t feel like socialising, so I follow him to the bar instead. I don’t care to mingle right now, don’t care to acknowledge Vicky’s existence.
Studying the menu, Ford sighs. “This shit is illegible.”
“Did you mean, unlegible?"
Ford punches my shoulder lightly. “Fuck off. You’re impossible. I was ten years old,” he says, unclenching his fist and rubbing my shoulder softly, although he did not hurt me in the first place.
“You meant to say I’m unpossible, surely,” I tease him and he scoffs.
“I hate you. Go have fun, I’ll get drinks.”
“Gin Tonic, please,” I remind him and he purses his lips in disgust. With a final air kiss, I leave him at the bar and venture back in the crowd. When I don’t find any of Ford’s friends, I shrug to myself. Change of plans, then.
???
“You smoke?”
Much later, Ford finds me outside the pub and hands me a glass of water.
Good question. No, I don’t smoke regularly.
But yes, I smoke every time Morgan, Preston and I go out and I get a little too overwhelmed.
I’m not ready to admit how much I love the ritual, how freeing it is to know that for the duration of a cigarette there is nothing else that matters around me.
Unless, of course, Ford is present. Then there is no amount of nicotine that can distract me.