Chapter 25 #2
Carefully, I picked up the last carrier bag, with the milk and the loaf of bread and the eggs in it.
“Where do you think you’re going? I’ve made tea.”
“You’ll have to drink it yourself then.”
Somehow, the ugly little porcelain dog ended up in my hand. And somehow it ended up in a thousand pieces at the bottom of the communal rubbish bin in the car park. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking all the way to the bus stop.
On the top deck of the first bus I stumbled onto, the shuddering engine rattled the windows so hard my fillings were in danger of coming free.
The bus roared along the high street, engine juddering far too loudly with every gear change, and I didn’t care about the hot stale air blowing through the vent by my ankles, or the lack of breeze from the cracked-open windows, or the smell of someone’s bag of chicken and chips at the back.
We were moving – heading home, away from here.
Gran’s voice rumbled through my head on repeat with all the things she’d said about Mam.
About me disappointing her over and over again.
The way she wouldn’t talk about any of it.
Why had I left my headphones at home? I wanted to drown her out with a generic playlist tailored to people who didn’t know what they wanted out of life other than to stop thinking. People exactly like me.
In my pocket my phone burbled, and I snatched at the distraction.
Simon
Booked us in for lunch at Possimus tomorrow. It’ll snare media interest. Say if it doesn’t work for you. Could always track down those stag-do friends of yours instead..?
I could picture his grin. The look he’d give me saying that.
Everything felt better when I was with him.
Even when I ballsed it all up, he’d never made me feel like he didn’t want me there.
Not really. My thumb hovered over the video-call button.
God, I wanted to talk to him. Not swap clever lines until he inevitably outwitted me.
Fuck it. I hit call.
He picked up before the second ring, his image flickering in, expression warm and welcoming.
“Just a minute – I’ll put you down somewhere.” The world swirled around him as he wandered through his flat, preoccupied. Gorgeous as ever. I ghosted the pang of longing to be there right now. Bloody hell, why had I decided to leave?
Simon propped the phone and stood back, tall and creaseless.
“Hi,” he signed, glinty and glad to see me, like he didn’t think I’d made a tit out of myself yesterday at all. I didn’t deserve that after the way I’d walked out.
Taking me in, his eyebrows knitted. “Ben, are you alright?”
Well, fuck. I wasn’t now he’d gone and asked.
“She died,” I blurted. “My Mam.”
“Jesus. What happened?”
Simon’s forehead rumpled, anguished, shocked. Because of course he was. I’d trauma-dumped a random fact with zero context. He didn’t know I suddenly needed to tell someone something true, so I didn’t flit out of existence because nobody knew me.
“No, I mean, when I was a kid.”
“I’m sorry.” The softness of Simon’s voice lay over me like a trap.
The lure of understanding, and kindness and warmth made my skin prickle horribly.
“Ben, why are you telling me this now? We can talk later, I promise.” He was frowning gently at me like I was small and tender, in need of protection.
Only, I wasn’t small and tender. I’d wormed into his bed, into his home, lying to him about so many tiny things so he wouldn’t turn around and see I wasn’t who he wanted at all.
“No, you need to hear this. Gran – today. She said some stuff about Mam. And me. And I’m just – I’m done with pretending everything’s okay when it’s not. And I know those pictures I took aren’t what you ever wanted. They’re not even true.
“I-uh. I wanted you to know how important this job is to me. Mam died. And—”Hot tears pressed in at the backs of my eyes, clogging up my throat. I signed an explosion, cheeks puffed out for the length of the fall-out. My world, up in smoke. “Overnight... Home, my language. Gone.”
I shouldn’t be telling anyone this on a video call on the top deck of a bus. But if I was in the same room as Simon, I’d never get any of it out.
“They didn’t like Mam signing. Gran and Grandad. Really didn’t like me doing it. Grandad used to…” Tightness ghosted through my hands. The echo of him pulling my arms down sharply by my sides. “He’d tell me to stop.”
Simon stilled. “Tell you. How?”
I blinked, stunned by his sharp tone. How was detail Simon wanted like a pulled thread on his favourite coat. It’d ruin the look. Damage the fabric. He can’t have wanted the ins and outs of my failed family. But the question in his eyes stayed solid.
Consciously, I flexed my knuckles. Staying signing was better. Grandad’s voice couldn’t ring through so clearly. “You’re not deaf, Ben! Stop pretending.”
Simon went so still I thought the screen had frozen, his face swept with a terrifying neutrality. Then a ripple of tension flexed through the muscle of his jaw.
“I don’t think I like your grandparents very much.”
A multicoloured tangle of guilt swirled in my gut. Gran was it: All the family I got lotteried by the giant tombola in the sky. Whatever she thought about me, I didn’t get another one.
“They looked after me though. This difficult kid, messing up their retirement, moving into their home, eating all their groceries.”
Simon wasn’t buying it.
“Difficult kid. Their home. Their groceries. Ben, listen to how you’re talking about yourself.” He sounded angry. But Simon Azie didn’t get angry.
“They didn’t have to take me in.” Anger bubbled out from beneath the lifetime of gratitude I’d smothered it under. Why was he picking so many holes?
“They didn’t have to make you feel unwanted.”
Oof.
Was all that scribed into me so deep he could read it?
The bedroom that wasn’t really mine. The posters I wasn’t allowed to stick up. All Mam’s things there had never been the space to bring. The language I wasn’t supposed to use. The clothes I couldn’t wear.
Everything I had was theirs to take away.
Simon’s expression darkened. “That isn’t love, Ben. That isn’t family.”
“Thing is”—I forced a laugh—“it’s the only one I’ve got.”
Something in my chest crumpled and my eyes blurred, and a horrendous hiccough-sob escaped when I tried to breathe.
This wasn’t love either. No matter how much I wanted him, or how many times we slept together, or how many pictures I took, or how many times he looked at me like in another universe we could change each other’s world.
I scrubbed a hand across my face, covering my mouth, trying to stuff it all back down.
“Are you on your way home?” Simon asked. “I’m coming over. We could both use a stiff drink.”