There was no way she could have seen that, right? And yet he opened his mouth to tell her she had no idea what she was talking about, and paused. He’d done his own research, years ago when Darren had first told him, and it was a little bit different for everyone, wasn’t it? Or maybe she’d seen the outskirts of it, because Darren could hide a lot if he really wanted to, he’d hidden the depth and scope of it for years from his other friends and from his family. He was good at it, so maybe Ella had only seen the outskirts of it? And anyway, it wasn’t her fault if she’d never met anyone who suffered properly.
So Jayden shut his mouth again, downed his wine, and excused himself. He had work to do, he told her, but in reality, he didn’t want to hear any more of it, and wanted to just curl up in bed and focus on Darren.
It felt like it had been a long, long time since he’d been able to do that.
Chapter 19
“I’ve got them!”
Jonathon’s pronouncement was loud in the quiet of Ella’s room; she was working on an essay, and Jayden was revising for an exam. The entire corridor was quiet, mostly for the same reason, and then Jonathon disturbed it all by parading in with a sheet of paper above his head, and looking smug.
“You’ve got what, the clap?” Ella asked, unusually crudely. She was moody when stressed, and she was definitely stressed today. She’d been snappy since breakfast.
“No.” He swatted her with the sheet and bounced down onto the bed between them. “The tickets! Paris! It’s all booked!”
“Ooh!” she squealed, abandoning her laptop and peering over his shoulder at the paper. “When? After exams?”
“Duh,” he said. “First weekend after.”
“What?” Jayden said.
“Yep,” Jonathon said proudly. “Twenty-third to the twenty-sixth.”
Jayden’s gut clenched. “That’s…that’s the weekend I’m going to see Darren,” he said.
Jonathon’s face fell; Ella frowned. “Well, change it,” she said.
“He’s booked the leave…”
“He can cancel it, it’s plenty of notice,” she said. “And anyway, we have the next two weeks off, so you can still go and see him.”
Jayden chewed on his lip. It was Darren’s birthday on the twenty-eighth. He couldn’t bail on his birthday weekend, right, especially when Darren had never really liked birthdays and Jayden had made a habit of trying to make them more special for him. Every birthday, even the one after he’d been stabbed, although they’d actually held that birthday late, if that made any sense, because Darren had been in hospital. Jayden couldn’t bail on his birthday, but…but Paris.
“I can’t change them once they’re booked,” Jonathon said apologetically. “And your name’s on one of the tickets. You have to come, Jayden, come on. It’ll be great, and you can always go and see Darren afterwards. Just, you know, shuffle the dates a bit.”
Jayden stared at the sheet of paper. A booking confirmation, and his name was on it, and…and Paris. Paris. This would be his only chance to go—he couldn’t afford it himself, and he wouldn’t be able to for years, because Jayden loved English and scriptwriting but he wasn’t stupid, he wasn’t ever going to get rich from it, and…and Paris. It was right there, right there for the taking, but why did it have to be that weekend?
“I don’t know…” he whispered.
“Come on, Jayden,” Ella wheedled, crawling around Jonathon to hug him with her bony arms, her hair spiralling down his back like a curtain. “It’ll be amazing, just the three of us in Paris, just for a weekend. It’s one weekend, he can’t begrudge you one weekend.”
“He’ll understand,” Jonathon said lowly.
Would he? Jayden wasn’t sure. Darren didn’t like them; he was bound to be pissed off Jayden was bailing for them, and being in Paris on Darren’s birthday weekend without him…it felt weird, it felt a little bit wrong, but there was no way Darren would be able to afford to come too, he wouldn’t be able to take the leave, and anyway, his training pay was awful, so…
“Just rearrange it,” Ella said. “You can see your boyfriend anytime, it doesn’t matter.”
“You’re giving him enough notice for the leave issue,” Jonathon said evenly. “It’s not like it’s tomorrow. And hey, he could take the leave anyway, have some down time. It must be stressful in his job.”
Ella rolled her eyes, but Jayden smiled gratefully. “Maybe…”
“Anyway, the twenty-sixth is the first day of the Easter holiday, so we have four weeks to do whatever after that. I mean, I have to get a research paper done, but you know, you could always go and spend a week in Portsmouth.”
“Southampton.”
“Southampton, yeah, sorry. You could spend longer to make up for it. He’d like that deal, right?” Jonathon pushed. “I mean, it wouldn’t be the weekend, but if you stayed like a week, it’d be way more time for the two of you.”
He should, really, if Jayden spent longer. And he might be able to—his finalised timetable had only one exam after the Easter break, and that would be okay. He’d have coursework to do, obviously, but he could do that while Darren was at work, and a week of evenings was still more time when you added it all up than a weekend…
And Paris.
“I’ll talk to him,” he said slowly.
“But you’re coming,” Ella said decidedly.
“Yes,” Jayden conceded, “but I do have to talk to him.” And probably instigate an argument in the meantime.
God¸ he hoped work had been good today.
* * * *
Darren didn’t get out of training until five usually, so Jayden tried calling at half past, but the phone was switched off. He decided against leaving a message, and lay on his bed editing his final essay for Byrnes before trying again at six, and this time, the phone rang. And rang. And kept on ringing.
“I don’t want to do this,” he whispered to the ringing, and then it stopped. “Hey,” he said. “Um, you’re free, right? I mean, you’re not busy, or…”
“I’m free,” Darren’s voice was a deep roll of easy vowels; for a moment, Jayden curled his toes into the duvet and smiled, a little twinge of miss you rising like a bubble in his chest. “Barely, though, five minutes earlier and I’d’ve been driving.”
“You just got out of work?”
“Yeah,” Darren said. Jayden heard a door bang and a muffled thump, like something being tossed to the floor. “Ran late. They were taking our hair and fingerprints and shit for the DNA database, and sent one poor woman for a training class of twenty. Took forever. Anyway. Spit it out.”
“Huh?”
“You called for a reason.”
Jayden wriggled his toes and eyed the closed door of his room. “Maybe I just wanted to talk to you,” he hedged. His heart was clenched and painful, and he didn’t want to do this. Darren was going to be so angry, and he’d been so weird lately…
“You always use Skype when you just want a chat,” Darren retorted. “This is about something, so spill it.”
“Maybe I missed you.”
“You use Skype for that, too. And now you’re being coy, so I’m worried,” Darren said easily. A echoing sounded faintly in the background, combined with rattling glass; Jayden estimated that he’d opened a fridge. “Bloody Rachel.”
“What’s she done?”
“Snuck in and nicked my butter,” Darren muttered. “Thief. Anyway. Stop evading, Jayden, what’s up?”
Jayden took a deep breath. “Um, well. You remember that Jonathon invited me and Ella to go to Paris with him? Like, a little weekend trip?”
“Yeah, you were dead excited.”
“Mhmm.”
“Going, then? Over Easter or something? Send me a postcard,” Darren said. “On second thoughts, don’t, postcards are tacky.”
“I’ll get you a tacky gift,” Jayden said. “It’s traditional.”
“Yeah, that’ll do. Bring me a fridge magnet, I can start a collection of crappy decorations in my kitchen.”
Jayden laughed, the knot easing. Darren was in a good mood—or at least a better one, his tone was still a bit flat—so maybe he wouldn’t be too upset. And Jonathon’s idea was a good one, offering a whole week in exchange.
“So when’re you going?”
“Um,” he said and took a deep breath. “Look, you remember how I said Jonathon’s Dad works for some big company and paid for our train tickets and the hotel in Paris, so it’s a really cheap weekend and I’ve never seen Paris and always wanted to go and…”
Darren paused. Jayden heard the sudden stillness, in the lack of the background rummaging and the way for a moment that even breathing went quiet. Now you’ve done it, whispered the little voice in his head.
“It’s my only chance of going before I graduate,” he whispered.
“When?”
“He booked the tickets before inviting me,” Jayden pleaded. “It had to be that weekend, Darren, they can’t change the tickets once they’re booked and…”
There was a long pause. Jayden squeezed the phone until the plastic case creaked, and bit down on his lip, listening to the nothing on the other end of the line, hearing Jonathon’s cultured voice saying the dates in his other ear like a ghost.
“So you’re not coming,” Darren said eventually, in a voice so quiet and so even, it was almost a whisper, if not for the steely undertone.
“I…I want to, Darren, you know I do, but…”
“You’re going to Paris that weekend instead of coming here.”
“I want to come to Southampton, and I’ll come after I’ve been to Paris, and…”
“If you wanted to, you would. You want to go to Paris more.”
Jayden flinched, and drew himself in, dragging his feet up the bed to prop an elbow on his knees. “I have one chance at Paris, Darren,” he said lowly. “I can’t afford to go, not until long after I get a job, and it was really nice of Jonathon to offer, and…”
“And hey, you can see your boyfriend anytime, doesn’t matter,” Darren said coldly, and Jayden’s stomach twisted at the mocking echo of Ella’s very words. “Except when the fuck am I going to get to see you, Jayden? I haven’t seen you since Christmas, now I won’t get to see you for my birthday or for Easter, so when? The summer? Next Christmas? Or will the trip to, I don’t know, fucking Milan with fucking Jonathon and fucking Ella get in the way?!”
Jayden recoiled physically from the phone for a brief second, the surge of Darren’s anger taking him by surprise. “Don’t swear at me!” he protested in startled, stupid disbelief, and Darren snorted.
“I’m fucking pissed off, Jayden, what the fuck do you expect!”
“It’s just a weekend, Darren.”
“It’s just the only weekend I could guarantee I’d actually have some of your fucking attention for five minutes, never mind the rest of you!”
“I…Darren, what?” Jayden floundered, too shocked to know what to do. He’d never had Darren angry at him, not really. He’d seen him in every mood imaginable, and he had seen him angry, but with other people, not Jayden. They’d argued only a few times, and then Darren had been obstinate and stubborn and a jerk, but not angry, not like this.
Jayden felt sick.
“Ever since Christmas—no, fuck it, since before Christmas—you’ve talked to me for all of ten bloody minutes before Ella’s there, or you have work to do, or Jonathon’s invited you out down the river, or something. I feel like you’re not even fucking there half the time, and then the one weekend I was going to get you to myself for a change, you’re cancelling to go to fucking Paris with your fucking obnoxious, condescending, so-called friends!”
Jayden felt the red in his own veins. “Don’t talk about my friends like that!” he protested.
“Oh, right, I’m not allowed to talk smack about them, but when the fucking banker’s daughter or whatever the hell she is, is ragging on my job and my appearance and the way I fucking dress, that’s cool? Thanks, Jayden, really pointing out where I stand here.”
“You’re being obnoxious!”
“You know what?” Darren snapped. “Fuck it. Go to fucking Paris, and have a whale of a fucking time with that poufter who wants to shag you so hard it’s painful being in the same county as him, and fucking enjoy it, Jayden, because by the time you get back, you might well be free to go and fuck him!”
“Wha—Darren, for fuck’s…!”
But Jayden didn’t even get to finish swearing at him; the phone cut out, the shrill silence telling after hearing Darren’s temper and the sounds of him smashing around his flat (that you haven’t even seen, the Charley-imitating voice in the back of his head chipped in snottily) in a rage.
“You fucking arsehole!” he shouted at the phone and hit redial. It was immediately cancelled. He tried again, and it was cancelled. On the third attempt, it dropped straight to voicemail. “Real mature, Darren!” he shouted at the Vodafone standard recording and hung up furiously.
Darren didn’t get it. He’d been all over the world. He had a picture on his Facebook of him and Scott in South Africa on Darren’s twelfth birthday, for God’s sake. It was just Paris to him, but Jayden had never been abroad, not anywhere, not even Ireland, and it was huge for him, to be able to leave the country. To use his passport! To hear people speaking in another language because they lived there, not because they were immigrants or in the classroom. Darren didn’t understand that, and okay, Jayden was sorry it had to be the same weekend, but Ella was right, wasn’t she? He could visit Darren some other weekend.
You’re overreacting, he texted, but got no reply.
“Jayden?” There was a knock on the door, but Jonathon had more tact than Ella and didn’t open it. “Are you okay? I heard you shouting.”
Jayden opened it and stuffed the phone in his pocket. “I’m fine,” he said shortly. “And I need a drink. You coming?”
Jonathon—that poufter who wants to shag you—stared back warily, chewing on his lip, then nodded slowly. “Did you argue with your boyfriend?” he asked delicately.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Jayden said shortly.
He certainly didn’t when, ten minutes later, he received a ???? WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON UP THERE?! from Paul, when his relationship status switched from in a relationship to it’s complicated.
Chapter 20
Darren woke up and felt a weight on his chest.
He closed his eyes and groped for the alarm. He still had work, weights on his chest or not. He had to focus, somehow.
He switched his phone on while the kettle boiled for coffee. The weight had slid to his stomach and pooled there, a sticky lump of viscous lead. It hardened when the barrage of missed texts assaulted the screen, starting with an accusatory you’re overreacting and dissolving through this is fucking stupid, Darren, answer me! and I love you but sometimes I don’t like you very much and this is one of those times! until Jayden’s anger had started ebbing around eleven o’clock and he’d said, I’m sorry it fell on our weekend but I can’t help that.
Darren snorted. Yes, he bloody could help that: he could not go.
The final text had been sent at midnight. Call me tomorrow? We need to talk. And I’m sorry I upset you and you’re feeling left out. I didn’t mean it. Left out. Right.
This heaviness in his bones wasn’t left out. He knew this heaviness. It was a special type of molten metal in the marrow: loneliness. The isolation that had dogged his teenage years from the word go. The feeling that he was behind a glass screen and the rest of the world was moving on without him.
That Jayden was moving on without him.
Darren put the phone on the side table and dragged himself from the kitchen into the bathroom. A headache pounded in time to his heart behind his eyes: he downed four aspirin and skipped breakfast. He felt so heavy that it was half-tempting to call in sick, but for what? To be crushed to death in bed under the weight of being cut adrift? To wait endlessly for a miracle to happen and Jayden cancel his plans and come h
ere instead?
To wait to come first?
He was pathetic, but he wasn’t that far gone yet. He dressed with sluggish speed, numb fingers struggling with buttons and zips. Rachel was up. He could hear her singing in her kitchenette, but where yesterday Darren had crept in to share breakfast with her before the landlady started banging pots downstairs, today he simply shrugged on his jacket and sank down the stairs, leaving his phone on the side. He couldn’t take more of it today. Not more coming second, third, last. Not more…not more Ella, speaking out of Jayden’s mouth.
It was an icy morning. The cold sank into his hands as he scraped the frost off the windscreen, and he left the heaters off in some vicious attempt to shake the lead from his brain. The cold woke him up, at least physically, but the metal core refused to be shaken, and Darren found himself rhythmically clenching and releasing his hands from the wheel.
The news about the Easter exams had been enough of a blow. Darren didn’t like his birthday, but the last few years with Jayden had begun to turn that around a little. Last year, they’d gone on a day trip to Brighton in the middle of their exams with Paul and Ethan. It had been bloody cold, actually, because the Channel didn’t know the meaning of summer, but it had been a pretty good day. Darren had been hoping to do it again this year, and then Jayden become so busy, and that was great that he was being challenged, it was, but…
But it felt like Jayden was being dragged away. Or even just walking. Because first came Christmas and having to cut the visit short because of his essays. Then had been the birthday and with it the Easter break. This weekend, the one weekend Darren had been looking forward to because it meant actually getting his boyfriend back…
He was losing Jayden and had maybe even already lost him.
The turn in the road swept up sharply, and for a split second, Darren’s hands didn’t move. For a split second, he kept going straight, eyes on the barriers and the ditch under the tree. For a split second, he hesitated.
Then he turned, kept the car on the road, and continued on to work.
The Devil's Trill Sonata Page 16