Falling (10 page)

Shakily I turn the tap down so that it’s not gushing so violently.

I really don’t know how to answer Angus’s question. I really don’t want to answer it at all. Why did he ask me that? How does he know?

Because yes, I wrote some of these. But I can’t bear to think of Angus reading my fantasies and knowing it’s me who’s written them—because that is exactly what the few things I wrote are. Can he not see this is an answer I can’t give him? It would be like giving him a free pass inside my head. And I’m ashamed. Ashamed that he’s revealed my secret. I don’t know why I feel like this, but I’ve never felt so exposed.

Thankfully Angus doesn’t push it.

I hear him walk back into the living room, and I wash up in soapy silence.

F
RIDAY
NIGHT
Angus seems reluctant to go back to his flat. It’s gone eleven, and I’m exhausted. A few weeks ago, I probably would have just told him to go home, that I wanted to go to bed, but somehow I can’t do that anymore. Somehow our interactions have become a lot more complicated.

He’s curled on the sofa, shoes kicked off on the floor beside him, watching some inane comedy program. The canned laughter is really beginning to grate on my nerves, and Angus doesn’t seem to be enjoying it much.

“Angus?” I say softly, looking up from the page I’ve read about fifteen times now. “You okay?”

He nods, chewing his lip, his gaze fixed on the screen. I close my book and put it down on the floor. I go for the not so subtle and sigh before picking up the television controller and turning off the TV.

Angus closes his eyes. For a minute we sit in silence.

“You’re going to think I’m as paranoid as my mum… I just… I thought I saw something earlier outside the window. I know it was probably nothing, but I don’t feel safe down there,” he admits eventually.

“I don’t think you’re paranoid, Angus.”

This has to be a reaction to what he overheard at the hospital, to Eleanor panicking.

“Do you want me to come downstairs with you for a bit?”

“No. It’s okay.” Reluctantly he gets up and picks his shoes up off the floor. “I know it’s stupid.”

I
T
’
S
S
ATURDAY
,
and Angus has been up here since I got off work earlier this afternoon. Sometimes I find myself just watching him. Most of the time I’m careful that he doesn’t notice, but today he glances up and sees me standing in the doorway. It’s too late to back away or pretend I was just doing anything other than what I am doing.

“I should go and get ready,” Angus says, stretching his arms above his head, then getting up from my desk where he’s been sitting studying for the past couple of hours.

“Ready? You’re going out tonight?”

I was going to ask him if he wanted to eat with me again. I kind of expected him to say yes. It’s weird, but I’m beginning to get so used to his company, to welcome it even. Crave it, perhaps.

“Oskar invited me out. We’re going to grab something to eat and then go to the cinema, I think,” Angus says, shrugging awkwardly.

“He likes you.”

The words just come out.

Angus blushes. “Is there anything wrong with that?” he asks quietly.

There is a quiet challenge in his question that I try to ignore, and yet I think about it long after Angus has gone downstairs to get ready.

I
LISTEN
out for him leaving, for his door to open, then close, his footsteps on the path. But I don’t hear anything for an hour, so I wander down and sit on the stairs, thinking perhaps he’s already left. He hasn’t. About fifteen minutes later, he steps out of his flat looking and smelling fresh and newly scrubbed. His skin glows pink; his eyes are alive, excited maybe. He’s somehow managed to flatten down his wild curls, though a few have sprung free, and that makes me smile a little.
I’m trying
, I think.
I’m trying so hard.

Angus bites his lip and looks puzzled when he sees me. I don’t know why I’m acting like this—I think I’m just worried about him. And if I’m honest, I don’t like the idea of him going out with Oskar.

“What time do you think you’ll be back?” I ask quietly.

“I know Mum has probably told you to look out for me, but I’ll be okay. I have been out at night before, you know. I am eighteen.” He gives me a smile—he’s trying to reassure me.

He looks so high and happy, and I feel so awful for feeling how I’m feeling. I’m scared my unhappiness will bleed through me into him.

“You don’t really know Oskar, though.”

“That’s why I’m going out with him.”

Feeling sick, I follow him to the front door. There is a taxi waiting in the road.

Angus checks his wallet and his phone, and then turns to me.

“I just want to go out, have a friend. I want to know what it’s like. What are you worried about, Josh?”

“I don’t know,” I say honestly.

I want to follow him outside, but I don’t. Instead I stand in the doorway, rubbing my bare arms with my hands. Watching as Angus gets in the taxi, and it drives away down the road.

I
T
’
S
HALF
one when I hear a car pull up outside. I can hear someone stumbling up the path and fumbling with the lock on the communal front door.

By the time I’m downstairs, Angus has managed to open the front door, but he’s not managed to get any further than that. Instead he’s slumped on the threshold half-asleep.

“Angus?” I kneel down beside him.

He groans, but when he doesn’t respond further, I hoist him into my arms and help him upright. He’s solid and heavy, and for someone who never seems to do any exercise other than running, he has a lot of muscle under those clothes. There is not an ounce of fat on him. If I ran like he does, I’d just get leaner. I wouldn’t bulk up like this. My hand fastens around his waist. I try and flatten it out, though I desperately want to trace the contours of the muscles I can feel. But I will not grope him when he is drunk and half-aware. I roll my eyes.
I will not grope him anyway!

With Angus staggering against me, we make it to his flat. I still have the spare key, and propping him up against the wall, my hand against his chest to stop him sliding down it like I know he wants to, I unlock the door.

Inside the flat, it is a tip. Angus is really not the tidiest person to have ever walked the earth, and with no one to encourage him to be tidier, the flat has just degraded into a mess. Textbooks and notes are strewn across the floor, a stack of dirty plates sits on the work surface, and there are half-finished mugs of tea
everywhere
. No wonder he keeps coming upstairs to me to watch TV and eat.

With my free hand, I flick the light switch—I don’t want to stand on anything that’s not made for being stood on—and half carry Angus in with me. He winces, holding his hand over his eyes. We make it as far as the sofa. I reason it’s far enough and let him flop down.

“Turn the light off,” he groans, curling onto his side away from me.

“What’s the magic word?”

“
Josh
,” he whines.

Well, at least he’s sentient enough to know who I am.

“How was your date?” I ask, reaching to switch on the floor lamp next to the sofa and then walking back into the hall to turn off the overhead light.

Angus grumbles something. I lean down to hear him better.

“Sleep,” he moans. Then “Come ’ere.”

Flinging his arm out, he catches me around the shoulder and tugs me closer. He smells of alcohol, smoke, and cold winter air, and something other—some scent that seeps under my skin and makes me want to press closer. For a moment I can’t do anything but breathe him in, my cheek pressed to his hair.

“You waited up for me, didn’t you?” he half mumbles. His eyes are closed, but his lips curve in a lazy smile. “Though you’d never admit it.”

I hate that sometimes it seems as if he can read my mind. He’s never been this direct with me before.

“You’re deluded,” I whisper.

“Probably,” he agrees.

He turns his head and his cheek presses against mine. I try to ignore the way my cock is stiffening, but my arousal is quickly becoming full-blown.

For minutes we don’t move. A battle is raging inside me, rendering me immobile.

I don’t remember putting my arm around him. I only notice when Angus groans and shivers as my fingers stroke the small patch of bare skin on his stomach where his T-shirt has ridden up. The soft dark hair there feels silky to my touch. I can see his thick erection straining the tight fabric of his jeans, a bare inch from my fingertips. I want to touch it so badly, I’m trembling—blood is pounding in my ears.

“When Oskar kissed me, I thought about you,” he breathes hotly into my ear. He arches his back and pushes his hips up, causing his T-shirt to ride up farther. “I didn’t let him suck me off. I wanted to come home and take my clothes off and think about you some more.”

The thought of Oskar kissing him makes me feel hollow and hurting. I pull away.

“Don’t,” I mutter, closing my eyes.

When I open them, Angus is staring at me—the black of his pupils swallowing up the gray of his irises.

“Be with me. Just once,” he says. Suddenly he seems as sober as anything—whereas I feel as drunk as all hell on his proximity, his warmth, his sweetness. “Just one night, and then we can go back to being friends, or whatever you want.”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“You’re as turned-on as I am.”

I don’t even try to shift and hide the erection he can see tenting my sweatpants. I’m so hard it hurts not to be pressed up against him, my cock longing for his warmth. And I can no longer deny that it’s him my body wants.

“That doesn’t mean it would be a good idea,” I say tightly, suddenly angry at Angus for pushing me and angry at myself for letting him.

“I don’t
want
anyone else.” The raw emotion in his voice and his expression terrifies me.

“You’re drunk, Angus.” I use every single ounce of willpower I have ever possessed to push myself up off the floor. “I’m going to bed. I’ll come and check on you in the morning.”

Walking away from him hurts like fuck. It’s as though there is a magnetic pull between our bodies. My dick is aching for him so badly. And it’s not just my dick. Something in my chest is pulled so fucking taut.

A
QUIET
knock on my door wakes me. Blurry-eyed, I blink at my phone, waiting for the numbers to stop dancing around so I can read the time. It’s half past four, and I feel terrible. A light sheen of sweat coats my skin. I’m not awake enough to wonder why someone is knocking on my door—when no one ever knocks on my door—at half past four in the morning.

Unless it’s an emergency.

Scrubbing my face with my hands, I get up, grab a pair of tracksuit bottoms off the floor, pull them up my naked body, and hurry to the front door.

Angus is standing outside, looking awkward and upset. He pulls at the frayed hem of his black hooded sweatshirt, and I wonder if he sleeps in those heavy-looking clothes, because he must be boiling if he does.

Since there seems to be no immediate panic, my first thought is that he’s freaking out again and missing Eleanor. But he’s never appeared at my door in the middle of the night before, and she’s been gone over a week now. He’s not a kid—however hard it is for me to accept that sometimes.

“You okay?” I ask, still squinting at the brightness of the lights, my head throbbing so hard it’s as if someone is whacking a rock against my skull.

“Can I come in?”

“Of course.”

Trying not to move too quickly because of the pain in my head, I step back and open the door wide.

It’s funny that a few short weeks ago, no one had been in my flat, and now Angus strides inside like it’s his second home. He hesitates in the hallway, seeming undecided about which room to head for—not that there is much choice in my small flat
—
it’s either the living room or the kitchen. After a heartbeat Angus decides on the kitchen.

“I saw someone at the window,” he says tensely, gripping the edge of my tiny kitchen table.

“What?”

“I woke up to pee, and I saw a shadow through the curtains in Mum’s room.”

I smile at his word choice, though I quickly let it drop away when I notice the reproachful look he’s giving me. Under the harsh kitchen lights, Angus’s skin looks wan and sickly pale, as though he’s ill and all of his usual brightness has fled. Dark shadows make his eyes appear large and haunted.

“I feel like crap,” he moans, making me think perhaps we do have some sort of telepathic connection. Shakily he brings his hand up to his head.

“Funnily enough, alcohol does that,” I say, moving past him to get a packet of paracetamol out of the cabinet in the bathroom. Filling a glass with water, I hand it to him with the tablets, swallowing a couple down myself before I put the packet away. “It’s mostly dehydration that makes you feel like crap.”

I resist the urge to lecture him. I’ve never known him to go out and get wasted like that before. Perhaps it was his first time.

He swallows the tablets and downs the rest of the water.

“There was someone outside, Josh. Just standing there…. Definitely a person this time.”

“Okay. I’ll go take a look,” I say reluctantly.

It’s not that I don’t believe him, it’s just I know what it’s like when you’re on your own and someone has planted the seed of an idea. Paranoia gathers momentum—a snowball of fear that builds and builds as it rolls round your mind. All sorts of shapes can come to life in the dark and quiet of the night.