Page 30 of Forever Not Yours

“Says Jake, the master of riddles. What the hell, man?”

“You,” he said, sitting in the armchair and turning it so he was in front of me, with a peeler in his hand. He grabbed an apple from inside his hoodie, turning it between his fingers before systematically removing the green peel in a long, curly rope. He used to do this, years ago. Sit down and peel me an apple, cut it up and feed it to me whilst I did equations on paper, swearing loudly in between figures and numbers as he would quieten me with…pieces of fruit.

“I make the rules. You do as you’re told.” He smiled, now picking up the discarded knife from my plate of toast and cutting the apple into pieces. He chose one and fed it to me.

I took it, like a good boy. Chewed as he smiled.

“You’re beautiful, you know that?”

“You used to tell me. I used to laugh it off. I mean, whenever I got dressed up to go out, you’d make me twirl round and tell me how good I looked.”

“I meant it. You must have known that.”

I’d had no idea. Jake was Jake.

“I never really thought of it, to be honest. I’m not saying that to be a twat, but you know. You and me? Never crossed my mind. I always thought I’d get married, have a couple of kids…”

I had to stop there. Take a breath. It was still a sore point. Something that hurt. We could have had a baby on the way by now. I shuddered out of that horrible space.

“It’s not your fault,” he said, like he could read my mind. “It’s never anyone’s fault. It’s nature.”

“I always wanted to be around babies. I was desperate for a sibling, kept pestering my mum to have another kid. She said no, refused to even entertain the idea and told me I was enough. I wasn’t, and then…” What the hell? Too much. “I learned early on that I couldn’t always have what I wanted. So I settled in with that.”

“You shouldn’t settle for anything, Bastien.”

“But that is life, isn’t it? Things can’t always go your way. Like, I will probably never be a dad.”

“You know you will. You’ll be a brilliant dad. There are so many ways to have a child be part of your future, with a girl, or with… It’s all possible.”

“I just think I’m too…fucked up to take that on. I mean, I can’t even get married without making a fucking piss-up out of everything.”

“Not your fault. Just life.”

“Oh, don’t try that one on me. It’s not life. It was…”

Too many words. Too much to try to sort out. I wondered why he made it so easy to talk. Why I actually had. This wasn’t me. It wasn’t what Jake and I were. We were friends. Support. Laughter. We definitely weren’t fuck buddies and one hundred per cent not about all these words. I shuddered, still chewing the apple, sour and refreshing in my mouth.

I checked my bloods, the comforting green on the app soothing me a little.

“That’s it.” He put the last piece of apple in my mouth. “We’re going out. Flossie needs to go, and we need to clear our heads.”

I had a feeling there were more things he wanted to say, but I went along with it. It was just easier that way.

He made me walk, too far for Flossie, who ended up inside my jumper as we trotted round the supermarket, with Jake pushing the trolley, chatting nonsense, as I followed him like a lost sheep. I suppose I was. He picked things off the shelves, then held them up for my approval, but I didn’t have the brain capacity to choose yoghurt flavours or loaves of bread, so he did it for me, like he’d promised.

It was a relief not to have to think. I just walked around in silence letting him lead. Sometimes he spoke. Mostly, he just let me be, a small smile on his face. He’d always had that little smile around me, a comforting detail in the midst of all this chaos. As long as I could make him smile.

I shuddered again. I hadn’t lied when I’d said I never saw this as an option. Jake, of all people. He hadn’t been, because I’d always been the straight guy. The flirty bastard. More girlfriends than I could remember. The sex? It hadn’t been an issue. Until—

“I wasn’t even drunk,” I said, out of the blue, walking back home. “I was just down, looking for a distraction. Ended up with this girl in a club.”

We kept walking, him nodding in some kind of understanding, Flossie sniffing around in the flowerbeds along our route, her little tail wagging in what seemed like constant excitement. He was carrying the shopping bags. I had a single bottle of sparkling water in my arms. Like the selfish twat I was.

“Okay,” he said softly, encouraging me to go on. I had no idea what I was doing.

“She pissed off with someone else, and this guy came up and sat next to me at the bar. Clinked his pint against mine. He wasn’t hitting on me or anything, he was just solidly sat there, staring at the wall, keeping me company in my misery.”

I remembered him well. His big hands. Hairy arms. The way he’d thrown me around that bathroom cubicle. The bruises he’d left on my hips. The feeling of being so utterly… Fuck.

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