Chapter 12 #2
Leaving is the rule I keep. He’s never asked me to go, never said you should get back, if anything, the opposite—a hand finding my wrist when I reach for my jeans, a pause.
Once, on Wednesday, his fingers close around my belt loop while I’m pulling on my shirt, and he holds—one beat. Then he lets go, and we let it hang.
But I go. The blokes at the back end of parties taught me the choreography—finish, leave, forget—except I remember. The tram seat is cold after his sheets, the bed when I get back smells like nothing, and I lie there staring at the ceiling, feeling everything.
The tram at midnight smells of wet coats. I lean my head on the window, let the cold help with what it helps with, leave the rest unexamined.
Friday lecture, week seven. He’s at the board, I’m in the last row, and between us two hundred students, a colleague taking notes for some module coordination thing, and approximately ninety-six hours since he had me on his kitchen table.
‘And as n tends to infinity,’ he’s saying, ‘the terms of the sequence get arbitrarily close to L, but never quite reach it.’
He finds my eyes—the automatic scan that snags on the last row and sticks—his mouth moving but his voice trailing away. For a beat, Dr Haldrey is replaced by the man who left marks on my skin still visible under this shirt.
He recovers. Nobody notices except the colleague and me.
‘You alright?’ she says, during the pause while students copy down an equation. Leaning in. Low voice, but not low enough. ‘You seem a bit distracted lately.’
‘Fine.’ His professional voice, the one with all the bolts tightened. ‘Didn’t sleep well.’
The colleague nods. Looks back at her notes. But the look she gave him before the nod, the look lasting one second longer than concern, stays with me.
My dick’s too hard, and the notebook on my lap will have to hide it. This man, this composed, controlled man, can teach a room of two hundred without losing it because of me. That’s the most erotic thing that has ever happened.
I shift the notebook, think about macroeconomic policy. Doesn’t help.
Never helps.
Saturday. Allan’s flat. Dinner.
Femi is cooking, which is ambitious given that his entire culinary range runs from pasta to slightly different pasta. Allan’s helping, which means Allan’s doing the actual cooking while Femi passes things and looks at him like he’s discovered gravity.
They’re disgusting in a good way.
Allan’s flat is a second-year upgrade. Actual furniture, a working oven, posters on the walls, somebody chose instead of inherited. There are photos on the fridge: Allan and his family. Allan and Femi are at a food market, Femi holding a churro like a trophy. They’ve already got fridge photos.
‘Pass the salt?’ Allan says, and Femi passes it, and their fingers touch, and they both smile like the salt shaker is a love letter and the piss-take is loaded, ready, but I can’t because my ribs are doing that tight thing again.
There’s a girl here, too. Karen, Allan’s flatmate, who’s studying biomedical science and has opinions about everything, and keeps refilling my wine, which I’m letting her because the wine helps.
We eat, we talk. Normal stuff, lectures, Christmas plans, a club night next week that Femi doesn’t want to go to, and Allan is already buying tickets for.
I’m funny. I make Karen laugh twice and Allan once, and Femi gives me the look, saying you’re performing but doesn’t call it.
Allan’s hand rests on Femi’s thigh under the table like it belongs there. Out in the open, no napkin hiding anything. Just there, in the light. Femi leans into him when he laughs. They kiss once, briefly, casually.
Nobody looks away, nobody checks the door. Nobody calculates the risk.
The wine turns sour, figuratively. Literally, it’s fine. Cheap Tesco Merlot does the job.
‘You seem happy lately,’ Allan says to me. He’s doing the dishes, and I’m drying, and the others are in the sitting room arguing about a film. ‘Like, properly happy. You seeing someone?’
Stomach. Drop.
‘Nothing serious.’ The words come out before I’ve built them. Pre-fabricated. Already drying the next plate.
Allan doesn’t fill the silence. He’s learned not to. He waits with a plate suspended, a habit Femi says he got from his mum.
‘He’s—’ My mouth is halfway to a sentence I have no plan for. It hangs in the kitchen between us, uncommitted, and a wet plate in my hands slips an inch, and I catch it against my chest. Cold water runs down my jumper. Allan lets the silence be what it is.
‘He’s not local. I don’t see him much.’
A half-truth. A full degree of a lie. Karen’s laugh comes in from the lounge—she’s lost the film argument, Allan bet Femi five quid she’d be the first to cave, he collects later. Ordinary sounds from a flat where people live during the day.
‘Fair enough.’ He grins. Allan grins widely and easily. Femi doesn’t. ‘Whoever it is, though, you look different. Good different.’
I dry a plate. Put it on the rack. My hands move, my face is neutral. The key is in my wallet. The flat in Chorlton. All of it fills the space where talking would go.
Femi catches my eye across the room. Raises his eyebrows. You okay?
I nod, smile. The performance is easy. I’ve been performing since I got to Manchester. The student who doesn’t care, the boy who doesn’t try, the hookup who doesn’t stay.
Except this one itches. That’s new.