This is Not a Love Story (28 page)

It’s a tiny room, just enough space for a toilet and sink, but at least it’s clean. I kneel down on the floor next to Pasha while Crash and Roxy stand outside.

The toilet is flimsy and the seat slips around as Pasha leans his arms on it and rests his head between them. I rub my hand up and down his back, feeling the skin slip over the bones, the thin layers of muscle. And even though he probably feels like death, the way he leans his body into my touch breaks my heart a little more. When was the last time anyone touched him without wanting something in return?

I do as Crash suggested and get him to drink warm water and throw up. There’s not much left inside him, and after a while he just brings up bile and shivers uncontrollably. I wrap him back up in the blanket and help him walk back to the room with the heater.

Crash and Roxy bring in a couple of chairs from the cafe, and Cassey follows behind them with a tray of soup and biscuits, which she sets on top of the boxes.

“I can’t send you back out into the rain cold and hungry,” she says, glancing worriedly at Pasha, who, although now walking unaided, still looks fairly spaced out and faintly blue with cold. But I know there is only so much she can do. She can’t be looking after everyone who steps in through the cafe doors looking a bit worse for wear. She would end up taking care of half of London.

“You need some dry clothes, love,” she says.

But that’s something we just don’t have. The only clothes Pasha has are the ones he’s wearing.

Cassey sighs. “Or at least dry those ones.”

She leaves us. The cafe is getting busy again as the second wave of commuters call in for breakfast on their way to work.

I motion for Crash to help me undress him. If we hang his clothes in front of the heater, they should be dry in no time.

Pasha doesn’t protest, but he wraps his arms around his chest protectively after we’ve pulled off his T-shirt, his teeth chattering. His chest and neck are black with bruises.

The clothing he has doesn’t look too worn, and they are different than the clothes he came to visit me at the hospital in. It’s stupid, but it hurts to think of Julian going to the clothing bank with Pasha instead of me and getting these for him.

I pull the blanket up over his shoulders and grip it tightly so he can take his trousers off in privacy. But he can’t. They’re too wet, and he’s shaking too badly, and when Crash moves to pull them from the ankle, tears fill Pasha’s eyes that he bites his lip to hold back.

It’s okay,
I mouth, stroking his cheek with my free hand. He shakes his head and drops to the floor, forcing me to sit down with him. It’s not the softest blanket, but we fold it over his body, and he manages to kick off his jeans.

“Julian told him to fuck off and leave,” Roxy says behind me, drinking soup and picking at the thin rubber of his shoes. The quiet scrape of his fingernails against the rubber irritates the hell out of me. “But I don’t suppose you care now that you’ve
moved on
.”

I hold Pasha’s gaze. His eyes look haunted. Fleetingly, I think I might hate Roxy.

“Remee,” Pasha whispers softly, shaking his head.

My chest tightens. Remee is what Julian calls me. No one else. And yet, I know why Pasha is saying that name—Julian must have spoken about me, or maybe he talked in his sleep.

With an anguished expression, Pasha places a cold hand against my face and says quickly in Russian, “He told me to go, to leave him and find Cassey. He didn’t want me with him anymore.”

When he breathes, it is a sob.

Where is he?
I mouth, not sure he can understand me.

Desperately, I gesture at Crash.
Ask him where!

“I went back to the hospital for you, but your bed was empty. He just wanted to get out of his head. Alone. I’m scared for him.”

“Where is he?” Crash asks.

“I don’t know. We were on the north bank when he told me to go. He needed money. He didn’t want to run anymore. He owed people, but I don’t think he cared.”

His words rip through me like barbs tearing open old wounds. The north bank is where he used to go to get picked up. The only money he is going to get is by selling himself.

The anger I felt at Roxy is nothing compared to this. I don’t know if I’m angry at Julian, myself, or the whole fucking world.

Unsteadily, I get up. I don’t feel right. I walk first one way, then another before heading toward the door.

“Romeo?”

I turn around, not really seeing the room anymore.

Where are you going?
Crash signs.

Take Pasha to your foster parents,
I sign.

What?

Please. Please do this for me.

Where are you going?

I’ll come back. I promise.
I have to look away from Crash. I can’t bear to see what I’m doing to him. I feel as though I’m breaking something fragile and unspoken. Instead I pull the phone he gave me out of my pocket.
I have this.

They wouldn’t let me collect your pictures from the hospital. That’s why I was so quick. They would only give them to Estella or you. I thought we could go and pick them up now.

I can live without my pictures. I can do more.

Help him,
I plead to Crash.
I know where Julian is. You know I have to do this. I will come back. I just need to find him.

What if he doesn’t want to come with you?

Why does he have to ask me that?

He holds my gaze, and I can’t look away without appearing a liar, so I don’t. I never want to go back out on those streets again, and I will do anything I can to get Julian away from them.

Please take Pasha back home with you. He’s going to get sick if he goes back out there.

I turn away.

“Wait,” Pasha calls.

He holds out his hand, and I crouch back down in front of him. “I’m sorry, Remee,” he says.

Oh God, I don’t want him to be sorry!

I’m sorry too,
I mouth, briefly pressing my forehead against his.
None of this is your fault.

“What’s wrong with him?” Pasha asks me quietly, glancing at Crash. “He speaks, but he’s like you.”

I touch my ears.

“Oh. How do I talk to him?”

I mime writing.

“I can read some, but I can only write in Russian.” Pasha looks embarrassed.

Taking his hand in mine, I squeeze it, wanting to hug him, but not wanting to hurt him.
Speak slow so he can read your lips.

I’m not sure Pasha understands, but I know he will be okay with Crash. I know Crash will look after him.

As I stand up, Crash quickly takes off his jacket and hands it to me.

You can’t go out there like that. I want it back,
he signs trying to smile, but I can see how much I’m hurting him. He moves his head so hair falls across his eyes, and he doesn’t even try to brush it away.

I can’t look back, even when Cassey calls out my name. I just shove open the steamed-up cafe door and keep running.

The rain has turned to sleet, and the darkening sky casts everything a deep blue-gray. I pull Crash’s hood around my face and slow down, keeping close to the buildings to avoid the worst of the weather, but still the bitter cold makes my hands and face ache dully.

Roxy catches up with me at the end of the street and grabs hold of my arm to stop me. I try to struggle out of his grasp, but he holds on.

“There’s something you should know,” he says out of breath. “A few days ago, someone was asking around about you down the embankment. A man. He was Russian. He was offering a hot meal to anyone that had information about your whereabouts.”

The familiar feeling of dread settles heavily in my stomach, but then I think of Julian and what he’s doing right now, and it hardly seems important.

Roxy waits for my reaction, but I don’t have one. I want to be somewhere else right now. I need to be somewhere else. I need to find Julian. And whether it’s anger or love that’s burning brightest through me, it doesn’t matter as long as it drives me forward and I find him before he does something I can’t help him walk away from.

Letting go of my arm, he shrugs.

“You should watch your back,” he shouts, dodging the cars as he runs across the road.

But I don’t care about watching my back. Whatever’s happening behind me, I can’t change. I look out across the river, twisting roughly under the gray-black bridges, and for the first time in my life, I feel a deep conviction that whatever I’m heading toward is the thing I can change.

O
NCE
I
reach the other side of the river, I can’t decide which way to go. If Julian’s here, he could be anywhere along this road. I choose the direction the wind is blowing, so the icy rain hits the back of my head instead of my face, and walk along right next to the river, watching how the wind whips the water up into the air and the rain drifts across in great billowing curtains.

There’s hardly anyone else around, and the few people I see are hurrying to be somewhere else, somewhere safe and dry. I still don’t see myself as one of them, but I don’t belong out here anymore either. I don’t belong anywhere. The feeling makes me want to carve out my own little world, somewhere I’ve made safe, somewhere away from all this.

My pace has slowed, and it’s not because I’m too tired to run. It’s just… however much I try to put Crash’s words out of my mind, I can’t—what if I find Julian, and he really doesn’t want to come with me? Where does that leave me?

I can’t force him. I don’t want to manipulate him. I want him to
want
to be with me, to want something better for both of us, but what if he just doesn’t? What if he wants to self-destruct, to let the streets annihilate all that he is, all that he ever was, and all that we ever were in the process?

I don’t let myself consider that if he wanted to still be with me, he would have found me already, because that thought scares me almost as much as not knowing where he is.

So I don’t run. Not yet.

I pass the ruins of Joe Brown’s cafe—Cassey’s cafe—Joe was her husband. I don’t look too closely. It’s mostly hidden behind a six-foot paneled security fence anyway; only the remains of the collapsed roof are visible, the blackened beams swelling and splitting in the rain. My chest tightens up just being here. I have to force my legs to keep stepping forward before the whole of me seizes up and the memories crush me in place. But still they come. I remember the shock of finding out the fire had destroyed the only place we felt at home, the only place that had
been
our home, albeit only briefly. I remember how distraught Julian was. I remember how he cried as he fucked me. I remember the helplessness I felt as he fell apart, his arms around me.

It was after that that everything changed.

I walk faster.

After today, I vow never to come here again.

The path drops down, away from the river. If the rain wasn’t so heavy, I could see the wasteland from here, the arches beyond it, but today I see nothing but a bleak, ghostlike mist.

I walk slowly, the icy puddle water seeping into my shoes until my feet are so cold I can no longer feel them. No one is hanging around. No one is trying to sell themselves. No one is looking. I glance at the time on my phone—it is only midmorning, which might explain the lack of trade.

I see a bus stop a few hundred meters away. I head toward it, wanting only to hide out from the relentless downpour for a moment and gather my resolve.

Unfortunately, I’m not the only one.

“Hi,” the girl says, smiling at me hopefully while she tries not to shiver. She needs more clothes on than a Lycra miniskirt and a halter-neck top in this weather. She must be freezing.

There is only one long tippy seat, and she is sat in the middle of it, a painted doll, her makeup too bright in this grayness.

“You look like you could use a bit of distraction. I could give you something that would be very distracting.” Her unreal gaze darts down to my groin, then slowly back up, and she smiles again, though it doesn’t reach her eyes. It’s just business.

I shake my head and sit down, watching the gutter at the roadside overflow with black water. I’m not walking to find another shelter from the rain just because she wants me to pay her to give me a blowjob. She must be desperate, but I guess Crash’s expensive coat is covering up most of my poverty.

She sighs, knocking her head against the Perspex behind her, and shimmies her skirt a centimeter farther down her thighs. “I just need one more fucking customer, then I can go back. You know he’s made me sit out here in the fucking rain since ten last night?”

I don’t know who he is. I don’t want to—I hate him already—but I don’t want to talk to her or be her friend. I feel sorry for her, I really do, but it’s just this whole thing. No one should be reduced to this, used like this. It disgusts me. And when I think of Julian hitting on men in bus shelters or by the side of the road, not enough clothes on for the weather, I start to unravel inside.

“If you’re waiting for the bus, it left five minutes ago. You’ve got a bit of a wait ’til the next one.”

Fuck…. I dig my fingernails into my palm. I
am
unraveling inside.

I should be running the length of this road searching for him. Instead I’m sitting in a bus shelter being hit on by a prostitute, waiting for the rain to stop, terrified of what might happen if I do find him, of what might be destroyed. It’s pathetic, and right now I feel so powerless. And I can’t stand feeling like this anymore.

This morning was so calm, those birds singing in that misty garden so far away from this moment. I can’t reconcile it.

I pull out my phone.

I’m looking for a boy. He has blond hair. His name is Julian.
I type and show her the screen.

She shrugs dismissively. “You should come later. There are a lot of boys, whatever color hair you want. If you close your eyes, we can pretend.” She smirks, and I dig my fingernails in deeper. “You lend us a quid so I can go get a cup of tea?”