Floored

by Sara Barnard

  She recoils, thank God.

  ‘We’d better be off,’ she says warily, eyeing Hugo with disgust. ‘Where did you say your dad’s bar was?’

  ‘Beach front. Calo Gracia – it’s a great place.’

  ‘Maybe we’ll see you there?’

  I nod non-committally and wave them off, before turning back to Hugo.

  ‘Come on.’ I hold out a hand to help him up. To my surprise, he takes it.

  He follows me in silence down Carrer de Lepant, saying nothing until we’ve both sat down on a shaded wall.

  ‘So your dad lives here?’ he asks.

  ‘Yeah. He moved here when I was three, with Trish. They got married out here, and opened a bar together. Trish is coming to pick us up.’

  He’s silent for a moment. ‘Was the divorce bad? Between your parents?’

  ‘They weren’t married,’ I say. I have a sneaking suspicion I know where this is going, and he proves me right a split second later.

  ‘You’ll know all about my dad fucking that Labour bastard, I suppose.’

  I can’t imagine anyone doesn’t know. It was the number one trending topic on Twitter for three days running.

  I’ve been there. Not as bad as this; not even close. But I know what it’s like to see your face everywhere, and have strangers calling you, asking for quotes, or probing for info. To have people follow you down the street, into shops, into toilets. I know what it’s like to be dehumanized and dissected. But you deserve it when you put yourself out there, right? That’s the theory. You’re asking for it.

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ I reply.

  ‘So embarrassing. I just mean, God . . . of all the fucking clichés in the world. And my own mother . . . I cannot believe those people are responsible for my genes. I’m shagged, basically.’

  He’s starting to sound like himself again, and a little flare of hope bursts inside me. Maybe he’ll be sober enough to remember where his mates are, and I can get back to Kait. Because as much as I feel sorry for him, this is not how I wanted to spend tonight. Or any night.

  At that moment, my phone buzzes, and I see a text from her.

  I’ve blown up the air mattress. He can piss off if he thinks he’s getting our bed x

  ‘Kait? As in Kaitlyn – Kaitlyn from the lift?’ Hugo says, and I realize he read my message. ‘Is she here? Why is she . . . ? Wait, our bed? Are you two . . . ? Oh my, wow. Are you two . . . ? But I thought you were gay.’

  And there it is. You know what, Hugo? I thought I was gay too. In fact, I was convinced of it, what with my one hundred per cent only-fancying-men record prior to this. Believe me, pal, no one was more surprised than I was to find out I was attracted to a girl. Not least because, as well as having to figure out how to have a relationship with a girl, it meant having to re-explain my sexuality to pretty much everyone I’ve ever met. Not my idea of a great time.

  ‘Yeah, yeah – my girlfriend. I know, right. I thought I was gay too, but actually I’m bi . . . No, it wasn’t a phase . . . No, I don’t think this is a phase either . . . I don’t know if my next partner will be a man. All I know is I’m happy in the relationship I’m in now . . . I don’t know if it bothers her that I’ve slept with guys before – I haven’t asked . . . Good talk.’

  You’d think it’d be easier to be bi than gay. Like my dad said when I told him: ‘Sounds like the best of both worlds.’ But it’s not. I don’t belong anywhere – there’s no social coding for bisexuality, and neither side is happy you exist. At best, while I’m with Kait I’m invisible because no one cares about a boy and a girl being together. At worst, I’m an indecisive sex maniac who will sleep with literally anyone. And at absolute rock bottom is the fear I’m a fake bisexual, because Kait is the only girl I’ve ever fancied. What if I’m not bi, but Kait-sexual? How do you know? When do you know?

  Hugo is staring at me, and I sigh. ‘Yeah. We’re together. Turns out I’m bi. It’s not . . . It’s pretty new for me. I mean, for both of us. We’ve only been properly together for three months. And Kait has her own stuff going on, so we’re keeping it on the down low for now, while we figure it out.’

  I realize then that I’ve told Hugo Delaney about me and Kait before Sasha, Joe and Velvet. How bizarre.

  He’s silent for a really long time, and then he looks at the ground. ‘Do you think that’s what my father is? Bisexual?’

  I nearly fall off the wall.

  ‘I mean, he must have fancied my mother at one point, surely? Although he did go to Winchester . . . College,’ he adds, when I look at him blankly. ‘All boys boarder?’ He sighs, and I can hear the eye-roll in it.

  ‘He might be,’ I say finally. ‘It is a spectrum, after all.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Sexuality.’

  ‘Oh do fuck off,’ he says. ‘You sound like the bloody Internet.’ He kicks his heels against the wall like a kid.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t need counselling, Dawson.’

  ‘I meant because of the drugs. What did you take?’

  ‘Oh. Better, I think. And I don’t know. I thought it was coke, but it must have been cut with something else. I’m normally fine on coke.’ He shrugs.

  Trish’s car pulls up then, and she beeps the horn. I hop down off the wall, but Hugo hesitates.

  ‘Well, this has been such great fun,’ he says, not looking at me. ‘But I think I’ll be all right to head back now.’

  ‘You don’t have to.’

  Hugo looks at me.

  ‘It’s late, and you look like shit. You stink. Come back with us, have a shower, get some food and sleep, and we’ll drop you back in town in the morning on our way to the airport. We’re leaving tomorrow, so you don’t have to worry about bumping into us again.’

  Hugo looks at the car, down at his shirt, then at me. ‘What about Kaitlyn? I’m pretty sure she doesn’t want me there.’

  ‘She really doesn’t,’ I say cheerily. ‘And she’ll probably make you suffer for it. But, she gets it. You know? She gets being—’

  ‘I need you to not finish that sentence,’ Hugo warns me. He takes a deep breath. ‘Fine. But only because the key card to my room was in my wallet, which I seem to have lost, and I can’t be bothered to deal with the hotel right now.’

  He crosses to the car and opens the passenger door.

  ‘I don’t think so, my love,’ Trish’s Black Country tones assault him. ‘Not looking like that. You can get in the back, thank you.’

  I bite back a smirk. Trish and Dad have two massive Alsatians called Reeves and Mortimer, and the backseat is their domain when they’re in the car. Thank God his clothes are already ruined.

  Hugo casts me a dark look, closes the door, and walks towards the back.

  ‘Sharman . . .’ He pauses. ‘This doesn’t mean we’re friends.’

  ‘Thank Christ for that,’ I say, smiling as I get into the car.

  When I look at him in the rear-view mirror, I swear he’s almost smiling too.

  KAITLYN

  Maybe this isn’t very nice of me, but my first thought when I heard about Hugo’s current state – and again when I saw him, pupils saucer-wide, shirt ripped and stained with blood – was the very selfish Did it have to be Hugo?

  I mean, of all the people to find out about us first. It’s not like Dawson and I have many mutuals – which is partly why we’ve been able to keep our relationship a cosy secret from them – but of all the ones we do have, Hugo is the very last I’d choose. It should’ve been Sasha, or Velvet, or even Joe.

  When he and Dawson arrive at the flat, he tries his usual suggestive smirk, but because he’s clearly tripping, it comes out a bit wonky. ‘Kaitlyn! What an unexpected pleasure.’ He looms towards me, stumbling slightly. ‘Can you see me? Should I get closer?’

  ‘Who . . . who is that?’ I ask weakly, flailing my arms out, tapping his face all over. ‘Hugo? Hugo, is that you?’ I enjoy just a second of him looking absolutely horrified, then give his fac
e a light yet definitive slap. ‘Yes, I can see you, Hugo, you arse.’

  Dawson steps around Hugo, laughing, and bends to kiss me. ‘Sorry,’ he whispers.

  Hugo bends his head down between us, ruining the moment. ‘I need the bathroom,’ he announces.

  Dawson gestures, and Hugo stumbles off down the hall, hand to his mouth. In his sudden absence, I look at Dawson.

  ‘I couldn’t leave him,’ he says.

  I sigh. ‘I know.’ I smile at him, feeling it spread into my cheeks, crinkling my nose. Smiling never felt like this before Dawson. ‘You softie.’

  The sound of Hugo’s elaborate retching ruins the moment somewhat, but Dawson still touches his fingers to my cheek and smiles back.

  How unlikely this all is, I can’t help thinking. Not just Hugo vomming into the toilet on what was meant to be mine and Dawson’s lovely secret holiday fun-time, but the fact that Dawson and I are here at all. Here in Ibiza, here in his father’s flat, here as a couple. ‘You were just a poster on my bedroom wall,’ I’d said to him the first time we had sex. (After, that is. After the first time we had sex.) I realized what an odd thing it was to say as soon as the words had fallen out of my mouth, but Dawson understood, because he chuckled softly in the dark and squeezed my hand.

  The thing I didn’t tell him is that I still have that poster. Folded carefully and stored in my memory box. Is that weird? Probably. But I could never get rid of it now.

  It’s not just the fact that he’s famous though, or even that he was in a show I loved and that I fancied him once. It’s that we were mates, just mates. Long after he was Famous Guy Dawson he was My Mate Dawson . . . My Gay Mate Dawson.

  ‘We’re still mates,’ Dawson said when I said this to him, wanting to know if he felt the unlikeliness of it like I did.

  ‘Bedmates,’ I said.

  He grinned. ‘Mates who mate.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ I said, laughing so hard my chest ached. ‘The word “mate” has lost all meaning.’

  We haven’t said I love you yet, Dawson and me. But I do. I love him.

  ‘Christ.’ Hugo’s voice sounds down the hall, and we both turn in time to see his head appear around the bathroom door, his hands clutching the doorframe. ‘I feel like absolute shit.’

  ‘Yeah, you look it too,’ Dawson says.

  Hugo claws his way out of the bathroom and shuffles a few metres down the hall towards us, leaning against the wall as he goes. All of his usual Hugo bravado is gone. He looks wrecked, actually. Wrecked and strangely young. It’s been a long time since I last saw him in person – though I’ve seen him in the papers since that whole political-scandal thing with his dad, when they kept using that family picture from his birthday – and I realize that I’d been thinking of him as older than he is. But he’s the same age as me, however rich he is, and I still feel like a kid most days.

  ‘What did you take?’ I ask.

  He shrugs. ‘I don’t know.’

  His face wobbles a little, and I take a panicked step back, almost crashing into Dawson. He’s not going to cry, is he? I can deal with a lot of things – the gradual loss of my sight, and falling in love with my gay friend, and that customer at the florist’s who complained about ‘politically correct hiring’ to the local paper after I got her order wrong – but I will not be able to handle a crying Hugo.

  ‘Do you want, um . . .’ I glance at Dawson, then helplessly down the corridor. What are you meant to give people who are off their face and don’t want to be? ‘Tea?’

  Dawson snorts a laugh, and I glare at him.

  ‘Kaitlyn,’ Hugo says suddenly, loudly. I turn back to him reluctantly. ‘Your hair is majestic.’

  ‘Wow, Hugo,’ I say. ‘You really are off your face. Come on. I’ll get you some water as well.’

  I dyed the stripe in my hair gold, specially for Ibiza. And I got my tongue pierced, pretty much on a whim, the day before I flew out here. (‘Oh, Kaity,’ Mum said. ‘Not another one.’)

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Dawson says, touching his hand to the small of my back. ‘Why don’t you go sit on the sofa, Hugo?’

  He’s speaking to him like a child, but it works. If anything, Hugo seems to like being told what to do. He swings around and begins clawing his way back along the hall, towards the living room.

  Lowering my voice, I look at my boyfriend. ‘I can do it,’ I say, trying not to frown.

  ‘I know,’ he says. ‘I didn’t mean you couldn’t. I just don’t want to have to sit on my own with Hugo, that’s all.’

  He laughs a little and grins, but I don’t smile back. Does he not trust me to make tea?

  Yesterday, I smashed a mug in the kitchen, but it was an accident, and it could have happened to anyone. It was that stupid dog – Reeves, the really annoying one – getting in my way; it was nothing to do with my eyes. But maybe Dawson . . . ?

  No, I’m just being paranoid, not to mention unfair. Dawson, maybe more than anyone else in my life, has always been great about my progressive sight loss. He’s never patronized me or done anything stupid like talk extra loud or offer to cut up my food for me. He downloaded a bunch of accessibility apps to his own phone just so he’d have a better idea of what my life is like. He offers me his arm whenever we walk anywhere, and never looks offended if I don’t take it. It was Dawson who I talked to about maybe getting a guide dog one day. Dawson who created a YouTube playlist of guide dog videos for me. Dawson who I was sitting with when I applied. Dawson who I called when I was officially put on the waiting list.

  ‘OK,’ I say, feeling a smile on my face. ‘Thanks.’

  I make my way across the hall, letting my fingertips graze the wall as I go. Even though I’ve only been here for a short time, I know the layout of the flat so well I don’t need to worry about navigating my way around, because Dawson and I did a special tour of it when I first arrived. And I’m thinking about this, how it’s nice to feel like I can walk around as confidently as I do in my own house, when I trip over the sandals that Hugo has carelessly flung off his feet in the middle of the doorway, and I go crashing – really crashing – to the floor.

  I land heavily, and it hurts. It fucking hurts. Fucking sandals. Fucking eyes. Fucking Hugo.

  I’ve barely had a chance to sit up when Dawson comes running into the room, his voice panicked. ‘Kait? Kait?’

  I look up in time to see Hugo’s head appear above the arm of the sofa like a startled bird. He looks like he’s been asleep, even though he’s barely been in the room for two minutes. ‘What was that?’ he asks.

  I throw one of his sandals at him. ‘You’re such an insensitive dick, Hugo!’

  This is completely unfair, and I know it is, because there are a lot of reasons to call Hugo a dick, but him taking off his sandals while high as a kite after the year he’s had is hardly one of them. But still. It’s yell at him, or cry.

  God, Dawson and I could have been shagging on the balcony right now.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Dawson places his hand on my arm.

  Hugo’s eyes are childishly wide with confusion and worry. Why can’t he be the Hugo I remember, with all that rich-boy swagger, and say something snide in that posh voice of his so I can say something back, and we can properly go at it? That would be so satisfying. I don’t want him worrying about me.

  ‘I’m bloody fine,’ I snap, jerking my arm away from Dawson and pushing myself to my feet. I kick the remaining sandal into the corner of the room and throw myself on to the sofa.

  ‘Did you hurt your—?’

  ‘Just get the tea, Dawson.’

  Dawson looks at me for a moment, more confused than anything, but eventually he shrugs and leaves the room.

  ‘Sorry,’ Hugo says.

  What a weird word to hear come out of his mouth.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Whatever.’

  We both sit there in silence for a while. I can hear Dawson in the kitchen, the soft thunk of the bin lid opening and closing. I should probably say something, but I have no idea w
hat. It’s not like Hugo and I were ever anything resembling friends, even before the whole Velvet thing.

  Thinking of Velvet makes me think about her and Sasha and Joe at the funeral, and I feel a soft twinge of guilt that I’m not there too. But only a tiny one, because I thought they – or Sasha at least – might ask me a little bit more about the ‘holiday’ I’d said I’d be on, and then maybe I would’ve told them about Dawson and me. They didn’t though. They never do.

  ‘Hey,’ I start to say, turning to Hugo, about to ask him if he’s been in contact with any of the others since the whole national-scandal thing. But I have to stop, because Hugo is crying. Actually crying. ‘Oh shit,’ I say.

  Hugo is just sitting there – the single sandal I’d thrown at him cradled in his hands – weeping. Fat tears are rolling down his face. His lips and chin are quivering.

  Oh God. Is this a drugs thing? Is this just what happens during a comedown? Is this even a comedown? Dawson would know. Actually, where the hell is Dawson? How long does it take to make three cups of tea?

  ‘Don’t cry,’ I say. My hand reaches out of its own accord and smacks at his shoulder, probably too hard, but he lets out a loud, grateful-sounding sniff, so I do it again.

  And then Hugo Delaney tips over and falls on to me. His head is in my lap, his arms are hugging my knees, and he is sobbing.

  ‘Oh my Christ,’ I say.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he’s saying, over and over, and something else that I can’t decipher through the tears.

  I try, ‘Why?’ and then, ‘It’s OK, Hugo,’ but he doesn’t seem to notice. The poor guy is going to pieces on my lap, and it’s actually kind of heartbreaking.

  I finally manage to make out what he’s saying, which turns out to be, ‘I made you fall over,’ and I’m so surprised, I laugh a little. ‘Hugo, that’s OK,’ I say. ‘Really, I’m fine.’ I feel a tiny bit bad then that I threw his sandal at him. Yeah, tripping over hurt a bit, and it was annoying, but it’s not worth him having some kind of breakdown over.

  ‘I’m a terrible human being,’ he sobs. ‘I hate myself, do you know that? Nobody likes me. Why would they? I don’t even like me.’