Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
Aidan
I sense him before I see him. My gaze seeks him out before I know I’m looking for him, and it’s the weirdest sensation I’ve dealt with for a while.
It’s shocking too, because I’ve spent the last week fighting the urge to knock on his door, to present myself to him as a lost cause and beg him to help me, even though I fucking know he has enough bullshit of his own to deal with.
Not that I think bipolar is bullshit. I’m just rubbish at expressing myself using more than six words. And I don’t want him to help me. I just know that the time I spent in his house that I can actually remember is the safest I’ve felt in years.
You have no right to feel that way.
I know that too.
In the time it’s taken me to come full circle, Ludo has crossed the road. He’s standing in front of me, peering into my bag. “Have you got rum at home to go with all that Coke?”
I roll my eyes. “No, and it’s not even mine. I buy it for the old dude above me. He doesn’t get out much.”
“And the cat food?”
“For the bat-fink that hangs around my garden.”
“So you do think about people other than yourself?”
“I never said I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.”
“When?”
He shrugs. “I have no idea. Maybe you just thought it too loud, huh?”
When it comes to how my brain behaves around Ludo, I’ll believe anything. And my silence seems to amuse him even more.
“You’re definitely not the arsehole you think you are.”
“I am.”
Ludo steps away.
I panic and grab his arm. “Where are you going?”
“Home. You?”
I hold up my bag. “Same. Um . . . can I, uh, see you some time?”
“See me?”
“Yeah, like get a drink—a coffee or something?”
“Why?”
“Because I like spending time with you.”
I can tell it’s on the tip of Ludo’s tongue to repeat his question, but he seems to catch himself and slowly nods.
“If you want. I can give you my number?”
He writes his phone number on my arm with a bright green Sharpie he digs out of his bag. His touch, as ever, nearly brings me to my knees, but I hold it together long enough to let him leave me again.
I watch him walk away, head bowed, tatty backpack slung over one shoulder. He moves like the world weighs him down, and I want to chase him across the road and ease his burden, but I’m in no state to chase anyone, and so I let him go and make my way home.
After delivering the bumper order of Coke to the old geezer upstairs, I retreat to the garden to feed the cat. He crawls out of the bushes and scarfs the food like it’s been days since he last ate, not the few hours that have passed since I fed him this morning.
I don’t actually know if the cat is male.
It’s an assumption I made a while ago, but I was drunk at the time, and I can’t remember why.
It’s stuck anyway, and despite the fact the damn thing is a pest, I’m glad he survived my absence.
Some days he’s the only living soul I talk to. I used to relish that. I don’t anymore.
The digits Ludo has scrawled on my skin tingle.
I programme them into the shitty prepay phone Michael brought me and wonder why I didn’t do it on the street.
Why I didn’t save Ludo the trouble of digging through his bag for a pen.
Then I remember how it felt when he gripped my wrist and twisted my arm to suit him, and for once I thank my subconscious for doing me a favour.
I need a drink.
No, I don’t. I haven’t touched the stuff since Ludo rescued me from the slow death I was dying on the pavement opposite his house.
It’s been hard . . . too hard to back up my assertion that I’m not physically dependent on it, but at the same time, it’s been easier than I deserve too.
Truth is, I’m so fucking embarrassed that he saw me like that, on top of what he saw in the hospital, that my pride has kept me sober.
How long that would’ve lasted if I hadn’t run into him is anybody’s guess.
My hands are still shaky. I alternate between sitting on them and clinging to my phone as if it’s life raft in a drifting sea of apathy, staring at the blank screen.
My cravings for a sweet hit of booze are at an all-time high, but they’re eclipsed by something else, and with twitching thumbs, I unlock my phone and start typing.
Aidan: hey
I zoom—ha, limp—around my flat like a man possessed, tidying shit that doesn’t need tidying, thankful that the sum total of my life belongings amount to little more than a small TV and the stack of magazines I brought home from the hospital.
For reasons I’m yet to understand, I’ve invited Ludo over, and I’m so fucking nervous my head feels like it might explode at any moment.
Your place is a shithole.
But there’s nothing more I can do about that, so I check the fridge for in-date milk and then collapse on my couch, clutching my phone, rereading our brief message exchange for the thousandth time.
Aidan: hey
Ludo: Aidan?
Aidan: it’s me. sorry. should’ve said.
Ludo: It’s okay. I asked, so it’s fine. Are you okay?
Aidan: yeah. are u?
Ludo: Yes. It was nice to see you.
Aidan: it was nice to see you too. I don’t live far from where you saw me. do u want to come round some time?
Ludo: When?
Aidan: now?
Ludo: As in . . . right now?
Aidan: yeah, or as in, whenever ure free
Ludo: I have to walk my dog when the sun goes in. Maybe after?
Aidan: sounds good to me
I’ve never been good at making plans, but as I sit in the fading daylight, waiting for Ludo to knock on my door, I regret not asking him for a rough time. The anticipation is killing me, and despite my housework binge knackering me, I can’t sit still.
I get up and pace the small space that serves as my living room and my bedroom, imagining what I might say to him when he arrives or how I’ll feel if he doesn’t show up.
My life up until this point is littered with broken promises and people I’ve let down.
Is it karma if Ludo doesn’t come? If he was humouring my text messages?
Why would he do that when he could’ve ignored you?
As has become my standard MO, I have no logical answer. Maybe—
A knock at the door startles me out of my fretting. I spin on my good leg and hurry to the hallway, all but ripping the door open. The pessimist in me half expects to find the milkman on the other side, even though I don’t have a fucking milkman, but it’s Ludo, in all his slender dark-eyed glory.
Despite my frantic pacing, I can’t think of a single thing to say, so I stare at him while he shifts uncomfortably, until I remember how to be a functioning human being.
“Sorry. Come in.”
Ludo hesitates, and it’s all I can do not to grab him and tug him over the threshold, but I don’t touch him .
. . not yet. From day one we’ve been weirdly tactile—he laid his hands on me before we ever spoke—but there’s something about him right now, an edginess I suspect has nothing to do with me and everything to do with him, so I let him be. I wait and eventually he comes inside.
I shut the door behind him. The urge to grab him is still there, but I ignore it and force myself to step around him and point to my shitty excuse for a kitchen. “I’ve got tea. Do you want some?”
Ludo bites his lip. His shoulders rise and fall too fast.
I give in and close my fingers around his scarred wrist. “It’s dark and quiet in here, because that’s how I like it, but we can sit in the garden if you like?”
“It’s not that,” Ludo whispers, and he finally meets my gaze. He clears his throat and takes a deep breath. “It’s not that,” he tries again. “It’s, uh . . .”
He spins around in a slow circle, gesturing at my barren living space as though I should have a fucking clue what he’s talking about.
I don’t. But I know he’s not happy, and that makes my chest ache. “What can I do to make it better?”
“Make what better?”
“Whatever’s upsetting you.”
Ludo sighs. “I’m not upset. I just got myself in a spiral rushing around to get to you, and now I’m here I’m having a hard time dealing with the fact that this is where you live.”
“It’s shit, I know, but it’s all I can afford.”
I don’t expect him to laugh. But he does, and it’s so utterly humourless my toes curl, as though they can draw up into my body and avoid the bitterness lacing Ludo’s rough bark of laughter.
“Aidan, it wouldn’t bother me if you lived in a cave and made you happy, but this?” He gestures around again. “This isn’t home; it’s a prison cell. Look at it.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “I do look at it, every fucking day. What’s so bad about it?”
“There’s nothing here.”
“What did you expect? Plush couches and plasma TVs in every room? All two of them. It’s a bedsit, for Christ sakes.”
“It’s not—” Ludo starts, then he cuts himself off and turns to face me, guilt and regret marring his lovely face.
“I’m not explaining myself properly. When I said there’s nothing here, I mean there’s nothing here that makes me think of you.
Anyone could live here, and I don’t like that. It reminds me of your hospital bed.”
A glimpse of what he’s trying to say creeps into my mind. I tighten my grip on his wrist and tug him forward. “Come with me.”
He follows me into my living room—albeit, just my sofa bed and a small cabinet with a TV plonked on top of it.
But in the cabinet is something that makes me think of my hospital bed too.
I kneel on my good leg and retrieve the stack of magazines from where I stashed them earlier.
There are so many of them that I can’t get up without handing them to Ludo. “Here. I kept them all.”
The first stirrings of a smile light up the shadows in Ludo’s expression.
He balances the magazines on one hand and helps me to my feet with the other.
“I wasn’t sure if you ever got them. I was a bit manic when all that happened, and I was worried I’d either imagined buying them or the nurses took them away before you woke up. ”
“I didn’t know you were manic.”
“Neither did I.” He sits on the arm of the couch and leafs through the magazines. He comes to a cooking publication and holds it up. “But if I’d been thinking rationally, this might’ve clued me in. I take it you’ve never made the four-tier lemon cake on the front?”
I wince. Ludo smiles softly again, and the madman in me decides I’ll make the fucking cake if it makes him happy. “I’ve never made any cake,” I admit. “I’m not much of a cook if you don’t fancy something on toast.”
Ludo lowers the magazine and sets the rest of the stack aside, grin fading as though it was never there. “Bet you haven’t got any bread.”
“How did you know?”
“Because that’s it.” He springs like a cat to his feet and jabs a finger in my face. “That’s what I’m talking about. You don’t have anything here because you don’t care enough about yourself to bother. I reckon your cupboards are bare, right? And there’s sod all in your fridge?”
I can’t deny it. So I don’t bother. I shrug and spread my hands. “I buy food when I need it.”
“Do you have a duvet cover?”
“What?”
“A cover. On your duvet.”
“I don’t have a duvet.”
“Sleeping bag?”
“Yup.”
Ludo shakes his head so hard it should fly off his slim shoulders. “I don’t like that.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
His answer makes as much sense as this entire conversation, and it’s not how I imagined his visit would go. But much of what I imagine about Ludo has little bearing on reality, so what the fuck can I do?
Ludo sighs and closes his eyes, and somehow I know he wishes he was closer to the wall so he could bang his head against it.
I reach for him again, grasping both his wrists this time and tugging him upright and closer to me.
“Look, I’m sorry my place makes you uncomfortable.
Before the accident I literally just slept here, so it didn’t matter, and since .
. . fuck, I don’t know. I guess you’re right, and I haven’t cared enough to do anything about it. ”
“Do you think that will change?”
It’s my turn to shrug. “I don’t know.”
Ludo mauls his bottom lip with his teeth. “I wish I could explain myself better—it’s just that sometimes what happens in my head is nothing like what comes out of my mouth.”
Hope sparks in my heart. “So you’re not uncomfortable here?”
“No, it’s not about me.”
I don’t understand, but I believe him. “We can still sit outside if you’d rather?”
Ludo shakes his head, gentler this time. “I’m hungry. Can we go to the shop?”
“Uh. Sure.”
We leave my bedsit less than five minutes after he arrived. As we make the five-minute trip to the shop, I’m scared he won’t come back with me. That he’ll make me buy a multipack of Snickers bars, then piss off home.
But in the shop Ludo buys sweet potatoes, red peppers, onions, and a small plastic tub of something I don’t recognise. “I can only cook pasta,” he says, amused by my puzzled frown. “Maybe we can learn something new together.”
The fear lifts from my chest, replaced by elation, and I don’t know when my emotions became so extreme.
“Okay.”
“You sure? We can get Super Noodles if you want? I’m sure we can both cook those.”
“Yeah, but they’re like tapeworms glued together, so—”
Ludo laughs again, for real this time, and I swear the sun twitches on its way to bed, like it wants to rise up again and get a better view of whoever made that fucking amazing sound.
“Stop,” he says. “Or I’ll never be able to eat them again, and I like the chicken ones.
They remind me of when being sick meant a day on the couch with a bottle of Lucozade. ”
“I remember those days too, but I didn’t get Super Noodles.” I point at the canned soup shelf. “I got cream of tomato straight out of the can with a fork to eat it with.”
“That sounds messed up.”
“That was my dad on a good day.”
Ludo doesn’t ask about my mum, and I don’t pre-empt any questions with the fucked up information I’m happy to keep to myself. I grab a couple of packs of instant noodles and turn away. “Come on. Let’s go, um, cook.”
“You sure?”
“Of course I’m sure, mate. Let’s learn something new . . . together, but take these just in case.”