Chapter 16 #4
“Yes, I rather gathered that.” She laughs. “I guess a lot of it wasn’t complimentary. Reuben and I haven’t always been the best of friends.”
She shrugs. “I don’t know about that. I knew you’d be a wonderful young man.”
“Really?” She nods. “I bet you’re having second thoughts now.”
She chuckles, and I smile at her. “Anyway,” she says, “he exhibits here because he’s a friend and he knows it brings trade to my gallery.”
“He’d do anything for friends. He’s excessively loyal.”
“Is it possible for loyalty to ever be excessive?”
“Yes, it is,” I say soberly. “Definitely.” I look around.
“So, everything is for sale? How much is Reuben Langley going for now?” She names a figure, and I choke on my own spit.
“Shit. I had no idea that being irritating, bossy, and very energetic paid that much. I should have got a few pictures out of him the last time I saw him.”
Her eyes twinkle. “There’s only one picture in here that he won’t sell.”
“Really?” I frown. “But he doesn’t keep any of them.”
She nods. “He’s been offered hundreds of thousands for this one, but there’s no budging him.”
Now I’m intrigued. It’s probably one of his early, arty shots. “Which one is it?”
She points behind me and I turn to find…
me. My mouth drops open. It’s one of the photos he took in that hotel room so many years ago.
Thankfully, it’s not one of the more explicit ones.
In this one, I’m lying amongst the sheets and obviously naked under them.
I’m laughing, and my face is turned so only part of my profile is visible. However, my joy is as clear as day.
Moira clears her throat. “He went through the series of photos very carefully to make sure you couldn’t be identified before he let me have this one. The others have never been shown.”
“He still has the rest of them?” I say, flabbergasted.
“Nobody would recognise you in this one,” she says quickly, not answering my question.
I shake my head. “I doubt I would,” I say softly. “I’ve not been that boy for many years.”
“I can see why he won’t sell it.”
I tilt my head as I consider the image in front of me. I look so young, so blazingly in love, and happy. It’s like being visited by a ghost. “It’s not like that.”
She pats my arm. “I’m sure it isn’t.”
She wanders away, and I carry on looking. Footsteps sound, and I know it’s him before I turn around. He’s clutching two takeaway cups and a paper bag, and his eyes are blazing in his pale face.
“So,” I say, throwing my hand out to indicate the six-foot portrait of me in case he’s missed it. “I’m having a bit of a surprising morning.”
The silence lengthens. I know he’s experiencing the same memories as me. Sunshine spilling on sheets that smelt of us. A quiet in the room broken by laughter and the click of his camera’s shutter. The warmth of our skin.
The images are clear and golden, like they’ve been preserved in amber. The richness and joy of those feelings have never been duplicated. Wild behaviour and hundreds of hookups don’t even come close.
I shrug. “Well, I suppose I should be glad it’s not one of the more risqué ones. I seem to remember a few that would get you up on a pornography charge. My reputation is already in the gutter without adding sex photos.” I look at him. “You still have them?”
His eyes widen. “Of course I do. Did you think I’d get rid of them?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “I’d have thought you’d have made a ceremonial bonfire of them and danced around it.”
“Well, you’d be wrong. They’re actually on a memory stick in a safe that will survive a fire, flood, or any natural disaster you could think of.”
“I don’t know. I can imagine a lot. What about a nuclear explosion?”
“Given the cost of the safe, I’d certainly hope so.”
“Nice to know the face I make when I come is enshrined for posterity.”
“I don’t need a photo in a safe to remember that,” he says steadily. Our gazes catch and hold, and I know he’s remembering those moments when I’d been overwhelmed by pleasure.
I exhale a deep, careful breath, and the moment breaks. “Well, I’m glad. Hang on to those pictures, because they’ll go up in value the more notorious I get.”
“Please try not to do that.”
“I make no promises.” I look back at the picture on the wall. “Moira says you won’t sell this one.”
“I won’t ever sell any of them,” he says. The words thrum with a deep conviction.
“Even the polite ones?”
“Never.” He doesn’t smile, his face earnest in a way that makes my stomach hurt.
“How did Moira come to see them?”
“She saw the polite ones, as you call them, when she came to dinner one night, and we were sorting artwork for her to take.”
I want to ask why he keeps these ghosts from our past, but I’m not sure I want to hear his answer.
He knows what I’m thinking. Of course he does. He always understands me. “Shall we walk on the beach?” he asks casually.
I nod, and we walk away. I don’t look back.
It’s silent in the car. I sit holding the takeaway cup and the bag of cake while Reuben takes a few turns before parking in a sand-dusted car park.
A small coffee wagon is closed and locked, looking rather forlorn.
“This way,” he says, and I follow him obediently down a hard-packed sandy path through rough sea grass to the beach.
“Calgary Bay,” Reuben says, and I stand still for a second in startled pleasure. The sand is so pale that it looks like powdered sugar, and the water is a pure turquoise.
“It’s like the Caribbean,” I say, turning to him. “I did a shoot there last year.”
“For Calvin Klein. I know.”
“How?”
He shoots me a sidelong glance. “I always knew where you were.”
“So, why did you—” I stop myself abruptly. He doesn’t need to hear that I missed him during our time apart. That won’t help anyone.
He waits for me to say more, and when I don’t, he doesn’t push. He rarely does. Instead, he jerks his head, and we start to walk.
The beach is empty apart from a couple of dog walkers in the distance.
The rocky headland around it is dressed in Scotland’s winter colours, and the range of clouds above us looks like a magical mountain range.
It’s quiet, the only sound the waves breaking on the shore and the mooing of a cow in the distance.
The air is cold and bracing. I remember my grandmother saying cold air would blow all the cobwebs away. I wonder if it works on the dust that seems to cloud my mind so often.
We walk along next to the sea, dodging its attempts to catch our feet, and I sip on my coffee, sighing in pleasure.
He shoots me a grin. “You’re still as addicted to that as ever.”
“People in glass coffee houses shouldn’t throw coffee beans.” He laughs. “I suppose I should drink green tea or something. Dean does.”
“You’re not him. He’s far more serene.”
I smile. “I’m not serene?”
He huffs. “I used to think you were sunshine in human form.”
“And now?”
“You’re more like a category five tornado.”
I start to laugh, and he joins me. Then I sigh. “Okay, give it to me.”
He bites his lip, wisely not saying anything as he hands me the paper bag.
I peer inside. “Lemon drizzle?”
He nods solemnly. “Best on the island.”
“Well, it’s good that the object of my destruction is at the top of its game.”
He chuckles and nudges me with his hip. “Eat it, Xavier. Nothing in life is so serious that it can’t be cured by lemon drizzle cake.”
We walk along as I munch on the cake, occasionally handing him small pieces which he accepts with a gravity that’s belied by his twinkling eyes.
“Am I not allowed to take a bite myself?”
“If you think I’m letting you loose unchecked on empty carbohydrates and lemon drizzle icing, you’re vastly mistaken.”
When I’ve finished, he takes the packet and sticks it in his pocket along with the empty coffee cups. “Alright?” he asks, perceptive as usual.
“I’m a bit tired,” I admit. It’s the truth. I feel suddenly drained, and my legs are rubbery.
“Time to go back.”
“I just want to feel better,” I say, frustrated.
“You will.”
“Promise.”
He directs a startled gaze at me.
I shrug. “You always tell me the truth. I trust that at least.”
“At least?” he says, his voice low.
“I don’t expect anything from you.”
I blink as he stops walking and spins me to face him. “Why not?” His eyes are suddenly stormy. “You know you can trust me.”
“No, I don’t.” The words are oddly gentle for me, tinged with my new reluctance to hurt him.
I have to say this, though. “The last time I trusted you, you destroyed me. That’s the last time I took anyone’s word.
The last time I trusted someone to see me and value me. The last time I felt truly safe.”
He swallows hard. “That makes me so sad.”
I shake my head. “Don’t be. It was a lesson I had to learn. Monogamy is a fucking dream like Cinderella and her slippers. If it hadn’t been you teaching me, someone else would have done it.”
“Don’t say that,” he forces out.
“Reuben, you are the only person, the only man I’ve ever truly shown myself to. Why the fuck would I risk that reaction again? I’m not stupid, am I?”
“No.” His face is sheet white, a tic going in his cheek. “What if I told you—” He stops talking abruptly.
My heart hammers. “What if you told me what?”
He eyes me, biting his lip, and I sigh when I see the familiar shutters come down over his face.
“Nothing,” he says.
I wonder why I feel such disappointment. I knew we would come back to this. We always do. I cannot get beyond the way he hurt me, no matter how I try.
“We should get back,” he says quietly. “It’s getting late.”
I swallow hard. “It definitely is.”
I shut my eyes when we get into the car, feigning sleep, which, irritatingly, actually becomes sleep. I’m so deep it takes me a few moments to realise where I am after he wakes me.
I stare up at him. He’s a dark silhouette against the darkening sky. “What time is it?” I mumble.
“Six. I stopped to get something for dinner. Something healthy,” he says in a disgusted voice. “You didn’t even stir.”
I knuckle my eyes. “Sorry.”