After The Fall

by Sarah Goodwin

Janey’s smile triumphed and grew.

  I said goodbye and was halfway out the door before it struck me, and I went back, catching Janey in the act of blotting her make-up. “Janey?”

  “Mmm?” She said, a tissue in hand as she wiped teary mascara and eyeliner from her cheeks.

  “That time you shouted at Nate...did you think he was someone that used to come here? A bloke I used to, see, outside of work?”

  Even with the wet grey shine of make-up on her face, it was impossible to miss Janey’s guilty blush. “You knew a lot of people, from the gym side of things mostly.”

  “Yeah, but, this one guy in particular. Maybe he and I talked a lot...” I let the sentence hang there, and when she didn’t pick it up, I drove it home, “maybe I went home with him?”

  “Connor!” she exclaimed, her eyes gleaming with guilt as she looked around the deserted reception. “What a thing to say.”

  “What? That I went home with a friend?” I said, “or that I went home with a stranger, for something other than a can of Stella?”

  Janey’s face could have powered Tokyo, the sheer glow of it was evidence enough. Still she struggled, “Connor, if you’re suggesting...”

  “I know, Janey, Emma told me.”

  She looked stunned, “Why?”

  I shrugged. “She thought I should know.”

  “Well then,” Janey said, calming slightly, “you see, she’s such a lovely girl.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And, really, if you don’t remember him...well, then it almost never happened, right?” She said, looking hopeful, “I just think you and Emma, you deserve to be happy. Truth be told...and I know I only met him once, I never liked him.”

  I shrugged, what else could I do, when I didn’t know him myself?

  She patted my arm. “At least if you’re leaving there’s no chance of bumping into him again.”

  “Mmm,” I said, noncommittally.

  “And that Simon, really he was nothing but trouble.”

  One of the many phones shrilled at that moment, and Janey leapt on it like a kestrel upon a mouse. I was left standing in front of the reception desk, wondering why my skin was suddenly cold with dread.

  After having effectively being fired, I walked in a fixed direction and went to the warehouse that housed that most elite club, of which I myself was now a member. I wasn’t ‘in a daze’ or suffering the kind of shocked detachment that I thought I’d feel. Instead, it was almost as if I’d had a lead weight hacked off of each foot. I felt light and insubstantial, like my blood had been leeched out of me.

  After climbing the stairs to the unemployed men’s club, I found that there was only one other person there. Morosely rolling pool balls around on the table and watching them clunk down into the pockets.

  It was Nate, of course.

  He was wearing ripped blue-green jeans and a t-shirt with If you want my body, crack open a lager on it in white writing. His hair was dishevelled, and his face covered in at least two days worth of stubble.

  I looked down and felt a sick little lurch at the sight of my now redundant uniform.

  “Hey,” I said, lifting a hand in an aborted wave, he almost jumped, but smiled weakly.

  “Alright?”

  “No,” I said, “just got chucked by the leisure centre.”

  He looked up at me properly, eyebrows drawing together in concern. “Shit.”

  “Yeah. Failed my test, thanks for the card though.”

  I was close enough to see the tips of his ears turning pink as he looked down at the ripped green felt of the table. “S’OK.”

  I sighed, putting my hands on the end of the table. “Where’s everyone?”

  “Skill training day, job centre’s put on a class to teach ‘em how to use the net.”

  “Gregory told me they did stuff like that.”

  “Well, I guess you’ll see it for yourself now,” Nate muttered, he came around the table, one hand reaching out and touching mine. “Sorry mate.”

  “It’s alright, I should have worked harder, that’s all.”

  “Not just about that,” Nate wetted his lips and let the words leave his mouth like knotted rope being pulled through his clenched teeth. “I shouldn’t’ve pushed you, I let myself get carried away.”

  He was embarrassed, I realised. Shamed by the fact that he’d shown himself to me, not as an easy going player, but as a lonely, desperate fool, clutching at whatever came near.

  “I’m sorry too,” I said, and felt a shift, like when alcohol first detonates in the stomach, striking out via veins to the extremities, numbing, burning, making the heart beat more noticeably.

  “What for?” Nate shrugged, “you were just being honest. I should have listened.”

  “No you shouldn’t’ve,” I swallowed, stepped closer, and it was so like being drunk, only the air felt sharper, and the fact that he was so near, and still and inch away from me, dug blunt fingernails into my skin, making me prickle and jitter with possibility.

  “I lied,” I told him, simply. “I lied to you.”

  His face changed in confusion, but I only saw it for a second before I was too close. My eyes were closed, and I was kissing him.

  Because I’d lied. I’d told him that without Emma, without the things that I put between us, work, marriage, my life before, I still wouldn’t want him.

  I’d lied to him, but more than that. I’d lied to myself.

  In that moment, I was sick of lying, and of being disappointed, of struggling.

  All I wanted was something true.

  Nate’s arms went around me, grabbing me and pushing aside my shirt so that his hands could press into the dip in my spine. As we kissed he pushed against me, pulling me up against him, and I felt I could never get close enough. My body was hot, jittery, and my stomach was volcanic with how much I wanted him, but more than that, I was light with happiness.

  Nate kissed the corner of my irrepressible smile, then hopped backwards, up onto the pool table, pulling me between his legs and wrapping them around me.

  My breathing came heavier and shallower as Nate kissed my jaw, my neck, pulling aside the collar of my shirt to lick and bite at my pulse. I tipped my head back and closed my eyes to the dark struts of the ceiling, rubbed up between his legs and let my hands squeeze and stroke wherever they fell.

  Nate leant back to pull his t-shirt off, and I discarded my uniform polo just as quickly. Then his hands turned gentle, running up my spine as he swallowed, clearing his throat. He edged backwards, wetting his bitten lips, guiding me to lie on top of him.

  His skin was damp with sweat, sticking to mine as we kissed again, no longer snatching the air from each other’s mouths, but sharing it on long, deep, plunges. Just kissing him, feeling his persuasive tongue and cracked lips on mine, made me want to be completely naked under him.

  Nate’s fingers gripped and pushed at my arse through my jogging bottoms, rubbing and stroking between my legs, making me want things that I hadn’t even known I was capable of, so that I rocked down harder against him, feeling the bulge in his jeans as a hot pressure against my erection. I felt shaky, almost in shock, wanting more than anything to have him inside me. To mimic those videos from my computer, and let him hold me down in mock supremacy, teasing me and finally giving me what I wanted.

  When he touched me through my joggers, I gasped and turned my face, pressing it to the curve of Nate’s neck, mouth open and breathless. He kissed the side of my face gently, fingers drawing down my joggers, rolling the band of my underwear down and trailing fingertips over my arse, to the sensitive inside of my thighs, making me twitch and whimper.

  I had my hands under his shoulders, pulling him to me even as I pressed against him. He opened his jeans, shimmied up to push them down to his knees, kicking them and his underwear off. He helped me struggle out of my bottoms, then heaved me over onto my back, pinning me to the ripped felt of the table. Its legs creaked, and with a snap the whole lot buckled, and the pool table hit the floo
r with a bang, making my body jerk and twist like I had dreamt of plunging down towards the ground.

  Nate laughed and kissed me, making himself comfortable between my legs, hitching my knees up on either side of him, until I felt exposed and sheltered by him, both of us naked and wrapped up in each other. The dust and wood smell of the warehouse settled on us, every sound echoing around the manmade cavern.

  I bucked up against Nate every time he pushed down on me, stroking his back, planting my hands on his arse, finding the hollow of his waist, the fluttering skin over his ribs, cupping his face. I tangled my legs up with his, and all the time our cocks brushed, bumped, slid along next to each other and in the creases of our thighs. Sweat gathered on us and Nate kissed me, leaving messy swipes of spit, warm on my lips and chin, he nuzzled the side of my face and whispered,

  “I want to fuck you, properly fuck you. God Con-” he sucked a bruise into my neck, “I want you to feel me, right inside.”

  I let myself relax, falling open to him, aching to let him do it, letting him fit between my legs. It was impossible to do it now, I knew that, still, the idea made my skin burn a thousand degrees hotter, and the feeling of Nate rubbing himself against me there, between my legs, made me shiver, hot and cold with desire.

  Nate held me closer, our bodies meeting at a frantic pace, his teeth nipped my neck, his body a quick, gorgeous thing that grew more sinuous as both of us hit the beginnings of orgasm, when the world blurred out, the fuse was lit, and burnt with delicious certainty, the countdown was on, and then pleasure detonated, ripping through us like white hot shrapnel.

  Nate’s body jerked along with mine, and when at last we were still, our sweat cooling on the table, dust sticking to us, he laid his head on my shoulder, and let out a long breath. I put my arms around him, closed my eyes to the darkness of the ceiling over us, and buried the tip of my nose in his damp hair, which smelt like smoke and petrol.

  We dozed for a while, certainly not long, because both of us realised that the warehouse wasn’t in any way locked, and someone could walk in and find us at any second. We rolled off of the demolished pool table, and Nate picked up his jeans, stepping into them and doing them up easily. He took a bent cigarette from the pocket, straightened it and lit up.

  He gesture at my back, chuckling. “You look like you’ve been romping on the football pitch.”

  “What?”

  “Massive grass stain on your back,” he said.

  I looked over my shoulder and could just see the start of the green mark there. Shit. The dye in the table’s felt had come off on my sweaty skin.

  Nate offered me the cigarette and I took it, taking a drag as I pulled my joggers on and recovered my shirt.

  “What’s going to happen here then?” Nate asked eventually, plucking the fag from my mouth so I could put my shirt on.

  I hid from him behind the thin cotton. It was a good question, and one that I wished I could answer. A large part of my life, at least, my life from before, had just crumbled. I had no job, and I’d cheated on my wife, again. It was apparent that I’d given up trying to delude myself that I could learn to appreciate Emma and the leisure centre.

  I pulled the shirt on and looked at him.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “I want us to do this again, and...I don’t think I should be with Emma, if I do. I can’t cheat on her, or, keep, cheating on her.”

  Nate caught my eyes. “Where’re you going to go?”

  “I have no idea,” I admitted. “I want...I need, to get myself sorted out. I’ve spent too long bitching about how much I hate my life, if it’s ruined, at least I can build myself a new one.”

  “And you want to do this again?”

  I nodded.

  “Exactly this?”

  “More,” I said, and, when his face turned severe I quirked a smile, “maybe we could actually spend some time together? Go out, get a drink, or something.”

  Nate’s expression cleared, and I let myself realise for the first time, just how good he looked. He was changeable as the sky, bright or cataclysmically dark, but never ugly, never boring. My heart felt open, vulnerable as a lidless eye, smarting at every speck of grit or puff of air. But even so, it was worth it for the way it made me feel. For the first time since waking up in hospital, I wanted something, someone.

  For the first time, I was glad that I had survived the accident.

  “What are you going to tell her?” Nate asked, bringing me crashing down.

  “I don’t know, the truth?”

  “Sorry love, I’m a raging bender and always have been?” Nate raised an eyebrow, “she’ll go fucking spare, shouting, clothes burnt on the front garden, you name it.”

  “I can’t lie to her, not after she’s been nothing but honest with me.”

  A dark cloud passed across his face. “Honest, is she, really?”

  “She told me I cheated on her.”

  “Oh? For how long?”

  “Just the once.”

  He made a whistling sound through his teeth. “Restrained of you.”

  “I felt guilty and I stopped, after that one time.”

  “So you confessed all, threw yourself on her mercy, and she forgave you,” he laid a hand over his heart, “how generous of her.”

  I frowned at him. “Cut it out.”

  Nate rolled his eyes, but didn’t say anything more.

  “I’ll tell her that...I can’t be married to someone that I don’t know, which is true, and that I want to start again, have my own life instead of trying to act like someone else’s is enough for me.”

  “And part of this ‘new life’ of yours involves us, what, going on dates?”

  “You don’t have to make it sound as...”

  “‘As queer as that’ is that what you mean?”

  “Just, that you made it sound soppy. Which it isn’t,” I said. “What’s wrong with wanting to get to know you?”

  Nate shrugged, “Nothing, save that you’ll have to get in line. I don’t even know me.”

  I chuckled, “Me either.”

  Nate’s smile warmed his face, and he came closer, ‘till I could feel the warmth of his body through our clothes, his breath stirring the part of my fringe that flopped over my face.

  “So, we’ll get a drink sometime, yeah?” he said, mouth close to mine.

  “Yeah.”

  “You can come back to mine for a little bit for dinner,” his hands traced from mine up to my shoulders, “see what’s on TV,” he stroked the back of my neck and excitement warmed my belly, no longer urgent and white hot, but the glow of coals waiting to flare up again. “Then...whatever we want.”

  Nate kissed me, and, it didn’t make me forget who I was, the way some people describe it. But it made me forget who I was supposed to be, and that made it better.

  Chapter Ten

  When I got home, the envelope with my exam results in it was waiting for me. Emma held it out to me when I came into the kitchen. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail, she’d clearly been cleaning, and her leggings were spattered with washing-up foam.

  “I already know what I got,” I told her.

  “And?” her expression flashed between worry and expectation.

  “I failed.”

  “Oh, Connor,” she dropped the envelope onto the table and leant on a chair as if for support.

  “Bradley told me I was fired this morning.”

  “Then where have you been all this time?”

  “I was trying to think, about what to do.”

  “And? How do you think we’re going to manage on just my wages and your job seekers?”

  “That’s not what I was thinking about.”

  Her expression changed, wariness sketching lines around her eyes, her mouth tightening as she prepared for a fight. “Then what were you thinking about?”

  “This. Us.”

  “What about us? Connor, I know it’s been hard, but you need to stop pul
ling away from me. Stop questioning this.”

  “That’s just it, I can’t help but question it...and I think it’s time I had the space to get to grips with who I am now...and I don’t think I can do that, while I’m living here.”

  I waited, watching her. I knew that this was a harsh thing to be doing, but it was unavoidable, an amputation. Without it, we would rot together.

  She blinked. “You’re saying...you’re leaving me?”

  “I think it’s the right thing to do.”

  She stared at me like I was crazy, her mouth falling open and her chin twitching in disbelief. Then she shook her head.

  “No, no you can’t,” she slapped her hand on the table and looked at me beseechingly, “not after everything, after I came to see you at the hospital, and worried about you for weeks, and took you in, and tried to make things easy for you, how can you turn around and just leave me?”

  “It’s because of that that I have to,” I waved my arms, taking in the whole of the kitchen, the house around us. “I’ve taken up too much of your time already, and it’s selfish, because I know I’m never going to be the husband you want, and I don’t think I ever was.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that...I think we both know, that my interests lie elsewhere,” I said, “I’m gay, Emma.”

  For a second she didn’t respond, then she laughed, a short sharp sound. “No you’re not.”

  “I am.”

  “You’re not.”

  “I know I am, Emma, it hasn’t been easy but...”

  “You ‘know’? Come on Connor, you don’t know anything about yourself. How can you ‘know’ you’re gay? You don’t even know your favourite dinner, or what you did on your last birthday.”

  I’d expected anger, maybe disgust, but her refusal to accept what I had come to realise was the truth, was frustrating, and I felt undermined, like a child being corrected by its betters.

  “Emma,” I said forcefully, “I am gay, because I have...done things, with a man, and know that they have done more for me, in that way, than anything else. Than anything we’ve done here, together...and I’m sorry, but that’s all I need to know. If I were to stay here, with you, then I would be lying to both of us, and I think both of us would be very unhappy.”