“Thank God.” I laughed. “I’ve already got one of those—well, almost. I don’t need another. And for your information, I’m not that eighteen-year-old boy either. My rippling six pack is long gone.”
“You know what I mean, Alex.”
I almost held my breath. “Will you give me a chance to find out for myself what you’re like now? To get to know you again?”
Another pause. Some rustling, as though he’d switched hands. I closed my eyes and imagined him lying in the dark, phone at his ear, silky black hair spread across his pillow. The thick, dark stubble blanketing his jaw. What that would taste like. What his lips would feel like. I wondered how much courage this late-night phone call had taken.
“You remember I said earlier that what we had was special? I meant it, Matt. Even though we were just kids. You know how you still think about Brenner every day?”
No answer. “Well, I still think about you every day, too. Especially when I’m alone in the car. Do you remember my little red Polo?”
“The one with all the shite CDs that you insisted belonged to your sister, and a back seat full of sequined cushions that were definitely hers as well? Yeah, I remember. Scarred me for life.”
I smiled to myself in the darkness, remembering the cushions, remembering how I used to drive desperately slowly from school to make the journey last as long as possible, eking out every minute of having Matt in the passenger seat next to me.
“I need to get a little car for Ryan soon. Perhaps he might like a Polo.”
“They’re girls’ cars, aren’t they? Don’t the boy racers all have little Corsas, or Fiestas?”
“I don’t want him to be a boy racer!”
And we were off. We chatted for another hour—well, I did most of the talking and Matt did most of the listening. I kept it light—no more delving into the past tonight. I updated him on my sister, my parents’ retirement, my job, Ryan, and my paternal worries about him. In return, Matt mocked me, in a gentle manner I loved, about my current music choices, which boiled down to me needing to hide my Coldplay and John Legend collections pronto. I listened to the careful way he had of choosing his words, his self-deprecation. We could have carried on talking the whole night.
“You still do, you know,” he said in almost a whisper after I’d failed to hide a yawn.
“I still do what?”
“Shine brightly, Alex.”
TENDER
(BLUR)
For our next date I upped the ante on our trip to hospital outpatients by inviting Matt to watch me coach rugby on Sunday morning. Who needed moonlit romantic dinners when you could freeze your bollocks off watching a load of blokes run around a muddy field? It was a wonder Samantha had stayed with me for as long as she did. But then Samantha had never appreciated me all sweaty and grubby in my dirty rugby kit, whereas I recalled a teenage Matt Leeson had practically drooled. I hoped his tastes hadn’t changed too much. If Ryan thought him coming along a little odd, then he kept it to himself.
“Your friend Matt’s here,” he observed after our ten-minute warm-up.
“Um…yeah. I invited him.” Jogging alongside my son, my mature, forty-plus-year-old heart skipped a rather immature beat, and not only because of my efforts to keep pace with a bunch of teenagers. Although that didn’t help. Instead of looking out for him, I’d thrown myself into the warm-up exercises and concentrated on sprinting five laps of the pitch, determined not to be disappointed if he failed to show up.
“Or at least I think it’s Matt. Last time I saw him, he had an arm in plaster and a face like a burst watermelon. Now he’s…blimey, he’s not taking any chances with the weather, is he?”
I dared a glance up and snorted. A handful of touchline dads milled around, dressed in jeans and sensible Boden puffer jackets, selected from their middle-class, smart casual range. Basically, at any given time, blokes like me looked set for a wet holiday fortnight in Cornwall surrounded by blokes exactly like me. Matt, on the other hand, looked set to wrestle a polar bear.
“He’s coming home for lunch afterwards. Is that okay?”
“Sure.” Ryan shrugged. “If his idea of Sunday afternoon fun is listening to you snoring with your mouth hanging open, in front of the telly.”
Note to self: do not fall asleep on Sunday afternoons.
For several months after our split, Samantha had attempted to hide her affair with Mike from our son. Not wanting Ryan to apportion blame, she persuaded me it would be for the best if he believed we’d taken the fashionable“conscious uncoupling”route, not the full your-mother-is-leaving-me-because-she’s-shagging-my-colleague route. During the shattered, embittered aftermath of our break-up, I went along with it, partly because I had an unattractive tendency to go along with most of her suggestions, to keep the peace, and partly because I thought she might be right. After all, this was new territory for both of us.
Ryan had found out about my replacement through a helpful pal at school. It didn’t go down too well. At one point, I wondered if he’d trust anything either his mum or dad ever told him again. And who could blame him? Inadequate parenting: yet another thing that kept me awake at night.
Regardless, the whole sorry episode had taught me one thing. Matt and I were embarking on a tentative new friendship, which might, or might not, develop into more. Whatever happened, I wouldn’t hide him, even if the whole my-new-girlfriend-is-actually-a-hairy-bloke scenario would be one hell of a tricky conversation. But the first person to know about Matt’s importance in my life would be the other, equally important person.
“Is he thinking of joining the rugby club?”
“I doubt that very much,” I smirked. “Even the under-fourteens would flatten him.”