This is Not a Love Story (3 page)

Thank God
, I think as Julian walks stiffly down the stairs, out the door, and crosses the road toward me.

The ache in my chest becomes almost unbearable as I notice the jacket, jeans, and shoes he’s wearing aren’t his. They must belong to someone Gem knows. But they suit him, especially the jacket—especially with the collar turned up against the wind. He looks like this guy I saw in a movie once. The guy’s jacket was like his signature piece. He wore it the whole film, though in the end it was covered in blood.

The gate to the play park creaks as he opens it, and Julian glances sidelong at the crowd gathered around the car watching us. He turns, and his eyes settle on me. He pretends he hasn’t noticed them.

“You okay?” he mouths.

I nod, my head barely moving. I wonder if he notices how swollen and red my eyes are.

We duck in unison as a third can flies through the air and hits the swing bar above our heads with a thunk.

“We should go,” he says softly.

I
T
’
S
LATE
as we head back toward the embankment, the turbulent autumn sky now darkening around us like a shroud.

I don’t know where we’ll sleep tonight, but the ripped tarpaulin we use to wrap around ourselves is stuffed under the bins at Joe Brown’s cafe, so that’s where we go first.

While Julian walks around the back of the cafe, I sit on a bench and sketch the river. I’m trying to ignore how cold I am. I get cold easily, and being tired and hungry all the time doesn’t help. At least when I’m drawing I can forget all that. I can forget everything and immerse myself in trying to create something beautiful.

Except getting too engrossed in anything is not a good idea. On the streets, keeping at least half your brain alert to your surroundings is pretty essential.

The bin hits me first—sending me sprawling across the concrete—then everything in it as all the disgusting contents are shaken over my shell-shocked body.

Lloyd and his shadow loom over me.

Oh fuck.

I struggle to brush all the crap off me as I scramble up off the ground and prepare to run.

Jack, the shadow, moves around the other side of me to head me off. My choices of escape are now significantly reduced. I can either go through Lloyd, through Jack, in the river, or over the bench.

It’s futile, and I know it, but I try and jump the bench anyway.

All the air leaves me body in a violent rush as they pin me down effortlessly before I’ve run two steps. They’re not featherlight or hungry or beyond tired. They’re wired for a fight and so much stronger than me. I don’t even bother to struggle now. It would be a waste of precious energy. Lloyd sits on my chest, flicking through my pad and crushing my ribs.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Julian round the corner, and two thoughts occur simultaneously. The first is, I want him to run. I know they’ll hurt him—badly, irreparably, and without remorse. The second is not so generous: I want him to see what they’re doing and fucking kill them.

Lloyd hates me, and because of me, he hates Julian. Five months ago Lloyd and the gang he hangs around with beat me so badly I couldn’t walk afterward. The only reason he didn’t kill me is because this fearless kid ran in swinging a metal bar, knocking at least two of them unconscious and nearly taking Lloyd’s eye out.
Julian.

He didn’t know me then, and he risked everything to help me. I have no idea why. Afterward, he looked after me, took me to an abandoned open-air swimming pool south of the river, and took care of me until I was healed. It’s been like that between us ever since.

“What’s a dirty little refugee fag like you doing with this?” Lloyd fans the pages of the book in my face.

I’m panicking so badly I think I might pass out.

I have no idea why he thinks I’m a refugee.

“He’s so fucking retarded he can’t even answer.” Jack laughs and tries to stamp on my hand, which I manage to jerk desperately out of Lloyd’s grasp just before Jack’s boot hits the ground.

Distantly, I hear glass smashing.

Lloyd holds my pen a few inches from my right eye. He has a nasty scar down his face from Julian.

I can’t breathe.

“Where’s your boyfriend? A little bird told us we’d find you around here, so where is he?”

My boyfriend.
Is that what everyone thinks? And where the fuck
is
Julian? Has he just deserted me?

It occurs to me that I’m going to die here.

All at once a car horn sounds, long and loud. And instantly the whole situation twists a different way. Lloyd glances at the road, then at Jack, and gets off me. The car horn was for them.

“Tell Julian we’re coming for him. Tell him he better watch his fucking back,” he hisses, taking out a golden lighter and watching the flames lick the pages of my drawing pad before he drops it to the ground.

He mimes firing a gun as they both turn and run toward the waiting car.

Twenty seconds later I’m still lying on the ground, watching the tiny flames destroy everything I’ve ever been proud of as Julian runs toward me, a baseball bat in his hand. Wild-eyed, he skids to the ground next to my head.

“Are you hurt?”

Blindly, I blink back tears and shake my head. I don’t want to get up.

“Where are they?”

GoneGoneGone
, I sign over and over until Julian wraps his arms around my body to stop me.

W
HERE
DID
you get the bat?
I write.

I’m sitting listlessly on the wet ground, leaning against the bench I tried to jump earlier, dragging a stick through the mud to form the words. I’m not sure why I asked that question. I’m not sure I really care about the answer right now.

“I panicked,” he says softly. “When I saw them… I didn’t have anything to… use. I looked around, but there was nothing. So… I smashed a back window in the cafe.” Absently he rubs at the drying blood across his knuckle. “I knew that Cassey kept a baseball bat under the counter in case there was ever any trouble, so I took it.”

So that was the glass I heard smashing.

Slowly, I break the stick into tiny frayed pieces. I don’t want to have this conversation anymore.

But Julian carries on in a broken whisper. “I thought I was too late. I thought they’d hurt you. I’m sorry I took so long. I’m sorry about your pad.” He carefully picks up the worthless charred cover and flicks his thumb through the burned-away pages.

I can’t take it. Abruptly, I snatch it out of his hands and fling it away, far away, out of sight.

“I’ll get you another.”

He’s watching me with this tender, concerned look on his face that I just can’t stand right now.

Shut up,
I want to scream at him.
Just fucking shut up.

I’m full of empty, useless rage. I want to hurt something.

It starts to rain. Tiny droplets of rain that come in fast on the wind, like blasts of sea spray. Julian gets up and walks away to get the tarpaulin. I think he knows I won’t move for anything.

“You’re pissed off,” he says as he pulls the faded blue sheet around us.

That’s a fucking understatement. But I don’t glare at him, even though I want to. Instead I glare at my useless hands and pick at the loose stitching holding the corners of the sheet together.

“Is it because… of your pad… or because of… me?”

I shrug.

We’ve never had an argument before. Normally, I just shut down. But I want… something. I want to sign
you, it’s because of you
, even though it’s not. It would never be because of him. He’s my best friend. But the frustration I feel makes me want to scream, even though I’ve never screamed in my life. I long for some howling release.

I want a fight.

He gets it, though. He thinks it
is
him—because I didn’t let him know it wasn’t.

There’s this odd smile on his face that’s not really a smile at all, just a way to hold his face in a fixed position so he can hide his emotions. He fiddles with the laces of his borrowed shoes.

These feelings inside me—everything that’s pissed me off today, all the lurking resentment at the world that I can usually crush—growl to be released. I want to tear the world apart into little pieces and watch the pieces burn.

Did you get paid earlier?
I sign.

Earlier, as in when he got fucked. When he got hurt so badly he could barely walk and he bled for an hour after. I have to sign my question twice before he understands me, and my bitter frustration is just about boiling over. I want to sob.

He nods and pulls out a crumpled twenty from his pocket. His hands are shaking. I wish he would just fucking fight me.

You’ll have to give the money to Cassey for the window.

He stares at me like I’ve gone insane.

The window
, I sign again, slowly, as though he’s stupid.

He’s anything but.

I’m being fucking obnoxious, and I know it, but I can’t stop. I hate myself, and I hate I’m doing this under the guise of caring for Cassey, and I do care for Cassey, but I couldn’t give a fuck about her cafe window; she can claim it back on insurance.

Again, Julian nods.

Stop fucking agreeing with me,
I want to scream.
Tell me I’m being fucking horrible, tell me to stop!

I stand up and throw my share of the tarpaulin at him in anguish.

I walk away to lean against the thick wall that separates the embankment from the water. What the fuck am I doing? Whatever it is, it’s destroying me. I dig my nails into the palms of my hands until they bleed and stare out at the dirty gray river, rough and swelling in the rain.

A few minutes later, I feel the tarpaulin being draped over my head, and Julian stands next to me. He doesn’t come close enough to touch me. I’m not surprised. I want desperately to close the distance and lean my head against his shoulder. But I don’t.

I
T
’
S
LATE
,
and we’re wandering. Every so often Julian steals a glance at me, but I’m restless and tearful. I want to apologize, but I don’t know how.

We walk past Cricket and Roxy, crouched under a dark concrete staircase leading up to one of the walkway bridges over the river.

Scrap that. I walk past them. Julian, however, stops.

Reluctantly, I follow him over to them.

They’re drinking, which means Cricket must have found a buyer for whatever he was selling in Joe Brown’s. He’s so far gone he offers Julian a can for free, while Roxy lounges against him, half-asleep in his lap. I didn’t know they had a thing. Maybe they don’t. Sometimes a little easy affection is all we have, and while you can’t live on it for long, I guess it eases the loneliness.

Roxy, used to be Robyn, who used to be my friend before I met Julian. He was sweet back then, full of anxiety and wonder, but his big round eyes and smooth caramel skin made him, I don’t know… desirable, I guess, and now he just seems so… lost.

I sit on one of the weirdly shaped concrete slabs that tessellate the pavement, out in the rain, away from them. I’m being childish, I know, but sometimes you just can’t stop. Sometimes there is no backing down, at least to yourself.

Julian holds out a can for me, but perversely I shake my head. I get soppy when I’m drunk, and it would do me good, shake this helpless black mood, allow me to apologize. Instead I bite the inside of my cheek as I watch them, while pretending to be staring at the ground.

The three of them are sitting close for warmth, even though Cricket stinks and Roxy’s skin is covered in sores.

I screw my eyes shut. A while later I feel the tarpaulin hit me. Without looking over I drag the plastic around myself and curl up on the ground.

I’ve slept wet and shaking with cold many times before, but it’s been a long time since I’ve slept alone.

S
OMETIME
DURING
the night, I wake to find a warm body curled perfectly against mine. We fit together so well I can’t imagine we’re not somehow part of the same thing. The rain is pooling on the ground around us, and I can’t go back to sleep, even though my eyes are aching in their sockets.

Every so often Julian squeezes his arms tighter around me, as though he’s checking I’m still there. That he does this while he’s sleeping somehow makes it sweeter, just a little nighttime wonder between me and his subconscious self.

I can no longer remember what the past was like without him, what I was like when it was just me and Roxy—Robyn.

I turn my head to look over at him and Cricket, similarly curled under two torn sleeping bags. Julian murmurs in his sleep, and I push myself back against him, closer than close, as close as it’s possible to get without admitting that this is more than friends/brothers/whatever he wants to call it.

Robyn and I used to be close too. More than friends once or twice. But it wasn’t like this. Nothing in my whole life has ever been like this.

If I tilt my head back, his warm breath drifts against my throat, and I can pretend he’s kissing me. I can shift my body so his hands move lower down my stomach… but it makes me hard, and it’s frustratingly not right to behave like that with him, not when he doesn’t feel the same.

Sometime before dawn I hear Cricket shout. A few minutes later, icy wind and rain whip around us as the tarpaulin is yanked off from around our bodies.

Three police in thick stab vests stand intimidatingly over us. They look like bodybuilders.

A boot presses against Julian’s stomach, pushing him farther back onto the wet ground. He looks at me and smiles tightly. Police, eh? Most of them are fucking jerks.

“Didn’t we already move you lot on tonight?” one of them asks like he’s some sort of teacher questioning pupils over bad behavior, like we have a choice about sleeping out in the fucking rain.