This is Not a Love Story

Published by

Harmony Ink Press

5032 Capital Circle SW

Suite 2, PMB# 279

Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886

USA

[email protected]

http://harmonyinkpress.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This Is Not a Love Story

© 2014 Suki Fleet.

Cover Art

© 2014
Aaron Anderson.

[email protected]

Cover content is for illustrative purposes only

and any person depicted on the cover is a model.

All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Harmony Ink Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or [email protected].

ISBN: 978-1-63216-040-9

Library ISBN: 978-1-63216-041-6

Digital ISBN: 978-1-63216-042-3

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

May 2014

Adapted from
This Is Not a Love Story
by
S. Honunjama
, published by CreateSpace,
December 2013

Library Edition

August 2014

T
HERE
’
S
THIS
boy (isn’t there always?), this beautiful, glowing creature who makes me feel alive. Even here, living on the street with all the shit that happens—the cold, the hunger, the terror of spending one more day like this, one more night like this—somehow he makes me want to survive it, despite everything, just to spend another fucking minute in his starry-bright glow.

Even now,
especially now
, as we stand on the embankment next to the busy main road. This is the red-light district for boys like us. This is where we sell ourselves, one piece of our souls at a time.

Four coins rest in the palm of his hand, the rest hidden in the strap beneath his threadbare sleeve.

He holds them out to me, and I am entranced by the warm gold skin of his wrist—people pay a fortune to get a glow like that, for something he just
has
naturally.

“For you,” he mouths, fixing his light brown eyes on mine.

Yeah, for me to go and get warm in Joe Brown’s stinking cafe while he gets fucked under the railway arches by some dirty creep who doesn’t give a shit if he hurts him. I wish Julian didn’t act like my big brother. I wish just once he’d trust me to look out for him. I’m not as fragile as he thinks.

But I take the coins, when really what I want to do is throw them into the road and beg him not to go.

He knows, and our gazes lock, the both of us trying to communicate something the other doesn’t understand, or doesn’t want to.

It’s like this every time he gets picked up.

As if on cue, the guy in the car blasts the horn. We both jump.

“Hurry the fuck up,” the creep hisses.

Through the steamed-up car window I can’t see the face attached to the voice, but the rest of him looks old and thin—hands gnarled as the roots of the trees that line this part of the embankment grip the steering wheel. And though I know that his age doesn’t mean he’s harmless, I can pretend, I can hope.

Julian tries to smile, his eyes telling me it will be okay. But how will this ever be okay? I can’t bear it.

But we have nothing.

We are nothing.

His warm fingers brush my cold ones, and I long to grab his hands and pull him away with me. I want to run along the embankment with him until my lungs burst. Maybe I will anyway.

Alone.

“Twenty minutes,” he mouths.

I nod robotically. He gets in the car and watches me from the window as he’s driven away. I make a note of the color, model, and registration number. Knowing this makes me feel safer: if anything were to happen, I would have a tether, a proof that this car exists and Julian exists within it.

Nothing is going to happen. I bite back a sob. And run.

J
OE
B
ROWN
’
S
cafe is full of wasters. Technically, I guess that includes me.

“Hey, Romeo!”

I ignore the shout. I don’t even want to acknowledge Cricket. He’s high. But he gets up and comes over to the counter where I’m stood waiting for Cassey to pour my tea.

“Where’s Jules?”

I turn around and shrug. It’s none of his fucking business. Whatever Cricket’s got to sell, I’m not buying.

“Lend us a quid.”

He drapes a skinny arm around my shoulder. I hold my breath and shrug him off.

I try not to look at the clock on the wall above the counter, but it’s become a sick compulsion. Ten more minutes.

“Pleeease.”

I take a clean napkin out of the dispenser and write
fuck off
with the pen from my pocket.

I’ve been desperate before too, and Cricket took that opportunity to kick me while I was down. Maybe he thinks I’ve forgotten.

Cassey hands me my tea along with four packets of sugar. She keeps the sugar behind the counter now. She eyes Cricket warily.

“Leave the boy alone. He’s never done you any harm.”

Cricket backs away, holding his hands up. “Hey, I was just being friendly.”

“Aye, course you were,” she says, grimacing.

I have this effect on women, especially after they find out there’s something wrong with me—when they find out I can’t speak, that I’m mute. They want to look out for me, mother me, protect me. Well, apart from my own mother. I never had this effect on her. I wouldn’t be here if I had.

“How you doing?” Cassey asks me. And it’s not an empty question. She really wants to know.

Got moved on again last night. Tired,
I write on the back of the fuck-off napkin.

“Hungry?”

If the rest of them ever found out she was giving me food for free, the place would get trashed.

“Come around the back in five minutes,” she says quietly.

M
Y
POCKETS
are full of crushed toast that’s getting even more pulverized as I run down the embankment toward the railway arches.

Julian’s late.

He’s been late before but never this late.

As twenty minutes turned into forty, I started to feel sick. So sick Cassey thought I was ill.

Oh God, oh God, please please please let him be okay.

Last week the police found the body of a boy on the heath. The heath is miles from here, but we all knew the boy. He used to hang around the embankment selling himself like Julian.

I knew I should have stopped Julian getting in that car. I had a bad feeling about this from the start. I should have followed them. The thought of him hurt or in pain makes me retch. At the bottom of the embankment, I stop and steady myself against a wall as I stare out toward the railway arches.

Where
is
he?

I wish I could call his name, hear a voice that is mine ringing with it. Instead I scream silently, my heart about to implode in my chest.

Please
, I plead to the silence,
let me find him. He’s all I have
.

T
WO
BATTERED
chest freezers and the shredded remains of a car tire litter the roadside, but there is no beige Ford Escort with rust-scoured wings. There are no cars parked up at all.

A swathe of misty rain sweeps in from the river and makes the world a blurry and somehow uncertain gray.

I look at my watch. It’s been fifty minutes. Julian said twenty. The police won’t start a search for at least twenty-four hours, even given the circumstances.

If he’s gone, I’ve lost him. If he’s not here, then he’s not anywhere, anymore.

His soft honey-colored hair, his sweet wonky smile (he fractured his palate when he was younger, but the only time you’d notice is when he grins at you full-on). Suddenly it hits me, and I feel light-headed, pain wrings my chest, thoughts spiral…
whatifwhatifwhatif
…? I can’t breathe.
Fuck
… I stumble into brickwork that curves in out of nowhere to smack me in the face. The pain is so great I almost pass out… almost… almost…. I kneel on the pavement until… eventually… my breathing deepens, slows down, and I pull myself up.

Ahead of me there are six massive archways. All dark in the depths of them. Perfect for what they’re used for.

I hate it here.

Julian would use the last one if he were given a choice.
Was he given a choice?
I bite back a sob.

My ears ring with music as a car races past, subwoofers vibrating the sodden afternoon air.

I inch along the pavement, eyes almost closed.

I’m such a coward, Julian. You would have found me by now. If the situation were reversed, I know you would.

The last archway. I stare up at the greasy black walls for a second as a train clatters overhead. Then I close my eyes completely, as if I can possibly delay the moment.

“Remee?”

Was that pale echo of a desperately familiar voice just my imagination? If it was, I think my heart might stop.

No one else calls me Remee.

Eyes wide, I step into the gloom.

The ground is cluttered with skeletal shopping trolleys, tangled wire, and used rubbers. The air smells weedy and damp. I can’t stand to think of him being used in here, his beautiful body, his glowing skin, his sparkly eyes, reduced to… a dark hole in someone else’s fantasy… a cheap fuck.

Against the wall in the not-quite dark, I see the threadbare jumper he was wearing. I stoop to pick it up and a thin naked arm shoots out of the gloom and grabs my wrist.
Julian
.

Sometimes relief is sweet and gentle; sometimes it hits you like a truck.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come meet you.” His voice is small. He doesn’t get up.

I don’t want him to be sorry. I want him to be okay, but he’s not.

I ease myself down next to him. I can’t see him properly. There’s not enough light. I hand him his jumper and can barely make him out as he pulls it down over his head.

“You smell like toast,” he says, softy. “Cassey?”

I nod, and he smiles, not quite a wince, as I hand him the most intact piece I have left.

The notebook and pen I carry around with me are squashed into my pocket too, but everything I want to say hurts a little too much.

Warm fingers brush my forehead, and he frowns.

“You’re bleeding.” He holds his hand up in front of my eyes, showing me the blood. “What happened?”

How can he worry about my stupid little graze?

I pull the notebook out and scrawl.
Slipped on the embankment and fell over, people were watching and everything.
I draw a diagram of a stick man flying through the air. I draw people laughing. I make them look like us.