Luca blinked sleepily, lifting his good hand to rub at his eyes. He’d been taken down for an MRI at nine, and it had exhausted him so much that, “What?” was the confused response that his brain gave.
“Your friend Andrew is here to see you!”
“I don’t—oh,” Luca said, catching the who the fuck is that? when his gaze slid past Peggy, fussing around his IV and checking the bag levels, and landed on Jack.
Shoulders hunched, hood up, hands thrust deep in his pockets, Jack would have looked belligerent if not for the ash-grey colour of his face, and the fact his eyes were not malevolently boring into Luca’s face as usual, but instead staring at his left leg. The hip had been badly broken, so the plaster-entombed leg had been raised in a sling to let everything heal up at least vaguely the way it was supposed to.
And…yeah, actually. Luca figured that would be…a shock.
“Hi,” he said.
Jack visibly swallowed, edging into the reach of the cubicle curtains as Peggy Li scuttled out. His gaze didn’t shift.
“Both shins,” Luca said quietly, “and my left thigh. Both hips. This arm, and the collarbone. Five ribs. Two surgeries to save my spleen, and they’re still not sure I’ll get to keep both my kidneys. Hairline skull fracture. Whiplash. And they’re all really pleased, you know, ‘cause I should be dead or paralysed.”
Jack hunched his shoulders even further.
“As it is,” Luca said quietly, “I don’t know if I’ll get to walk properly again.”
A cold rush of fear bloomed in his own stomach at the words, and Luca found himself looking away for a moment. It hadn’t sunk in yet. He felt…uncomfortable, exhausted, but okay, all things considered. But that was on a lot of painkillers, and not being allowed to move at all. He was terrified of what would happen once the casts came off. Of his hips being permanently twisted up, or the nerve and muscle damage in his legs being too much for his body to cope with. He was scared. Just so, so fucking scared.
“I didn’t see the car.”
Jack’s voice was a very low, hoarse whisper, and Luca shook his head.
“You expect me to believe that? After the knife? Twice?”
“I didn’t.” Jack’s voice didn’t change, but he finally lifted his gaze from Luca’s leg to his face, albeit not quite his eyes. “I thought you were dead.”
“So did everyone else. So did I.”
“I thought I’d…killed you, like.”
“S’what you want,” Luca returned. Jack frowned. “En’t it? Get the faggot out of your―”
Jack…flinched.
He physically flinched, his gaze dropping again, and Luca’s stomach clenched up tight in his stomach. So he’d been right. Jack wasn’t capable of it, of actually killing someone, not any more than he was. Certainly less than Tav probably was.
If anything, it made it harder, for Luca. There was some simplicity in being proven wrong, in Jack having meant to push him in front of the taxi. He could have been convinced, then, that Jack was too dangerous and he’d just end up killing the next gay kid he met if it wasn’t Luca. But the way he flinched, the way his eyes dropped away…
“I haven’t talked to the police yet.”
“Don’t matter,” Jack said. “Your mates will have.”
“Yeah, but they can’t say you meant to push me.”
“Neither can you.”
“Yeah I can,” Luca said. “You were right in front of me. I saw where you were looking. S’easy, to just say you glanced into the road before you pushed me. Say I saw you look at the car.”
Jack’s jaw clenched. “So why don’t you.”
“‘Cause I feel sorry for you.”
“I don’t need some fucki―”
“Just shut your face and listen, yeah?” Luca interrupted, and Jack fell silent, his eyes shifting back to that elevated leg. “I know someone abused you.”
Jack’s jaw worked, but he said nothing.
“And I’m not asking who or what happened, but―”
“I live with my aunt and uncle,” Jack said brusquely. “Don’t that tell you something about who and what happened?”
“Maybe,” Luca allowed. “But whatever did happen, it’s fucked you up. And that bit isn’t your fault. But what you’ve done to me an’ Tav, what you’re going to do to other gay guys if you don’t change, Jack…you’re gonna kill someone, for real, for just being gay. I mean, you know, killing someone who raped you, maybe…I mean, you know, I’m not some pacifist, I could see that being maybe not so bad, but killing someone just ‘cause you found out they’re gay? That’s retarded. What you gonna do if, you know, you come out of juvie and you try having a standard life, and then your neighbour is gay? Or your boss? Or your doctor? What if you have kids, and one of them’s gay, you gonna kill your kid?”
Jack’s grey complexion was turning into some mash-up of green and white, and Luca pressed his advantage.
“You nearly killed me. And this is the last chance you get, and either option involves you staying away from me, forever, and knowing that if I even feel a little bit threatened by you again, I’ll tell the cops everything you have ever said or done, I will tell them I lied because I was afraid of you, and that you meant to push me under that car. So you wanna make a deal?”
“Depends on your fucking terms.” And yet the curse was more of a whisper, something thin and weak.
“The deal is, if I tell the police I don’t remember anything, and they deal with you just based off what Aaron and David and whoever in the street told them, you have to go to a psychiatrist.”
“How the hell are you gonna check?”
“Because you’re going to give me proof. Send me photos of your appointment letters, I don’t know. But you have to go to a psychiatrist or a counsellor or someone. You have to get proper help.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I tell the cops you shoved me in front of that taxi on purpose, and you go to juvie for ages, and your life is fucked up even more. I mean, it’s your choice, but…you know, they do stuff in juvie, too.”
Jack physically twitched, and Luca almost—almost—regretted the low blow. And then Jack’s jaw sagged, he licked his lips, and said, “I were eleven when it started, and the social never did anything. Was only when I ran away and told my aunt, she sorted it, let me move in with them. I was legal by then. And he never went down for it, he’s still living with my fucking bitch of a mam in Manor Top. And then I get out, and I get back into school, and there’s you and your fucking boyfriend, like that shit’s normal…”
“It is normal,” Luca said, “‘cause me and Tav, we’re just dating and having fun. Just like other guys do with girls. It’s not the same. Just like rape’s not sex—rape’s not fun, but sex is fun. They’re not the same.”
Jack was shaking his head, but his face had dropped to eye the tiles, and Luca felt intensely, painfully sorry for him.
“You can’t live,” he said carefully, “letting some pervert rule your life for you. You got away. Now you have to get out from the shadow of it, too, and you need help to do that, proper help, like.”
“Right, yeah, go to a nutjob doctor.”
“It’s not a nutjob doctor,” Luca said. “My brother goes to a counsellor. Anger management, ‘cause he’s a right bolshy little fucker. He’s worse than Tav these days, he’s a total over-the-top little bitch.”
To his surprise, a very faint smile cracked the hard, unapproachable face in front of him, and Luca cocked his head.
“Get proper help, Jack,” he said quietly, “and get that fucker out of your head, too. You started swimming, right, I thought you were alright. You’re fucking crazy with that front crawl, you’re better than that lazy lifeguard they got there. Did his job for him, when the accident happened, right? But you’re letting this psycho run your life for you. S’why I don’t want to just let the cops pack you off to prison. ‘Cause Tav was like that, gonna chuck it all away, and I was like that when I was trying to accept being g
ay, and we turned out alright. So can you.”
For a long, long moment…nothing. A tannoy squeaked ineffectively in the ward corridor beyond the doors. A nurse was giggling somewhere with one of the orderlies. A machine at the end of the bay was beeping gently to itself. And Jack simply stood, and stared at the tiles.
Then he turned on his heel, and headed for the door.
“Oi!” Luca yelled. “We got a deal?”
Jack paused, fist clenched around the door handle. “Yeah,” he said gruffly. “We’ve got a deal.”
“Good. And, er, little insurance policy on my part—my phone, on the stand? It’s recording everything.”
Jack snorted, then threw a dark, half-smile Luca’s way, that twitched suspiciously at the corner of his mouth. “You’re gonna be a cop one day, Jensen,” he predicted darkly. “You’re sly enough.”
Luca snorted. “Charming. Fuck off before my boyfriend shows up and finishes what’s left of you.”
“He fucking wishes.”
And then Jack was gone, the door swinging shut behind him.
Luca sagged into the pillow under his head, all the tension—and a little bit of fear, he wasn’t too proud to admit it—leaking away. He’d done it. He’d scored a deal, and he had done it. Jack Collins was gone, and one way or another, Luca had either saved him, or Jack had condemned himself.
Luca closed his eyes, and let the painkillers drag him under.
Epilogue: “Baci.”
Tav was practised at this now: out of the car before it had quite stopped rolling, get the door, crank back Luca’s seat before he even thought about getting out, and pop the boot to get the crutches so Mamma Alessandra didn’t have to get out and therefore pay the parking charges.
“You’re getting efficient,” Luca teased.
Tav smirked. “Shut up, cripple.”
“Oi!”
“I’ll pick you up at two,” Mamma Alessandra said blithely, and smiled when Luca lurched upright on the crutches. “Baci, Luca.”
“Baci, Mamma.”
Tav grinned and obnoxiously planted a loud kiss on Luca’s cheek. Mamma Alessandra just laughed and started to reverse back out. Luca scowled. “Technically,” he said snottily, making no move towards the doors, “baci means kisses. Not kiss. Where’s the other one?”
Tav rolled his eyes and kissed the other cheek.
“Better,” Luca said, and started to limp forward. It was still painfully slow progress. He’d only graduated to being allowed to walk any significant distance a month ago, and he couldn’t take more than ten steps without the crutches yet. But it was still walking. It was still, you know, not disabled. Or dead.
Plus Tav had long since learned, in short trips into the city centre when Luca was released from his mother’s fussing or his physiotherapist’s shouting, that nobody batted an eyelid if a boy put his hand to the back of another boy if said another boy was struggling on crutches. They thought the first boy was being helpful. They smiled, and thought it was kind, and maybe the younger generation weren’t all total wasters.
He slid his hand to the small of Luca’s back, and grinned. Support had nothing to do with it. If Luca fell, he’d go like a ton of bricks and there was nothing Tav could do about it. Tav was getting away with being a bit hands-on in public, and he was loving it.
“Steve said,” Luca started a little breathlessly as he clacked his way into the foyer of the swimming centre, “that if you want to come to my hydrotherapy session next week, he’s cleared it with his boss.”
“Yeah? Cool!”
Tav had taken to this physio thing. At first it had just been about helping Luca—a shattered hip, a broken thigh and multiple shin fractures had kept him completely hospitalised for months and mentally climbing the walls, and Tav had thrown himself into helping Luca stay upbeat through the gruelling physiotherapy when the casts had finally been cracked off. But it had actually turned out pretty interesting. Luca’s main therapist, Steve, was kind of cool and a fan of the same football team as Tav. And he showed Tav all the exercises and stuff. Lately, he’d even started talking about getting Tav a volunteer placement in the physiotherapy unit, and how Tav should go to university and train up proper, like. Which was novel. Mam wanted him to go to university, but Tav had never really entertained the idea. Until now.
“You can’t get in the pool with me,” Luca continued, struggling with his bag to get his membership card out. Tav let him. He’d been snapped at last time he’d tried to help, and the lady on the desk was nice and patient anyway. They were regulars, here. It was smaller than the proper one at Ponds Forge, and Luca was too shy to go there yet and be stared at. “Steve says his boss was a jerk about that bit. But you can come and watch and talk physiology and shit with him while I flop about uselessly.”
“You don’t flop,” Tav chided. “You can do backstroke again.”
“Yeah, with my arms.”
“But you can float easy now,” Tav protested, opening the gate for the little lift and ushering Luca inside. Stairs were still fractionally too difficult for him. And where was the point in exhausting him before swimming? “And you’re managing widths again.”
“Slow widths.”
“But you’re managing,” Tav stressed. “Stop being impatient, Luca. The doctor’s still floored you’re walking even half a step without the crutches.”
“I’ll be glad to be rid of them,” Luca sniped, then deflated. “I’m sorry. I know I’m being a shit.”
“I get it,” Tav said, holding the changing room door for him. “It’s hard. But you’re doing really well, okay? You’ll be swimming properly by the start of school again.”
“I’m being held back a year.”
“And I’ll be taking a gap year after school to do Steve’s volunteer placement training thing, so we’ll still go off together,” Tav said firmly. “Now c’mon, stop your whining and get changed.”
Luca rolled his eyes and struggled to his feet again. He’d spent most of the spring in a bed by a window in the hospital, soaking up sun. Or in a wheelchair in the hospital garden, soaking up sun. Or struggling with physiotherapy and clumsy casts and crutches, catching sun in between exhausting sessions. He still slept a lot, and the living room at the Jensen house was still his bedroom until he could get rid of the wheelchair properly and use the stairs again. And he was paler than any summer before, but still not as scarily white as he’d been right after the accident.
Tav kissed that gently darkening skin just beside his nose, and started to help Luca out of his jeans. This was the bit Luca hated most. Changing. He still wasn’t—
“T-shirt?”
“Leave it.”
Tav bit back the sigh. Luca hadn’t been really comfortable in his own skin since the taxi. He had scars. He was thin and wasted where he’d been wiry before. He didn’t like the way he looked, and Tav wanted to shake him most days and say who gave a fuck anyway? He was here. He hadn’t left. He hadn’t—
But Tav didn’t want a row, so he scratched his fingers lightly behind Luca’s ears once he was changed and kissed his jaw. “Gimme a sec.”
Luca nodded, shifting his crutches between his hands. He leaned against walls and whatnot a lot when he sat now, and one of his feet pointed ever so slightly inwards. Steve said it would realign as his hip and knee improved, but Tav didn’t much care. What was a wonky foot?
He ripped his own T-shirt off over his head, ruffling Luca’s hair to make him scowl, and stripped down. Only once he was naked did he rummage in his bag for his trunks. Luca might have gone all body-shy since the accident, but Tav had no such qualms. He wasn’t exactly the hottest guy in the book, and he could get his balls out in the changing rooms just fine. And he was determined—once they’d tackled the basics like walking and changing his own trousers—to get Luca back to that point, too.
“Okay,” he said, tucking their towels under his arm. “You sure you’re keeping your shirt on?”
“Yes.”
“Alright, alright.
Let’s go. The others will be waiting.”
Luca groaned. “Tav!”
“They like helping you out, shut the fuck up.”
They bypassed the showers, and the attendant was waiting when Tav pushed open the poolside door. Luca couldn’t bring crutches onto the wet tiles, and the pool staff had thrown a fit when the swimming team had tried to get him in the water themselves. “Health and safety violations! Health and safety!” a shrill woman with a face like a rat had squealed, and ever since, a pool attendant had been waiting with a rickety plastic wheelchair.
Still, the whole operation was over quickly enough, Luca being slid into the shallow end with easy practice, and then the swimming team were crowding around, mocking his hair and asking why he got VIP treatment.
And Luca—
Relaxed.
Luca just relaxed in the water, back with his team, and he jeered at them and took the piss out of David for having a proper, legit girlfriend now. Tav liked that part best. Where under the wasted muscle and exhaustion, Luca’s smile still had dimples, and he still bemoaned the missed opportunity of turning Aaron gay on a stage in front of a couple of hundred people.
“Tav, you actually coming in, or you sitting there like a lemon?” Aaron asked.
Tav shrugged. “S’too cold yet. Gimme a minute.”
“Pussy.”
“What a nancy.”
“Here, Luca, you shagged him sissy or what?”
The jeering bobbed away in the water, hands flashing through the water to steady Luca’s painful, slow breaststroke as he followed them, and Tav trusted them to do it. He wasn’t stupid. Body-shy, he could help with. Physio, he enjoyed. Baci, he could provide. But the water had always been Luca’s touchstone, and it was the water that would really heal him.
Across the pool, in the racing lanes, a figure dragged itself up out of the water and headed for a water bottle on the side. Tav watched through narrowed eyes, as the familiar, lone figure of Jack Collins took a long pull, then adjusted his goggles and turned back to the water’s edge.
He paused.
In the water, so did Luca.
Tav knew there had been some deal struck, because of the way Luca nodded, and Jack, after a moment, nodded back, then dived neatly back into the lane and vanished. Every session was the same. Tav watched, murderously wary, and Luca and Jack engaged nods almost like they were civil. Almost like Jack was a friend, not the psycho banned from swimming club, expelled from school, and—rumour had it—got an electronic tag and a home curfew instead of a young offenders’ institute by the skin of his teeth.
The Italian Word for Kisses Page 26