Chapter Twenty-Eight
Colin let himself off the bus at the stop opposite Stephen’s building on Thursday evening, his work bag still on his shoulder.
He’d thought about ringing ahead the whole journey from Pimlico, and decided against it, because Stephen was very good at finding reasons not to be in when he didn’t want to have a conversation.
Colin let himself into Stephen’s flat with his own key and found Stephen and Ryland at the kitchen table, Stephen still in his work shirt with the cuffs rolled, Ryland with a colour-coded meal planner open in front of him.
“Daddy.” Stephen got up to put the kettle on. “You should’ve said you were coming. I’d have set us up with a proper dinner.”
“Sit down, love. I won’t be long. I’m just popping by on my way to Diwa’s.”
Stephen sat. His shoulders pulled back at the name, the line of his jaw tightening before he’d had a chance to school it. Ryland’s eyes flicked sideways to him, clearly watching for a detonation.
“Diwa’s coming to this Sunday lunch at my place.” Colin pulled out the chair opposite Stephen and lowered himself onto it. “Remember, you said yourself you wanted to meet with him again. This time you’re going to be good to him, Stephen.”
Stephen’s jaw set. “Daddy —”
“He’s had a hard week with his business. I’m not going into the details, that story’s his to tell, but it’s been bad and I’m not having him ambushed over a lamb joint. Are we clear?”
“I wasn’t going to ambush him.”
“You were absolutely going to ambush him. You can’t help yourself, Stephen, you’ve got a barrister’s brain and a barrister’s mouth, but I love you anyway.”
Stephen folded his arms across his chest. “I just don’t see why I’m meant to roll out the red carpet for someone I’ve still got reservations about.”
“Because he’s coming to my home, on my invitation, and you’re going to be there as my son and not as opposing counsel.”
Ryland had started rocking back and forth.
“Stephen.” Colin’s tone softened. “Love. I’m sorry I’ve put you in a position where you worry about me this much. That’s on me. I’ve spent your entire life giving you reasons to think I needed looking after.”
“Daddy, no.” Stephen’s hand came down flat on the table, hard enough to rattle the salt grinder. “You’ve got nothing to apologise for.”
“I know there’s a fair chance this thing with Diwa won’t last. I’m not stupid.
He’s twenty-eight and he’s got the whole world in front of him, and I’m an omega with bad knees, and one day he might wake up and work that out.
” Colin reached across the table and put his hand over Stephen’s.
“But I’m willing to take that risk, because I feel safe enough with him to want to.
Diwa’s earned that from me. And I’m asking you to try to get to know him, because he’s a part of my life now, Stephen. ”
Stephen looked at Colin’s hand on his. His throat moved.
“It’s just…” His voice came out thin and young. He cleared his throat and tried again. “It’s just that I can see exactly how this ends, Daddy. He’ll get bored, through no fault of yours, or he’ll get called back to California. And I can’t stand the thought of you getting hurt…”
“Maybe.” Colin didn’t take his hand away. “Or maybe not. But that’s not a reason to keep him out of my life now.”
Stephen’s other hand came up and pressed against his eyes. He held it there for a long moment. When he dropped it, his eyelashes were wet.
“Fine,” he said. “Sunday. But if he says something stupid and new age, I’m allowed to call him out on it.”
“That’s my good lad. I don’t hold myself back either when he yammers on, and don’t expect you to.” Colin stood, leaned down, and kissed Ryland on the cheek on his way out.
? ? ?
Diwa stayed over at Colin’s on Saturday night, ostensibly to help with the lamb prep for Sunday lunch, though his contributions to the preparation had so far consisted of reorganising the spice rack by region of origin and asking whether Colin owned a meat thermometer.
His visit was the reason the armchair died.
Its rickety demise had been coming for years.
The frame had developed a creak sometime around the twins’ GCSEs.
For years the left armrest wobbled if you leaned on it too hard.
Colin had re-glued the joints twice and hammered a brace across the back leg, and the chair had repaid his efforts by holding together through another decade of evenings.
It did not survive a jackhammering Diwa.
The leg gave first, letting out a sharp crack that Colin felt through his knees where they were braced on the seat cushion, and then the whole thing listed sideways and deposited the two of them onto the lino in a tangle of splintered wood and upholstery foam.
Diwa, still inside him, said “Oh my God” in a voice that suggested the structural failure of the chair had alarmed him more than the fact that Colin was now spread out on the cold kitchen floor.
Colin rocked back against Diwa. “Finish what you started,” he said, and Diwa complied.
The chair went out with the bins on Sunday morning.
Colin broke the frame down with a claw hammer, stuffed the cushion into a black bag, and had the whole lot in the communal skip before Diwa was out of the shower.
The gap it left in the front room was noticeable, leaving faded rectangles on the carpet where the legs had sat for fifteen years.
But Colin put the side table over the worst of it and got on with the lamb.
He was checking the potatoes when Diwa appeared in the kitchen doorway, freshly shaved, and staring at the front room.
“Colin.”
“Mm.”
“The chair’s gone.”
“I binned it. You were there when it broke, Diwa.”
“He’ll notice.” Diwa’s voice had gone tight. “You said yourself you’ve had it since your boys were small. He’ll notice it’s missing, and he’ll know what we did.”
Colin turned the potatoes over with a fork. “So you think my son will walk in, clock a missing armchair, and immediately conclude that it was destroyed because you had me on it.”
“Yes, Colin. That’s the only logical conclusion.”
“Not the fact that, as I’ve mentioned, it was thirty years old and held together with wood glue and stubbornness?”
Diwa opened his mouth, and the knock came before he could overthink things even further. Colin wiped his hands on the tea towel and went to the door.
Stephen stood on the landing in his good coat, Ryland a half-step behind him with a bottle of red in one hand and his car keys in the other. Stephen’s gaze moved past Colin’s shoulder and found Diwa hovering by the kitchen doorway.
“You all right, Diwa?”
Colin watched Diwa’s face cycle through three emotions in under a second before settling on something that resembled composure. “Yeah! Good, thanks. Really good. Come in.”
Ryland stepped forward, extended his free hand for a handshake that lasted precisely long enough to qualify as one, and thrust the wine at Diwa’s chest. Diwa caught it with both hands.
“It’s a Malbec,” Ryland said, already moving past him towards the kitchen. “Stephen selected it. The tannin structure should complement lamb.”
Stephen followed Ryland in, shrugging off his coat, and made it three steps into the front room before he stopped.
“Daddy.” His voice had gone flat. “What happened to the armchair?”
“Gave out under Diwa yesterday.” Colin hung Stephen’s coat on the hook by the door without looking round. “Couldn’t salvage it. Had to throw it out.”
Behind him, Diwa made a sound like a man choking on his own tongue.
Stephen stared at the side table sitting over the faded rectangle on the carpet, and his face took on the devastation of a son confronted with the destruction of a childhood landmark. “That was our chair, Daddy. We’ve had that chair since Lysander and I were seven.”
“I know, love. It was old.”
“It wasn’t just old, it was…I used to do my homework in that chair. Lysander fell asleep in it every single Christmas.” Stephen turned to Diwa, whose neck had gone the colour of a ripe tomato.
“I was just sitting on it,” Diwa said. “Just sitting.”
“Yeah. What else would you be doing on a chair?” Stephen sniped.
“Standing on it to reach a high shelf,” Ryland said. “Reading. Napping. Stretching, if the armrests are at the correct height for triceps dips. Folding laundry, though a wider flat surface would be more efficient—”
Stephen’s hand landed flat on Ryland’s chest, tapping twice, without looking at him, and Ryland quieted instantly.
Ryland had a sheaf of papers tucked under his arm, which Colin had clocked when they’d come through the door but hadn’t thought much of.
Ryland always had papers. He read constantly on subjects that ranged from soil microbiology to the structural failings of Victorian plumbing.
Colin had once found a highlighted printout about the optimal pH of sourdough starter wedged between the sofa cushions after a Sunday visit, annotated in Ryland’s small, precise handwriting with notes that included the phrase requires further investigation.
The lamb came out well. Colin carved it at the counter while Stephen laid the table, working around each other in the narrow kitchen the way they’d done since Stephen was old enough to reach the cutlery drawer.
Diwa hovered near the doorway until Colin handed him the gravy boat and pointed him at the table with his chin.
The kitchen table seated four if nobody minded their elbows touching, and tonight two of the four minded very much. Stephen had angled his chair towards Ryland, while Diwa kept adjusting his as though a few extra centimetres of clearance might protect him from Stephen’s peripheral vision.
Colin served the meal, simple and hearty; Lamb, roast potatoes, carrots, and peas from a tin because frozen ones were a con. Stephen poured the Malbec. The silence that settled over the table had a density to it that choked out the possibility of conversation.