Chapter Fifteen Time
Julian’s room was a cramped little space, with every horizontal surface crowded with tat and every vertical surface papered with posters and magazine clippings.
Rahul raised a sceptical eyebrow at a particularly suggestive David Bowie poster pinned to the battered old wardrobe.
Behind him, Julian was lying down crosswise on his single-sized bed, just like he used to do as a boy.
Only now he was several feet taller and his knees crooked at the mattress edge, feet nearly touching the laundry-cluttered floor.
Pink Floyd was playing through Julian’s hand radio on the desk.
“But aren’t the acting schools in London better?” Julian was saying, his voice just shy of a childish whine. He might be taller, but he was just as spoiled as when he was thirteen. How someone so working class could be so spoiled was beyond Rahul.
Not that Rahul was any less working class than Julian was.
But things had started looking up for his family once his mother had married Ron.
While Rahul and Ron never quite got on like a house on fire, the house was at least warmly lit, maybe even with a cosy little fire going in the fireplace.
Which was much more than Rahul could say for many boys and their stepfathers.
They had something of a mutual respect for one another and the man certainly never lifted a hand to him in anger.
If Ron ever got angry, Rahul had yet to see it.
Julian and Rahul had first bonded over being raised by single, working mothers.
The pre-packaged lunches, the empty homes when they got back from school, the judgmental looks of their classmates.
But they soon drifted apart on the subject when it became clear that their situations were wholly different.
While Rahul still visited his father quite regularly, spending alternating Christmases and summer holidays with him, Julian’s father had taken off when Mel had been just a baby and never returned.
Julian had seen neither hide nor hair of his father since he was seven years old, when he’d awoken in the middle of the night to find his father packing a single bag.
“Go back to bed,” Julian had told Rahul his father had said.
His father had then kissed Julian on the crown of his head and exited stage right pursued by bear.
Julian’s mother had never remarried. While Rahul’s mum had become a secretary and then eventually gone on to marry her boss, Julian’s mum had taken part-time shifts at the local off licence and eventually succumbed to what was very clearly alcoholism but which Julian still blatantly denied.
“She just likes a drink every now and again,” he’d say defensively.
“Who doesn’t? And she’s only just tired from working all bleeding day.
You’d be, too.” It was one of the few times he’d become truly serious, and he would attempt to divert the subject as quickly as possible.
And yet, despite his hardships, he was ever the ray of sunshine.
Rahul was the moody one, always moping about, writing poetry, banging on about how no one at school understood him and his sensitive soul.
Julian played on the football team and made all the girls’ heads turn, not that he noticed.
He was always smiling and joking and telling daft stories.
Rahul couldn’t understand why Julian had remained friends with him all these years.
As soon as it became clear Julian was athletic and good-looking and the other kids took a shine to him, Rahul had been sure that was the death knell for their friendship.
Starting in year ten, Rahul had braced himself to be given the cold shoulder, thrown over for the popular kids who were suddenly all interested in what had once just been his goofy little friend.
But despite forming fast and loose acquaintances with the bright young things, Julian had never given up spending his lunches with him, or walking home with him after school even though Rahul’s flat was in the opposite direction.
He never gave up on him even when his new friends openly asked him what the hell he was doing hanging out with a gangly freak like Rahul.
“He’s all right.” Julian would laugh and dismiss them, going on to the next vapid topic of conversation.
Meanwhile Rahul, at the other end of the classroom, would beam privately.
The beautiful, funny, popular Julian Collier of the football team was friends with him.
Wanted to be friends with him, stood by him, and defended him.
While he might have scorned the popular set with Julian when they were alone, chewed his ear off about how shallow they were, deep in his heart of hearts he was just ashamed he wasn’t good-looking or likeable enough to be one of them.
Being friends with Julian, desirable Julian, was as close as he could get.
That made it sound as if he were using Julian, but nothing could be farther from the truth.
He was grateful that time and circumstance hadn’t parted them.
He knew Julian in ways those trendy bastards could only ever dream of knowing him.
He’d been Julian’s first kiss, as brief as it had been.
He’d been Julian’s friend when no one else had deigned to give him the time of day.
He knew that Julian wasn’t suave or perfect.
He was daft and a bit thick. But he also knew that Julian was selfless and courageous and loyal.
He knew that his lips were soft and his hair smelled like the lavender Rahul’s mum planted in the allotment.
Did any of the slick popular set know that?
“Rahul! Are you even listening?” Julian whinged, kicking his legs petulantly against the mattress.
“I am. And I’ve already told you. It’s not because of the school. It’s because my dad’s agreed to pay for my university and as long as I’m taking his money I need to be staying with him and helping out around the shop.”
“You could stay and go to university with me,” Julian grumbled, voice slightly muffled as he gnawed on a hangnail. “I bet you’ve got loads of scholarships. You’re well clever.”
His being too clever by half was part of the problem.
Because instead of applying himself to his A-Levels, he’d spent his time reading Chekov and nicking jazz sheet music from the local instrument shop, with the outcome being his grades were atrocious.
The only hope he had of getting into a decent university was having his father, whose chain stores had earned him a tidy sum, pay for his schooling.
“Yeah, well, we can’t all have gotten BTECs in art, can we have?
” He hadn’t meant for it to sound so callous.
Julian had worked hard for that BTEC. Taking lessons after school, and even after football practice, never once complaining.
But Rahul was just as crushed at the prospect of having to leave Julian as Julian was at the prospect of Rahul leaving him, and wounded animals tended to lash out.
Luckily, they’d known each other long enough for Julian to understand this about him and he didn’t take it personally.
He finally sat up just as Rahul turned round.
His hair was in a state from having been thrown back over the bed.
What had once been brilliant, burnished gold had settled like sediment over time into a rich, honey brown.
It still had traces of gold at the tips and the places where the sun had bleached it.
It was getting too long, falling into his tanned face in locks and hiding his sparkling blue eyes.
“But you’ll be back to visit, right? Every holiday?”
Every bank holiday, even. Every long weekend. Every unoccupied afternoon. Only rabid Alsatians could keep Rahul away. “Yeah. ‘Course.”
“I can’t believe I’m going to uni without you.” He scuffed his trainers against the carpet, watching them as they kicked a pile of unsorted pants out of the way. Rahul tried not to stare at the pants for overly long. “I always thought we’d be together forever.”
Rahul tried not to read into that. That was just the way Julian spoke.
Frank and innocent. It didn’t mean anything.
It certainly didn’t mean anything in the way Rahul wished he meant it.
And wasn’t that all the more reason to go away?
He’d been holding onto this flame for well over four years.
One of these days he was bound to slip up and ruin the friendship that had meant so much to him for so long.
Wasn’t it best to put distance between them and find the time to shift his affections onto someone else?
Someone who could even, dare he think it, return his affections?
“That’s just the way of the world, Julesy.” Julian wrinkled his nose at the diminutive. “People grow up, they move away. It’s the natural order of things.”
“Yeah, well, the natural order of things can sod off.”
There was a genuine note of hurt there, so Rahul came forwards and knelt in front of him.
He had the sudden impulse to place a hand on Julian’s knee.
His hand was already there before he could even disregard it as a terrible idea.
Julian’s knee was bony and warm beneath his cords.
He was too skinny by half, the plight of being underfed, though the layer of whipcord muscle over his bones from his years of athleticism were an interesting dichotomy.
Julian looked up at him with too-shiny eyes, lip quivering, and Rahul had the sudden, stomach plummeting fear that Julian might start to cry.
He squeezed his knee and tried to smile in what he hoped was a comforting fashion.
“Whoa there, small fry. It’s not permanent, is it?
I’ll be back. And you’ll come up to visit, too.
As often as you like. It’s not like we won’t see each other anymore.
And as soon as uni’s over, I’ll be right back.
Quick as you like. We’ll even get a flat together and everything. You’ll see.”
“Promise?”
“Swear it. On your life, even.”
Julian laughed at that, a tad wetly but Rahul was willing to overlook it. As long as that brilliant smile was back, it meant the crisis had been averted. Rahul had fulfilled his purpose.
“I’m still gonna miss you something awful, you wanker.
” Julian’s smile wobbled. Rahul was keenly aware that his hand was still on Julian’s knee.
He was also keenly aware of how close their faces were.
If he moved forwards just an inch, if he just closed his eyes, if he just let his lips touch Julian’s…
Julian’s arms were suddenly around him, crushing him against his chest in a lung-flattening hug.
Julian’s face tucked against Rahul’s shoulder, lips pressed warmly into his jumper.
Rahul’s arms wrapped tentatively around Julian’s lean frame.
His hair tickled Rahul’s nose, soft and clean and smelling of lavender. Rahul’s heart ached.
“I’m gonna miss you,” Julian repeated, muffled in Rahul’s cable-knit jumper.
God, how I’ll miss you, Rahul thought desperately.
How every day I’ll wake up thinking about you and every night I’ll go to sleep thinking about you.
How my arms will feel empty without you, feeling the ghost of you within them the way you feel in them now.
Christ, how I wish you knew, even one iota, how much you mean to me, how every muscle in my body is screaming for you, how there’s no me without you.
Instead he said, “You, too, small fry.”