Chapter 18
18
ISAAC
Joe’s advocacy work keeps him away for longer than the week he’d hoped for, but that’s okay. He calls every evening, filling a nightly gap that Mum’s missing calls have left vacant.
He must have practised reading stories, putting in enough work that Lenny doesn’t critique his delivery while Tor shares his pillow. Later, we speak as I’m propped on my own pillows, Joe right there with me, and I can’t care about this sensation of falling, this leap of trust I never thought I’d make but is easy whenever he smiles out from my phone screen.
He asks me about everything and nothing. About my work, which settles into an increasingly easy rhythm of shelving books and helping children to tell their own stories. Joe asks about my brother, and I tell him about Len’s second visit to Sealife School. “The waves were too high outside the harbour for a boat trip. It’s looking better for this weekend. He can go spot some seals if we don’t hear from Mum about a visit. You better watch out.”
“Why?”
“Len’s got a thing for Luke’s dad now. Got a whole new case of hero worship brewing.”
“Not on my watch.”
We chat shit, joking and teasing. We also tell the truth to each other. I hear that loud and clear one night when he rubs at tired eyes in a shadowed bedroom.
“Busy day with your hot chocolate client?”
“Amongst others, but yeah. Kwasi’s trial date is rushing up and he’s refused to walk into a courtroom twice now. Still gotta keep trying.”
Joe’s told me so much about his work that I can almost picture this teen who could be Teo or Noah, only without their chance to escape knife crime central.
“One minute, he’s acting like a top boy, you know? King of the heap. Scared of nothing. The next, he’s shitting bricks about being in the same room as the real version.”
His top-boy term doesn’t belong in Cornwall. Like fed and fam and bruv , it’s a whole other language that Joe reminds me of while wincing.
“They made him feel like family. Included, yeah? Like he had a future in their organisation. Gave him a ladder to climb out of Wintergreen, only to find out it led straight down to where they really wanted him. A drone at the bottom of the heap doing their dirty work for them. A fall guy. A pawn, like me.”
“Like you were.”
“Yeah.” Him scrubbing at his face asks for a change of subject, so I ask about his pregnant sister-in-law.
“Meera?” I don’t know how he ever passed for a criminal when he can smile with this much sweetness. “She’s changed her mind about the shade I painted the nursery. Said Josh wondered about me and Dad getting it done with him once and for all.” His smile fades. “That’s not happening. It’s a nursery, not a three-man project. I mean, all three of us could do it, but…” He looks away, his next glance full of feeling. “Tell me a story with a happy ending, yeah?”
I do, sharing happier news with him about video calls and prison visits being on our horizon thanks to a chaplain’s intervention, but his smile doesn’t touch his eyes, so I reposition my phone and try harder for that happy ending.
“Once upon a time, a librarian wanted his boyfriend to push his sheets down a little lower.”
Joe smiles, and fuck me, that’s better.
“Boyfriend? Moving a little fast there, aren’t you?”
“Fast?” I shrug. “Doesn’t feel fast to me. I started reading this story a whole year ago. You want me to go even slower?”
“Nope. I’m just saying that I don’t know the rules for storytelling. The last time someone read me a bedtime story, it was Thomas the Tank Engine . I’m all aboard this boyfriend choo-choo. Keep going.”
I do.
“That librarian wanted his boyfriend to push his bed sheets down, but his boyfriend wouldn’t take the hint.” I point at my own sheets pooled low at my hips.
“What a fucking muppet.”
“Tell me about it.” I smile so hard my face aches, and yes, there are hundreds of miles between us, but Joe’s with me and that does something to my voice box. “So he had to show his boyfriend what he wanted.” I shove my own sheets all the way down to show him what he does to me.
His voice pitches lower. “Then what happened?”
“His boyfriend copied.”
Joe does, and if I wasn’t thinking with my dick, I’d do a little happy dance like Asa, only not for catching a crab. I’d do it for Joe baring himself without hesitation. To be fair, I’m not interested in what acid etched on his surface, in scars that don’t register beyond being part of the one man I never stopped thinking about.
Now my gaze locks on his hard-on, his does on mine, and I’m done with the talking part of storytelling. This section is all about adding actions.
“Yeah?” His breath catches. “Show me.”
I do, and his hand around his cock flexes while mine models a slow slide followed by faster movement. He holds his phone closer when I pay the head of my dick some attention with spit-slick fingers.
I close my eyes to Joe watching closely, then open them to a question.
“Does the librarian want his boyfriend to copy his actions or to keep watching?”
“Copy.” My mouth dries, my dick so hard for this audience of one who narrows his eyes when I lick my fingers again. My breathing picks up. So does his hand, speeding in a race to an ending he almost spoils by reminding me of actions I once made in a school library.
“Just warn me if you’re gonna do the robot. Not sure I got the coordination.”
And yeah, it takes longer than a week for him to come back to Glynn Harber, but that’s okay. I’m used to countdowns.
At least we get to laugh our way through this one together.
I shouldn’t be surprised by Luke stalking the library daily. I still jump when he speaks from behind me weeks after I first started to make this space mine. “These are new.”
He’s found my most recent addition to a storytelling corner. “The capes? Ruth helped me make them.” I unfurl shimmering fabric, heavy with silver sequins. “Because why only read about heroes when you could be one?”
“Speaking of hero worship.” Luke looks through another window, and my heart stops.
Joe has arrived a day ahead of an extended schedule we’ve both been counting down to.
Lenny is with him. So is the padre’s son, busy gifting him with dandelions and daisies that Joe accepts. He meets my gaze with only a glass pane between us instead of a phone screen, and I’m so fucking pleased to see him.
“He rang first thing to say he’d had a cancellation and could head back today.” Luke pauses. “You were busy with the little ones. I guessed that him coming early wouldn’t be a problem. It’s an extra day for him to get to know the sixth-form cohort before testing the waters about a longer run of workshops.” He lowers his voice as if Joe could hear him through the window. “That’s still good with you?”
I nod. It’s more than good. Frankly, I’m not sure it could be any better until Luke shares that he has more news for me. “I also just got confirmation that the prison service has added the school landline to your mother’s approved list. You can take calls in here. Or maybe somewhere else would be more private.”
I follow him a short way along the hallway to the pastoral care room. “You wouldn’t need to worry about being overheard or overlooked in here. The room is entirely private right down to the reflective window.” He unlocks a desk drawer. “And I’m sure Hugo would be fine with you using this tablet for video calls, so you have a decent-sized screen. All you’d need to do first is?—”
I’m an old hand at this. “Install the app and request a call.” I take the tablet. “I’m on it.”
I do it right away, so intent that I forget Luke is with me until he says, “Well, will you look at that?” He closes in on the window, and if I needed proof that no one can see inside here, he gives it by standing with his hands on his hips, blatantly staring. Or observing, rather, like the man he mentions. “Dad said he thought Lenny wasn’t far off from getting completely verbal.” This sounds wondering from him. “He’s come close with me a few times at breakfast lately. Forgot to be quiet and felt safe enough to let go of that tight rein. He’s already there with Joe, isn’t he?”
“Maybe because Joe was around when Lenny was still talking.”
“He’ll be a chatterbox with everyone before you know it.” Luke is so like his dad that I’d point out they’ve even made the same promise if I wasn’t too busy wishing and hoping for that outcome.
Especially for Mum.
Soon, please.
The tablet pinging is perfectly timed. I focus on it instead of letting Luke witness how much I want that for her. I can’t pretend I’ve got my shit together once I read the notification.
“Trouble?” Luke’s shoulders square for me like I’ve seen once already, even though the only trouble I have right now is making myself sound as calm as a real school librarian should.
My voice fucking trembles at getting at least one wish granted. “Mum can make a video call today.”
I didn’t expect to see her face-to-face this soon. I only have one wish—that prison rules wouldn’t preclude Joe from being with us when our time slot comes around a few hours later. The call finally connects to show her, pale as fuck but smiling, and Joe being with us is the only way this could be better.
Then he’d get the reward of witnessing what seeing Mum for the first time in almost two months does to my little brother.
For once, Len doesn’t cry or sit in silence. In fact, he asks a surprising question.
“Do you know how to catch a crab, Mum?”
My eyes sting at her surprise, at her relief to hear him speaking, and at her shaky, still smiling, answer. “No, baby, I don’t. Do you?”
“Yes!” He tells her how that happened, and this isn’t how our calls usually go, but I’ll take this animated version even if I don’t get to say much. Lenny does all the talking for me. “I’ll teach you soon.” That word has new meaning for him, and all because of the man outside this window.
Joe sits all alone at a picnic bench, leafing through a scrapbook missing a page. I don’t need that old map leading straight to prison. Having him here, Lenny talking, and Mum in the same room as us feels like finding triple treasure.
Because of him.
Joe looks up as if he hears me thinking, and I see a reminder of his twin in this expression. He’d been stern in that photo of him and Joe together. Black and white, Joe had called him, only this real-life frown looks more worried to me.
About us.
I wish even harder that he had sat in on this call and got to hear Lenny yap-yap-yapping about puppies and about sheepdogs. About his new besties, Tor and Hadi and Asa. “He fell in a rock pool again, Mum, and Mr. Lawson saved him. Not our Mr. Lawson. His daddy.” He leans close to the screen. “He said I didn’t miss the boat trip. I can go on Saturday to see some seals and a castle.” He winces, as if he doesn’t want to hurt her. “But I might need to come to see you.”
Mum presses her lips together instead of filling his silence like usual.
Lenny does it for himself, nowhere close to done with telling her news I know must make her happy. It must also be painful to hear this from him. “Ruth made a new cape for my Silver Man, and I drew her a picture of the lambs Noah showed me on his farm.”
She chokes this out. “You’ve been to a farm, baby?”
“Not a baby.” Lenny chuffs like he always used to, and like I’d almost forgotten. “Joe came to the farm with us the first time and I sat on his shoulders until I liked dogs and now he’s come back and Isaac is happy again.”
When she finally gets a few words in, Mum chokes again, only with laughter. “Joe makes Isaac happy?”
Lenny chuffs again as if the whole world already knows this. “Every time he comes back, Isaac gets all smiley.”
Phrases like “come back” usually lead to Lenny upsetting himself by asking, “When are you coming home?” Today, he doesn’t, and I can’t lie, my eyes sting all over again at him skipping that question. He’s way too busy telling Mum that home is with a woman she hasn’t met. Who she might never if she won’t share the name of who brought the drug squad to our front door to splinter both it and our family.
“Ruth needs me to sit next to her on movie night in case she gets scared in the dark, and she reads my bedtime story. She’s good, but Joe reads it even better. The same story he gave me!”
Lenny can’t notice that Mum shows what I’ve seen in my own mirror. Or at least what it used to reflect before we got to Glynn Harber.
She’s defeated.
She doesn’t need to move a muscle to show it. I can tell that she’s beaten by what has to sound like proof that she isn’t needed. That life is going on without her.
I don’t know how the fuck she can find the smile she summons to show Len or how the hell she can ask a teasing question. “What is it about Joes and your brother? This is the second one Isaac has got all smiley about.” She softens. “I could see it when you first used to visit. You wouldn’t stop talking about Lenny’s helper, remember?”
“It’s the same Joe!”
I stop Len from spilling more about what I had no idea Mum had noticed. “Yeah, Joe was Lenny’s school welfare officer. He has a different job now. We met again by accident.”
Lenny only states the truth. “Joe’s here for my friend Noah.” Heat still climbs my neck because I’m pretty sure that Joe is here for me. I change the subject in a hurry.
“We’re nearly out of time. Mum, are my emails getting to you now?”
She nods.
“And the photos I’ve been attaching?”
“No.” She slumps in her seat, and just like that, I can’t pretend she’s free to make her own decisions. Someone else has decided for her. I also can’t pretend I don’t see another flicker of defeat that gets me speaking up in a hurry.
“I’ll send some more.”
“He takes lots of Joe,” Lenny offers.
“Well, you better make sure to send me a few of him.” She closes her eyes for a long moment. They’re so much brighter when they reopen. “Then stop taking photos for me, Isaac. Focus on enjoying yourself, yeah?” Her gaze landing on Len looks as soft as velvet. “Listen, baby. About that boat trip. You want to go spot some seals?”
Len nods.
She flashes a look my way. “Even if your brother needed to come see me?”
“You got a date for a visit?”
She nods at me. “Yes. This Saturday. I think the chaplain fixed it.” She speaks to Len. “Maybe Ruth could go seal spotting with you, baby. Or?—”
“Mr. Lawson and his daddy?” Len nods again. “Both of them are coming.”
“Then you go do that. Go and see lots of seals, just as long as you draw me a picture afterwards, yeah?” She swallows. I hear that dry click all the way from London. “Because I need to have a boring grown-up talk with your brother, and London is a long way to come to just be bored, right? You can come next time, and I can video call every week now, so you stay right there.”
She sells Cornwall to someone who doesn’t take much convincing.
“It sounds like a good place for fresh starts.” She clenches her jaw as if holding something back while outside in the courtyard, Joe turns a scrapbook page and unfolds a leaflet about breaking harmful patterns. “That’s all I want for both of you. A fresh start.”
“And for you.” I so want to keep this promise. “You’ll get a fresh start of your own here soon.”
Lenny repeats what it took Joe to prove to us both. “Soon used to take a long time, Mum. Now it keeps coming quicker and quicker.”
And our call is also over quicker than any of us want. At least Lenny holds it together over saying goodbye for the first time in forever. “I’ll see you soon, Mum,” he promises and catches the kiss she blows him, but it’s Joe I see even sooner. And it’s Joe keeping Lenny busy while I rewind and replay how Mum ended our conversation as soon as the door closed behind Len.
Keep him safe.
That shouldn’t have sounded final, like her handing him over to me for good.
Thank you, baby.
I’m almost certain she thanked the wrong person, but Mum doesn’t know that every time I track back to how we got here, Joe’s the reason.
Yes, I made my own luck without him, but even then, he was my incentive—I wanted to prove I didn’t need him. That he broke my trust.
He didn’t.
Now I want to dig through that time capsule for an envelope holding a map and a picture of Lenny holding the hand of his real hero. I’d scrub out my own name and label it Joe da Silva if it hadn’t already been buried.
It’s Joe who Mum should thank, and I hope the fuck she gets to.
Maybe he could come with me.
It’s probably too late to add him to her visitor list for this weekend, but the idea stays with me all the way through bath and bedtime.
It’s still on my mind much later when Lenny’s tucked up after a bedtime story neither Ruth nor I needed to read now Joe’s here, and my brother’s favourite narrator walks me back to my new staff rooms later.
It’s dark outside. Inside too, once I enter. Joe still sees enough to pause in the doorway and ask a question instead of following. “You okay?”
Maybe whatever stole my brother’s voice is infectious, and perhaps Joe guesses. He speaks for me like he used to do for Lenny in front of social workers. “I guessed something was on your mind after your video call. Lenny came out all smiles. You…” He catches hold of my chin. Not for long. Only for the few seconds it takes for him to scan my soul, it feels like. “You kept looking at me.”
I do that again now, even though he’s shadowed. I don’t need any more light. I already know what he looks like.
So fucking good, inside and out.
I want Mum to see the same as me, so I don’t argue when Joe flicks on the living room light. I get my phone out instead.
“What are you doing?”
“Keeping a promise. Told Mum I’d send her some photos. Doing it before I forget.” Or before I can second-guess adding image after image to an email while the subject of so many of them is right beside me. Joe watches me select a shot of Lenny reuniting with him beside a harbour.
“Killer smile.”
He’s looking at my brother. Lenny isn’t who holds my attention, but I nod and add another image.
“Wait.”
He makes me pause over a shot taken only a half hour ago at Lenny’s bedside. It’s already my all-time favourite.
“I’m in this one too.”
I nod. Then I shake my head. “I won’t send them if you don’t want me to.” I pause instead of adding it. “But you do look really good.”
“Even with…” His finger hovers over the screen and over what I’m too slow to notice. He spells out what his rolled-up sleeves have left on show in this photo. “Kinda hard to see anything good-looking about those.”
I want to tell him that Mum is the last person to judge a book by its cover. It matters to Joe, so I offer to delete it. “I don’t have to send them. Mum wanted to see you, that’s all. And I wanted her to see how much Lenny loves having you back in his life. And how much I do.”
I also can’t help loving how he flushes or how low his voice gets when he gives his permission. I’m less of a fan of him changing the subject like he can’t handle hearing how much he’s wanted.
“Nice place you got here.” He touches a horseshoe nailed to an oak beam. “Old stables, right?” He frowns the same way now as the first time I let him into emergency accommodation only fit for roaches. “Is it big enough for both you and Lenny?”
“It’s plenty big enough.” I show him, giving Joe a whistle-stop tour of a kitchen, of a bathroom, and of where my throat tightens.
“Lenny’s room,” Joe says from beside me in the doorway of a bedroom decorated with stars and planets and spaceships. “You made it really nice for him.”
“It wasn’t me. Hayden’s boyfriend painted the mural. Ruth found the same fabric as his bedding for the curtains.” I point to a toy box. “Luke brought over a ton of action figures.” Pretty much every teacher has popped in with welcome presents. “But Len’s refusing to move in while Tor is still a boarder. Once his parents come back to the mainland and Tor goes home, he’ll probably change his mind and move in with me.”
I tell him what still feels weird to me.
“The first time I almost left home, I ended up staying to help Mum. The second time, you came to get me when I’d only been gone for a few months. Now I finally got my own place like I always wanted, and I don’t like it. Being alone, I mean.” I finally say what has beenon my mind since the video call ended. “I think Mum wants to see me without Len because she’s definitely made her mind up. She’s gonna plead guilty and hope for a lesser sentence, all so that she doesn’t have to name someone who could take it out on us. Her doing that will still mean years for Len without her.”
“And for you.”
I don’t care about myself.
Joe does.
“You don’t have to be alone with that. You don’t have to face any of it all by yourself. I’m not going anywhere.” His lips brush where my jaw hinges, his breath across my ear warm and tingling. His lips linger, and I have to close my eyes against this much sensation. Against what else he tells me. “I mean, I know I’m only here until Thursday to get to know the sixth-form students, and I’m staying at the Rectory, but we could make it work after that. I’ve got one hell of an incentive to try. Two of them.” His teeth find the edge of my ear. “If you wanted.”
The tip of his tongue melts me.
I melt even more at how much I do want him around for longer, and fuck history repeating like it did for someone whose only crime was falling head over heels for the wrong person.
Joe’s different.
He can’t be bad news like Mum’s exes, and he definitely isn’t unwanted, like his family seem to have convinced him.
This comes out louder than I intended. “Come with me when I visit? I mean, it’s probably too late to add you to her visitor list, but?—”
“You would if you could? You’d ask her to add me?”
I nod. “For next time. But I could meet you after my visit this weekend, if you aren’t busy painting with your fam.”
“Painting?” He snorts, then looks anywhere but at me. “I won’t be. I’ll only be busy on Friday morning, dodging more hot chocolate. I can’t miss that. It’s Kwasi’s last chance to face his fear in private.”At least Joe holds me again, bringing his mouth to my ear as if he can’t risk anyone overhearing. “You’d really want me with you?”
“Y-yes.” I’d sound more definite if he didn’t breathe across my ear all over again. My knees almost buckle at the sensation. “Yes,” I say more firmly. “Who wouldn’t?”
Everything I’ve noticed floods back like waves did my first night in Cornwall.
“Does your fam really still give you shit because of these?” I’d never want to hurt him, but I risk touching the edge of where acid splashed him. Each mark on his skin is his reason for being gentle. He knows pain I can’t even imagine and found more strength through surviving than I could hope to fathom.
I find more strength of my own then, and yeah, Joe’s a solid fucker, dark and dangerous at first glance. If he’d prowled my way late at night in our part of London, I would have run in the other direction. Here, in a Cornish hallway, he doesn’t scare me. I’m only scared that he doesn’t believe what I grit out while backing him towards my bedroom.
“They should hold it against whoever did this to you. Prison’s too good for them. I’d take down every single thing they valued. Burn it all down.” How often have I thought this for Mum? “You know what I’d leave behind? Fucking ashes. That’s what your family should want to do for you.” I cup his face with both hands so he can’t avoid this. “And they should miss you like I did.”
Forget Joe being gentle.
I’m pressed up against the hallway wall so fast it’s almost violent.
My breath gets knocked from me, and he’s between my legs, kissing for so long I’m almost smothered, and there’s no breaking free from this hold, this iron grip that hooks my thighs and hoists me like I weigh nothing as he backs into my bedroom with his mouth still fixed to mine.
And forget Mum teaching me that history always repeats. Yes, Joe dropped me once.
He drops me again now, only this time he doesn’t leave without looking back.
Today, my back hits a mattress, and he joins me.