Falling (12 page)

I think I can hear Emma talking on her phone, or maybe she’s talking to Angus in the kitchen about the porn. Poor shy Angus.

“So are you still sick? Should we call a doctor?”

I shake my head, which isn’t actually hurting. Now it just feels full of low-grade static and echoes.

“Then you need to get up and get on, and not lie there and wallow.”

Wallow? Do I look like I’m wallowing?

“You need to work on your bedside manner,” I mutter.

Soren raises an eyebrow. “You’ve no idea what my bedside manner is like.”

“I’m serious, Soren. I don’t need all this fuss, everyone here.” I pull a pained face. I’m not in the mood for his teasing or games. I feel so weak.

“If you suddenly just drop off the radar and don’t turn up for work or call in sick or
anything
, and you make everyone who cares about you worry, then you’re going to get a fuss.” Soren folds his arms across his chest.

“I still feel like crap, all right. Leave me alone.”

Soren shrugs, his face like stone. “You look well enough to get up. You can stay in here as long as you want, but I’m not leaving your flat until you can get out of that bed and I know you’re okay.”

He really is a pain in the arse.

“And anyway, I quite like reading the walls in your kitchen,” he calls over his shoulder as he stalks out.

I can hear them all talking. I close my eyes and try to shut them out. When I open my eyes again, Angus is leaning against the doorframe, watching me. He brushes his hair out of his eyes and smiles, though it’s not a happy smile. I get the sense that he’s been upset, but I’m not sure how I know that. He looks pale, but maybe it’s just because of his dark clothes, because he’s not pale. Even in winter he glows a warm shade of gold.

“I’m going to see Mum in a bit, but I can come up and check on you later… if you like?” As he speaks, he fiddles with the leather strap wrapped round his wrist.

“Can you get rid of Soren?” I groan.

Angus smiles wryly. “I doubt it.” But his smile quickly fades, and we stare at each other, though this time I look away first. “What I said the other day… I didn’t mean it. Any of it. I hate not seeing you. Can we go back to how things were before?” he asks quietly.

“Okay.”

It might not show on my face, but inside I’m smiling, and some part of me that’s higher than my stomach but lower than my heart is doing little flips of joy.

He may as well have his hand around my heart.

E
VENTUALLY
I
get up.

Emma and Soren fuss around making sure I’ve got everything I need and watching me as though they suspect I might collapse to the floor at any moment. When they’re gone I begrudgingly admit Soren was right to make me get out of bed. I shower and dress, and I’m surprised to find I’m okay. Exhausted, but okay.

It’s a relief, because however much I convince myself I
was
actually just sick, underneath it all I was terrified the last few days were a lapse back into the darkness that paralyzed me before. I was terrified that the abyss had opened up inside me again, that my depression had come to swallow me.

But I didn’t fall apart. I’m not falling apart.

As I butter myself slice after slice of toast to make up for the last two days’ lack of food, I think perhaps I’m stronger than I thought. I think perhaps I won’t slip back under so easily.

I
T
’
S
DUSK
and I’m sitting in the window seat when I see Angus walking back from the hospital carrying a bag of shopping. His head is down and his free hand is in his pocket as he kicks at the rubbish that litters the pavement, the bag swinging against his leg. A car passes, and he looks up, not at the car but right up toward my window. The light is so low I’m not sure he sees me, but I experience a pleasure so intense I don’t think I could ever articulate it. My world has shifted. Something that I thought was broken is flickering to life inside me, fixing itself and filling me with so much energy, I don’t quite know what to do with it. I put my book down and get up to go downstairs and meet him.

His eyes light up, and he grins when he sees me waiting. Surprised, I think.

“You’re feeling better,” he says, closing the communal front door behind him, his gaze checking me over.

I nod. “Much. Just wrung out. How’s Eleanor?”

“Anxious. She’s worried about you. About not seeing you. I had to lie. Told her they needed you to do extra shifts at work. I hate lying, but I was scared she’d only worry more if she knew you were sick.”

“I’m sorry you had to lie.”

Some people lie with such ease, it’s as though it’s part of their personality, but others are just so straightforward and true that lying cuts them deep.

Angus shrugs. “I brought you some food.” He holds out the bag of shopping, biting his lip and blushing so hard I can almost feel the heat of it. “Are you busy…? I could….”

“Come upstairs?” I finish for him. I give him a lopsided smile. A smile he returns a hundredfold.

In my kitchen I smile at him gratefully as I unpack the food he bought me and make some more toast.

“Hungry,” I explain. “Want something?”

Angus shakes his head. “I should do a bit of studying.”

“Want to do it up here?”

“Okay.”

I catch him still staring at me as I shove toast into my mouth, and I slow down a bit—I don’t want to look like I’m stuffing my face (even though I am).

“It’s complicated, isn’t it, this….” He frowns at his hand before looking up again. “Whatever it is… between us?”

I stop chewing my mouthful of toast. Angus keeps looking at me steadily, but his chest is rising and falling more quickly than it was a moment ago as he waits for my reaction.

I barely move my head, yet Angus’s relief at my response is palpable.

“It’s okay. Complicated is okay,” he says brightly, before getting up to go and retrieve his textbooks from downstairs.

I stare after him, my toast growing cold in my hand, knowing without a doubt that this thing between us is not complicated. What’s complicated is me. Angus is as uncomplicated and true as an arrow shot right through my heart.

T
HE
NEXT
day I feel much better. I phone Soren and tell him I’m coming into work—he’d signed me off for the rest of the week, but his comments about getting up and getting on stirred something inside me. And mostly I’m tired but not at all sick anymore.

As I leave, I debate knocking on Angus’s door, but I have no idea whether he will be awake, whether he is a morning person or not, so I leave it. This complicated thing between us feels so fragile now, and I’m scared of breaking it.

I stride out the front door and almost trip over Oskar, who is sitting topless on the doorstep outside, smoking. His still plastered foot is stuck out in front of him, his ragged jeans rolled up above it.

We stare at each other, the both of us wide-eyed with shock.

“Hi,” Oskar says after a heartbeat.

I think my mouth may be open, but no sound comes out. I can’t stop staring at his pale skinny chest as my brain fills in the gaps as to why he has no top on. Why he’s here outside the house in the first place, freezing his nipples off. He must have spent the night with Angus and is smoking out here because Angus knows Eleanor wouldn’t want anyone smoking in her flat. My stomach lurches, and the newly wired hope around my heart short-circuits in my chest.

“Angus,” I say, without really knowing why. I have nothing to follow it with.

Oskar nods.

“I’ve got to go to work now,” I mumble, turning quickly and walking away.

My journey to work is a blur.

My brain has gone into overdrive. Self-loathing is a bitch always looking for her chance. And I know I’m being melodramatic and jumping to conclusions, but maybe it’d be for the best if Angus fell in love with Oskar. Perhaps Oskar can give Angus what I can’t. Actually, I’m pretty sure he can. So why does the thought of them together make me feel like I’m collapsing inside? Why do I keep thinking back to how Angus looked at me yesterday when he asked me if it was complicated? Why does being with him make me feel so fucking hopeful and alive?

Feeling so much is what terrifies me. Feeling so much and not being able to make any sense of it.

This is why you have to keep your distance
, I remind myself bitterly.
Don’t feel, don’t ever let anyone reach beneath the surface and your world will stay intact and not crumble around your feet.

“Are you going to make me regret thinking you were okay enough to work?” Soren says with a frown when he sees me waiting for him to open up by the front of the shop.

Today he’s wearing the hat with the earflaps he wears when it’s cold.
The deerstalker.
Not everyone can pull off the dorky earflap hat, but with his high cheekbones, angular jaw, and unusual coloring, he looks like a poster boy for some hip winter-clothing line. Well, that or a Sherlock Holmes wannabe.

“I
am
okay to work,” I assure him, smiling tightly.

“God, that’s scary. Please don’t do it again,” he says dryly.

I actually laugh—not knowing how that is possible when I’m the closest to crying I’ve come in years.

Stupid thing about crying is when you
think
about doing it, you sometimes find yourself
actually
doing it.

“Shit.” Soren grabs my arm and pulls me inside the shop. In a second he has an arm around my shoulder, pulling me into an awkward embrace, overwhelming me with his aftershave and his kindness.

Mortified, I shove him away and wipe my eyes. I can’t believe I’ve done this in front of him.

“I’m okay,” I say again, determined to keep the tremor out of my voice.

“No, you’re not.”

“Shit, Soren, that’s not helping, okay…. Just… just give me a minute.”

Holding up his hands, he steps away and flicks the shop lights on.

“I’m making you a sugary coffee, and you’re going to drink it, and afterwards, if you still look like you’re going to frighten children, you’re going home.”

I
MANAGE
to annoy Soren into letting me stay at work. I don’t want to go home. In fact I am dreading going home. My head is a mess. At least here I can pretend everything is normal and okay.

“So, I take it you’ve not made a move on that neighbor of yours?”

Soren stands next to me at the cash register filling out an invoice.

“What neighbor?”

“Pretending you don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about doesn’t actually work when I’ve been in the same room as you two,” he says, shaking his head and looking at me as though he cannot believe I’m denying this.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That I think you want him, and when he looks at you, he just about melts. I’m betting he will do absolutely anything you ask him to—which, by the way, is kinda hot.
Waaay
hot, actually. And yet, here you are, still as sexually frustrated as ever.” He sighs, smiling innocently.

“I don’t want him,” I say stubbornly, glowering.
And I am not sexually frustrated!
I want to shout.

Soren is really starting to piss me off.

I
SPEND
the rest of the day avoiding the raised eyebrows and suggestive little smirks Soren gives me whenever he glances my way. He knows he’s fucking right, and I hate his smugness.

“D
ON
’
T
COME
in tomorrow. I’ll get Emma to cover for you—she needs the hours,” Soren says as we’re closing up.

“What? Why not?” I lock the front of the shop, feeling a sharp spike of panic at this suggestion. Is he thinking about cutting my hours permanently? It’s well within his role as shop manager to do that.

“Take the day off. Do something fun. Go to the seaside—take Angus. Have a picnic. Anything. Get it out of your system.”

“You’re giving me the day off to go hook up with someone?” I raise my eyebrows incredulously.

“No, I’m giving you the day off to go sort yourself out.” Pulling down the shutter, Soren sighs as if he thinks he really shouldn’t have to be telling me this. “Ever since that burglary, you’ve been a mess. And now I know why. It’s all connected to Angus. Figure it out, Josh. Don’t be a dick about it.”

Soren is the last person I’m willing to accept advice from, and yet, perhaps he’s right. Perhaps I do need to sort myself out. Perhaps I should get in my car and just drive, just put my foot down and keep going. I don’t even think about where Angus fits into all this. I no longer have to—my heart just knows. But now everything is unraveled and out of my control. I’ve held back for too long.

A
NGUS
IS
waiting in the hall as usual when I get home. He smiles when he sees me, lit up with happiness.
It’s probably Oskar’s presence
, I think despondently.

“Hey,” I say. I go for upbeat, but it comes out flat.

Even though I’ve convinced myself he’d be happier with Oskar, trying to mask the wave of hurt I feel is harder than I thought.

“Finished my studying, so we could… I could—” Looking incredibly self-conscious, he swallows and shifts from foot to foot. His hands are behind his back as though he’s hiding something. “—cook something for you if you like?” He produces a recipe and what looks to be a small plastic bag of ingredients.

“I’m tired,” I mutter, hating myself.

I walk past him and up the stairs.