CHAPTER 20
Only the people immediately around them could see there was something romantic happening.
The rest of the rally was cheering for Apricot XPX beginning to sing her hit ‘Space Booty’.
Jeremy looked into Sam’s forest eyes, his heart in his throat, his breathing shallow and fast, and felt like he might fall over from the intensity of this moment.
‘I love you too,’ Sam said, smiling so widely that Jeremy felt as if he could clamber into that grin and live like a hermit.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Jeremy said, desperate to break the cycle of bad communication, desperate to make sure Sam knew he knew how much he’d fucked up.
‘Thank you,’ Sam responded, kissing him again briefly before separating with clear regret. ‘I have to get back up there.’
Jeremy nodded, pushing him gently. ‘Go, go. I’ll wait. But can we talk after?’
Sam nodded, smiling shyly, and leant in, pulling Jeremy to him with one strong arm around his waist, and kissing him again deeply. It felt like Jeremy was floating for a second, and then Sam was gone, clambering back onto the stage.
After the speeches and performances, the rally turned into a march, a colourful mass that flooded the main streets of central Sydney, full of noise and signs, helicopters with news crews hovering above.
Jeremy marched along with it, with his friends, even joining in on the chants for a while, despite the fact he hated forced participation.
Every so often, he saw the PopBuzz crew taking videos and photos, doing vox pops with the crowd.
After an hour or so, the march ended in a big park, where the crowd dispersed.
Jeremy loitered around in the park waiting for Sam, watching his social media feeds flood with news stories about the rally.
It was so rare for anything to pierce the oversaturation of media right now, and professionally, Jeremy was impressed.
Personally, he was thrilled for Sam. He was also proud of his team at PopBuzz, who had already pumped out several news pieces, although he wasn’t over the moon about someone (probably Aiden) putting up a shot of him and Sam kissing during the rally with the caption: Brothers reuniting 3
He felt a brief surge of affection for his team and his weird and often annoying job – they both had really come through.
He did think he would still quit at some point, because none of the problems he had with Vanessa or being properly valued had been fixed in any sense, but right now he was almost feeling grateful.
Plus, he had a weird addiction to paying his rent.
Jeremy couldn’t sit still. He kept pacing around, not knowing how long he’d have to wait for Sam.
He was exuberant, from the success of both the rally and his plan to apologise to Sam.
That kiss had been otherworldly, transcendent, and also like coming home – but he felt like he couldn’t relax.
He’d fucked things up before. He could still snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Another hour passed, and then Sam was walking out of the soft sunset that was providing a fiery banner of orange and soft pinks across the city skyline.
Jeremy rocketed to his feet, feeling the urge to run across the last stretch of park that separated them, and then feeling embarrassed and stopping himself.
Sam continued towards him, raising a hand in greeting, and then suddenly Jeremy didn’t care and he began to run, not quite leaping into Sam’s arms – he was probably too long and tall for that – but he did feel himself being lifted and maybe even spun.
They kissed again, and Jeremy realised in that moment that this was a man he would run for.
And Jeremy never ran, not even to catch a train.
‘Ahem,’ came an amused voice, and Jeremy reluctantly let himself free of Sam’s arms to see that Patsie had joined them. ‘Boys, try to main some decorum, please – this is a public space and you’re both too hot!’
‘I’m this close to pashing you too,’ said Sam wonderingly, kissing her on the cheek. ‘That was spectacular. So many people turned up. What did you do?’
‘Me? Not much, except seize opportunities. But also a little bit of lying,’ she said, opening up her phone and handing it to Sam. ‘You need to be thanking Jeremy, actually.’
Sam swung to face Jeremy.
On Patsie’s screen was an article with a huge photo of the School Strike for Climate kids sitting moodily in front of a bunch of placards. Across the photo was the title of the article: Our World’s On Fire, How About Yours? Why the School Strike For Climate Activists Refuse To Give Up.
Underneath that was his byline: Jeremy Thomas Sharp.
‘You wrote this?’ Sam asked, his eyes wide, and then began reading a quote from the article out loud.
‘ “People think we don’t understand what we’re campaigning for – but what they don’t get is that we’re the ones who are going to live in an uninhabitable world thanks to the climate crisis their generation helped create.
We do understand, and we’re angry. And scared.
”’ Sam shook his head, looking at Jeremy with clear gratitude.
‘This is so good – all the newspapers ask them shitty questions about homework and what their parents think. You actually treated them like people.’
‘Yeah, so the article kind of went viral,’ said Patricia, taking back the phone, and showing Sam some of PopBuzz’s social media – the schoolkids on their TikTok, the article shared on Insta. There were hundreds and thousands of likes and comments. Jeremy grinned proudly.
‘What?’ said Sam in disbelief.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,’ Patsie said, ‘but I didn’t want to upset you, and also Jeremy asked if we could keep it a secret.’
‘Keep what a secret exactly?’ Sam asked.
‘Jeremy approached me about doing a bunch of stuff at PopBuzz with the climate kids to promote the protest – this interview, some videos, some news pieces. It was an amazing opportunity. They did a lot of work.’
Sam was shaking his head. ‘This is … amazing.’
Jeremy took Sam’s hand in his. ‘I just wanted to show you … how much you mean to me, and how important I think you are. I knew this rally meant a lot to you, so I thought maybe if I t-tried to help … if I t-tried to make it a success, you’d see …
how sorry I am.’ He stuttered his way through his explanation, heart in mouth.
Sam smiled at him, and just nodded, and something calmed and quieted inside Jeremy. He barely noticed Patricia extricating herself from the conversation.
‘How did the rest of it go?’ Jeremy asked after a brief, slightly awkward pause where they looked at each other intensely, each of them almost visibly vibrating with nervous energy.
‘Jeremy, it couldn’t have gone better.’ Sam laughed in disbelief. ‘I can never thank you enough. I’ve never seen Melanie so happy. How can I thank you? Seriously, you made that a triumph.’
‘There’s nothing I could have done if you hadn’t done all the groundwork first,’ Jeremy demurred.
‘And I need you to understand that. You worked yourself to the bone – this all happened because you believed in it more than anyone else. Don’t make me force you to repeat some kind of affirmation here …
’ He mocked growled, and Sam put his hands up in defeat and nodded, looking embarrassed but pleased.
‘You don’t need to thank me, because I needed to apologise.
This is part of my apology. I’m so sorry for everything, Sam. ’
Sam nodded, looking more serious, but still elated, and still holding Jeremy’s hand in his own, which Jeremy took as a good sign.
‘We should talk.’ Sam gestured to a park bench that had just freed up as the last of the rally crowd finally dispersed.
They walked over together in silence, hands still held lightly. Jeremy felt so tense with anticipation that he worried he’d snap like a stretched elastic band at the slightest provocation. They sat, and Sam chewed the inside of his mouth before looking at Jeremy.
‘I want to tell you that everything is fine,’ he began, which made Jeremy’s heart leap a little, before he truly understood what Sam was saying.
‘But what you did really hurt me – and I know we hadn’t talked about what we were, and what we were doing, but I guess that’s kind of the worst part …
you didn’t even give us a chance. And then you went and started dating Brian, and that didn’t feel good either.
So, because I’m trying this whole … not being a pushover thing, I’m not gonna say that it’s all fine. It hurt.’
Jeremy released a breath, trying to really listen to what Sam was saying, stamping down the urge to defend himself, to mitigate his own crimes.
He thought back to what his mum had said – and this had to be the first non-fashion-related piece of advice from his mother that he’d ever taken to heart – and he knew that owning his mistakes was not about trying to water them down, to escape consequence.
It was about taking it on the chin; it was about eating shit.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Jeremy said simply. ‘I won’t try to …
justify what I did, but I will say that I got a bit lost. In fact, since I’ve known you, I’ve been lost, trying to work out who I want to be, and somehow this all got mixed up in that.
It’s not an excuse, and it doesn’t make the fact that I let you down forgivable. ’
Sam widened his eyes a little at Jeremy’s apology – it was very different from the spin that drunken two am Jeremy had attempted.