Frankly, he felt too tired to deal with it. In the middle of the deadline season, it was the last thing he needed, a moody boyfriend and a fracturing relationship. The ugly it’s complicated was still darkening Darren’s relationship status on Facebook. Jayden hated it, but the only solution was to cancel his end of the relationship status at all, and then they’d both show as single, and then…
And then they’d be single, and Jayden didn’t want to let go. He didn’t want it like this either, but he didn’t want to let go, whatever he’d told Jonathon. Maybe it would be for the best, but…he still, at the very very core of it all, loved Darren. Too much to let him go, either, or at least not without a better shot at hanging on than this limbo. They could sort it out later. In the summer. He had a whole summer in which he could go and camp outside Darren’s door until he stopped being so bloody obstructionist and they could work it out.
Leah wasn’t talking to him either. She had been furious with him about Paris, had had a right go at him on Facebook, and Jayden was hard-pushed to believe she’d never met Darren (even though she couldn’t, really, but still!) because she was so firmly on his side. He saw her at breakfast on Sunday, and she’d almost completely turned her back to avoid him, even as Tim had waved and shouted, “How were the frogs?!” across the dining hall. Jayden couldn’t win. If he stayed the same, he’d be hanging on to home and not taking advantage of what Cambridge had to offer; if he changed…if he changed, then he’d upset Darren even more than he already had, and…
Jayden just wanted this year to be over.
He had an essay due and a tutor meeting that morning, so he left his phone in his room (just in case Darren was on shift and did mean to text him back, because maybe, right?) and sleep-talked his way through the meeting, answering all of Dr. Byrnes’ worried questions with Darren-esque replies: it’s fine, it’s okay, it’s all right. He was beyond the point of caring; the stress and the anxiety and the fear that this is it, it’s over, this is the end was overwhelming him, and he just couldn’t focus. He’d get some negative report on his student record, he was sure, but he just couldn’t bring himself to care.
Tim caught up with him outside the office once he was done, snatching at his shoulder and saying, “Hey, wait up, man.”
“I have to study, I can’t…” Jayden started.
“No, listen up, look,” Tim said and stopped him with a fist in his shirt sleeve. “Listen, right. You got to pick.”
“What?”
“You got to pick, right. Who you are. You got to be who you are, but you hafta pick who that dude is, ‘cause right now, you can be whichever,” Tim said. “You can be this high-achiever but you’re on your own, ‘cause we both know Ella and Jonathon and that lot, they ain’t sticking, they’re not real mates, you know, once uni’s over, they’re over, you get me? Or you can be this middle-achiever, right, but you get to keep your boyfriend and some proper mates. You gotta pick what’s important to you.”
“Honestly, Tim?” Jayden rubbed his knuckles over his forehead, pressing on the stress-headache and gritting his teeth briefly. “Honestly, right now, I just want to pass my modules and forget this year ever happened. I don’t have the energy for your self-discovery stuff. I mean, no offence, but I don’t.”
“Yeah, but that’s what you gotta do,” Tim insisted cryptically, then let go and wandered off, his newly-shaved pate almost glowing in the watery spring sunshine. Like some kind of demented prophet.
Jayden shrugged it off, shouldering his bag and trudging back up to his room. Ella’s door was thankfully closed—he vaguely remembered something about her own meeting this morning—and he slipped into his room as quietly as possible, shutting the door with a gentle click behind him. His phone was still text-free; Darren still hadn’t done anything on Facebook. Jayden opened a new message, typed maybe a half-dozen variations on call me, we need to talk, I still love you, you’re being a prick before giving up the attempt entirely and shutting down his computer. When did this all get so hard?
“Hey. Coming down the river?”
Jayden sighed, checked his phone one last time, and nodded. It was a nice day outside. Maybe Jonathon had the right idea; maybe going for a walk before Ella got back would be nice. Maybe…maybe Jonathon could help him decide what to do.
“Did your meeting go badly?” Jonathon attempted.
Jayden shrugged, struggling into his coat and wondering vaguely if this tired apathy was close to what Darren felt sometimes. He fished his phone out of his back and texted a quick, call me? love you x in the hopes of generating a reply—any reply—but shoved it into his jeans pocket quickly enough to reveal the likelihood of that hope.
“Is he being distant?” Jonathon asked delicately.
“Mm,” Jayden said. “Let’s go.”
It was cold for May, the faintest traces of morning frost still visible in the shade, and their shoes crunched on the path down to the river that ran behind the college grounds. Most of the students didn’t come down this way, preferring the main route that ran around the west wing, and so they were relatively alone, a couple of the postgraduates lounging in the sun by the bank with their theses, ignoring them.
They walked along the river for perhaps a half-mile, following the idle water and gently-swaying reeds, and the farther they got from the college, the more one part of Jayden’s stress eased. It seemed stupid to worry about his grades now: all but one piece of coursework was in, and tutor meetings were formalities more than anything else. His exams were out of his control. He’d pass or he wouldn’t, and he’d have to deal with that as it came, so really…
So really, the only thing he could do was to work out what to do about Darren.
He didn’t want to break up. Quite apart from the fact that Jayden still loved him, even when he was being distant and aloof, was the fact that letting go of Darren meant…it meant letting go of the entire reason Jayden had gotten through secondary school and into the university of his dreams. Darren and his unflinching, dry-humoured, stubborn support. It seemed petty to dump him now, when Darren had withstood being outed for Jayden, withstood the final breakdown of his relationship with his parents for Jayden, had shared his life and his friends and his school with Jayden, had done everything for him. To dump him because of this change seemed petty and horrible and Jayden desperately didn’t want to do it.
But then…what was the point in continuing if they couldn’t sort it out?
“I think,” he said slowly, to the lazy river and the slowly warming day. “I think maybe…maybe I’ll try to work this out over the summer. See where we stand. And then…decide. Maybe.”
“You and Darren?”
“Mm.”
“That sounds like a good plan,” Jonathon said slowly.
Jayden paused to look at him. “And?”
“And what?”
“You’re not done.”
Jonathon sighed. “Look,” he said. “I’ve tried to be…objective. You know I like you. Purely selfishly, I kind of want you to break up with him, but I’ve tried to be objective and look at this in light of what’s best for you, not me.”
“Um…thank you?” Jayden tried, unsure and suddenly wary of where this was going. It sounded strange. It sounded…he didn’t want to say suspicious, but it did.
“But it’s…it’s hard, you know. This guy stresses you out, and he’s not even here to help alleviate your concerns, and I know it’s irrational of me, but I just don’t like him for it. He’s being difficult. And you’re letting him get away with it.”
“It’s not…”
“Can I finish?”
Jayden raised his eyebrows, but shut up. He’d never known Jonathon to be so…forward, and it was more than a little surprising. And kind of weird, maybe. He sounded almost like Ella. Maybe not so bad, but…
“In all honesty, taking everything into account, I think you should break up with him,” Jonathon continued. “I mean, even all of this mess aside, I just don’t think it’s healthy to
only ever have one person in your life. There’s a time for experimenting and fooling around with people, and that’s kind of now, but you’re determined to hang on to your very first boyfriend no matter what, and I think that one day, you’ll regret it. That maybe one day you’ll wake up and wonder who this guy is that you’re sleeping with, because people change, Jayden. They change, and that’s why everything’s so hard with you and Darren right now. You’re both changing, you’re becoming different people, both of you, not just him, and I think letting go now is going to hurt the both of you less in the long run.”
“Um…okay,” Jayden said. “Um, thank you for…for the advice, and the, um, the honesty and everything, but…”
“Just consider it? Really think about it, don’t just brush it off? I mean, you have a tendency to change your mind a lot, you know.”
“I…”
And then Jonathon did something Jayden hadn’t expected: he closed the space between them, one hand sliding around Jayden’s jaw to cup the back of his head, and the other fisting in his jacket at his waist—and kissed him.
Jayden froze.
Jonathon was kissing him. Jonathon. Was kissing him. His hand was warm on the side of Jayden’s face, and up close he smelled of some expensive aftershave, and the shape of his mouth was different to what Jayden was used to and Jonathon was kissing him. There was the tang of orange on his lips, and there was a warmth on his face from Jonathon’s, and the hand in his jacket was tightening on the lapel, and Jonathon was tilting his head, and Jonathon. Was kissing. Him.
He planted his hands in Jonathon’s chest and shoved. Perhaps unnecessarily hard, judging by the way that Jonathon staggered back, but Jayden didn’t care. He felt weird. The angle had been wrong and Jonathon was taller than…well, he was too tall, and the way he pushed forward into it had been wrong, and it hadn’t been like…like proper kissing, like good kissing, like Darren’s kissing at all.
“What the hell?!” Jayden flared up.
“Jayden…”
“I have a boyfriend, Jonathon! Oh my God, you know, the guy we’ve been talking about?! I mean…what the…we talked about this, I don’t…I’m sorry, but I don’t like you like that, I told you that, you can’t just go…”
“You’ve never experienced anything else,” Jonathon argued.
“I’ve never slept with a girl either, doesn’t mean I should fuck Ella to make sure I’m gay!” Jayden raged. His mouth was buzzing, almost like it was angry with him. He felt angry and ill and shaky. And Jesus Christ, what would Darren do—think—do, if he ever got to hear of it? Oh God, he’d go mental, he would. Jesus, he’d warned Jayden, hadn’t he? He’d said it from the start, from the minute he met Jonathon, he’d said he was interested, and Darren hadn’t liked him, and this was why.
“Look, I’m sorry, that was going too far, but…”
“Yes, it fucking was!” Jayden exploded and folded his arms over his chest, shaking his head. “I can’t believe this. I mean, seriously, I came to you because, you know, you were more understanding than Ella and you seemed to get at least some of it and you said you were trying to be objective, but…”
“You’re overreacting.”
“Don’t you dare.” Jayden stabbed a finger at him. “Don’t you dare tell me I’m overreacting, and while you’re at it, don’t you dare tell anyone either. This didn’t happen, nobody’s talking about it, nobody gets to hear about it!”
Jonathon curled his lip. Jayden wanted, suddenly and fiercely, to punch it. “Like Darren?”
“Yes, like Darren!” Jayden said hotly. “And I’ll know who told if he gets to hear about it, and I’ll kill you, Jonathon, I will absolutely bloody fucking kill you!”
He turned on his heel and stormed back up to the college, leaving Jonathon standing by the river, angry thoughts buzzing like a wasps’ nest, furious and confused and upset all at once. Who did that? Who gave advice about boyfriend worries and then kissed you? Seriously, who did that?
And what in the fresh hell was he going to tell Darren?
Chapter 25
Darren pulled on the handbrake and stared blindly through the windscreen as he fumbled for his phone. He couldn’t remember the day; work was drowning in a thick soup of numbness, and he couldn’t remember. He rubbed his finger and thumb together as he scrolled through his contacts. He couldn’t feel them.
It was just after six. Jayden would be out of classes—and yet the phone rang out, until his voicemail opened up to swallow Darren’s message. A recording. A recording that he knew Jayden didn’t check regularly, if at all. A taped imitation. A mimicry of the one person he needed right now, the only person who’d ever…
He wasn’t there. He hadn’t been there for months, and some dark part of Darren’s brain, that had been buried in the back since Jayden had come back for a second date all those years ago, finally stirred again, seeping into his thoughts like oil. Of course he wasn’t there, that part breathed like a lover in the ear, because why would he be? Why would anyone want to be there for this?
Darren stumbled up the stairs. It felt like dragging himself physically beyond what he was capable of; he could hear the creak of the stairs, but not the flex of the old wood under his shoes. He couldn’t even feel the shoes. He felt exhausted and run-down; he felt like he had run a marathon and climbed a mountain, all in the same day, but with none of the exhilaration.
He knew this feeling. He thought he’d forgotten, but he hadn’t.
His room was dark, curtains still closed from this morning, and he didn’t bother to open them. The dark was almost comforting, hugging him and hiding his flaws rather than exposing them and criticising them, and he curled up on the unmade bed without even pausing to take his shoes off. He was heavy, like his limbs were made of lead. He was shattered, like he’d been awake for days.
He couldn’t feel himself, like his brain was detached from his body and dunked in thick honey, cloying his thought processes and numbing all sensation. Like the stage between being asleep and being awake, when the world was there for the listening to, but the importance of it never hit your mind. He could hear the landlady downstairs, but far away, as though remembering the sound rather than it really being there. He could hear the memory of the violin, hear the high strains of Vivaldi’s spring, jarring and mismatching against the real thing outside the covered window.
He itched. His fingers spasmed, and he wanted to play with a sudden, fierce longing, and not Vivaldi, but Tartini. Play the sonata in G minor, the Devil’s Trill Sonata, and play it like it truly was: a pathetic imitation of a dream. Music composed to echo that heard in Tartini’s dream, and falling forever short. That was all Darren was living. It had been a dream, to get away from home and music and this. It had been a pathetic dream thought up by a child, and he wasn’t a child now. He was an adult, and twitching with the urge to play it, play the imitation of a dream, because…
He lived the Devil’s Trill Sonata. He lived it. He had imagined a beautiful future, with Jayden and his own home, with a job he loved and no trace of the classical music favoured at St. John’s. If he had ever played the violin again, it would be fun. He would have enjoyed it. It would have been like the piano: the potential, all the bloody potential…but it wasn’t.
It had all been a dream. Like Tartini, he had woken from a dream and tried to replicate what he’d seen, and it had all fallen so utterly short. It had been nothing like the dream, in the end. The dream had been beautiful, and this…
He had never left this. Stupid, stupid, for imagining it could have been real. Stupid for imagining it was ever going to be real. Of course it wouldn’t. Hadn’t he been here enough times to learn this by now? Hadn’t he felt the world slipping out from between his numb fingers enough times to realise that this wasn’t going to go away? That he wasn’t going to go away? There was no getting away from this; maybe he’d feel better next week, maybe he could summon Rachel or Jayden or even Scott, but it would be resetting the clock, and eventually…eventually…
Darren hauled himself off the mattress and collapsed into his chair, opening his laptop and smashing his hand on the wooden desk when his fingers refused to cooperate. There was nothing: no pain, no twinge, not a flicker. He was slipping, his brain retreating behind his eyes, uninterested in the outside world.
And he didn’t mind.
What was the use of trying if this was as close as you were going to get? whispered the part of his mind he’d thought he’d left behind. Why bother holding on? It was all slipping away anyway: soon, Jayden’s distance would overwhelm them both and he’d be gone for good. This city already had no idea who he was, his colleagues were fleeing into different shifts and different stations, and uninterested in him, and soon Rachel would find another friend to cook her omelettes. Soon, Scott would forget about him. Misha already had.
The opening bars of Tartini’s masterpiece poured from the laptop speakers into the quiet room, and Darren relaxed back in the chair at the familiar notes, the high whine of the string, the flicker and swoop of a bow he could hear, but not see. Tartini’s best piece: the piece he had heard in a dream, being played by a devil, and strove to imitate when he woke. And it had never sounded as good as the dream. It had never been as good.
Darren’s fingers twitched again; his shoulder ached. It would have been ideal, to play this for his last performance, if only to the curtains, but…the laptop would have to do. A recording would have to do. An imitation. Like Jayden’s voicemail; like every piece he’d ever played himself. This had been the last piece Weir had wanted him to play, before the stabbing, and he had known then that he wasn’t good enough. Now, he was worse than that: he was useless, because to play even the first-grade scales was beyond him. The violin was gone.
He was shaking, Darren realised, as he fumbled in the desk drawer and returned to bed with the bottle. He toed off his shoes; his feet looked odd in their black socks, like they weren’t his. Like he had stolen them from someone else. His throat was hoarse. His face, he vaguely noticed, was damp. He was crying, and he made no attempt to stop himself.
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