This Thing With Charlie

by Sophia Soames

  “I just want to see if we can make this thing… because you see, Charlie, this thing with you? That’s what I want.”

  “We never had a thing.”

  “We did. Even Mrs Hallet said we had a thing.”

  “Mrs Hallet is an old gossipmonger.”

  “She’s my new best friend, now you’ve dumped me.”

  “How’s your new house?” he asked, changing the subject.

  “I climbed up in the loft earlier. There’s loads of space up there. I’m going to convert it into a bedroom and put a massive window in the roof. I also need help designing a cheap kitchen with enough workspace for you to teach me how to bake.”

  I made all that up because the window was for him, and he needed a good kitchen, one that he had planned himself.

  “I’m not moving in with you,” he said like he could read all my thoughts.

  “I haven’t asked you to,” I muttered.

  “I can recommend a good builder, and my mate, Geoff, is a kitchen fitter. He also owns a gay bar. Handy bloke to know. “

  “I’m not gay,” I said, hoping it would make him smile.

  “I’m not gay either,” he said back, staring at me.

  “Oh, fuck off, Charlie.” I laughed. “I wish you were here, and I wish you could just come and make me dinner and make me feel better about this rat-infested shithole I’ve bought. It needs razing to the ground and then smashed to rubble, and then, perhaps, it would be more liveable than it is now. I have a bucket upstairs in a room where the roof is leaking and rat droppings in the downstairs toilet, and I think there is something nesting in the loft too. Charlie, I’m fucked.”

  “I know you are,” he said softly, “but I still won’t be your big mistake. I’m not something you can try out and return when you figure out that I am just a crazy idea in your head. I’m worth more than that.”

  “You’re worth more than a hook-up in a bathroom.”

  “Touché.” He smiled.

  “I’m glad you’re with your family.”

  “I am too. Graham is having a ball. My brother’s wife is making him do all the cooking. My brother has gone out to get the Christmas tree, and the kids are high from eating an entire chocolate advent calendar. They apparently forgot about it this month, and yeah, it was full-on carnage earlier.”

  “When you are back, will you come and see me?”

  “I want to see the house and laugh at the state of the place.”

  “You’re mean.”

  “I’ll text you the name of a builder. Went to school with me. Decent bloke.”

  “Thank you.”

  I felt calmer with him smiling at me.

  “I’ll be back for New Year’s. If you’re lucky, I’ll bring you a sprig of mistletoe.”

  “That… sounds good. Promising.”

  “I’m not your boyfriend.”

  “Got it.”

  “I won’t be your bi-curious thing.”

  “Okay.”

  “Just let me get over you, and then? Then we’ll figure it out. Okay?”

  “I think you’re amazing. Just so you know,” I said in desperation. “I think you’re beautiful and smart and so bloody brilliant at everything. I just wanted you to know that because you are. And I know I’m pathetic and confused and not in a good place, but maybe, as you say… maybe, one day…”

  “Merry Christmas,” he said.

  “Merry Christmas, my Charlie.”

  “Daniel?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m not your Charlie.”

  “I know,” I said quietly.

  “But you’ll always be my Daniel. Okay?”

  I smiled as he hung up on me. I curled up on my sofa and fell asleep. There were no twinkling lights in my windows and no tree in front of the filthy fireplace with its cracked tiles, but I had a leaking roof over my head and all my belongings in one place. Then I dreamed of crackling fires and ginger teas. I dreamed of crinkly eyes and the smile on his face. I dreamed of everything and nothing as the world around me just disappeared.

  This thing with Charlie made the days come and go as I tried to busy myself enough to get through the week. I didn’t hear from Charlie again, apart from sending through the number for some builder called Big Derek and a name of an architect firm in town. I set up appointments for quotes I wouldn’t be able to afford and dragged my sorry arse down to the bank to try to plead my case for a desperate remortgage, using the ramshackle building I slept in as my useless collateral. The mortgage advisor looked at me with pity as I cringed at the sums on her screen and compared it to the desperate state of my bank account. At least I got paid on the day before New Year’s Eve, and I swiftly invested in a microwave oven and a set of sheets for the mattress that still had no base or frame.

  I bought too many pillows in the homeware shop and also grabbed some extra blankets. Added candles, too, for a homely touch, which I had to laugh at when I got home and placed them on the small table next to my sofa. The room looked anything but amazing with the peeling wallpaper and damp patch on the wall, but the finishing touch was obviously the broken windowsill where I’d carelessly stood trying to get the old-fashioned curtain pole reattached to the wall. I’d spent days removing all the carpet, hoping to find some long-forgotten treasures underneath. Instead, I was now walking around on bare wooden floorboards, and there were damp and droppings wherever I peeled back something new.

  At least the fireplace in the front room brought me heat at night. I even had a chimney sweep come out to service it after I found some firewood neatly stacked under a dirty tarpaulin at the back of the house.

  I was warm and the smell of wood burning brought me comfort as I ate a microwave meal straight out of the packet, perched on the only worktop in the rundown kitchen. I had my crockery, which I neatly stacked on a shelf, and I had running water and food in the small fridge. I could survive here for weeks if I needed to. Well, apart from that I was running dangerously low on clean clothes and the laundrette behind the health centre still had a sign posted, “Closed for the holidays.”

  I needed a washing machine, and I sighed to myself as I added that little expense to my massive list of things to buy on a non-existent budget.

  I should have saved harder and not lived my life as if every day was my last. I thought of all the meals out Justine and I had shared, the holidays, minibreaks, and the car I had so carelessly told her to keep. Not that I needed a car, but I should have fought harder for what was half mine. I should have taken the curtains and a couple of rugs. I should have maybe kept the lovely paintings we had bought, so I would have had something to put on the walls, but then the thought of a life now long gone would have just made me remember things that I no longer had.

  It was better to just start over. Start afresh. Be someone else for a while because the person who slept in his clothes and sometimes forgot to shower was definitely not the person I was aiming to be. It was just, at the moment, this seemed to be the only thing I could be and that... that was a worry.

  I showered on New Year’s Eve, just in case, letting my hair dry in front of the fire as I installed the Wi-Fi router that had finally arrived. I drank cups of tea and tried not to text Charlie, hoping my indifference to his whereabouts would make him more inclined to come and see me. It was stupid, of course, because he said he would come back. Yet he didn’t.

  He didn’t turn up on New Year’s Day, despite me taking a brisk walk through town, hoping there would be light above the bakery and fresh goods on display.

  There weren’t, of course, and I went to bed feeling crushed and distraught. I’d hoped he would come, and he didn’t. I rang him in desperation, only to listen to his cheery voicemail in despair.

  I texted him, wishing him a Happy New Year and hoping this was the year when we laid down some roots.

  It sounded great in my head but reading it back, my stomach twisted with fear.

  I didn’t want this. I didn’t want to be here. Alone.

  But the
days went on, and I went back to work, getting back into routines and filling my evenings with TV and sleep. I met with the architects and showed Big Derek around the house. He laughed at the state of it and told me he’d seen worse. Then he quoted me a ridiculous amount of money, and I laughed right back in his face. Then he laughed even more and sat down on my sofa and told me not to be stupid because he knew Mrs. Hallet’s son, who’d said I was a decent bloke. He also lived for Graham Shaw’s meat and potato pies, so anyone who was a friend of Charlie’s would be looked after. He would build whatever I wanted, and I shouldn’t worry about a thing. His grandma was apparently one of my patients too, so that, he said, sealed the deal. I couldn’t follow much of his logic, but he shook my hand, and I signed his contract, and the planning permission sheet was stuck to my door the following week.

  It was crazy, but I needed crazy. I needed anything to get my head screwed on right because Charlie? I missed him every day. I knew it was madness, something that had spiralled out of control in my head, but I couldn’t let go of the thought. The ridiculous fantasy that perhaps I could do this. That I could make him happy when I couldn’t even make myself smile.

  This thing with Charlie? It had destroyed everything I thought I was, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  It was a cold evening at the end of January when I finally took a day off, so Geoff the Kitchen-fitter-who-also-owned-a-Gay-Bar could come and take measurements for what was to become an open-plan kitchen in the new improved hovel that I now couldn’t wait to get started on. Both rooms upstairs now leaked, the loft had bats, and I was going batshit crazy, trying to control the constant migration of rodents in the downstairs toilet. They were probably rampant in the kitchen too. I was sure of it as I held my breath every morning, hoping my teabags were still intact. I’d bought a fire alarm in case my four-legged squatters chewed through my wiring. I lived in squalor and misery, but at least my clothes were cleaned weekly, and the sofa I slept on had blankets and enough warmth that I slept well at night.

  But Charlie? Charlie was never where I was, and I avoided town as much as I could. I thought I was giving him space, the space he had asked for, but the thoughts in my head were filling me with doubt because I was more than likely doing this all wrong.

  So, I sat down on my sofa and stared at my phone. I stared at his number and pressed it. I knew he wouldn’t answer and almost jumped at the sound of his voice.

  “Hi, Daniel,” he said in my ear, and the lump in my throat made me shudder with fear.

  “Charlie,” I said, my voice cracking up. “Fucking hell, Charlie.”

  “You all right?”

  “No,” I said because I just couldn’t lie. Not to him. “I’m not all right. I’m lonely and messed up, and I bloody miss you.”

  “I’ve not been around much,” he said, sounding completely indifferent to my pain. “Gave up the job at the hotel and got another one teaching down at the college. Just two days a week but it’s… It’s been good, you know?”

  “How are you?” I said weakly because I needed to know. I needed to hear him speak because just hearing his voice had already settled the anxiety in my chest down to a small flutter in my stomach.

  “I’m fine…” he said. Then there was just the sound of breathing in my ear.

  “Can I please, please see you? I just need to talk to you,” I begged. I wasn’t proud. This was not me. I was better than all this. Yet, I realised that this was exactly me. I demanded. I needed. I pushed and I pulled and people walked away.

  “Daniel,” he said softly.

  “I’m sorry.” Here we were again. Me and my stupid excuses, but I took a deep breath, and the words just came tumbling out.

  “I wish things with you had gone differently, and god knows, I wish I’d said completely different things. I wish things with you had played out differently because if they had?” I had to stop and breathe again. “If I knew what I know now? I would’ve hugged you more. I would have hugged you every time I saw you and every time I left. I would’ve told you how bloody cool you are, and how beautiful you look when you smile. If I’d realised sooner, why I felt like this around you, why you calmed me down and made me laugh, and why the world was a happier place when you were with me, then I would’ve stood there and let you kiss me. And I would have kissed you back, but I didn’t realise, and instead? I got scared. I didn’t want to think about all those things in my head because I knew they weren’t true, and then I tried to tell myself I didn’t like you as much as I thought I did, but I did, and it wasn’t you. It was never you reading things wrong. You read everything right, and I wish I’d just realised before it was too late.”

  “You’re not in love with me,” he said softly. “Well, fuck do I know? You might be. I mean there are people who are bi-romantic, who fall in love with people of the same sex, but don’t necessarily want to have sex with them. But…”

  “Bi-romantic?” I questioned. “I like sex. I want sex.”

  “Yeah, but have you actually thought about it?” he asked. And I had to swallow, a bit too loudly.

  “Sex?” came out of my mouth as I blushed like a teenager. “With you?”

  “Yes, Daniel, because sex is kind of a deal-breaker with me. I like sex too. If you and I can’t at least get naked and get each other off, then I don’t know how this relationship will have a future because I get what you are saying and trust me, you’re asking how I am? Daniel? Really?”

  “Yeah?” I sounded like a fool again. And now? Now he was truly angry.

  “I’ve been humiliated in my life. I’ve been beaten up by assholes and followed around in town. I’ve been scared shitless, many, many times, but that kiss with you? Fucking broke me. That was the last straw because I thought… Fuck, I liked you so bloody much. I finally thought, you know, that I had met someone... someone I actually cared about. Every day, I woke up and I couldn’t wait to see you. I counted down the hours until you would walk through that door, and when you did? You lit up my world, but that? That wasn’t how it all turned out. You just dumped me after you had that big gay panic of yours. And then? A couple of texts. A five-minute phone call where we said nothing that mattered. Nice. That? That’s what you want?”

  “You asked for some space,” I said calmly. “You said you wanted some time to get over me.”

  “And did you want me to get over you?” he shouted.

  I could see his point.

  “No, Charlie. No, I wanted you to come to me. I wanted to go to wherever you were, but I was terrified. And you? You were with your family.”

  “I cried on New Year’s Eve. I haven’t cried like that since I was a kid.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. You are such a dick.”

  “I know.”

  We fell silent. I didn’t know what to tell him. I didn’t know what to say.

  “I thought of buying you a Christmas present and leaving it outside your door.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Good conversation, Daniel. Very good.

  “I was going to order you a massive dildo and some lube and leave it for you with a note not to ring me until you had figured out if you liked it or not.”

  “Liked what?”

  He laughed.

  “Daniel. Daniel, Daniel, Daniel. A lot of straight men enjoy ass play. It’s not just a gay thing, you know. It’s not just girls using big scary strap-ons to peg their blokes. It’s more sensory play because the anal area is full of lovely nerve endings that will give you all kinds of nice pleasure if you just open your mind to it. I mean, yeah, it’s not for everyone, but there is nothing like making someone else connect with you like that.”

  “Connect? Sounds like… plug and play.” How old was I? Thirteen?

  “Talking about it is good, Daniel. Don’t be such an arse. You don’t have to make a joke about it every fucking time. You’re a doctor. Talk to me on a professional level here. Did you not have those moments when you made love to your wife when you stared at each other and t
hings were just, you know, completely calm, almost magical?”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. Magical? Maybe?

  “It doesn’t matter. Everyone is different, but if… if I was with you and you let me, then I would make love to you, and yes, I would want to put my penis inside of you because there is nothing, and I mean that, nothing more wonderful than being that close with someone. I would be inside you, and I would fuck you until you came because you would. I would make sure of it.”

  I swallowed. Breathed.

  “Daniel?”

  “Yeah. I’m still here.”

  “And I would let you put your manhood up my anal passage because I would want you to, because you and me would be all tangled and sweaty and turned on, and yeah, call it whatever you want, but we would be bloody amazing. You would… fuck, Daniel, just the thought of it makes me horny. Kissing you. You fucking into me. I would be riding you and holding you down and… and making you come… I can’t think of anything I would want more than that.”

  “Charlie…” I whined.

  “I would look after you, Daniel, and I promise it would be worth your while. But I can’t do something with you when your heart’s not in it. It’s not fair. I know I am a fantasy to you, but I’m really not. I’m not that reliable, nice person everyone thinks I am. I don’t keep promises, and I don’t play fair when I should. Relationships frighten me because there is no happily ever after, ever. I could give you some sob story about my parents’ messed-up love life, but yeah. Not a happy ending. Nobody I know has a happy ending. I don’t expect mine to be any different, especially with someone like you because all this, with you, is pissing me off.”

  “You are lovely, Charlie.”

  “I fuck around. I mess with people. I get bored easily, and I… yeah. I went out on New Year’s Eve and ended up going home with a bloke. We fucked around for hours. It wasn’t good. I can tell you that because all I could think was that I wished he was someone else. I was imagining him being you.”

  “I… don’t.” I was drained. Exhausted. I couldn’t take this. Not from him. Not anymore.