Story of my life.
I shook myself and gunned the engine. Stuff it. I was going home. With any luck, Billy would’ve settled in for the night with Luke and Mia. Had a few drinks and put some demons to bed. An empty house would do my head in, but it would be worth it for them.
Somehow it took half the time to return to Rushmere as it had to escape. I let myself into the dark house, toed off my shoes, and padded straight to the kitchen to feed the cat—I’d learned the hard way he didn’t appreciate being kept waiting. But his food bowl was already full, and the cat was nowhere to be seen.
Billy had been home.
Instinct took me straight upstairs to his bedroom. His door was ajar. I poked my head around it, and my heart sank. Billy was passed out drunk next to a bottle of cheap vodka, the knuckles on his left hand bleeding and raw.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have left him with Luke after all.
Chapter Six
Billy
“I had a boyfriend once.” Gus squinted into the sun, for once sparing me his liquid gaze. “He was married, though, so it turned out to be a big fat mess.”
“What happened? Wife find out?”
“No, she died, and then I never heard from him again.”
“You think he killed her?”
“What? Jesus. No. Why would you say that?”
“Makes sense.” I shrugged. “Closeted mo-fo kills his wife so he can get his dick wet in peace.”
I was joking, mostly, but as Gus turned to me, and his soulful eyes filled with horror, I regretted it. Not enough to take it back, though. Regretful or not, I was still that prick. And I had the hangover from hell, which made me all the more of a shithead. “Okay, so if he didn’t bump her off, what did happen?”
It was Gus’s turn to shrug. “I have no idea. He ghosted me, remember? But he didn’t block me on Facebook, so I got to see him acting out his grief on social media as if he hadn’t been banging me on the side for eighteen months, and let me tell you, the marriage he was mourning in public was nothing like the one he portrayed to me.”
I stared at him.
He finished his second lunch and slid out the back of the van. “What?”
“Nothing. Just, you do realise you’ve just told me more about yourself in three sentences than you have since I moved into your house, right?”
“What does that mean?”
“Exactly what I said.”
Gus frowned like I’d grown horns, then huffed and walked away. But I stood by it, every word. My brother drove me crazy because he suffocated me with his wall of silence and yet still expected me to climb over it and fix everything. But Gus was worse. His shield was his affable grin and benign conversation, all the while ensuring no one got past his sweet smile. Was his married ex-lover to blame? Or had he been like this forever?
Shamefully, I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember lots of things right now, mainly because I’d spent all weekend locked in my room and using vodka as a substitute for prescription pain relief. And it had worked. Combined with a few days off the tools, I could move my shoulder without screaming or pounding my fist into concrete for a sick and welcome distraction. Winner. Still, I had no idea why Gus felt a sudden need to share his romantic history with me. I’d avoided him since Friday, and he’d been a weirdo all morning.
I caught up with him on top of the garage we were working on. Gus was laying felt with a pensive expression plastered on his lovely face, and I had no patience for that shit. I trampled across his hard work and crouched down. “Do you think I decked my brother or something?”
“What the—” Gus reeled back, wavering a moment before he steadied himself on the roof ledge behind him. “What are you doing?”
“Getting up in your face to ask you a question. It works better than talking in circles all day.”
“And better than silence, huh?”
“If you say so. Answer me.”
For the umpteenth time, Gus’s gaze slid to my mashed knuckles and back again. “What happened to your hand?”
“What do you think happened to it?”
“That’s not fair. I answered your question.”
“Actually, you didn’t.”
“Okay, fine. Did you mess your knuckles up fighting with Luke? Cos there’s no way you decked him. Your brother is mean.”
“You think I couldn’t take him?”
“I think it would get too messy to matter who won.”
He was probably right, but we were losing the thread of the conversation. “You’re missing the point.”
Gus sighed. “What is your point, man? Because I want to get this done and go home. I’m tired.”
He didn’t seem tired, but then he never did. I had two speeds: batshit and coma. But Gus was a machine, he just kept going and going and going, only stopping to eat enough food for ten blokes and not have an ounce of extra flesh on him.
Not that I’d checked.
Much.
Maybe it’s you that’s missing the point. “I’m trying to tell you I didn’t fuck my hand up fighting with Luke, because I know that’s what you think.”
“It’s not what I think.”
“Yes, it is.”
Silence. Gus stared at me, expression carefully blank. And I fucking hated it. Don’t dead-eye me. Show me how you really feel.
Why do you care how he feels?
I had no idea.
But I did care. I cared a lot. “I didn’t fight Luke. I went back to his house after you’d gone and got drunk with Mia for a bit. Then he came down and stared at me for a little while longer before I went home.”
“And drank yourself to sleep?”
“Something like that.”
“Doesn’t explain your fight knuckles.”
“So? If I didn’t fight Luke, why do you care what happened to them?”
More silence. I tried not to let Gus’s troubled gaze get under my skin, but man, it was hard. He was like a kicked Labrador when he wasn’t smiling, and it made me want to throw up. Or maybe that was the hangover. After three nights on the sauce, I pretty much wanted to die. “Look,” I said. “I didn’t fight anyone, okay? It was...part of something else and nothing to do with Luke. Please don’t make me explain it cos it’s really fucking stupid.”
Gus’s frown deepened. “I wouldn’t think it was stupid.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’m not that kind of arsehole.”
He wasn’t any kind of arsehole. Everyone round here knew that, even me. But I still didn’t want to confess the ridiculous ways I’d dealt with chronic shoulder pain since I’d smashed it up falling from, of all things, a garage roof, though I’d been out of my mind on mandy at the time, not grafting like an honest man.
I started to straighten up, then changed my mind. “Why didn’t you ask Luke?”
“Ask him what?”
“If we’d had a fight. You’re his gatekeeper, aren’t you?”
Gus nudged my feet, forcing me to move so he could relay the felt I’d kicked aside. His back was to me, and I was instantly so lost in his broad shoulders and rippling muscles I almost missed his response.
“Because I didn’t want him to know if you’d punched someone else.”
* * *
It turned out to be the longest day of my life. My hangover wore off mid-afternoon, taking with it the numbness I’d found at the bottom of a vodka bottle, and by the time we packed up for the day, I couldn’t move my arm without biting chunks out of my tongue.
Somehow Gus didn’t notice. Or maybe he was still ruminating over his assumption that I’d lost a fight to Luke, and my craptastic counter explanation as to why that was bullshit. Fucking-A, he was a patient dude. Sometimes I had to remind myself that he’d spent the majority of the last few years with Luke, and that even on my worst day, I’d
never be as maddening as my brother. In the reticent stakes, at least. I was willing to bet Luke bought more cups of tea than me. That his wallet didn’t hold the grand total of thirty-seven pence to last him until whenever Daley Roofing paid out these days.
If I was even getting paid. If I was Luke, I’d have paid my wages directly to Gus to cover my rent and board. Who cared if I was in desperate need of some weed to ease this fucking pain?
“Are you falling asleep on me?”
I wish.
The unbidden—and definitely errant—thought brought me back to the present. I sat up in the passenger seat in the van. Apparently I’d missed the drive home. I glanced at Gus’s house. My temporary bedroom had become a sanctuary, but despite the earth-shattering throb in my shoulder, I was hungry, and I knew the fridge was bare. Gus ate a lot but never shopped, as if he expected food to fill his plate by magic. Or he spent all his time on Just Eat, which I guessed was better than the imagined life I’d created for him on Grindr.
I turned my attention back to him. He was thumbing through his phone, lips twisted in a faint grin that did odd things to my empty stomach. Imagined. Yeah right. I dropped out of the van without answering his question and drifted inside. Grey was waiting for me. I fed him the last pouch of Felix in the cupboard, hanging it out while I waited for Gus.
But Gus didn’t come in, and eventually the van rumbled away.
I couldn’t decide how I felt about that. On the one hand, I was in enough pain to crave solitude so I could suffer in peace. On the other, I longed for Gus’s company so bad my head spun.
Or maybe I was just hungry. Either way, everything was fucked.
I trooped upstairs and searched my bag for the black market morphine pills I saved for emergencies, but the bottle was empty, like it had been for weeks, and I lacked the funds or facilities to get any more. Gus’s bathroom contained an empty box of paracetamol and I couldn’t decide if that was better than trying to dull this pain with a mouthful of OTC meds, or worse than the fact that my thirty-seven pence wasn’t enough to buy any more.
Damn, I was eight pence short. Story of my fucking life.
I could’ve pinched some. Would’ve, if I’d been anywhere else. But on my vodka-buying expeditions, I’d struck up a rapport with the Indian dude who’d taken over the nearest shop, and I only stole from people I didn’t like.
It didn’t leave me many options. I took a hot shower and drank all Gus’s French beer—a bad idea on an empty stomach. It didn’t stay down long, and when I was done throwing it all back up again, I lay on the bathroom floor, knowing the cold tiles would make the pain worse, but unable to make myself move. Masochist. Maybe, but probably not. I didn’t like pain, but sometimes I needed it to stay alive. Without it, I was a coil of insensible apathy, and somehow, that hurt more.
Chapter Seven
Gus
“Billy.” I shook him. “Billy. Wake up.”
For a long moment, he didn’t move. Fear that he was actually unwell and not passed out drunk lanced my heart, but then he stirred, eyes fluttering, groaning as he came to on the bathroom floor. “Wha—?”
I shook my head. “No idea, mate. Apart from the twelve pack of stubbies you put away, and anything else you drank after.”
“What are you talking about?”
Huh. He didn’t sound drunk. And now he was staring at me like I was off my rocker, the terror of finding him knocked out on the floor eased a little.
I sat back on my heels, giving him space to figure out which way was up. Billy closed his eyes and stayed where he was, lines of pain etched deep into his lovely face. He’d always had sharp edges, but this was something else. I reached out and touched his shoulder. “What’s the—”
Billy jerked back, flinching so hard he hit his head on the sink pedestal. “Fuck!”
“Oh god, I’m sorry.” I reached for him again, this time closing my fingers around his wrist with one hand, and cupping his face with the other. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
Billy sucked in a shaky breath, then another, and another. “My shoulder.”
“The one you hurt in the accident last summer?”
“Yeah. It sends me crazy sometimes.”
Tiny puzzle pieces clicked into place in my Billy-addled brain. I knew about his accident, obviously, because I’d been there when Luke had taken the call, and handled his business when he’d rushed to Billy’s bedside, but so much had happened between then and now that I’d forgotten how bad it had been, and it hadn’t occurred to me for a single second, even when we’d been hoofing tons of wood up and down scaffolding, that his catastrophic injury was still causing him pain.
Nice one, Gus. Way to take care of your best friend’s brother.
Mind racing, I helped Billy sit up. He was freezing. I took my hoodie off and draped it carefully around him. “How long have you been down?”
“Dunno. Your beer made me hurl, then I figured I’d stay where I was in case I chucked up again.”
“Can’t handle your drink?”
“I can’t do bubbles on an empty stomach.”
“Why didn’t you eat?”
“Eat what?”
He had me there. The supplies from his shopping trip had run out days ago. Last time I’d checked, the only thing left in the fridge had been beer, milk, and some random tomatoes. “Sorry, mate.”
“Why? It’s not your job to feed me.”
But it was. I’d promised Luke I’d take care of Billy, and two weeks in, he was passed out sick, hungry, and in pain on my bathroom floor.
Guilt burned a path from my heart to my own empty stomach. Quiet nights in with Billy were sending me round the bend, but I would’ve given anything to turn back time and stay home, offering him a plate piled high with takeout food he’d pick at like a fussy child.
I helped him sit up, my mind already on what I could order in to line his already traumatised stomach, but as Billy came upright, it dawned on me that eating was the last thing on his mind. That he was in too much pain to think about anything else. “What do you usually take?”
“Hmm?” Billy swung his distracted gaze my way. “What?”
“For the pain. What did the doctor give you?” Because there was no way a couple of paracetamol was going to fix this. I didn’t know much, but of that I was certain.
Billy dropped his head, freeing me of his stare. “Surgeon gave me some naproxen, and some codeine, I think. But they’re all gone now.”
“What about the GP? Or your physio? Didn’t they prescribe more?”
“What GP?”
“Are you serious?” Of course he was. Now that I thought about it, Billy’s vagabond lifestyle probably hadn’t left room for registering with a GP and following a recovery plan. I tracked back, counting the months since the accident I still knew next to nothing about. At the time, I’d been focussed on Mia and Luke, and so much had happened since. Six months? Nine? A year? My fuzzled brain couldn’t seem to remember. Maybe I was absorbing Billy’s apparent lack of equilibrium.
He didn’t answer my question. I got him to his feet. “Do you still feel sick?”
“I feel like I died.”
I believed him, given that he had died the first time he’d had surgery on his shoulder. Daley boys didn’t take well to general anaesthetics. They were also proud men who didn’t admit perceived weaknesses easily. I didn’t know Billy as well as I knew Luke, but instinct warned me to settle him fast, before old habits kicked in and he pushed me away.
My room was closest. Billy’s room was hardly a world away, but for reasons I’d never understand, I walked Billy to my bed and sat him down.
He cast a slow gaze around my bedroom. “What are we doing in here?”
“Bigger bed, telly on the wall, and I have the good drugs.”
“What drugs?”
“Tramadol for p
ain. Amitriptyline to relax your muscles.”
“How’d you get that shit?”
“Knee surgery.”
“When?”
“Two years ago.”
“I didn’t know about that.”
I shrugged, because why would he? Even if he’d had a functioning relationship with Luke, my health and wellbeing would hardly have been a hot topic of conversation. “Anyway. If you wanna chill in here for a bit, I’ll get you some pills, some food, and a hot cuppa to wash it all down. How does that sound?”
Bewilderment warred with the sardonic half smirk Billy usually painted on his face. He glanced around the room again, his hesitance clear, though which part of my proposal was making him twitch, I couldn’t tell.
I took a chance and knelt in front of him, my hands on his knees. “Look, I can give you the drugs and help you to your own room if you’d prefer, but I’m not leaving you alone like this, okay? I’ll kip in your doorway if I have to, and I’m sure you don’t want that.”
“Don’t want you being a creepy weirdo? Nah, I like that shit.”
His rough humour was a soft breeze after a sandstorm, washing the scratchy tension from the air. “Whatever.” I stood. “I’ll get the drugs and the tea while you figure it out.”
I was halfway to the door when he called my name. Holding my breath, I turned.
Billy offered me a ghostly smile. “I’ll stay, but don’t make me eat. Your room is too nice for me throw up in.”
Unforgotten (Forgiven) Page 6