Page 143 of Pansies

Fen gave him this smile, bright and fearless in the moonlight. “What I want? Oh, Alfie Bell. I’m head over heels in love with you.”

Joy and sadness and pain and love collided in Alfie’s chest like some kind of terrible motorway accident. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe. Worse than jumping off that cliff into the icy depths of the North Sea. But all he could hear was Aidan’s voice, carried to him as inexorably as the ceaseless hush-hush of the ever-turning tide.

You’re helping him throw his life away. If you’ve really changed, do something good for him. It’s what you want, not what he wants.

let him go let him go let him go

“You can’t give up your whole life,” he mumbled, “and everything you want to do, for me and the memory of your mum.”

Silence again. The sea still roaring too loud in Alfie’s ears.

“Well.” Fen’s fingers danced uncertainly against the edge of the Waltzer. “Notexactlywhat I was hoping to hear. But I can imagine worse reactions. And you haven’t said no.”

“Come on, Fen. You know we can’t.”

“I know it’s a bit out there. But ‘we can’t’ is pretty strong.”

“I can’t, then.”

“What do you meanyou can’t?”

“I mean…” Alfie had never felt so useless. So wordless. So hopelessly adrift. “I can’t.”

Fen laughed like he had that night at the Rattler, brittle and fractured. “My, er, my heart’s kind of dripping blood on the floor here. I just did the emotional equivalent of putting my head down the toilet for you. Don’t you think I deserve a bit better than that?”

“Uh. What?”

“Man up, Alfie.” And when he couldn’t even find a way torespond to that, Fen shoved him in the shoulder hard enough to jar. “Man up and tell me the truth.Anytruth. You don’t actually want this. You don’t love me. You like what you have in London and the whole save-your-local-florist act was bullshit. But don’t you dare sit there like Marsden-fucking-Rock and give me nothing.”

There was no way he could tell Fen he didn’t love him. It was a lie so big and deep and absolute that uttering it would have been practically blasphemy. But he had to say something that would convince Fen to leave. Be who he was supposed to be. Claim all the happiness and freedom he deserved. “You’ll end up hating me,” Alfie tried, and wished there was even a flicker of conviction in his voice. “You’ll wake up one day and realise you’re living a life you never wanted.”

“Jesus Christ, what do you think I’ve been doing for the past year and a half?” He could feel Fen trembling beside him. And, then, all of a sudden in a graceless scramble, Fen was out of the seat and out of the cart. Glaring down at him. Arms folded tightly over his chest. “It was you who taught me how to want again. And what I want is a life like this. With you. And, you know something”—Fen gentled unexpectedly—“I think you want it too.”

He did. Of course he did. But Aidan had trusted him. Had believed in him. Thought he was a good person. How could he let him down? Betray them both, father and son. Just because he was lonely and in the wrong place. Fen deserved better than a flower shop in a town he hated and the love of a man who had spent more than half his life afraid.

Fen kicked him lightly in the ankle. “Don’t make me beg, Alfie. But I will if you need to hear it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, “cos I won’t do it. You need to get over your guilt or whatever, and stop trying to drag me into it.”

He wasn’t sure what kind of response he was expecting. He was prepared for sharpness, at the very least, but Fen seemed suddenly and surprisingly calm. Sure of himself in every way that Alfie wasn’t. “It was guilt that brought you here too, you know. But guilt doesn’t have the power to make someone stay or change or fall in love. Trust me, Alfie. Please. I know what I want.”

Alfie swallowed. “And what about all the other things you wanted?”

“What about them?”

“They’re your dreams and stuff. And you’ve never liked it here.”

“South Shields gave me a lot to run away from. But”—Fen spread his arms wide, letting the light weave through the strands of his hair and fill his eyes with electric stars as he gazed straight at Alfie—“look what it’s given me back.”

“I’m not enough.”

“You are.” Fen flashed him the briefest of smiles. “But rein in your ego. There’s Pansies and Dad and the scent of peonies on a spring morning. There’s the way the wind fights you and the way the sky changes. The way the air always tastes of the sea. There’s everything my mother loved and everything I’m learning to.”

“Fen…” Except Alfie didn’t have anything else. Just a sad little name and the tears he was frantically holding back.

“So you see,” Fen went on, “it’s not really about what I want any more. It’s about what you want. Which I…I kind of have to hope is this crappy little nowhere town, abandoned by industry and forgotten by history, with very little to recommend it except that it’s ours and”—his voice wavered, and broke at last—“you could spend a lifetime here, with this prickly, grieving flower shop boy.”

And that was when Alfie knew: there was no way out of this.Fen was too strong, too honest, too full of courage. And if Alfie had been half as strong and half as honest, if he’d had any courage at all, he’d have pulled Fen back into his arms and never let him go.

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