This is Not a Love Story (5 page)

“You call earlier?” he asks.

Julian nods.

The guy steps back from the door, pulling it wide.

“Come in,” he says, giving us an eerily toothless smile. “I’m Malik.”

Somewhere inside the flat there’s a dog barking continuously. Julian doesn’t move. He has a long thin scar on his arm from where he was sewn back together as a kid after a dog attacked him.

“We were told we could get some place to sleep in exchange for… some pictures,” he says hesitantly.

Malik looks us over again. I notice how hard and cold his eyes are as they flick from Julian’s face to mine.

“How old?” Malik asks, his eyes focused on me.

I hold his gaze as Julian edges his feet closer to mine and says. “Just me, not him. The deal is for me.”

Malik shrugs.

“You speak to Vidal tomorrow. You come in and rest now, yes?”

The warmth from the flat floods the cold night air around us, and I lean into Julian, into his solid stance.

I no longer care about the bad feeling swelling in my chest. I no longer care that Malik continues to stare at me. I just want to be warm. I’m so tired. I just want to collapse further against this glowing boy, wrap myself in his warmth. Whatever decision he makes, wherever we go, I feel safe if I’m with him.

“You have a dog…?” Julian begins, but Malik throws his hands in the air like it’s a stupid little detail and beckons us inside.

We’re led down a dark hallway to a dim square room. Behind us the front door slams shut, and I hear heavy bolts being draw across.

The first thing I notice is the room has no window. The second is the ten or so sleeping bodies lying haphazard across the floor. A few share blankets, but most sleep alone. The whole place smells bitter and musky like old sweat, but at least it’s not freezing cold.

“You sleep here.” Malik gestures to a corner by the door. “You have blanket?”

We shake our heads.

“Okay, I get you blanket. You want some food?”

Malik doesn’t wait for an answer and heads back up the hallway. The dog is still barking sporadically somewhere, the sound slightly more muffled than before. Julian is barely able to suppress a flinch every time he hears it.

We look at one another. Julian swallows and touches my cheek with his knuckle.

“I will look after you,” he says softly, his eyes searching mine. “Whatever happens. I will look after you. You are my family.”

I let my head fall against his shoulder and breathe in his familiar scent.

I will look after you too
, I promise him silently.

Taking my hand, Julian follows Malik to a tiny kitchen right next to the front door. The window is boarded up from the inside with a warped piece of chipboard half-dark with rot. All I can smell is dog. Two other men are in there, smoking and playing cards at a small round table. We stand in the doorway and watch while Malik flings open filthy cupboard after filthy cupboard, all of them empty. The other men laugh at him. They pay no attention to us.

Eventually Malik finds two pieces of bread and holds them out to us. We’re so hungry we don’t care that they’re stale and tasteless.

With a questioning look on his face, Malik picks a ratty blanket up off the floor and holds that out to us too, but it’s a dog’s blanket, covered in yellow stains and short black hairs. Julian shakes his head, no way, and pulls me back down the corridor.

Once we’ve found our spot, we curl on the cold concrete floor, as far away from the other bodies as we can get. Julian takes his jacket off and lays it over us.

“It’s going to be okay,” he whispers into the dark. “We’re going to get off the streets. This is just the start.”

It’s not long before he drifts to sleep, half on top of me. But despite my overwhelming exhaustion, something stops me from shutting down. It starts off as just slightly panicked thoughts about this enclosed windowless space, about losing Julian somehow, and then it slowly turns into a headache, which gets worse and worse until I begin to feel delirious and sick.

When I try to sit up, Julian stirs in the darkness beside me.

He reaches out a hand, wraps it around my wrist.

“What’s wrong?” he whispers.

It’s too dark to sign, so I take his hand and hold it against my forehead.

“Your head hurts?”

I nod into his palm.

“Is it bad?”

It’s getting worse and worse.

The room is spinning.

And I throw up before I can stop myself or warn him or anything.

I hate sick—being sick, the smell of sick, the idea of it—and I’m covered in it.

Oh God, I feel wretched.

Julian rubs soothing circles all down my back and then helps me to my feet. Everywhere is dark now. The bathroom is opposite the kitchen at the end of the corridor, but before we get that far, the dog starts barking again and a door to the side opens.

A figure that’s not Malik appears in the shadow and asks where we’re going. He has the dog on a leash at his side, a stocky black thing with a torn ear and snarling mouth.

Without taking his eyes off the dog, Julian says quickly, “My friend’s not well. Have you got any paracetamol?”

The figure vanishes for a second, then chucks a mostly empty packet at us before disappearing with a grunt back into his room with the dog and closing the door.

We pretty much stumble into the squalid little bathroom, and Julian tugs my disgusting vomit-covered top over my head. Disappointingly, his new jacket is pretty well covered too.

We rinse our clothes under the tap in the brown bath, throwing a wide-eyed glance at one another as the water starts to run warm.

Julian turns to me. “Hey, do you want a bath?” he asks, grinning.

Of course I want one!

I swallow the tablets and sit on top of the toilet lid while Julian hunts quietly in the kitchen for a cup or mug we can use to cover the plughole to keep the water in.

The bath isn’t hot, just warm, and there is no soap or towel, but I don’t care. My head feels a thousand times better just looking at it.

Julian sits on the floor in front of the closed door and watches as I trail my hand absently through the water.

“You not getting in? It’s not going to get any warmer.”

Slowly I peel off the rest of my clothing. It’s filthy, it all needs washing. Without giving myself a chance to think about the wisdom of my decision, I dump it all in the bath before I step in.

Then holding my nose, I lie down and slip under the surface. I love the feeling of being completely submerged and enveloped in warmth. I stay under for as long as I can. When I eventually break the surface, Julian is peering over the edge of the bath, a strange faraway expression on his face.

“You always do that,” he says softly, his eyes slightly glassy.

I shrug. I know. I can’t be bothered to sign.

I’ve found the best way to deal with being naked with Julian is not to think about the fact that I’m naked with Julian. At least this time he’s not naked as well, although he is still watching me intently.

My eyes are drifting shut when I hear the rustle of clothing being removed.

What are you doing?
I sign, startled, as Julian strips his T-shirt off and starts unbuttoning his jeans.

The look he gives me as he steps out of his pants is long and complicated.

Of course, it’s
obvious
what he’s doing. Fuck, so much for him not being naked.

“Do you mind?” he asks as he steps his long, glowy limbs in the bath and sinks down opposite me.

I’m so relaxed it takes a second for my brain to catch up with my body, which is already hyperaware of
his
body’s proximity. And, although we’re not touching, the more I try not to think about it, the worse it gets. The sweet, sweet ache in the pit of my stomach intensifies, throbs, and my cock stiffens helplessly.

I’m halfway to my knees.

“Don’t get out,” Julian says hastily, catching my wrist.

I can’t look at his face.

Please
, I sign, my heart thudding so loud I’m sure he can hear it.

He lets go immediately. I must look desperate.

“Use my T-shirt to dry yourself if you want. It’s pretty clean,” he says in a voice that’s barely audible.

As I crouch shivering by the side of the bath, rubbing my skin with the thin piece of cotton, Julian just stares at his hands.

He doesn’t look up for ages.

Afterward, we hang my clothes around the room and share what’s left of his. I wear his jeans, and he pulls on the damp T-shirt and pants. It’s still too cold, not outside-on-the-street cold, but shivery all the same.

Julian regards the dog blanket on the floor in the kitchen.

I guess warmth wins over everything in the end, and we take it. This time we both sleep, fast and deep, forgetting that time ticks away however much you want it to stop.

I
WAKE
with a start, shocked to consciousness by all the voices murmuring around me.

This disorientation is common, a hazard of our piss-poor nomadic existence.

Where the fuck am I?
is perhaps the most frequent question I ask myself.

Julian blinks away sleep beside me. His
where the fuck am I?
look is almost instantly replaced by resignation as he remembers. His head
thunks
against the concrete floor. Oh.

I look around the room at all the boys with their blankets, whispering and waking.

Entirely without meaning to, I catch someone’s eye—a boy about my age, who gets up from his spot on the floor by the wall and comes over to us.

His skin is smooth and dark as Gem’s, and he has a beautiful wide smile. He holds out his hand to me, and I notice that he only has one. The other is missing from the wrist. I don’t stare. I’ve seen other people like this on the street. I know it’s not a birth defect.

“I’m Phillippe,” he says in a voice that is quite high and heavily accented.

I sit up and take his proffered hand. His palm is warm and dry against my cold deadness.

Julian shifts behind me, pressing so close I can feel him breathing, and wraps his arm loosely around my bare waist. If he had any idea what this did to me, well… I doubt he’d still be doing it.

“This is Romeo,” he declares, and I smile to myself at the way he says my name, the name he never calls me. “I’m Julian.” He never calls himself Jules either, though everyone he gets to know always does. I think he hates it.

Phillippe is fifteen and a refugee from Sierra Leone. He doesn’t have a passport. He thinks his family are dead, and he’s so obviously lonely it makes my heart ache.

I sketch his face while he and Julian talk.

Malik comes in and passes around bowls of grayish I’ve-no-idea-what, but at least it’s warm, even if it tastes of nothing. He tells us we have to be out in ten minutes.

“Where do we go?” Julian asks Phillippe.

“White house not far from here,” Phillippe answers, shoveling food in his mouth. He notices Julian’s guarded look at this and thinks for a moment. “They take pictures of you without clothes, that is all. Other boys do other stuff. They ask you when you go in if you want to do other stuff. Sometimes I do, but mostly I say no.”

He looks pleased with his decision.

I show him the picture I drew. He seems to like it, so I tear it out of the pad and give it to him. I’d much rather do this than see them all go up in smoke again one day.

He hugs me tightly and for so long that I start to wonder when he’s going to let go.

I decide his reaction is better than any satisfaction I would get looking at his picture.

Julian watches me, smiling, then dips his head down, resting his forehead against my upper back between my shoulder blades. I can feel his breath whispering against my skin, down my spine.
Fuck.
It feels so nice.

When Phillippe gets up to collect his belongings, Julian whispers, “Would you draw a picture like that of me one day?”

I try to turn around to look at him, but he presses his head more firmly into my back as though he doesn’t want to be seen, as though he doesn’t really want to know my answer—or is afraid of it.

Would I draw him? Of course. But I’m scared, because it’s easy to draw someone you’ve just met, or a stranger. You’re not drawing them from your heart, you’re not sharing your soul, you’re not displaying with every fucking fiber of your being how much you’re in love with them.

I drop my head back. I need to tell him to stop what he’s doing because his breath is so hot it feels like he’s kissing me. All too vividly I imagine it’s his tongue flicking against my skin, circling each vertebra with warm wet heat. If I could groan, I know I would. Instead of, oh God,
panting
.

The door opens to the corridor, and we break apart in a rush of cold air. I hope no one noticed the way I just utterly dissolved, and I spin around to see Julian is flushed from his face to his chest. My heart constricts with embarrassment that I’ve caused
him
embarrassment.

Without looking at one another, we get up.

In the bathroom we find my clothes are still soaked. I completely regret my stupid idea of dropping them in the bath. I don’t know what I was thinking.

Julian and I share them between us, even though he is inches taller than me. He takes my T-shirt and jumper, while I take my trousers and wear his T-shirt (immersed wholly and deliciously in his scent) and coat. I realize somewhat desperately that I need to release some of this tension. I look around longingly. Thirty seconds on my own in this bathroom is all I need. I haven’t touched myself in over a week. Even when I do, I don’t think of Julian. I can’t. It would make our interactions way too difficult and awkward. Instead I think in abstracts, a mouth on my mouth, a tongue on my skin, spit slicked on the palm of my hand, and it’s enough. But frustratingly Phillippe waits for us by the front door, having a stilted conversation with Malik, who’s in the kitchen with the dog. Thankfully the dog is eating.

Julian watches it warily before edging outside. And we leave.