Chapter 30
In the dream, Noah was always wearing the same thing: that pink silk shirt he loved, a pair of paint-splattered jeans and nothing on his feet.
He wouldn’t notice Adam at first but then, suddenly he would look up and a breath would catch in his throat.
Adam would reach for Noah and with one hand on his waist and the other grasping at the nape of his neck, Adam would bring Noah to his lips.
Soft, light kisses at first, and each time Adam pulled away Noah’s kaleidoscope eyes would be wide with wonder.
Adam would take Noah’s hand and lay its palm on his bare chest. The next time their lips met there would be something hungrier there, less curious, more ravenous.
As Adam pulled Noah’s slight but sturdy frame towards him, Noah would turn his head just enough to take Adam’s thumb into his mouth and then it was Adam’s turn to catch his breath. Then Noah’s hand would move downwards.
It was at this point that Adam would trail the silk from Noah’s shoulders and run his teeth across Noah’s collarbones just as he felt the tease of fingertips against his waistband.
Adam heard himself panting, fixated on the scene before him.
Noah was a little tentative at first, brushing and teasing against him.
But with time, he would build up his confidence, his grip growing firmer.
And then there was his mouth and Adam was throbbing with impatience.
Adam’s fingers would snake into Noah’s loose dark curls as he sank deeply into the satisfaction of being consumed.
At the moment that he came, as his thoughts grew first frantic and then utterly still, he would open his eyes and find himself alone in bed.
And the sheets dampened with the evidence of his wanting.
Adam lay still, catching his breath and waiting for his heart to stop beating as fast. This was the third night in a row that he had dreamt of Noah, and somehow Adam still woke up disappointed and ever so slightly disbelieving that it wasn’t real.
It had been a long time since he’d had a spate of wet dreams. He thought back to the first time, when he would wake up shaking with guilt and sweaty with shame.
How he would lie to his mother the next morning and tell her that the sheets balled up in the laundry basket were stained with urine as the result of a nightmare.
That had seemed like the better option, for her to think of her son as pathetic, rather than perverted.
And then there had been the times when he was living with Joshua.
It had only been a couple of weeks and Adam was sleeping on the sofa, in the days before Joshua got his big break.
Adam had woken up one early autumn morning to find his cock rock hard and sticky.
He’d panicked and rushed around trying to find somewhere to hide the blanket he’d slept with.
Joshua found him, with his boxers soiled and frantically trying to stuff the blanket under the sofa.
Adam had looked up and locked eyes with Joshua, the familiar sting of shame prickling the skin all over his body.
But then Joshua burst out laughing. Huge bellows of sound that caught Adam so off guard that he too began to giggle.
Soon the pair of them were wiping tears from their eyes.
‘I think you might be even hornier than I was at your age, and that is saying something.’ Joshua’s words had felt like a balm on a wound so gaping that Adam hadn’t been able to face the pain of even acknowledging it.
It was acceptance. It was the first time he had felt both understood and loved in the same instant.
Previously those two things had felt mutually exclusive, and then in a single throwaway sentence Joshua had rearranged Adam’s entire world, and his standing in it.
He was capable of being loved. It would take many more years for Adam to feel deserving of it, but when he thought back now, the memory felt searingly poignant.
Adam got that feeling, just then – the one he’d had a few times since Joshua died – as though he were being watched.
It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling; in fact it was comforting, like the admiring gaze of a lover in a moment of domestic mundanity.
When you catch them staring at the way you make a cup of tea, or the face you make in the mirror whilst brushing your teeth.
Adam felt as though Joshua was there with him, smiling proudly, just outside of Adam’s line of vision.
As though if he could just find a mirror at just the right angle he might see Joshua standing there, arms crossed, hip popped, admiring this man that he had decided to love even more than a lover.
Joshua had decided to love Adam as a son.
Looking over at his alarm clock, Adam was surprised to see it was already midday.
He’d been finding it hard to get to sleep, and fallen back into his nocturnal tendencies.
At night his mind would race with new ideas, costumes, choreography, new music he needed to source.
Sometimes he wouldn’t notice the time until the sun began to bleed into his room around the heavy velvet curtains.
A light knock at the door. And he was suddenly once again filled with the panic of his adolescence.
Adam scrambled out of bed, but managed to keep his voice calm as he called ‘coming’.
He discarded the soggy briefs into the laundry basket, cringing momentarily at the thought that the cleaner who came a couple of times a week would encounter them on her next rounds.
Adam pulled a T-shirt over his head and a pair of plain jersey cotton trousers over his bare arse. He checked himself in the mirror. His hair was beginning to look a little too woolly for his liking, but he couldn’t imagine there were any decent barbers nearby. It would have to do.
Adam opened the door to Opal. She was wearing a brilliant red dress and holding a dry-cleaning bag in her hand.
The pair took a moment to eye each other.
Adam was surprised to see Opal looking so glamorous at this time of day, and he imagined Opal was having the opposite thought: that he looked unusually scruffy.
It was true that Adam had tried very hard to maintain appearances – it was one of the only commandments he’d retained from his strict Ghanaian upbringing.
The fastest route to making a good impression was to make sure that your shirt was impeccably ironed.
Up until that moment, no one had seen him look anything other than ‘put together’.
Opal’s eyes drifted downward, and her eyes widened ever so slightly.
With mounting horror, Adam realised that the fabric of the trousers he was wearing was …
indecently supple. That is to say that without underwear on he was almost certain that Opal could make out the outline of his not-so-long-ago arousal.
Opal cleared her throat as she dragged her gaze back up to Adam’s face. A flush of pink rose up her pale neck, and Adam felt thankful for the darkness of his own skin, which would never, so mortifyingly, betray him.
‘This is for you. I guessed at everyone’s size, but Martin’s tailor is popping by in an hour or so to drop off his suit so if there’s any alterations needed I’m sure he could help.’
Adam took the bag from her outstretched hand.
‘Thank you, Opal, that is very thoughtful of you.’ Adam had his own suit.
It was already pressed and hanging on the back of the door.
He wondered if Opal might be surprised to learn that he already owned an expensive suit.
Then again, maybe it was easier to assume everyone would need to be clothed, rather than go through the painful conversation with everyone individually.
‘How poor are you exactly?’ would have been the subtext.
Adam could understand why Opal might want to avoid that.
‘Guests will start arriving from around 3 p.m., so …’ Opal gave him another once-over ‘… not too long to go.’ Adam got the message.
‘I’ll get myself ready,’ Adam replied, grateful now to have something in his hands to hold in front of him.
‘Noah has been so kind as to offer to umm … “scent” the party and he has also set up some sort of sound system. He said he might ask you for help with that, but I thought I’d relay the message in case he’s too busy. He’s down in the ballroom.’
The mention of Noah’s name made Adam tense, and then immediately hope that Opal hadn’t noticed. It was getting trickier to keep the Noah of Adam’s imagination and the real Noah distinct in his mind.
As Adam thanked Opal and shut his door, he imagined waltzing into the ballroom, pulling Noah into his arms and whispering into his ear: ‘I can’t stop thinking about last night.
’ How strange it was that Noah wouldn’t know what he was talking about, that it could feel so real, and yet be so one-sided.
Adam showered and decided to wear his own suit.
The black tail coat that Opal had left felt gimmicky, like he was in costume.
He pulled the deep burgundy trousers up to his ribcage and donned the loose jacket.
Adam admired himself. Feeling Joshua’s presence again, he was sure this was the right choice.