Falling (24 page)

I poke him gently in the ribs with my phone. “You want to do it?”

He shakes his head. “Want me to leave you alone?”

When I nod, Angus kisses my cheek, then wanders slowly back to the warmth of the living room.

I pick up the phone.

And lay it back down on the table.

I pour myself another glass of brandy. I probably should do this a little more sober, but I’m losing courage by the second.

Riding the burn of the alcohol, I hit the redial button, hold the phone to my ear, and close my eyes.

“Hello?” The girl is cautious this time when she picks up. She thinks someone is playing a joke.

“Rose?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

I can hear music in the background more clearly now. “Silent Night,” my favorite Christmas carol. I can even imagine the room all decked out as it was when I was a kid, but the people are all a faceless blank. Even Rose.

I remember her at ten
—
her blond curls always pinned up on top of her head, her wicked sense of humor. She loved to dance and perform. She was the life of every party, whereas Toby, her twin, was quiet. Not shy, he just preferred to watch life from the wings until he was ready to join in rather than jump into the center of attention. Toby was more like me. I remember him hovering in the background at the hospital, not knowing what to say to me. The last time I saw Rose, she was angry with me. Toby was crying. I didn’t feel anything then, nothing—I couldn’t even get out of bed—but now I’m ashamed.

“It’s Josh,” I say hoarsely.

“Josh?” She pauses. “Josh who?”

I’m about to put the phone down when she shrieks, “Josh, my brother Josh?”

The moment after she says this, there is nothing but the quiet gasp of breathing—mine, hers, everyone in the room around her, perhaps. Even the music in the background has died. I hold my hand over my mouth, afraid to speak.

“What did you say, Rose?” a woman’s voice asks shakily.

My mother. And even though she is nowhere near the phone, her voice reaches inside me. Her voice connects me to the past. Maybe this is a bad idea. A really bad idea. Maybe this is a trigger.

But something stops me from hanging up.

“Josh?” Rose says to me. “We don’t know any other Joshes. You’re my brother, right?”

“Yeah,” I say softly.

“Josh?” It’s my mother’s voice down the phone line now, coming through the tangled network of sound waves. Even if I put the phone down, I know I’d still hear her. She sounds shocked, upset, and… I just don’t know. I think she sounds so pleased to hear from me and yet so scared too. I can understand that. I feel the same.

I didn’t think I’d feel like this. I didn’t think it’d be so very upsetting.

I can’t speak.

“Josh,” she says again. “Is that you?”

“I’m sorry, Mum.” They are the only words I manage to get out. Maybe they are all I need to get out.

I don’t even hear Angus come into the kitchen, but suddenly he is there, kneeling in front of me. His warm, gentle hands stroke down my back in long soothing movements while I lean forward in the chair and sob.

“Josh, it’s so good to hear from you,” my mother gasps.

She calls for my dad to come to the phone. He says my name, and I can hear him breathing, imagine them all standing around the phone.

For a moment no one speaks.

Angus stops stroking my back and hugs me.

“Is Toby there?”

“Yes, he’s here,” my father answers, and there is a rumbled “Yeah” I take to be Toby’s voice.

I hate that I’ve left calling them so long. All I’ve done is hurt them. The guilt is almost enough to make me put down the phone. But again, I don’t.

“How are you? Where are you living?” my mother asks, her voice tight. She’s trying so hard not to cry. I could always tell when she was trying to put “a brave face on things,” as she’d say.

Wiping my eyes, I sit up and take a deep breath. Angus gets up and pulls the other kitchen chair over so that he can sit next to me. I stare at his bare feet, and he flexes his toes against mine. His feet are beautiful.

“I’m doing okay. I’m living in South London. We should… we should meet.”

Angus squeezes my hand so tightly as I say this.

“Josh, we would love to,” my mother says quickly.

Her eagerness scares me a little. I’m scared she’s going to suggest we meet tomorrow or the day after or something, and it’s too soon. If I’ve learned anything over the years (mostly from bitter experience, and not from seeing psychs and being in hospital), it’s that I need time to get my head around things, prepare myself. Impulsivity like this is about the worst thing in the world for me. It’s taken me so long to build up to this phone call.

“You could come here, Josh. You are always welcome here. Or if you’d rather meet somewhere else first, just tell us where, and we’ll be there.”

“I’d like that. Maybe in the New Year.”

“Okay. Can we… can we call you sometime?”

My throat is tight. I can hardly speak. “Yes, of course.”

We don’t say much more. I can’t. I leave my number with them, my address.

It’s enough. For now it’s enough.

Angus wraps his arms around me, and I rest my head on his shoulder. I’m not sure what I feel, it’s a whole mixture of things, I think. None of them bad. None of them crushing. All I need is time, and for Angus to hold me until I come together.

And he does.

He always will.

Six months later

“O
H
MY
God, look! There, look, that’s a foot! It’s like there’s an alien moving around inside her!”

Soren holds his phone out, resting it on the table in the pub so that I can watch a video of Lucy’s pregnant belly undulating as the baby moves inside her.

“Don’t say that to her. That’s your kid in there!” Angus says, placing a tray of drinks on the table and squeezing onto the leather sofa next to me.

I like that he does this. There is a whole seat free on the other side of me, and yet he prefers to sit so close, he may as well be in my lap.

I put my arm around him, not really giving a fuck if we get stared at. It’s Tuesday lunchtime, and the pub is mostly empty anyway.

“Oh, she was the one who said it to me. She thinks it’s hilarious,” Soren replies.

I can believe that. Soren and Lucy are made for each other.

Strangely, the whole birth thing has yet to make me squeamish. I even sat through a birthing video last week at Soren’s house. Lucy jokingly asked me and Angus to be her birthing partners when Soren began to look a little green.

Angus thinks it’s pain that makes me squeamish rather than just blood, and while giving birth looks agonizing, it’s a positive sort of pain. There is a point to it. A beautiful reason.

Perhaps I’m envious. I don’t know. I do know that Soren’s kid is going to be adored.

And if Soren did bow out, I know Angus would love to be Lucy’s birthing partner, and he’d be wonderful at it too. Seeing his confidence grow, especially since he started college, has made me happier than I ever imagined.

I turn my head, pressing my face into his hair. “You smell delicious,” I whisper.

Angus pushes his face into my neck, his lips brushing against my skin, his warm breath making me shiver. He turns me on so easily as if he flicks a switch in my brain with his presence.

I smile as Soren rolls his eyes. He won’t say we’re embarrassing him—he’d be more likely to say he feels left out and we should stop because watching us turns him on. He wouldn’t mean it, though. Lucy is his world.

And anyway, Soren is going back to work in a minute. He’s left Oskar in charge at the shop—his newest employee is his most hardworking, I suspect—whereas I have the afternoon off. Though what I want to do to Angus will have to wait until later. Much later.

A
T
ONE
o’clock we leave the pub. The afternoon sky is blue and gold, its brightness overwhelming. “It’s a nice day for a drive” as my mother would say, and this afternoon we are driving two hundred miles north to see her and my father and my brother and sister and the house where I grew up. I’m trying not to think about it too much.

Angus grabs my hand and phones Eleanor. Tells her we’re on our way.

She wanted us to pop in to the hospital to see her before we left. She only has another week there now, and she’s been home every Saturday for the past month to build up her confidence.

I think she wants to reassure me everything’s going to be okay. She knows I’m worried. The last time I saw my parents’ house was from the back of an ambulance.

“I’ve got this feeling everything’s going to be okay,” Angus says after he has put the phone down.

“Eleanor tell you to say that?”

Angus squeezes my hand and smiles—he’s always smiling.

We walk through town to the car park where we left Angus’s nearly clapped-out powder blue Escort. It’s newer than my car and so far more reliable, which is why we’re taking it instead of my crappy rust bucket (which I still love).

It also has the most comfortable seats I’ve ever sat in.

Angus told his dad he wanted to learn to drive, and a week later this car was sat outside the flats, its key through the front door. That sort of sums up their relationship a lot of the time, but they do have a relationship. I refused to teach Angus to drive it, insisting we’d end up hating each other, so he’s taking lessons. I’m insured to drive it until he can.

As we reach the car, I look around to make sure we’re not being watched and gently push Angus up against the warm metal and glass of the door and brush my lips against his. He melts against me—he always does—but I don’t do it again. I just hold him close. It’s enough. Being with him is enough. Enough to rearrange my heart, my trust, my world.

His eyes swallow me. He brings his arm up to cup my skull and kisses me again.

“I don’t care who knows this,” he whispers.

Sometimes when I look at him, I think I know him so well, and at other times I know nothing. He’s changing, but it’s not a bad thing. His growing confidence and the quirks that come with it are like warmth inside me. Like an ever-burning flame that will only get brighter and brighter.

“You’re thinking,” he murmurs. “I hope you’re thinking about later, like, much later.”

I laugh. “I am now.” I smile and open the car door for him, and he slips inside. I could watch the way he moves all day. How graceful he is in everything he does. “And we don’t have to sneak around.”

I wasn’t sure what my parents made of Angus when we met them in January for dinner at a London restaurant—and though I probably made it pretty clear by holding his hand and kissing his cheek, I didn’t explicitly state we were together. When my mum phoned last night to check everything was all right and we were still coming, she told me she’d made up the double room in the attic for us, so I think she’s worked it out.

I ease myself into the driving seat and start the engine.

Angus links his fingers with mine. “Not worrying?”

“No. Not worrying.” I shake my head. I’m really not.

I’ve spoken on the phone every week to them—all of them. My parents have listened to me and not questioned my need to take this slowly. I think they realize coming home is a big thing.

“Do you still think of it as home?” Angus asks softly.

“It’s my parents’ house. It’s like revisiting the past, I guess.” My home is the one I’ve made with Angus. I think he knows this. “My home is with you,” I say just to make sure.

“We’ve got a bit of tidying up to do at home when we get back,” he says, pulling a face.

“I’m not thinking about it,” I say firmly.

This morning we left the flat in a complete mess. We’re redecorating. The kitchen was the first room to change, but that was months ago now. After Soren pointed it out to Lucy, and they closed the door, giggling and then growing silent, I knew it had to go sooner rather than later. I dread to think that their baby was possibly conceived in my kitchen. That would just be too strange.

And it’s no longer my kitchen. It’s no longer my flat—it’s
our
flat. Angus’s chaos is my chaos, and I couldn’t be more in love with it.

With him. I am so in love with him.

Words still wind around our walls, but they are new ones now, added by both of us, a mixture of whim and innocence. Some of them are poems and songs. Some of them I wrote for him. And I will keep writing them.

But gone is my map of the stars on the ceiling. I don’t need it anymore. What’s the point of being reminded of your insignificance? Of overwhelming yourself with it every day?

The significance is what you make for yourself. My map of stars is right beside me, smiling in the sunshine, shining out from beneath his wild dark hair.

I don’t need anything bigger or brighter. I have it all right here.

S
UKI
F
LEET
grew up on a boat and as a small child spent a lot of time travelling at sea with her family. She has always wanted to be a writer. As a kid she told ghost stories to scare people, but stories about romance were the ones that inspired her to sit down and write. She doesn’t think she’ll ever stop writing them.

Her novel
This is Not a Love Story
won Best Gay Debut in the 2014 Rainbow Awards and is a finalist in the Lambda Awards 2015, LGBT Children’s/Young Adult category.

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Innocence

By Suki Fleet