Or maybe it was Jayden who was different. Darren was wealthy and worldly and had been to exotic countries before he was walking and talking properly. Jayden hadn’t experienced anything but Attlee Road and the theatre and school until Cambridge, and maybe it was him that was changing. Darren was always taking shots at the way he dressed now and what he drank, but maybe it went further than that. Maybe he really was different, and he just hadn’t realised yet.
Whoever had changed—whoever was changing—there was a gap in the room, like a crack in the floor that was widening into a chasm, and Jayden didn’t like it.
* * * *
Jayden went home on the following Saturday morning.
The trip had been…weird. It had been nice to see Darren again, and get to hug him and feel him and sleep with him again, but…as the train pulled away from the station and began to haul him back towards Cambridge, Jayden couldn’t help but feel like that was all he’d gotten to do. Physically, they’d reconnected, but there was still something…adrift.
Darren was depressed, that much had become obvious. He was sleeping too much, and he was unusually quiet, and Jayden hadn’t missed the way he’d kept flexing and clenching both hands like the fingers weren’t working properly. That was normal on his left, but not his right, he only ever did it on his right hand when he was depressed. He wasn’t eating everything that came within range, and Rachel did good curry, Jayden had learned, so he should have been pilfering Jayden’s share and wheedling for more and…
And worst of all, Rachel didn’t seem to know that Darren was the human equivalent of a food bin.
Darren had been distant, and Jayden hadn’t liked it. He’d been slow to answer, quick to question, and hadn’t talked to Jayden like he used to. Everything had been ‘fine’ or ‘okay’ or ‘mm.’ He hadn’t been all funny and sarcastic, and when he had talked it had been to take shots at Jayden’s friends at Cambridge and…and okay, Jayden felt a little bad about bailing right before his birthday to go to Paris with them, but some of Darren’s comments were uncalled for. And it wasn’t like Darren hadn’t changed either, but…
Back to the point, something was sitting between them for the first time, and Jayden hated it. Darren had never exactly been open, but he’d always been honest and let Jayden in with his depression, even when it had caused arguments (like about his calling the Samaritans, which judging by Jayden’s sneaky check on his phone on Monday night wasn’t happening anymore; and in the last year of school, his tendency to wait out his moods until Jayden had finished a stressful piece of work, and hadn’t that been a nasty row, and…)
In a way, it was happening all over again, but now…now was different, somehow, and Jayden didn’t know how to handle it. He didn’t know what to do or say to make anything better, and the lingering it’s complicated from before he’d even gone to Paris hung between them, and neither of them wanted to discuss it, and…
One new message
From: Ella
Message: Hey, hun! :) You coming back today or tomorrow? Shopping trip for some retail therapy tomorrow if you want in, a load of us girls are going but you’re invited too ;) Hope you enjoyed the trip to your boyfriend’s, but it’s back to Olde School now, haha! Only a few more weeks until all the coursework is done and then summer! xxx
He closed his phone and dropped his head back against the rest, staring blindly out of the window at the passing south coast. He had always presumed that in the summer he would take a huge chunk of time to go and stay with Darren and be them again without the rest of the world poking in, but now…
Now, he wondered if there was any point to that.
Chapter 23
Jayden arrived back to Cambridge late.
In part, he engineered it to avoid Ella; he suspected from her text that she’d want to talk about Darren (and the four million reasons Jayden should break up with him, and Jayden was sick of being between the rock and the hard place, so just no, not tonight), and in part it was helped by a signal failure in London that screwed up his connection.
As a result, it was mid-afternoon by the time he slipped into the college, and his room was cold and barren, his sheets still messed from waking up late the Friday morning that they went to Paris. He dropped his bag and fell onto the mattress, staring up at the ceiling morosely. Paris seemed…less stunning, now that he’d been. Now he’d been to Paris and Southampton, that was. Bitterly, he wished he’d just stayed here for the entire break and finished off all the work he still hadn’t done.
He twisted over onto his back to text Darren with, Back at Cambridge :) Speak soon, love you x in an effort to keep up a cheerful facade to him, to make him hopefully feel a little bit better, but…but his heart wasn’t in it. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to forget the entire world existed and sleep. Maybe go home and let Mum feed him and allow him to wriggle out of household chores and not bother him all the time. He just wanted to not be bothered.
And that was when someone knocked on his door.
Jayden groaned and put both hands over his face, but a tiny reprieve was granted when instead of the door opening and Ella’s blonde waterfall shimmering into view, the intruder knocked again and Jonathon’s voice filtered through the wood. “Jayden? Are you all right?”
Jayden heaved himself off the bed and opened the door. Jonathon offered a small smile and cocked his head.
“Are you all right?” he repeated.
“No,” Jayden said honestly.
Jonathon eyed him, then jerked his head down the corridor. “Want some tea and cake?” he offered. “My sister was visiting this week and left some of her supplies.”
“…What kind of cake?”
“Chocolate. Obviously.”
“…Okay,” Jayden caved.
He’d not been actually in Jonathon’s room since the beginning of the year, and there were more posters of various indie bands on the walls than he remembered. And a lot more snack food and remnants of snack food.
“Comfort eater?” he asked as Jonathon flicked on a kettle tucked out of sight of the room inspections and opened a drawer full of goodies.
“In a big way,” Jonathon agreed. In no time at all, Jayden was sitting cross-legged on the end of his bed (which had a disturbingly psychedelic bedspread) with a cup of steaming Chinese tea and a slab of chocolate cake that could have fed a small African nation for a good couple of weeks. “What’s up?”
Jayden shrugged and tried the tea. It wasn’t too bad, surprisingly.
“Visit not go so well?”
“How do you know?”
“Ella was suspicious when you ignored her text-bombing,” Jonathon said. “You have to admit, you usually answer her.”
“She’s going to accost me in the morning.”
“Come late to breakfast,” Jonathon advised. “I’ll tell her I saw you and you were fine, just tired.”
“Lifesaver,” Jayden said, and they both grinned guiltily. “I do like her, she’s just…”
“Overbearing, I know.” Jonathon rolled his eyes.
“You don’t have a boyfriend she disapproves of.”
“I have an ex she disapproves of,” Jonathon said. “We’re still friends. Apparently that’s not allowed.”
Jayden rolled his eyes, but privately thought it was a bit strange. He couldn’t quite imagine him and Darren being friends if they split up, because Darren had been so against the idea when they left school, and…
And maybe he didn’t think that anymore.
“Jayden?”
“I…” Jayden crumbled a pinch of cake between finger and thumb. “I don’t know what to do about Darren.”
“What do you mean?” Jonathon prompted gently.
“I…he’s…different.”
“Well,” Jonathon said delicately, “you’re both bound to be a bit different. This isn’t school anymore.”
“Yes, but…” Jayden fidgeted. “There was this distance, all week. It was like I couldn’t get through to him, like there was this gap be
tween us.”
“People grow apart,” Jonathon said, eyeing him carefully.
“I know, but…I can’t just…I don’t know whether…” Jayden took a deep breath, and blurted out the horrible, nagging worry that had teased at him since…no, since before Paris, that had never really gone away since they’d left school. “I don’t know whether to break up with him or not.”
“Oh.”
“…Yeah,” Jayden whispered in a rush.
“Well…do you still love him?”
“Yes,” Jayden said automatically, then frowned. “I do. I’m just…I’m not sure that’s enough. You know? He won’t talk to me, and he picks on what I do here and at my friends, and…”
“You…did kind of let Ella do the same,” Jonathon pointed out.
“I know, but that’s different,” Jayden said. Is it? demanded the snotty voice in his head, the one he’d been ignoring since he got here, and he ignored it once again. “And if he won’t talk to me anymore, and he’s so different, then…”
“Yeah, but…okay, look, I don’t know him, I only met him the once and only for a little bit, but…he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who’ll let you come back from a proper break-up,” Jonathon said.
“He’s not,” Jayden agreed.
“So until you’re sure, you know, I…well, I wouldn’t,” Jonathon said. “I mean, until you’re totally sure…”
“I’m sure I can’t carry on like this,” Jayden muttered miserably, chasing cake around the little plate.
“Like what?”
“Like…” Jayden huffed and shrugged. “Like him loving me comes with these conditions. Like I’m not allowed to hang out with who I want to, or do the degree I want, like I have to do things he wants even though, you know, he’s there and I’m here, and…”
“Nobody should try and control you,” Jonathon said instantly.
“Well, he does.”
“Jayden, you never said he was controlling.”
“No, that’s too heavy, but he…he takes shots at what I do.”
Jonathon made a little face. “No offence, but you and Ella take shots at what he does. Isn’t he a copper?”
“A crime scene examiner.”
“Well, that doesn’t make him stupid.”
“Of course it doesn’t.”
“The way you let Ella rant on, you’d think…”
“Forget Ella,” Jayden snapped. “She doesn’t know him, or us, and…and we’re…I think we’re in trouble, Jonathon.”
“Can I be honest?” Jonathon asked, folding himself into a lotus position, feet tucked into the crooks of his knees. “I think you’ve been questioning your relationship with Darren since you got here. I mean, you said you weren’t sure school couples make it. Is that just what’s happening?”
“…Maybe.”
“So…maybe now’s the time?”
“Maybe.”
Jonathon hummed sympathetically. “Well…you know. Good luck. Breaking it gently and all.”
Jayden grimaced. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
“He’s…he’s got depression and when I was down there this week, he seemed…off. I think he’s having a bit of a bad time of it.”
“Maybe that’s the distance, then.”
“It shouldn’t be!” Jayden exclaimed. “He always came to me when he felt bad, he always let me in, always. If anything, you know, we were closer when he was having a bad day because he’d come to me, and…”
“And now he can’t or won’t?”
“Yes.”
Jonathon winced. “That’s…not a good sign.”
“No,” Jayden agreed miserably, hugging his knees. “I don’t know what to do, Jonathon. I can’t break up with him the way he is now, and I don’t want to break up with him because I still love him, I really do, and I hate that it’s all unravelling, but I just…I can’t carry on with a boyfriend who’s about as emotionally close to me as a rock. An Irish rock. The Blarney fucking Stone.”
Jonathon suddenly sniggered, covering his mouth with his hand and reddening for a brief moment. “Sorry,” he said. “Totally inappropriate, God, but…that was kind of funny.”
Jayden huffed and smiled a little. It still felt strange, like he’d somehow forgotten how, or he hadn’t done it in a long time.
“Honestly?” Jonathon said softly. “I think it’s time you did things for you. Never mind Darren and Ella and the rest. You’ve been stressed out, and it’s been shitty to watch, and you should smile more.”
“I don’t really feel I have a lot to smile about.”
“You should,” Jonathon countered. “Look, Monday afternoon, let’s just get out of here for a little bit. Go down the river, go find a nice wander, away from everything, yeah? It’ll get your mind off things. I’ll tell you how much Ella hated my sister instead and we can laugh at them.”
Jayden picked at the bedcover and offered a half-smile. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “Just…escape.”
“Yeah,” Jonathon said and raised his mostly-empty cake plate. “To escaping.”
Jayden clanked their plates together and wondered when everything got so fucking complicated.
* * * *
Jayden had barely been gone all of an hour before Darren’s mobile went off, and Paul dropped back into his existence with a loud and rude, “Oi, fuckwit!” down the line.
In spite of himself, Darren smiled. He’d only just gotten back to the flat (an accident had snarled up the traffic something awful) and Rachel was out at some asexuality meet-up thing, so he flopped back onto his bed without the risk of being disturbed and returned the greeting with, “What do you want, retard?”
“Dead original.”
“Like you can talk.”
“I want,” Paul said loftily, “to know what the fuck is happening with you, man?”
“Like what?”
“Like your job, and your interests, and the boxing thing you started doing, and, oh yeah, how you’re still not back to normal, re Facebook statuses, even after your its-complicated boyfriend visited. How are you not back to normal?!”
Darren shrugged awkwardly. “We’re just not.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Things just aren’t the same.”
“Look, I get it, you’re pissed about him missing your birthday, except he didn’t, he was there for your birthday, so…”
“He might as well have not been,” Darren countered. “He was constantly texting Ella and didn’t want to do anything but give me the anxious face and ask if I was all right.”
“Because I don’t know if you’ve noticed, genius, but you’ve been plenty weird lately.”
Darren sighed. “Yeah, well.”
“Look, man, Jayden’s a girl. Well, he’s a queen, and that’s close enough. Just make some big overture, I don’t know, send flowers to his room or something, and he’ll forgive you whatever you did to make him weird, and it’ll all go back to normal, and then you’ll stop being weird.”
Darren grimaced. Trust Paul to have such a basic outlook on things. Mind you, it was Paul. He had always been basic: life was black-and-white (pun wholly intended) to him. It was simple. He knew about Darren’s stupidity, but the whole reason Darren had never let him in on it was that, when it came down to it, Paul was just like Scott. He didn’t understand. He didn’t know, he didn’t get how badly that complicated things. Jayden wouldn’t be stopped worrying by some gesture—Darren had tried plenty in the past—and he wouldn’t stop being some carbon copy of a Cambridge drone just because Darren ‘snapped out of it’ or whatever he was supposed to do. There wasn’t an easy answer to this.
Maybe there wasn’t any answer to this.
“Honestly, Paul?” he said. “I think Jayden’s about a step to the left of dumping me.”
And there they were. The words were out. The truth was out: Jayden was fed up with him, and the end was nigh. What Darren had predicted all those years ago had come true, and his fai
th had been misplaced. He had known, when they got together, that his fucked-up mind would drive them apart again. He’d known that. And he’d just forgotten it when he’d believed (believed, so different to knew) that they loved each other enough to survive university.
Maybe they could have done…but love couldn’t survive this. It couldn’t survive the numbness in his fingertips or the shadow around his vision or the crippling, exhausting lethargy that was sitting on his chest like a heavy, hated pet every morning when he woke up. Love didn’t survive that. It choked.
“Come on, mate, aren’t you exag-”
“No,” Darren said. “I’m not.”
“…Shit, Darren, what you going to-”
“Do?” Darren finished. “Nothing.”
“What?!”
“If Jayden wants shot of me, then…then he can have shot of me,” Darren said finally. “I hung on after school, Paul. That was me, that’s the reason we’re still together. He wanted out then, and if he still wants out, then…then I’ll let him out. I can’t hang on to him forever, not if he’s done.”
“Yeah, but…fucking hell, Darren, you don’t know that-”
“Yeah, Paul, I do,” he said and sucked in a deep, shaking breath. “Look, I have to go.”
“Darren…”
“I really have to go, Rach is calling.” She was still out. “Talk to you later, idiot.”
“Darren!”
Then Darren did whatever he had never done before and likely would never have the guts to do again. He hung up on Paul Smith, switched off his phone, and logged out of Facebook.
He dropped off the face of the reachable world.
Chapter 24
There was no reply by Monday.
Jayden’s encouraging text went ignored by phone. In fact, there was no update from Darren at all: his phone was silent, his Facebook was abandoned, and his email lifeless. Rachel said she’d seen him, but barely, and he’d stopped coming over. Darren had seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth, and at any other time, Jayden could have supposed he’d had a long shift and was asleep or had been awake at antisocial hours or something, but…but no. He was being ignored, and he knew it.
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