25. Chasing My Tail
Chasing My Tail
Nine Months Earlier
Mash
It was loud, even by my standards. Everyone was drunk, the open bar already running low on certain types of alcohol. It was messy. I’d been into the men’s room for a piss and heard two people fucking in one stall and a third puking their guts up in another. And the food hadn’t been served yet.
The restaurant was one of those futuristic places, all white and grey and lit up with pink strip-neons. It usually sold tiny plates of overpriced stodge with the slogan “better with friends” or some shit like that.
Cian was struggling. They were his colleagues, but he’d already pulled in on himself, his defences up, shoulders hunched. From across the dining room, I saw folks attempt to talk to him, but he’d respond with a shake of the head and a tightly pursed mouth.
I needed to do something, save him, get him out of here, or get some decent food inside him to mop up all the booze. Or . . . not even decent food, but some food. He was likely hangry on top of being overstimulated and drunk.
A waiter wearing a white shirt and black waistcoat barged past me and I leapt into action. “’Scuse me, can I get some food? Only, my friend looks on the verge of passing out.”
The waiter huffed at me. “I’m so sorry,” he said in a way that suggested he was not in the least bit sorry, or even cared. “We’re running a little late. I don’t know when the food’s going to be ready. Probably in the next twenty minutes.”
“Someone told me it’d be twenty minutes half an hour ago.”
The waiter simply shrugged, then disappeared into the kitchen area.
I looked at Ci, who stared vacantly back at me. I wanted to tell him I was going to bust into the kitchens and save the day—a smash and grab kinda job—but the music was too loud to shout over, and the lighting was too dim for lip reading.
So, I would just have to do the crime and bring him the spoils. I turned around, and one of his colleagues—Jo, I think her name was—grabbed my face with both her hands and pulled my lips down to hers.
In an instant, her tongue was in my mouth. She tasted of alcopops, of sugar and artificial raspberry.
“Geddoffme!” I yelled, pushing her away.
“Sorry,” she said, looking both upset with me and herself.
When I turned around again, Cian was gone. Vanished. My gaze flitted over to the lift panels, to the red LED number climbing higher and higher . . . eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, fourteen, R, where it stopped.
Fine, if I couldn’t get food from the actual waiters, there was another place for me to go. I walked over to the lifts, collected my jacket from the coat stand on the way, and threw it on. I pressed the button for level ten instead of the roof, even though I knew that’s where Ci was.
There was a vending machine on ten. Cian always complained about how there was never anything healthy in them, but I didn’t care. Neither of us could afford to be choosy right now. I used my credit card and bought one of every type of chocolate bar. After rooting around in the desks on Ci’s floor, I located some thick parcel-style tape and stuck each candy to the inside of my jacket. Then I took the lift to the roof.
I found Cian perched on the end of a barren planter, staring out over the city. The motion-sensor lights of the office building had switched themselves off, and the only thing illuminating him was the soft glow of the moons on his cheek and the lights from the office block opposite.
He wore his fancy suit without a tie. He had a foot up on the planter opposite him, and his breath puffed out in little white clouds in front of his face. He looked peaceful.
And so beautiful.
I’d thought it before, how beautiful my friend was, and at the time it felt like a weird thing to notice. But now . . . now I could happily gaze at him all night.
He heard my footsteps and turned his head.
“Mash?” Cian held his hand above his brows, shielding his eyes from the newly activated motion-sensor lights. He squinted in my general direction.
“Wanna smoke?” I joined him on the edge of the planter, put both my feet onto the opposite one, and removed a joint from my inside jacket pocket.
He was swaying a little, and stank of booze. His teeth and the inner creases of his lips had been stained purple from the wine he’d drunk earlier—still beautiful, though.
Cian shook his head. “I’m starving. Remember last time, what happened when I was hungry and got high?”
The memory came crashing back to me. “Oh my gods, when we went to the cinema? Yes, I remember. Man, you were fuuuuucked. What were we even watching, anyway?”
It was during the first year of our master’s. We’d rented another tiny townhouse in the suburbs of Remy, and smoked a blunt in our garden before heading to the closest multiplex. The high always hit Ci harder than it did me, and for the entire duration of the ads and trailers he’d whinged so loudly about how hungry he was, several people stormed out to complain. Luckily, the manager was a gorgeous human woman in her thirties, and well, those were my specialty. She let us off with a warning, and in the process I managed to snag three jumbo boxes of popcorn. Cian polished them all off, leaving an inch at the bottom of the third box because, “I’m not an animal.”
“It was the film where all the kids have to kill each other on an island,” he said.
“Yes! That was it. Damn, that movie should not have been as funny as it was. Anyway . . .” I lit the joint, took a drag, offered it to Ci.
“I don’t want to go downstairs. I hate them, Mash. Well, I hate most of them. I don’t hate James or Giddy, but Giddy’s not here, and James is busy, and I don’t want to seem clingy. If I get the munchies, I’ll have to go back down there to get food, and I want to stay up here forever and fester. Worse comes to worst, we’ll cook up the rats and pigeons.”
“Well, I can’t offer you any rats or pigeons right now, but I do have . . .” I opened my jacket to reveal half the chocolate bars I’d taped to the lining.
“Oh my gods.” He slapped his hand over his mouth.
I opened the other side to show him the rest. “Dog friendly too.” Not that Cian had a problem with chocolate, but it meant I could eat a few without shitting myself later.
“You’re . . . Mash . . . this is . . .” He seemed lost for words, but then pulled himself together. “Got any Peanut Goobers?”
I held the joint between my lips and wriggled Cian’s snack free.
He accepted them, opened the bag, and looked off into the distance. “I saw you kissing Jo.”
“She kissed me. I pushed her away.” Was he . . . jealous? “She’s drunk. Actually, I think I’m the only person here not drunk.”
“I’ve had three bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon,” he said, a little too proudly.
“You gonna chunder?” I asked, looking around for the most appropriate thing we could use as a vomit receptacle. The planter probably. Might get fined if we splattered someone fourteen storeys down by hurling over the edge of the building.
“Nah, not yet. Maybe later if I feel like it.”
I relit the joint, took another drag, and passed it to Ci. He accepted this time without question.
“I’m thinking of quitting,” he said after he’d finished all his peanut candies.
“Weed or work?”
“The job. This.”
“You say that every year at Winter Fest. That you’re gonna quit in January and then you never do,” I argued.
“It’s just . . . It’s safe and guaranteed, and the pay is great, and my boss is amazing, but it’s the job itself. It’s . . .”
“Slowly killing you from the inside out?”
Cian sucked in a lungful of smoke, held it there for an eternity, and blew it out again. “I don’t wanna be here any more. I hate these people. I hate the job. The other week, James shredded my proposals on market-share growth. He’s not interested in making money, and I get that. That’s not who he is, and that’s not even who I am, but I’m so fucking bored, Mash. Every day is the same.”
“Where will you go?” I asked.
I asked every time, but Cian never knew. Never had an answer. As expected, he shot me down with his deadpan glare.
The joint passed between us a few more times. A few more chocolate bars were consumed. The motion sensor gave up illuminating the space, and we were shrouded in darkness—or at least, as dark as it ever got in the city, which was never really that dark. Below us, a siren wailed.
Cian began closing his eyes and tilting his face up to the stars. This was his “the drugs are working” expression. In a few hours, the cocktail of weed and booze and sugar would likely have him spewing, but right now he was so serene.
After a few moments, he turned to me. “What will you do?”
“Me?”
“If I leave Remy, will you stay at RU?”
No. Of course I won’t. I’ll go wherever you go. “Why would you leave Remy? Aren’t there any other big tech companies for you to work for? Or small ones? Maybe you could work for a start-up again.”
He shrugged, turned his attention away from me.
For weeks, months, I’d been planning on tonight being the night I told him everything, confessed all my secrets. All of them. The alpha thing, having to move back to Howling Pines at some point, probably sooner than I’d like . . . my feelings for him . . . I was gonna tell him, even though all of those things weren’t clear in my own mind.
When would I move back home? No idea.
How did I feel about him? I wasn’t one hundred percent sure.
All I knew was that I needed him. Didn’t know how I was going to make this alpha thing work if I couldn’t see him every day.
I had planned on telling him everything, but I hadn’t expected the caterers to fuck up so astronomically that everyone would get too shitfaced to function. Tomorrow, Cian wouldn’t remember what we were talking about now. It was a big gamble. I didn’t want to pour my heart out if he was gonna turn around and paint my fancy brogues with three bottles of red wine and six candy bars.
“I think I’m tired of Remy,” he finally said, still looking out over the twinkling city. “I’ve been working for a fucking dating app for like . . . a decade . . . you’d reckon it’d help me find a fucking boyfriend.”
Oh. This again. I had nothing to add to this discussion that we hadn’t already been over a thousand times.
“At least if I left Remy, went somewhere else—Bordalis, I don’t give a fuck—there’d be new guys there. Not the same old . . .” He puffed out a sigh, and brushed his hair backwards off his forehead, but still didn’t spare me a glance.
I let my eyes travel over his face. The glow from the building opposite, a fae video-games company, whitened the lenses of his glasses and illuminated the soft lines of his features. Along the straight of his nose, his brow, the curve of his cheek, those lips . . .
“Don’t go to Bordalis. Don’t leave Remy,” I said.
He turned to me. “Why not, Mash?” His voice was quiet, but accusatory, like he knew I was hiding something. “Why shouldn’t I leave this city?”
I swallowed the rising guilt. Why couldn’t I tell him? Why couldn’t I be honest with him? I’d known him for fourteen years. We did everything together. Why couldn’t I just get the words out . . .
Because I’m in love with you. Probably. Maybe. At least I think I might be. And because I think we should give “us” a shot. It was a long shot. The longest fucking shot in the entire history of long shots.
I wasn’t sure I was prepared to lose him.
“Fine, leave Remy, but I’m coming with you,” I said instead. “Where are we going? Not Bordalis, I . . . don’t want to trade one shitty city for an even bigger, shittier one.”
He didn’t answer my question, he just narrowed his eyes at me. “You’d come with me?”
“Of course I’m coming. I’m not letting you escape that easy.”
Cian made a sound like a horse’s blow and rolled his eyes, evidently concluding I’d been taking the piss.
“I mean it. If you leave Remy, I’m coming with you.”
“What about your job?” he asked.
“Hate it. Would jack it in in a heartbeat.”
“What about your apartment?”
“What about it? The only thing I like about living where I live is that you’re close by.”
“Mash.” In the mottled city lights, I caught the sadness in his expression. Nothing new for Ci. He spent a lot of his life sad, but this felt different. As though it was directed at me.
“We could . . .” I started, but stopped myself. He was either going to take it as a joke, or . . . I didn’t know, rip my heart out. But I needed to try. Right? Needed to see if this could go anywhere. “We could run away together.”
Just me and him. Everything else behind us—my job, his job, our apartments, the city, his parents, my pack, Howling Pines, my alpha responsibilities.
He raised a disbelieving eyebrow. He thought I was messing around.
I puffed out a long stream of air. My breath fogged in front of my face. “I mean it.”
Cian stared at me some more.
“I . . .” Fuck, how was I supposed to say this? How could I possibly find all the words I needed to explain how much he meant to me? “I love you.” I held my breath. Simple, honest.
“I know you do.”
I didn’t hide my frustrated groan. Every time. Every fucking time. I love you; I know. He never said it back.
“Fucking hell, Ci, I’m trying to tell you how much you mean to me. I love you, man, more than I love anybody. And if you want to move away from the city, I’m coming with you. Unless . . . of course . . . you don’t want me to.”
I waited. Waited for him to say “Don’t be silly, of course I want you to come with me,” or “I love you too, I’m sorry I’ve never said it back before,” or even “Okay, thank you, let’s run away together.”
Nothing.
He said nothing.
Just stared at me. Holding eye contact for a few seconds that seemed to stretch into an eternity. Then he closed his eyes and turned his head in the other direction.
Fuck. My heart.
If I thought it was bruised after Sam Dixon broke things off, it was nothing compared to how it felt right now.
“You don’t want me to come with you?” I said. My voice wobbled. Fucking hell, I was thirty-four years old. I needed to keep it together.
“It’s . . . complicated. I think maybe I need . . . space . . . to grow. To figure out who I am. Away from you.”
“But . . .” I was on my feet.
Shit, this hurt so much. “Away from you.” I scrubbed my hand down my face. “Are you . . . breaking up with me?”
Still, he said nothing, simply stared out into the city.
“Oh my gods,” I whimpered. I didn’t have any more coherent thoughts. Couldn’t articulate how I really felt. Was this the end of us?
“Don’t, Mash. Don’t make me feel guilty. You asked. I was just being honest . . . I can’t do this any more. It’s not normal. This isn’t how platonic friends our age treat each other. Maybe in uni, but we’re in our thirties now. You need to grow up.”
“I’m trying,” I said. I wanted to say so much more, but my throat had closed itself off to any other words.
“Look, it’s not only you, okay? I need to grow up too. I’ve been stuck wanting the same things for so long, and I have to face facts. I think we need time away from each other.”
Cian held my gaze for the longest time. Tears tracked down his face. I felt the warmth of my own tears stripe my cheeks, but the sensation was instantly lost to vast numbness. The December air was no longer frigid, the buzz from the joint long since vanished.
“Mash . . . you’re holding me back.”
It was a good few minutes before I spoke. Before the white noise in my brain had subsided long enough for me to squeak out a word. “Okay.” I wiped my tears on the heel of my hand. Walked away from him. Returned. Nope. I had to get out of here. “Okay. Whatever you need.”
I guessed there was no point in hanging around in Remy any more. Might as well message Nana and the betas . . . tell them I’d be home soon. Maybe I could accept the call of the alpha at the next full moon, the Wolf Moon in January. How fitting.
If Cian needed space, needed me to ease off and let him be who I was stopping him from being, I would give it to him. I loved him too much to do anything that would hurt him.
“You’re holding me back.”
Okay, but . . . fucking ouch.
I walked back to him, but I wasn’t staying. I just had to . . . “Keep away from the fucking edges, okay?” I said. Not that I thought he’d jump, but he was wankered and accidents happened. I could stay here with him, make sure he got home safely, but I wasn’t wanted. He’d made that much abundantly clear.
I turned towards the fire exit.
“Wait,” Cian called out. I paused. “Mash, I do lo—oh, fuck . . . I . . . I’m gonna be sick.” He leaned forward over the planter and vomited.
I was beside him in an instant, my hand on his back between his shoulder blades. I took his glasses from his face to save them from falling into the barf and brushed the sweaty hairs from his forehead. “Okay, okay, okay,” I said, as I continued to rub his back.
“Mash?” He spat into the planter and then vomited again. “I’m sorry. Please don’t . . . I didn’t mean . . .” He began sobbing.
“It’s okay, I’m not going anywhere. You’re such a mess right now.” I didn’t have any napkins on me to clean him up, so I used his decorative pocket square to wipe the sick off his chin.
Once I was certain there was nothing left inside him, I stood. “Let’s go get you some hydration.”
With my arm around his waist, we walked to the exit and I hailed a cab to his apartment. I swiped his key card to let us in, turned his alarm off with the code, and took him straight to his bedroom, snatching a bottle of water from the fridge on the way there.
“Did I barf on you?” he said, as I was unbuttoning his shirt.
“Not yet,” I replied. “But the night’s still young.” I undid the button and fly on his trousers, and wiggled them down his legs. “You want PJs, Bangers?”
He nodded. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell backwards on the bed.
“Arms up, big boy,” I said, after rifling through his drawers and finding a clean T-shirt and pair of pyjama pants.
He lifted his arms like he was a toddler at the pool waiting to be dressed. I pulled the bottoms onto him and laid him on his side.
“I’m gonna get you a bucket. Just in case.” But before I had finished speaking, Cian was asleep.
I stood in his bedroom, my hands on my hips, and I puffed out all the air in my lungs. Fuck, he had really said all those things to me.
“You’re holding me back.”
Had he meant them? Or worse still, had he meant them but never intended to say them?
Usually, when I stayed over, I’d crawl straight into bed next to him. It was big enough. This time, it felt . . . wrong.
I took a blanket from his cupboard and settled onto his sofa, though I left the door open in case he called out for me in the night.
My neck was stiff when I woke, just another reminder I wasn’t twenty-four any more. Another reminder of exactly how much I was letting everyone else down.
Cian was snoring when I popped my head into the bedroom to check on him. He hadn’t been sick again, but it was best to let him sleep in until all the booze was out of his system.
I raided his fridge. Found stuff to make chicken and waffles for breakfast. I was nowhere near as good a cook as Ci, but I could keep myself alive if I had to. I plated one up for me, and one for Ci, which I left inside the oven to stay warm.
“Hey,” he said, only moments later, sauntering into the open-plan kitchen diner. His hair was rumpled, his PJ pants snagged up around one knee. He took in my shirt and dress trousers, and a frown crossed his features.
“Good morning, angel of my paradise,” I said back, before I caught myself. Ah, what did it fucking matter any more? “How you feeling?”
“Like my brain and nervous system are staging a mutiny on my skull.” He sat opposite me.
“From what I witnessed last night, that sounds about right.”
He groaned.
“You hungry?”
“Fucking starving.”
I took his plate from the oven and placed it in front of him.
“Oh my gods, this looks perfect.”
I sat back down. “So . . .” How to broach the subject of Cian’s rejection . . .
“So?” he repeated.
“Do . . . you remember anything from last night?”
His face found his palm. “Urgh, fuck, what did I do this time? Please tell me I didn’t hand my resignation in?”
“No, you didn’t quit your job. You did talk a lot about quitting, though.” And leaving Remy, and breaking my heart . . .
“Shit, in front of James? It wasn’t in front of James, was it?”
“No, it wasn’t. You only said those things to me. You’re good.”
Cian let out a long sigh of relief.
I had to find out. “So, you don’t want to leave? The city, I mean.”
“I mean, I do. I can’t stay here forever. But I need to secure something else first. I’m not about to quit Howl without another job lined up.” Duh. How stupid of me. Why would I think Cian would up and leave like that? He’d never been that rash.
“So, you’ll live in Remy until you find a new job?”
He tilted his head to the side and regarded me through narrowed eyes. “Of course. Why? What did I say?”
That you want to move away from me. That you’re sick of me. That I’m holding you back. “Uh . . . you said you were bored with work, and this city, and the men here.”
He snorted out a laugh and rolled his eyes. “Urgh, same old shit then.” After a few moments of me debating whether or not to mention what was said last night—my half-baked love confession, his heart-pulverising rejection—he spoke, interrupting my thoughts. “You alright?”
“Oh.” I pushed the chicken around on my plate. “Yeah, I’m good.”
Guess I wasn’t going to bring it up. Maybe I never would.