Falling (13 page)

“Oskar said he saw you this morning,” Angus says quickly, taking the stairs two at a time and following me. “He’s staying with me for a bit. He was supposed to be staying with a friend, but it fell through.”

I reach my door.

“We’re just friends,” Angus says.

I stop. He thinks I’m jealous, and I am, but not in the way he thinks.

“It’s okay,” I say quietly, just wanting to get inside my flat and shut the door.

“Jesus, Josh. Can you just… look at me?”

I turn.

“I’m not fucking interested in Oskar. Okay?” He sounds exasperated. “I’d have thought you’d be able to work that out by now.”

It’s more Angus swearing that has me paying attention than anything else. Angus hardly ever swears. That and the look on his face that tells me… well, it tells me whatever he’s feeling right now, he doesn’t feel that way about Oskar.

It’d be so easy to lose myself in his eyes, in the intensity of his gaze.
Please give me a chance
, he seems to be begging me, and I want to. Oh God, I want to. I want to give us a chance more than anything.

I want to trust him.

“I want to cook you something. I owe you.
Please
?” he says.

My resistance has evaporated.

Holding my door wide, I let him in.

“I’
M
GOING
to take a shower,” I say as Angus peers around the kitchen looking for pans and knives and a chopping board. He nods distractedly, smoothing out the recipe sheet on the small kitchen table and staring at it.

“Can I ask what you’re cooking?”

I try and glance past him at what’s been handwritten on the sheet, but he steps in front of it so I can’t see.

“It’s a surprise,” he says, his blush deepening the longer we look at each other.

I shrug, smiling a little, the weight in my chest lightening as though I’m being slowly filled with helium.
Okay.

I take my time, standing under the shower far longer than normal, the warm spray washing over me. In my stomach it feels as though I have swallowed one of those tiny bouncy rubber balls and it’s just bouncing around inside me. The sensation increases as I pass the kitchen and see Angus concentrating as he chops something and scrapes it into the pan. It smells wonderful, and I just want to lean against the doorjamb and watch him. Even if watching him is turning me on.

In the bedroom I have a bit of a clothing crisis, thinking jogging bottoms and the T-shirt I slept in are somehow not appropriate, but not really knowing what is. I don’t know why I’m so nervous either. I’ve eaten meals with Angus plenty of times now.

As soon as I step into the kitchen, Angus hands me a beer and gestures for me to sit down. The lights are off, and the room is full of candlelight. Bright little tea lights cover all the work surfaces and are dotted across the table. He must have found them in one of the drawers.

“I can turn the lights back on if it’s a bit weird,” Angus says hesitantly as I stare around. “Or… or if you think it’s a fire hazard or something.”

“No, it’s okay.” My hands are shaking as I pick at the label on the beer bottle in my hands.

Angus carefully places a piled-up plate in front of me. It’s a warm bacon and potato salad with warm crusty bread croutons—simple fare, but effective enough to bring a pressure behind my eyes that I have to blink away.

“No one has ever cooked for me like this before. Thank you,” I say, wondering where this desire to be so open has come from. It’s not as if I’m about to tell Angus about the lack of friends or lovers in my life, but I’m aware I’m hinting at it.

“Thank you for letting me,” Angus says, sitting down opposite. His eyes appear so dark in this light. His cheek dimples as he tries not to smile.

We don’t speak much, but it’s okay. It’s not necessary. Afterwards Angus washes up and makes coffee, and we sit in the living room, our thighs pressed together on the velvet couch. His hands flutter in his lap as if he wants to do something with them but is unsure what, and he fiddles with the strap around his wrist. I think about holding his hand, but I don’t. I wonder if that’s what he wants me to do.

Slowly he relaxes. He laughs at a few stupid jokes I tell him. I discover I have a talent for a simple sort of humor, or maybe Angus just finds everything I say funny. I don’t know. But we grow silent after a while. He leans his head against my shoulder, and I just breathe him in. The sweetness of these moments becomes too perfect to spoil with too many words. I am so content just
being
with him. I want to share my silence with him. I’ve never felt like this with anyone before. It’s as if some subatomic shift is taking place inside me. The change is so fundamental, it worries me that a part of my brain has still not recovered from my being sick.

When Angus tells me he should go home, I don’t want him to.

“You need to rest,” he says gently and gets up.

“Stay,” I say softly. I hold his gaze, trying, for once, to impart my own meaning in our secret shared connection.

“Another time,” he says but he looks as though he has to force the words out.

I walk him to the front door, pulling him into my arms before either of us feels awkward about what we’re supposed to do now, how we’re supposed to say good-bye. We hold each other like that for a long time, my nose pressing into his hair, his soft lips on my collarbone. Angus’s heart thumps against my chest. I love how warm and excited he feels. My whole body is thrumming and stiff with excitement for
him
. I want to kiss him, but he told me he wants to go, so instead I move my head and whisper in his ear, “Are you free tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I can be. What for?” His voice is just muffled breath against my neck, but it feels wonderful.

“Want to come to the beach with me?”

“Yes.”

I can hear the smile in his voice, feel it against my skin.

W
E
LEAVE
early, heading down south toward Brighton. Although I have no intention of actually going to Brighton, the beaches on the south coast are the best (and the nearest).

It promises to be a beautiful day, though Angus and I do have to scrape ice off the car windscreen before we set off, and I turn the heater up to full sunshine hot. But beauty is relative, and we could be going anywhere and doing anything and it would be nothing less.

Angus dozes off in the passenger seat for the first hour. He looks exhausted and maybe a little stressed. There are dark rings under his eyes. I wonder if he’s pushing himself too hard over this test for college.

The test is the day after tomorrow. I didn’t want him worrying about it, so I asked him before we left if he wanted to bring any textbooks along, but he stopped himself and told me he’s studied enough and a little revision later will be fine. I know he wants so badly to do well, but it’s not worth putting himself under so much pressure. I don’t think he should have to. Not that I would ever tell him for fear of sounding like a patronizing parent, but I’m so proud of him.

A
T
AROUND
half eight I pull over for a cup of tea at a breakfast van in a lay-by right at the top of the South Downs. Angus climbs out of the car, yawning and stretching as though he needs a few more hours in bed. His T-shirt rides up, and I stare at the neatly defined line of jet-black hair that descends his flat stomach, disappearing below the waistband of his jeans. He catches my eye, and I quickly look away across the frosty Downs, everything glittering in the hazy morning sunlight.

“It’s pretty up here,” Angus says.

We lean against the car, drinking our tea and taking in the view. A couple of other cars are parked up with people doing the same thing. I can feel the heat of Angus’s body even though we’re half a foot apart.

“I made you breakfast,” I say. “Do you want it now or when we get to the beach?”

“The beach.” He smiles. “I’ve never seen the sea.”

“Really?” I admit I’m a little shocked. On this small island, surely everyone has been to the seaside by the time they’re eighteen. But perhaps even before she stopped going out of the house, Eleanor didn’t like going too far away. And by the sounds of it, Angus’s shit of a father has never done anything just for Angus.

There is a beautiful emptyish expanse of beach near the garish seaside resort of Hayling Island. I park up and for a moment let Angus just stare out the windscreen as I go and buy a day’s parking ticket. In the distance there are a few dogs racing across the sand, their walkers slowly ambling behind them. Apart from them, we are mostly alone.

The sea is so far out, the beach looks as though it might stretch right up to the horizon. Almost. If it weren’t for the flickering, sea-glass glint of light as it glances blindingly from distant wave to distant wave, I might think the beach goes on forever.

Out of the car boot, I pick up the picnic blanket and the rucksack full of food I prepared this morning, and we set off across the stones toward the never ending stretch of sand. But the wind is so bitterly cold, we head back inland after a couple of minutes to find a little shelter amongst the sand dunes to eat our breakfast. I even wish for a couple of Soren’s god-awful silly hats to protect us from the icy breeze.

Angus’s enthusiasm is undimmed. He grins at me when I hand him a bacon roll.

“You’re amazing, you do know that, right?” he says, taking a bite. The wind whips his hair in front of his face.

I raise one eyebrow, pretending I’m cooler than the freezing December air, but I think by now Angus gets it that I’m not all that cool beneath the surface. I don’t know how exactly, but I think perhaps he’s always seen behind the front I put up. Maybe I’m just writing on a wall to him. I’m not sure how I feel about that—elated, terrified, embarrassed, relieved. I’m a secret that has never been told. Maybe we all are until someone cracks our code.

Perhaps I shouldn’t analyze.

“I hoped it wasn’t going to be quite so cold and windy.” I sigh.

“It’s exhilarating! We should go swimming.” He gestures excitedly at the too distant freezing sea.

I roll my eyes, but half an hour later, I’m standing barefoot in the sand, my shoes in my hand, the achingly cold water lapping against my ankles.
This is what going for a walk with an overgrown puppy must be like
, I think wryly.

Angus wades a little deeper, gesturing that I follow him. With the wind blowing in his hair, he looks so wildly beautiful and free it makes my stomach do the mad little flip thing it’s started to do whenever I am around him. Just being near him makes me feel exhilarated. My breath is whipped away by the sea.

What can I do but walk into the sea after him?

T
HERE
ARE
few stones and shells in the sand but Angus digs out what he can find as souvenirs. I’m mesmerized by him, by the expressions of wonderment he tries to hide. Glancing up, he attempts to hold himself in check, but he can’t. He’s far too open, and I never want him to be anything else.

“I’m being too much a kid, aren’t I?”

“No. Never.” I shake my head with a smile.

Standing up, he pouts. He looks as if he’s about to say something else, but as he steps backwards, his face twists in pain. I reach out to grab him, but I’m not fast enough, and he collapses down onto the sand, gripping his foot.

Shocked, I drop the shoes I’m carrying and sink down on the sand next to him.

“What happened?”

Angus’s only response is a sort of strangled gasp as he pulls a thin piece of clear glass out of his heel and blood begins to gush everywhere over the wet sand.

Oh shit.

“We need to get you back to the car,” I say, trying to keep it calm and together even though I can feel how hard I’m shaking.

I pick up the shoes and slip my arm around his back to help him to his feet.

“I’m okay,” he says.

Wincing, he tries to hop.
It’s going to take forever to get to the car like this.

I give him the shoes to hold, and I lift him into my arms. Although he’s shorter than me, he’s broader, and his leanness is all muscle. It’s a long way back across the sand, and I am still exhausted from how sick I was earlier in the week. My arms are aching in protest, but I don’t even register the discomfort fully.

Angus makes no protest to being carried. Instead he grips his hands around my neck and presses close. If I weren’t so worried, it would be a turn-on.

Blood drips from his cut heel, leaving a thin red ribbon that trails behind us.

“You’re losing too much blood.” I stumble painfully across the stones to the car. I’m ready to bundle him up and put my foot to the floor to get him to the nearest A & E.

“I’m okay,” he says calmly. “It’s just a cut.”

I open the passenger door and gently set him down on the seat. Angus brings his foot into his lap to take a look at the damage.

“It’s just a cut,” he repeats, as I stare at his foot feeling light-headed. “Josh…. Josh, sit down.”

With one shaky hand on the car, I lower myself onto the gravel. Everything feels so far away, even Angus’s voice sounds like it’s coming from a distance.

“Put your head between your knees,” he says.

I’m feeling too awful to argue, so I do as he bids.

I breathe deeply and slowly come back to myself.

“Lots of people feel faint at the sight of blood,” Angus says kindly as he flips open the tiny medical bag he must have found in the glove compartment.

“I just don’t like the thought of how much it hurts,” I reply, lifting my head but making sure I keep my gaze on his face. “It’s not just the sight of blood… but that it is leaking out of you.”

It’s not even that I’m thinking about it consciously. I just feel light-headed when I see someone bleeding or in pain, and it’s far worse when it’s someone I care about. When I hurt Oskar’s foot, I didn’t feel anything like as bad as I do now, though perhaps I would have if he had been bleeding.