“I don’t want us to not work, Matt,” Alex stated, as we walked to the train station. He gestured vaguely between us. “I think about you and me—what we have, all the time.”
If we’d been a boy and a girl, I’d have held his hand, because he’d accepted my olive branch and we’d sort of made up. But being fucking gay and paralysed with fear meant we couldn’t even offer each other that simple, unspoken comfort.
“I’m a mess, Matt. I want this with you, and yet I don’t know if I’m even gay.”
Fucking hell. He was like a bloody stuck record. Thank God we weren’t holding hands after all. My emotions swirled from teetering on the brink of tears and about to declare undying love for him, to seething irritation. Irritation pushed ahead by a nose. “Can we just remind each other who kissed who first?”
“Don’t be like that! Let me finish. I swear there’s something wrong with me. It’s like you said. I still fancy girls, but I fancy you, too. It’s…confusing. Are you sure you don’t like girls as well?”
No hesitation, not for a nanosecond. “Yep. Positive.”
Alex hesitated. “I’ve thought about telling my parents. Asking them for advice.”
Oh my God. I could see clear as crystal how that would play out. He’d drop his bombshell while they were cosied up on the flowery sofa watchingAntiques Roadshow ordoing whatever normal families did on a quiet Sunday evening.Lizzie would dig her fingers into the arm of the sofa, a fake smile on her lips and cast nervous glances at call-me-Richard. Taking his cue to lead, he’d lean forwards, elbows on knees, and adopt a grave I’m-listening-intently pose. Lots of subtle gestures buying him thinking time, his busy mind working out a perfect response. Not too dismissive, not too condescending, neither repulsed nor closed-minded, supportive but not embracing. I could write the fucking script for him. The upshot being that they supervised Alex more, pushed more rugby onto him, and encouraged girls to come over while simultaneously discouraging his friendship with me, although never saying so out loud.
“Don’t bother,” I responded carelessly. “I’m not sure there is a you and me. Not anymore.”
That startled him. “Don’t say that! Have you met someone else?”
“Yeah,” I answered with a brittle laugh. “There’s a club exclusively for in-the-closet young faggots opened up on Stourbridge high street. They dole out poppers and free condoms. Of course I haven’t fucking met anyone else!”
My train was cancelled—normal service for British Rail—so we sat in a grimy café near to the station, waiting for the next. Alex insisted on staying, even though I said I’d wait on my own, so we bought a cup of tea and a fatty bacon bap each. And I was glad he stayed, because we made up—again—then talked about normal shit while playing footsie under the table.
Alex wiped shiny grease from his lower lip. Face reddening, he lowered his voice. “Now you’ve got me hard, and wishing we’d not gone out last night.” He busied himself folding the paper napkin into a perfect square, avoiding my gaze. “I…I’d hoped this weekend that we’d, you know…”
I did know, I’d wanked myself half to death over the idea of nothing else for the entire week leading up to the whole disaster. Our first ever night in a bed together, and we had planned to fuck. We weren’t entirely sure how—it wasn’t as if I had anyone to ask, or a recipe book. In my mind, Alex shagged me, which, even though I felt apprehensive about it, had got me semi-hard all day at work. We’d have worked it out somehow, but now we’d left it too late.
“Next time.” I smiled at him. “Shit, Alex, I really need to kiss you right this second.”
We found ourselves snogging and rubbing each other in a grotty toilet cubicle out the back. Closing his eyes, Alex crushed me against him, as if desperately trying to cram all the love we should have shared over the last twenty-four hours into three minutes. To be fair, he had a pretty decent stab at it.
“I love you, too,” I whispered, clinging to him. He smelled of last night’s beer, cooking fat and something uniquely the essence of my Alex Valentine. How I wished I could’ve parcelled it up and taken that scent home with me. One moment like this was worth every industrial mile that separated us, every hour packing ball bearings on aching legs, every shitty night in bed alone, imagining our future together. One day, everything would work out all right. Like a mantra, I repeated it over and over. Me and Alex, we were going to be all right.
That cup of tea at the greasy spoon must have been laced with happy pills. I had a spring in my step for at least twenty-four hours until reality hit home. Or rather, until my dad smacked my mum, enough for her to need a trip to A&E and nine stitches above her left eyebrow.
Hunched over in our hallway, the telephone cord stretched to its limit from its dusty home on the lounge windowsill, I phoned Alex. I’d waited for my mum to fall asleep on the sofa, drugged up on painkillers and drowned in cheap vodka, only for Alex to fill me in on his day and then wind up our chat, asCallieandRuperthad a taxi waiting outside. The next time I called, no one picked up the phone. The time after that,Cassieanswered and explained he’d gone out withCalliesomewhere.
The happy pills wore off.
I fell into a funk, not turning up to work and avoiding my mates, until the following Saturday night, when Phil and Brenner dragged me out of the house.
“You should tell social services,” advised Phil, always the voice of reason.
“Says the bloke who’s never had to fucking deal with social services,” sneered Brenner, with the wisdom borne of a lifetime of putting up with interfering do-gooders.
“She’s not interested.” Same old, same old. “She’ll tell them she slipped on the stairs again.”
“You haven’t got any fucking stairs.”
We went clubbing in Wolverhampton. Phil had received his first months’ pay from the estate agency and subbed our entry. He showed off his wage slip; more money than either me or Brenner had seen in our lives. Brenner was all smiles too; he’d been elevated to conveyor-belt supervisor which was fucking hilarious given that he could barely supervise wiping his own arse in the morning. The crushing ache in my chest, due to knowing I was irrevocably losing Alex and because of my fucked-up parents, eased a little as I half listened to them bickering. The best family I’d ever had.
Drinks in clubs were a rip-off, even for moneybags Phil, so we split a bottle of two-quid Aldi sherry between us on the bus, which burned like drain cleaner on the way down. We chased the taste away with three bottles of Diamond White that Brenner nicked from the Co-op, and I had a feeling it would be burning again later, on the way back up. Brenner bragged about all the birds he planned to pull in the club and Phil good-humouredly egged him on. Brenner had never pulled a bird in his life. Maybe tonight would be special.
I didn’t know whether to blame the sherry, the strong cider, my shitty week, or just that I’d had enough of lugging a lifetime’s worth of secrets around, but there and then, snuggled between my two best mates on the backseat of the number 556 bus, I decided to come clean. For as long as I could remember, I’d juggled two people inside my head: the old fraud also known as Matt-the-lad, and top secret Matt-the-gay, a boy miserably in love and who desperately needed his old mates. For the last few weeks, I’d failed at successfully playing either of those fucked-up kids. The real me, a mixture of both, was withering away, and too fucking tired to care anymore.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” I announced during a lull in the banter.
“Is it that you smell?” flashed back Brenner. “Because we already know.”