This is Not a Love Story (2 page)

Afterward I lean toward him, letting my head rest against his shoulder. He smells of sex—not in a good way.

Want to go to Gem’s?
I write in tiny little capital letters.

I feel him nod tightly, his cheek against my shorn head. I know his eyes are closed. I know he’s trying not to cry. So I don’t move until he gently pushes me away.

Gem’s is where we go when things get real bad. We can’t stay there—she has a kid, and she works as an escort from her flat (it’s only one bedroom), not out on the street, and she’s always pretty busy—but she never turns us away. She lets us use her bathroom, her kitchen, and if we’re desperate, we can sleep for a few hours on her floor. I think she and Julian had a thing once, but I’ve never quite had the courage to ask.

I help him to stand. I notice he seems to have lost a shoe. He says he doesn’t want to look for it, but I don’t think we’ll get far without it, so I leave him leaning against the wall and start scanning the rubbish-strewn ground. Even though my eyes have adjusted, I can hardly make out anything deeper in this shadow.

“Remee,” he calls hoarsely.

I spin around, and he’s sobbing. Julian never cries, well, not that he lets anyone see anyway.

“I just want to go,” he whispers brokenly.

I nod and slip my arm around his back so he can lean on me, and we stumble out to the road.

G
EM
IS
the epitome of glamour—a glossy television glamour, 1000 watts brighter than real life. Understated is a word she’s never heard of.

She opens the door in a long red gown, looking like the star of some old Hollywood movie. Her hair piled up on her head in a beautiful cascade of dark curls, her black skin shimmering and glittery.

But her painted-on flashlight smile drops as soon as she sees us.

“Jesus. What happened to you, Jules?”

Julian looks at her pleadingly, and I tighten my hold on him. I guess he wants to tell her.

After all these months, I still haven’t worked out why he never wants to tell me. He tells me everything else.

“Hey, why don’t you go and make us a cup of tea?” Gem says to me as she leads Julian into the small living room. “I’ve got five minutes before the next one’s due.”

Angrily, I slam the cups down on the counter and shove the kettle under the tap. Does he think I can’t see the bloodstains on the back of his trousers? Does he think I didn’t notice he can hardly fucking walk? I’m not a fucking kid. I’m only three years younger than him, and I’ve been on the street for the same amount of time as he has. So I don’t pull tricks—it’s a bit of a disadvantage when you can’t speak, punters think you’re somehow retarded when you start writing notes—but I
know
what happens. I know it gets rough sometimes. I understand. Fuck, I
want
to understand.

I grip the edge of the sink until my knuckles turn the color of the bones beneath them.

I’m not angry he won’t talk to me about it. I’m angry because someone hurt him.

“Rome-yo!”

Tiny arms wrap around the tops of my legs, hugging me tightly, and I quickly swallow my rage and spin around to scoop up the smiling imp. Gem’s son Joel is four and a bit and superclever.

I swing him upside down and tickle him until he begs me to stop, then crouch down to brush against his chest with my hands.

What’s got you so happy?
I sign.

I enjoy teaching him sign. It amazes me that he picks it up so quickly, second only to Julian.

I love you
, he signs back, grinning.

I love you too, Joel,
I sign before pulling him against me and hiding my face in his tight braids. I don’t know where Gem gets the time to do his hair like this. It’s like a work of art. But I do know this kid is her world.

“Why is Jules sad?”

Everyone gets sad sometimes. I
sign.
Want to help me make tea?

I need an excuse to turn away for a moment and wipe my eyes, so I let Joel scamper around finding tea bags and milk.

J
ULIAN
IS
buried in Gem’s arms as I walk into the living room, burning my knuckles on three cups of tea. They break apart as soon as Julian sees me, and he wraps his arms around a sofa cushion instead, his eyes hollow in a way I can’t stand. I’m not jealous that they’re close. We hug like that all the time. It’s what friends do, isn’t it? I just wish he’d let me comfort him too.

This is the last of your milk.
I hand the note to Gem as I put the tea down and sit next to Julian on the sofa.

Gem sighs. “Here.” She hands me the last coins out of a glass jar on the floor. “Pick some more up for me and run him a bath, yeah?” She inclines her head at Julian.

I nod.

Joel stands in the doorway, staring at Julian’s shivering form, worried about him, I guess.

When the doorbell rings, the chime echoes weirdly. It’s like those doorbells you get in Victorian mansions. And yet in this bright fourth-floor, tower-block flat, immaculate despite the dodgy windows and the damp seeping in through the exposed outside walls, it seems strangely, perfectly suited.

“Joel, honey, you going to look after these boys while I’m working?” Gem calls, walking to the door.

I take out my notebook and sketch an outline of Joel’s face. I show it to him.

Want to come to the shop with me?

It can’t be good for him to hear what’s going on behind the paper-thin wall to the bedroom. I know Gem’s explained something to him, and I know she doesn’t trust anyone else in this block to look after him, but still.

We take the lift, even though I hate the lift—Joel finds it thrilling.

I left Julian in the bathroom, unsteadily peeling off his clothes. I think he needed to be alone. Every time now it takes that little bit longer for the visible warmth to suffuse his being again, for his glow to return. I wish he’d never started this. He thought it would be easy money, enough to maybe get us a room somewhere, something we could build on.

Yeah, easy money and a little bit of your soul.

W
E
STOP
off at the play park on the way back from the shop, so we’re gone a while. Gem’s still busy when we get back, and Julian is still in the bathroom. I leave Joel in the living room with my notebook and pen, coloring in the sketch of his face, and stand outside the bathroom door.

I don’t knock. I hate knocking. People call out when you knock, and I can’t answer. So I just slowly open the door and close it again, my heart beating fast.

Though I didn’t see much, just a handheld mirror and Julian balanced awkwardly, I’m still glued to the spot a few seconds later when Julian bursts out of the room, water pouring off him and onto the floor, a small towel slung around his hips.

I’m sorry,
I sign quickly. Mortified, actually.

You’d think we had no secrets left, living as we do, and I’ve seen him naked plenty of times, but I’ve never seen him
exposed
like that, examining himself.

He tugs my arms and pulls me into the bathroom, shutting the door softly behind me.

Raking a hand through his hair, he swallows audibly. “I’m still bleeding.”

Oh God. I pat my pockets wildly for my pad, then remember Joel has it in the other room.

What should I do?
I sign.
Do you want me to get Gem?

I’m not even sure he understands me.

“I didn’t want you to see me like this,” he moans softly, not meeting my eyes, though I’m
pleading
with him to look up. It’s so fucking unfair when people won’t look at you, especially after they say something like that.

The front door bangs, Gem’s client leaving, I guess. I grip the door handle.

And why didn’t he want me to see him like this? How is it any different than going skinny-dipping in the lake and wrestling in the freezing water to get warm, or sneaking into the swimming pool showers and sharing the same cubicle, squeezing close, our soapy limbs tangling, deliciously slippy—I had to get out before he noticed how much I liked it.

Doesn’t he
get
how I look at him? I can’t take my eyes off him. His smile makes me melt. Does he think I’m somehow going to think less of him because some intimate part of his beautiful body is hurt and bleeding? How fucking stupid is that?

Or… or… does he not want me to see him naked at all suddenly? Has something changed in the balance of our friendship?

But….

He sees my mind is crazily spinning out of control and gently picks my hand up off the door handle, shaking his head.

That’s not what he means, none of it.

“Remee? Can you check me?” he whispers, his voice full of uncertainty.

With effort, he spreads a towel out on the floor and lies face down. He rolls another towel up and pushes it under his hips so they’re raised up.

I can see he’s still bleeding redly, not a lot, but the blood is running in a tiny river down his thigh. His skin is still sweetly pink from the heat of the bath, and there are dozens of finger-size bruise marks over his narrow hips. My hands hover over them, too scared to move. He turns his head, and those amber eyes swallow me whole.

I imagine I’m a nurse in a hospital and he is my patient. I’m calm, and I talk myself through what I have to do in my head: I need to place my hands on his buttocks and spread them apart. I need to see why he is bleeding. Is it a cut, a bruise, a tear? Does it look clean? Does it need stitches? But when I place my hand on his lower back to let him prepare for my touch, all these feelings start spinning around inside me, like leaves whirling in the wind, and my mind goes terrifyingly blank. His skin is hot, slightly clammy, and oh so soft. As I brush my hand across the triangle of nerves at the base of his spine, he shivers, goose bumps appear all along his arms, and I snap my hand away, afraid that it’s cold. I’m always cold, but when I bring it to my cheek, it’s not.

He watches me the whole time. I feel my face start to flush, and I’m too hot in my clothes, uncomfortable in my skin. I need to get this over with. I need to get over my own fear and concentrate on him. This is too important.

Despite his slight frame, his buttocks are full and round and not at all bony. They feel perfect beneath my hands. I struggle to think of his body in abstract anatomical terms. I struggle to slow my racing heart, but it’s no use. Gently I spread him apart, careful of the bruises.

I don’t know what I imagined, but I feel ashamed I was afraid of this. It’s all so… normal-looking, and I’ve never looked at anyone from this angle before. When I look up to reassure him I’m not freaking out, I see his eyes are squeezed shut, are squeezing tighter shut every second that passes with me peering at this hidden part of him. I grab a piece of tissue to dab away the blood, discovering the graze isn’t deep.

The bleeding has almost stopped, and I’m so engrossed in being gentle and thorough that I involuntarily leap up when there is a soft knock on the door. Julian turns over, covering himself self-consciously with a towel.

“Yeah?” he calls out.

The door eases open. Gem’s head appears. “Everything okay?”

She frowns when she sees I am nursing tissue after tissue covered in blood.

“You’re still bleeding, Julian.”

It’s not a question. She vanishes and returns half a minute later with a box of those surgical rubber gloves you get in hospitals.

“You can never be too careful,” she says to me as she squeezes into the tiny bathroom and kneels down on the floor. “Tell me the fucker used protection.”

Julian shrugs and won’t meet her eyes. I can tell he doesn’t want to talk about this, probably because I’m here.

“Come on,” she says, impatiently snapping a glove on each hand. “Let me see.”

To his credit, Julian looks like he’d rather crawl under the bath than have another person peering at him.

Gem cocks her head. “It’s not like I haven’t seen it before.”

My eyes catch Julian’s.

“How you can still be coy about this I’ve no idea,” she carries on, smiling obliviously.

I look away first.

It’s stupid given the circumstances, but I suddenly feel sick and unbalanced, as if someone’s whipped the floor away, and I no longer know which way is up. I
knew
they’d had something. A relationship, a fling. Deep down, I knew. You can see from how comfortable they are with one another that they’ve been close. But having it confirmed… having it confirmed that he’s not gay, that all the little things, all the looks, touches, smiles I try to add up to mean something, mean nothing after all.

And I know he’s not bi either. Once I overheard him tell Cassey he wished he was. He said it would have made everything easier—whatever that meant.

“Remee?” Julian’s hand touches my arm. “What’s wrong?”

I scribble in the air, miming that I’m going to get my pad, but as soon as I’m in the living room, I rip out the page for Joel, kiss him on the forehead, and leave the flat.

If I broke down in there, Julian would want to know what had upset me, and I can’t tell him, not now. If he knew how I felt about him, I’m certain it would ruin everything.

T
HE
SKY
is an ominous expanse of purple-gray as far as the eye can see, the clouds shot through with shards of silver. So much texture and depth, I wish I could paint it. I’ve never painted anything… well, apart from in primary school, where I covered sheet after soaking sheet of paper in every color imaginable. Though that wasn’t really painting, more just passing the time so I didn’t feel like such an inadequate reject, lost in the constant song of other children’s voices. I lean back on the swing and let my head touch the ground. Now I can see what I would do with color, how it would
sing
through
me
like—

A can clatters across the road between the play park and the block of flats. Still upside down, I twist my head and see a group is gathering by a silent blacked-up car a few meters away from the entrance to the flats. Slowly, I pull myself upright. I don’t want to draw their attention, but I know I’m being watched. As if to confirm this, a second can clatters against the fence around the play park.