Chapter 24 #2
I read it twice—a message that costs Ronan nothing to send and me everything to receive. Properly is the word doing the work. Ronan doesn’t deploy properly lightly. It means I’ve been patient long enough, little brother, and patience has a shelf life.
Somewhere in the building behind me, Laurence is shaking hands, collecting his coat, pretending the last forty minutes never happened. A man I love. A man I got on my knees for tonight in a room smelling of bleach. A man whose colleague has just filed both of us under not my problem until it is.
The taste of him is still in my mouth. The blazer button is still printed somewhere across my shoulder blade. His fingers in my hair, the grip of them, the precision. All of it is so loud in my head that the rain barely registers.
Friday. Five days. The colleague has eyes, and Ronan has intention, and somewhere between the two of them is a cupboard that smells of bleach, where I got on my knees for a man I love in a building where he works. The gorgeous stupidity of that sits in my stomach like a truth I hadn’t earned.
Hands in my pockets, rain on my face. Walking towards a tram that’ll take me back to halls where the bed is narrow, and the walls are thin, and the taste of him is still in my mouth.
Piccadilly Station, Friday. Half seven. The arrivals board flickers, and the coffee place is heaving. I spot Ronan before he spots me, coming through the barriers with a stride that says he hasn’t come to sightsee.
No rucksack this time, no tourist energy. Just Ron in his good jacket, face set.
‘Alright?’ Casual. Performance-grade casual, costs everything.
‘Yeah.’ He studies me. He used to study my homework when I was twelve, and he suspected I’d copied it. ‘You look different.’
‘Manchester air.’
‘Who’s A?’
It comes—I’ve been expecting this for weeks, know Ronan, know the man I grew up with doesn’t ask questions he doesn’t already half-know.
‘What?’
‘A. The letter in your phone. You angled your phone away when the name popped up, but not fast enough.’ Cop eyes, cross-examination eyes.
‘I told you I’m seeing someone.’ It leaves me before the strategy catches up. Direct. Better than lying. He’ll catch a lie in three questions, and the truth is easier to control than a fabrication. ‘He’s older.’
Ron puts his hand down with a precision that says I’m listening and I’m furious and trying very hard to be calm.
‘How much older?’
‘Not much.’
‘That’s not an answer.’
‘It’s the answer you’re getting.’
‘Twenties? Thirties?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘You’re nineteen, Ewan. Everything matters.’
It hits heavy. Ron’s been doing the maths.
His face tightens, the Carrick tells. ‘I ask again. Is he married? Is it a teacher?’
Rehearsed it a hundred times: in the shower, on the tram, staring at the ceiling at four AM.
‘No.’ Flat. Immediate. No hesitation, no blink, no tell. I’ve learned from Laurence after all.
Ron watches me for five seconds. Ten. I hold it. My pulse hammers behind my ribs, but my face holds, and I need both of them to keep.
‘If you’re lying to me,’ he says, ‘I’ll find out.’
‘I’m not lying.’
I am. The lie tastes of the same nothing as just sex in a corridor in Vienna, and I’m starting to think that’s what lies taste of, not bitterness, not guilt. Nothing.
He insists on the Northern Quarter. ‘That bar from last time. The one with the good IPAs.’ The excuse is thin enough to read through—that bar like a place he’s been thinking about, the beer as cover story.
I don’t clock it. I’m on my phone under the table, thumbs moving fast: Ron is here. Don’t contact me. Will explain later. The message goes to A.
Laurence replies in four seconds. Understood. The same answer. Everyone keeps telling me to stop.
The bar. Brick walls, low light, the curated chaos of a place that knows its aesthetic. We order at the counter. I scan for a table.
Ron’s eyes are already there, already at the corner.
That person is at the same table, notebooks scattered, pencil between their teeth—different jumper, worn the same way.
Rings, dark nails, hair that doesn’t resolve into any category Ron’s filing system would recognise.
They look up, find Ronan across the room with the accuracy of someone aware of him all along.
Ronan looks away, fast. Too fast. The flinch disguised as disinterest. I’ve seen this before—a man feeling eyes on his back and refusing to turn around because turning around would mean admitting the looking mattered.
But I’m on my phone. Texting: He asked about A.
I said no. One catastrophe at a time, and the one at the corner table isn’t the one I’m watching.
Ron’s different for the rest of the night. Shorter answers. The thumb circuit, the same one from October. His questions about my love life dry up. His eyes dry up. He keeps not looking at the corner table.
‘You alright?’ I ask because I’m his brother.
‘Fine.’ He drinks. Doesn’t elaborate. Doesn’t look at the corner table.
Then, softer: ‘Ewe.’
‘Yeah.’
‘How do you know if there’s someone you—’ He stops. Mouth shuts, the stopping has teeth.
I wait three seconds. Four. I have never, in nineteen years of living next to this man, seen Ron start a sentence and bin it mid-word. Ron finishes sentences like he finishes jobs, on schedule, no snags, the last screw tightened before he puts the drill down.
‘Someone I what,’ I say.
‘Nah.’ He drinks. ‘Forget it. Pint’s good.’
‘Ron.’
‘Pint’s good, Ewe. Drop it.’
Sunday evening. Ron’s train left two hours ago. I’m at Laurence’s flat. Surfacing.
‘My brother suspects.’ Into his neck. We’re on the bed, still dressed, my face against his collar—soap, coffee, skin.
Laurence’s arms tighten around me.
‘Does he know it’s me?’
‘No. But he will.’ My voice is smaller than I want it to be. ‘He’s going to find out, Laurence. He doesn’t stop.’
Silence. His hand on my back, tracing my spine. Just that.
‘I don’t want you to get hurt.’
‘I’m not going to get hurt.’
‘Ewan.’ The name, soft and certain. ‘Your brother loves you. Whatever he does—remember that.’ Strange thing to say, from him.
I pull back. Look at him, tired and worried. He knows what comes next because he’s lived it. Cambridge, Hugo. A career.
I kiss him. His mouth is the only place the fear stops.
Slow. His hands on my face, my hands on his chest. I’m here. I’m not leaving—two bodies holding on against what’s coming.
After: his arm across me. The familiar weight. His heartbeat under my ear.
‘Whatever happens.’ Half-asleep, vowels blurred. ‘This was real.’
His breathing. The rain. The drawer with my things, the toothbrush, and the trainers under the bed.
Real. It settles into the dark like a key into a lock.