Lovers Leap

by JL Merrow

  “Mum, you don’t get it. Rufus is . . . It’s not just sex, all right?” Why couldn’t she see that?

  “I know what it is, Michael O’Grady. I know just what it is, and thank the Lord, it won’t last.”

  Ouch. That kneed him right in the balls, that did. And what did she even know about it anyway? She’d barely spoken to Rufus. “What the hell is it, then, eh? Go on, tell me. What would you call it?”

  “Well, it’s certainly not love.”

  “Because he’s a bloke?”

  “Of course because he’s a man! What kind of love is it that causes you to throw over a perfectly nice young woman—”

  “Mum, you hated Trix.”

  “—for a young man with the loosest of morals?”

  “I met Rufus after me and Trix split up, all right? It was nothing to do with him. And you know nothing about his morals.” Michael flushed, his conscience kicking him in the teeth. All right, so they’d shagged the first time they’d met. Didn’t mean it hadn’t meant something.

  Eventually.

  Look, she didn’t sodding well know about that anyway, right? So who was she to judge?

  Mum put her hands on her hips. “And you’ve known him, what? All of three days?”

  “Yeah, but . . . I’ve never felt like this about anyone, okay? It’s scary. He makes me wanna be better.” Michael swallowed. His insides felt raw, just coming out with it like that.

  But it was the truth. That was why he was doing this, why he was finally, after all these years, making a stand against his mum’s old-fashioned attitudes. Because he couldn’t stand Rufus thinking he was a fucking coward—and worse, knowing it was true.

  Mum wasn’t impressed. “Better? Better? By going against God’s law? And who’s he to say there’s anything wrong with you the way you are?”

  Christ, she just didn’t get it. “He doesn’t. He’s never said anything like that. It’s just . . . he’s not scared of who he is, and he’s always doing stuff for people. He’s great, Mum. Say one of the girls wasn’t married and she brought someone like him home, you’d love him. Admit it.”

  “I’ll admit no such thing.”

  “That’s just cos you haven’t had a chance to get to know him. Haven’t given him a chance.”

  “I know quite enough about that young man from what you’ve told me of him. I certainly don’t want to know any more. And what do you suppose Father Thomas would say if he were here now?”

  “What the bloody hell’s it got to do with him?”

  “What about Our Lord, then? What do you think He’d have to say about you . . . fornicating with a young man?”

  “Mum, this is the twenty-first century, not five hundred BC or whenever Jesus was around. You were fine about me and Trix going on holiday together, and you’ve never got on my case when I’ve had girls over for the night.” Their case, yeah. But not Michael’s. “If Jesus is so concerned about my bloody sex life, why would He want me to be having it with a girl I wasn’t married to, either?”

  “Don’t try and tell me this is the same. It’s nothing like.”

  “It’s exactly like!”

  “The Bible says—”

  “The Bible says a lot of shi—stuff we never bother about. Why is the bit about blokes loving blokes so much more important than the rest?”

  “Because it’s disgusting!”

  It echoed through the room, ripples dying away into the awful silence.

  When he’d been around fourteen, yeah, Michael and his best mate, Col, had nicked a couple of six-packs of Col’s dad’s beer and got wasted. He’d come home reeling, swearing, and stinking of alcohol.

  Mum had slapped him round the face. Hard. Even through the drunken haze, it’d hurt like fuck. Not the slap. The fact she’d done it to him.

  It’d been years before he dared to drink again.

  This . . . this felt worse. It felt like she’d hollowed him out with a spoon, like Col’s mum had used to do to pumpkins before carving a face on ’em at Halloween. “Me and Rufus, yeah?” he heard himself saying, ’cept it didn’t sound a lot like his voice. “You think we’re disgusting?”

  “I most certainly do, and I won’t have it. Not in my house.” Her face was stone.

  “Right. Fine. Guess you won’t want me living round here any longer, then.”

  Michael blinked once, and headed up to his room, ignoring the shouts of “Michael O’Grady, you get back down here this instant!” His bag was still packed with all the stuff Rufus had washed for him. That’d do him for a bit. He picked up his work phone and chucked it in. Then he shouldered the bag and went back downstairs.

  Mum was standing in the hallway, not an inch of give in her expression. “And just where do you think you’re going?” she demanded.

  “Dunno. But I’m going there with Rufus,” he said, forcing himself to look her in the eye. Well, near enough. In the face, definitely.

  She’d cave now, right? Tell him if Rufus meant so much to him, then she’d come round to it. Tell him she loved him too much to lose him over this.

  Right?

  Mum’s lips tightened. “If you leave this house now, Michael O’Grady, don’t you even think of coming back.”

  “I’m sorry, Mum. I gotta.” Michael stepped out of the house he’d grown up in, feeling like someone had just ripped his whole skin off and left him raw and bleeding. He’d never . . . He’d never thought Mum would speak to him like that. Not him. He’d always been her favourite. Even his sisters just treated it like a fact of life.

  Although now he came to think about it, Faith had seemed sort of bitter at Christmas when she’d said something like, “Well, of course she’s going to leave you the house.”

  Huh. Not looking so likely now.

  Where the fuck was he gonna go? Thinking about it, Michael didn’t reckon any of his sisters’d turn him away—well, maybe Faith—and he had plenty of mates who’d let him kip on their sofas. But they were all straight. He just wasn’t sure how happy any of ’em’d be if he turned up with a boyfriend in tow.

  Christ. A boyfriend. Michael swallowed. He was still having a bit of trouble with that word. Maybe if he thought of it as “a Rufus” instead?

  Yeah. He could cope with having a Rufus. That’d do for now. There’d be plenty of time to get comfortable with using the b-word.

  Maybe he could go to Col’s? They’d shared enough mutual wank sessions in the past. Or Gaz’s? They’d done pretty much everything.

  Michael snorted. Yeah, right. He could just see himself explaining that one to Rufus.

  Which brought up another problem.

  Where the fuck was Rufus?

  Shit. Michael slung his bag in the back of the Saab and drove off up the road to look for him, the setting sun in his eyes making them water.

  And yeah, it was definitely the sun, all right?

  Shut up.

  Rufus wandered down Coronation Road in a haze of pain. His shadow stretched out yards in front of him like a grim portent of his future. He needed comfort. He needed his mu— No. He needed Liz. Grabbing his phone, he hit Call.

  Liz answered almost immediately. “You arse.”

  This was not quite as comforting as he’d hoped. “What have I done?”

  “Only abandoned me at the ferry terminal with a car I’m not insured to drive. Arse.”

  Oops. “But you got on the ferry, right?”

  “How could I? I’d have had to get another ticket to travel on my own. How far do you think my benefits go? And I wasn’t gonna leave you here on your own with that shit-bag.”

  “Michael’s not a shit-bag. I’m the shit-bag.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I made him come out to his mum. And she’s, like, totally against it. Didn’t even want me in the house.”

  “So where are you?”

  “Halfway down his road now.”

  “So . . . let me get this straight. You told him he had to come out to his mum or you’d leave him? So h
e told her. And you left him anyway. You’re right. You are a shit-bag.”

  Oh fuck. She was right. “But I did it for him! He’s better off without me.”

  “Hear that clip-clop sound? That means it’s way too late to shut the stable door now. And while we’re on the subject, how come you get to choose what’s best for everyone? Might wanna work on that god complex, just saying.”

  “But what do I do? I can’t just go back there. That’s not going to make his mum like me any better.”

  “Hang on a mo.” There was a pause, filled with the muffled sounds of a conversation Rufus couldn’t quite hear. “Right. We’re gonna pick you up.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “Me and Trix. I called her, din’t I? After you buggered off and left me. She picked me up from the ferry terminal, and we’re on our way back now. We’re gonna swing by and get you.”

  “But what about Michael?”

  “I dunno, do I? I can’t solve all your problems for you.”

  “I can’t . . . I’ve got to go back.” Even if Michael’s mum called him that boy again in a tone that made it sound like she’d rather her son was shagging a cockroach than Rufus.

  “Jeez, make your mind up. Look, we’re nearly there anyhow. We’ll see you in five minutes, yeah?”

  “Um. Yeah?” Rufus hung up, not much caring if they came or not. Whatever happened, he wasn’t going anywhere until he’d spoken to Michael again. And explained he hadn’t meant to be a shit-bag. Rufus turned and ran back the way he’d come, blinking into the last of the sunshine.

  Of course, deciding he had to talk to Michael was easy. Getting up the balls to actually knock on his door was, like, planetary orders of magnitude more difficult. There seemed to be some weird gravitational effect on his feet that made them much, much heavier the closer he got. By the time he managed to reach the door and raise a fist to knock on it, it was like he was moving in slo-mo. He kind of expected the knock to come out as a big, echo-y boom, but no, it was just his normal hesitant rap.

  Michael’s mum opened the door. In tears. When she saw it was him, she let out an actual sob.

  Rufus felt like a total selfish bastard. “Oh my god, I’m, like, so sorry. This is all my fault. I thought you’d be okay with it, yeah? And that’s why I told Michael I didn’t want him to lie to you about us. I just didn’t think. Is Michael in?”

  She shook her head mutely, a hanky pressed to her lips. Why her lips? Did she cry through her mouth? And yeah, when Rufus looked, the Saab was gone from the road outside. He’d thought the place looked different, somehow. “I am so sorry,” he said. “He’ll come back though, yeah? You know what he’s like. He gets all funny if you give him an ultimatum. Just has to go away and think about it for a while. Look, why don’t we go inside and I’ll make you a cup of tea?”

  To tell the truth, he was a little worried about her, but once he’d got her sat down in the kitchen with a nice cuppa and a choccy biccy, she got a bit more colour in her cheeks. Still hadn’t said anything, mind, but that was okay cos Rufus was babbling away for England. “Is there someone I can call? One of Michael’s sisters? Not the one who’s expecting, cos she needs to put her feet up, poor love—one of my teachers at school had twins and she was like totally round for the last three months—but one of the others? Which do you think would be best: Faith or Hope? I always reckon hope’s a good thing to have, but from what Michael says, you’re probably more into faith. I was brought up Church of England, which I always think is just code for not really sure about anything. But in, like, a respectful manner. Um. More tea?”

  She shook her head and took a deep, shuddering breath. “H-he’s told you all about us, then?”

  “Yeah. And about his dad, which was, like, so sad. I lost my mum when I was sixteen and that was pretty horrible, but at least I got to know her, you know? It must have been so hard for you.”

  She took a sip of tea and put the cup down, where it rattled on the saucer. Rufus had known she’d be a cup-and-saucer person, not a mug person. He could tell these things. “How old are you now, Rufus—it is Rufus?”

  He nodded. “I’m twenty. Although I’ve just had my fifth birthday—bit of a funny story—”

  “You’re a leap-year baby?”

  Rufus beamed. “Yes! How did you know?”

  She actually smiled. Well, a bit. Sort of. “Michael’s father was a leap-year baby. My Michael. He used to joke about me being a cradle snatcher, a girl of eighteen carrying on with a boy who hadn’t yet had his fifth birthday.”

  Yeah, jokes like that were probably funnier in those days. “That’s amazing,” Rufus said. “I mean, you’d think, statistically speaking, there must be loads of us leaplings, but I never meet any.” Of course, for the last four years or so he hadn’t really got out much. “You must’ve married really young,” he added, nudging the plate of biscuits closer to her.

  “Eighteen, I was, and Michael not much older. I never even looked at another man. I don’t think it’s right,” she said, and Rufus was queasily certain she wasn’t talking about having a roving eye. Her next sentence confirmed it. “You can’t tell me it’s natural for two men to . . . be together. You say you’re Church of England?”

  Rufus nodded, sending a guilty mental sorry to Poseidon, who hopefully wouldn’t turn out to be the vengeful sort when it came to aposo . . . apost . . . people who changed their religion. Rufus still had at least one more ferry crossing to survive.

  “Well, then. Do you really think such a life is what Our Lord would want for you?”

  “Well, the way I see it, Jesus was all about love, yeah? So I don’t think He’d mind a bit more love in the world.” Rufus was actually fairly confident on that one, cos he’d heard it from a gay vicar he’d snogged once. Probably best not to mention that to Mrs. O’Grady, though.

  She gave him a sharp look. “And that’s what you’d call it, is it? Love?”

  Rufus could feel his cheeks going pink. “Um. Sort of? I mean, okay, we haven’t known each other all that long, but look at me, yeah? Off the island for the first time since my mum died. I wouldn’t do that for just anyone. But please don’t tell him I said that. It might make him feel all ultimatum-y again.”

  “I’m sure you’ll be seeing him before I do.” She took another sip of her tea and closed her eyes for so long, Rufus started to wonder if she’d fallen asleep. Then she startled him by standing up, her eyes wide open and a determined look on her face. “When you see Michael, tell him . . . tell him I didn’t mean what I said. Tell him to come home.”

  Um. That meant it was time for Rufus to go, didn’t it? He stood up too, and carried the cups over to the sink. “Are you sure you’re going to be all right?”

  She nodded. “I’m going to call my daughter now. You—travel safely.”

  It sounded a bit grudging, but the thought was what counted. “Thank you. And I’ll tell Michael what you said.”

  If, he thought as he closed the front door behind him, he ever managed to find Michael again.

  Funnily enough, that turned out to not be too hard.

  All he had to do was follow the shouting.

  Rufus jogged down the road to where the noise was coming from, which was where Michael’s Saab and Trix’s Jeep were pulled in at the side of the road, having a face-off. Michael, Liz, and Trix were standing by their cars, having a shout-off. With added bonnet-thumping.

  Yikes. Michael and Trix were kickboxers, weren’t they? Rufus hoped Liz would have the sense to keep out of it. Although the closer he came, the more it looked like it was Liz yelling at Michael, and Trix was the one keeping out of it. Rufus wondered what they were fighting about. Okay, yeah, he’d known there was a fair bit of mutual hostility, but he’d thought it was on a low simmer, not boiling over into what looked like imminent violence.

  “What the hell have you done with him?” Liz screamed.

  Michael was dark-faced and dangerous looking, which Rufus should not have found so attractive. “Me? Don’t
you try and game me—”

  “Hello?” Rufus said nervously.

  “Roo!” Liz flung herself on him so hard it actually hurt. She was small but solid. And bony.

  Michael glared at them. “Christ, where the hell have you been, you tosser?”

  “Um, with your mum.”

  Everyone stared at Rufus. It was like one of those dreams he still had occasionally, where he turned up to school completely naked and thought he’d managed to hide it until Mr. Blackmore (it was always Mr. Blackmore, who’d reeked of pipe smoke, liked to stand too close when correcting Rufus’s work, and had a disturbing way of rolling the R at the start of his name) asked him to go up to the front, and everyone pointed and laughed.

  “With Mum?”

  “Yeah, we had a cup of tea and a biccy. She said she didn’t mean it and she wants you to go home.” There. Duty done.

  “Mum . . . let you in the house?”

  “Well, I sort of let myself in. I mean, she obviously needed looking after.”

  Michael just carried on staring at him. It was a bit unnerving, and was making Rufus’s eyes want to water in sympathy.

  Liz gave an exaggerated tut. “It’s what he does. Give her your recipe for sticky toffee pudding, Roo, and she’ll love you forever. Right. All sorted. Now can we please get back to the ferry before they stop running them for the night and my little boy has to cry himself to sleep thinking his mum’s abandoned him?”

  “Liz, it’s only just past his teatime. And I need to talk to Michael, okay?”

  “I’m coming with you,” Michael said out of nowhere.

  “You’re coming with us? To the ferry terminal, or to the island?” Rufus looked surprised, fuck knew why.

  “The island. At least for tonight.” Because Michael needed somewhere to stay anyhow, and fuck if he was letting Rufus out of his sight again. At least until he was feeling a bit less shaky.

  “What about your mum?”

  That stabbed him right in the heart. “I can’t go back there. Not tonight. I’ll ring her, all right?” Michael added quickly as Rufus started to frown. “She . . . said stuff, yeah? Need a bit of time to get my head round it.”