Chapter Twenty-Four #2
“Yeah you do,” Jonah said, throwing caution to the wind by deciding to address the missing-Dexter phenomenon head-on.
They’d been not-casual for a month now, and Jonah thought he deserved to know what his boyfriend, if he could call him his boyfriend, did when he didn’t answer messages for two days and vanished off the face of the earth.
“I usually spend Sundays in the gym,” Dexter said, leaning forward to inspect his face in the mirror, tapping his fingers
along his flushed cheeks while pouting at himself. “And I like to step away from my phone for the day, otherwise I end up
endlessly scrolling and doing nothing with my day off.”
“Well, you could ignore your phone while doing something with me.” Jonah leaned against the wall as he watched Dexter admire
himself. “We could go to Brighton or something. We wasted the entire summer by not having a beach trip and now it’s basically
October, and we can’t sunbathe in October, Dex.”
“You would burn if you even tried to sunbathe.”
“I will have you know I go a lovely shade of pink in the sun.”
Dexter scoffed as he looked at him. “Ah, yes, pink, the color everyone hopes to achieve when sunbathing.” He raised an eyebrow
with a smirk. “Anyway, you do get to see me on a Sunday. I was over yours a couple of weeks ago and we had breakfast.”
“Yeah, then you ran away the moment you ate all my cereal. I’m just saying it would be nice to see you when we don’t have
to worry about doing shows.”
“What’s bought this on?” Dexter asked as he stood from his seat to grab his first costume. He wasted no time in taking his
top off, his eyes on Jonah as he did so, and he smiled when he saw the way Jonah’s gaze scanned his torso. “Like what you
see?”
“You know I do.”
“So, you just want me for my body, huh?”
“No,” Jonah said, crossing his arms over his chest. “We’ve never been on a date. Let me take you on a date. This Sunday. Please?”
The choreography for Bobby Child flashed into his mind; he promised Melanie he would spend his spare time drumming each tiny
movement into his head, but, surely, he could let himself relax for one day to date his maybe boyfriend.
Dexter, however, didn’t have a chance to answer, for Jonah’s phone rang loudly in his pocket, jolting him from his leaning position against the wall, unsure of when he turned the phone off silent; he didn’t even know it had a ringtone. He pulled it from his pocket and glanced down at the screen.
“It’s my mum,” he said, looking at Dexter. “Do you mind if I—”
“No, go ahead. Don’t ignore your mum.”
Jonah nodded, and while the phone still rung in his hand he stepped out of the dressing room and into the hallway. “Hey, Mum.”
He’d spoken to her almost every day since he called her in Richmond. The call back then left an unnerving beat in his veins,
one he needed to stamp out. He knew his dad was safe in the home, so he focused on the well-being of his mother.
Her tears were the first thing he heard. She’d been better recently; she sounded more like her old self, less slurred words
and full of gossip. He guessed the new medication was settling into her system, giving her a sense of normalcy. Or, that’s
what he hoped, at least. Dad even seemed happy in his new home. In fact, the last photo his mum sent to him showed his dad
looking healthier than he had in years, his cheeks no longer sinking into his skull, a smile on his face while he looked out
the window at the sea. For the first time in a very long time, Jonah could feel a weight lifting from him; his love life wasn’t
a total disaster, things were well back home, and he didn’t wake in the middle of the night in a cold sweat brought on by
the anticipation of something bad about to happen.
Which is why the tears caught him by surprise. “Mum, what’s wrong?”
“I need you,” she sobbed, words filled with alcohol; they flowed into each other, indistinct and strange. “Jonah, come home,
please come home.”
“Mum, I can’t,” he said and tried to ignore the plummeting feeling in his chest. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m all alone.” The three words wrapped around his heart and squeezed until he couldn’t breathe. Alone. She felt alone, and
the miles between them stretched even further.
“Can you go to a friend’s house?” Jonah asked. “Or call someone and get them to come to you? How about I call Aunt Penny?”
He heard his mum sniff before letting out another breathless cry. “No. I need you. I need my son.”
Jonah looked at the clock on the wall just above the sign-in sheet. He couldn’t leave now, not so close to a show, and even
if he did, he couldn’t get to her for hours. “Mum, what’s made you feel like this?”
“I was looking at the photo albums,” she said. “And it made me so sad. So sad. Jonah, I miss him, your dad, and I miss you,
and I don’t know what to do with myself anymore. Sometimes I think about just walking out into the sea and not coming back.”
Jonah froze. The words she said, the admission she made, even if she was under the influence of alcohol, chilled him to the
core. “Mum, I’m going to call Aunt Penny, okay? I will need to hang up to call her, but then I will call you right back. Do
you promise me you’ll answer?”
“Yes, sausage.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Jonah hung up the phone with shaking hands only for bigger, steadier hands to cover his. He looked to his left to see Dexter
beside him, Hector ready, with his mouth in a grim line as he searched Jonah’s face for an answer to what the call was about.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“No, I need to call my aunt,” Jonah said, gently moving from Dexter so he could scroll through his contacts. “I need to call
her quickly because I’m worried my mum’s going to hurt herself.”
“Shit. Okay. What can I do to help?”
Jonah paused as he found Penny’s name. “I don’t think I can go on tonight.” A lump worked its way to his throat as tears brimmed
at the edges of his eyes. “I need to get to her.”
“Make the calls you need to make. I’ll sort everything else out.
Go to your dressing room.” Dexter spoke with such confidence Jonah hung onto his every word and did exactly as he said.
His dressing room wrapped him in a warm hug and ushered him into his seat, where he finally called Penny and prayed she would answer.
“Jonah?”
“Aunt Penny,” he said, trying hard not to let his trembling voice break out into cries. “Can you get to mum?”
“Of course I can. What’s wrong?”
“She . . . she was slurring, she’s been drinking,” he said quickly. “She said something just now that’s terrified me, and
I don’t want anything to happen to her.”
“Was it about walking into the sea?”
“Yes, how did you—”
“Jonah?” The voice changed, and this time it was Sally on the other end as Jonah heard rustling in the background. “Penny’s
getting her coat on and will head over there now.”
“Has she said something like this before?”
Sally didn’t answer for several seconds before finally letting out a regretful sigh. “We decided not to tell you. We didn’t
want to worry you.”
“Tell me what?”
“Two days ago, she called Pen and said she was going to walk out into the sea and not come back. We drove over there and she
wasn’t in the house and we went down to the beach and there she was, in the sea. We took her to hospital. Penny stayed there
with her, but they came home this morning.”
“You should have told me.” He was crying freely now, unsure of how else to convey the excruciating pain in his chest. “I’m
coming home. I’ll get a train tonight and—”
“Jonah, we’ll look after her.”
“No, I need to be there. Penny’s on her way to her now? Is she? I need to call Mum again.”
“She just left.”
“Okay, thanks, Sally, thank you.”
He couldn’t stop crying, his eyesight blurring as more tears filled his eyes.
New hands found his, Bastien’s, and took the phone from his grip.
He turned Jonah to look at him before pulling him into a hug.
Jonah tried to talk, but words were lost. He needed to call her, he needed to know she was okay.
“I need to—”
“Who do you need to call?” Bastien asked, picking up Jonah’s phone. “Let me help.”
“Mum.”
“Okay, I’ll call her.” Jonah would have protested, would have told Bastien he didn’t need to get involved if he thought he
could pull himself together. But he didn’t want her to hear him like this. He couldn’t allow himself to show a weakness in
front of her; she needed him to be strong, to be there for her, but his own devastation stood in the way. So Bastien called
his mum. He paced in the dressing room, dressed as Patroclus, a ridiculous image of a Greek man on a mobile phone, and he
talked to her. Jonah listened as he rambled about nothing and everything all at once. He told her about his wedding plans,
about how he was moving to New York, and about the white fluffy dog he saw on the way to the theatre that afternoon. Jonah
could hear his mum’s voice whenever Bastien stepped close to him, and the tears she shed earlier were long gone; she spoke
to him with warmth, his voice clearly a comfort to her as she let out a laugh, and the tension in Jonah’s shoulders dissipated.
“Jonah?” Bastien said, snapping him out of staring at his red, blotchy face in the mirror. “It’s your aunt, she’s with your
mum and wants to talk to you.” He handed the phone to him, and he put it up to his ear, body numb.
“Jonah? I’m here, okay, she’s fine. Just . . . had one too many glasses of wine. I’ve told her to stop drinking with the medication
she’s taking, but . . . well, she hasn’t.” She spoke with a high-pitched voice, as if the higher her tone the better it would
be for his mum. “I’m going to bring her home with me. I’ll look after her, okay? I’ll call you in the morning. Please, don’t
worry. She’s fine.”
“Okay,” he said, his voice still shaking as fat tears rolled down his cheeks. “Tell her I love her.”
“I will.”
As he hung up the phone, Bastien knelt before him and rested his hand on Jonah’s knee. “Everything’s okay,” he said. “Omari’s
going to call you an Uber and you’re going to go home.”
“No. I need to get ready for the show.”
“Jonah, you can’t go on like this.”
“I’m fine.” He looked at the clock on his wall. “I’ve got twenty minutes.”
Bastien chewed his bottom lip as he wiped some of Jonah’s tears away. “Lennon’s already getting ready to go on, don’t push
yourself.”
“No.” Jonah jerked his head away from him and rubbed his hands over his skin, removing the tears and the salty tracks they
left behind. “I need this. I need my mind to be on something else.”
Bastien stood, his demeanor pensive, unsure, but he didn’t stop Jonah as he pulled off his clothes to get into his first costume.
“You’ve not been mic’d up,” he said. “Let me go get Sherrie.” He left the room quickly as Jonah focused on the costume, dressing
himself as quickly as he could before Sherrie came into the room with Dexter following behind her.
“Okay, let’s do this,” she muttered, pulling a makeup brush out of her bum bag to fix Jonah’s face. Her hands were trembling
slightly, cheeks flushed an angry red.
“Are you okay?” Jonah asked quietly, his own mind working overtime, but he couldn’t ignore her distressed expression.
“Hmm?” She shook her head slightly. “Just Romana, nothing for you to worry about, seriously. Let’s just get you ready, yeah?”
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Dexter commented from the doorway. “Jonah, go home.”
“No.”
“Jonah, I don’t think—”
“I’m going on,” Jonah snapped, making Sherrie flinch as she finished dusting his face with powder.
They didn’t understand, no one could understand, because they could never know just how his mind worked.
If he didn’t perform, then he would only go home and dwell on what his mum said to him and dream of her wading out into the water until her head disappeared beneath the waves.
And if he didn’t perform, Colbie would have another reason to add to her list of reasons to not renew his contract.
Achilles may not be his for much longer, but there was no chance in hell he would let him go without a fight.