by Alexis Hall
Alfie watched him go, smiling a bit, happy and sad and confused all at once. Since he’d picked up the sausage roll, he tried to eat it in the least dodgy way possible, and it settled lumpenly in his stomach.
Now Uncle DJ was playing “The Power of Love,” swaying ecstatically behind the mixing desk, and Great Aunt Sheila’s voice was somehow managing to drown out even Céline Dion. “An’ ye knaa what else?” she was telling her rapt little audience. “I think wor Maureen’s a lesbeen.”
Nobody was looking at Alfie. Except they were not looking at him so very pointedly that he knew the moment he turned his back they’d all start staring at him. Like everyone was playing some kind of weird visual game of Grandmother’s Footsteps.
It was at times like this that he really wished he smoked. Or did coke. Or whatever gave you an excuse to slip out of the room when you needed to. So he did the next best thing. He pulled out his phone, reacted to the blank screen as though he’d received some kind of important message, and hurried outside. The air was blissfully cool for a few seconds, and then just cold. He shivered. His coat was still in his room.
God, he really was a soft southern ponce.
He used to go clubbing in the middle of winter wearing only jeans and a T-shirt. Kev the same. Just two lads out on the toon. The girls had flocked to them. Stroking the tattoo on his arm with soft hands.
The Little Haven Hotel was one of those places that seemed to exist only in the backwaters of the North East. It had a timeless, custom-built blandness, but the visitor information made a big deal of its unique location: an expanse of yellowing scrub grass overlooking the grey-brown mouth of the Tyne.
He wandered down to the beach. Most of the light had faded, leaving the scene as still and silent as a black-and-white photograph. The sand was silver-stained by the tide. The red groyne lighthouse that guarded the jetty like a stubborn old man was nothing but a hunch of shadow in the distance. And across the bay, the answering light from the North Shields dock gleamed like a pale star.
It was even colder here. But he had forgotten how clean the air could be. Fresh air, literally fresh, breathed from the edges of the sea.
He’d sat on this beach so often with Kev. They had shared their first bottle of White Lightning here. Alfie had never touched cider again. Even apparently good cider, proper cider, organic, artisanal blah blah blah cider, tasted of nothing but vomit and sand.
The memories felt so clear and so distant at the same time.
He took out his phone again—barely one bar of reception—and turned on Grindr. It took ages to load.
Maybe he really was the only gay in the village.
Finally, he was rewarded with about fifty profiles, none of them inspiring. He wasn’t really in the mood to cruise, but he desperately wanted to be with someone.
Someone who wouldn’t ask any questions. Someone who might find something to recognise about him. Even if it was just that they both liked men.
He was updating his profile to say he was only in town for a night and looking for—when he suddenly couldn’t be bothered anymore. Couldn’t be bothered in this really massive way. And in a moment of overwhelming dissatisfaction, he deleted the app. He put his phone away and stuck his hands in his pockets. Listened to the swooshing of the tide. The distant, mournful gulls. It was too overcast for stars, so the world was a strip of artificial light, squashed between two shifting darks.
Eventually he climbed back up to the hotel. He could hear music seeping faintly from inside. Thankfully, he couldn’t quite work out what it was.
He hesitated in the car park. He really, really didn’t want to go back to the party.
His TVR Sagaris was tucked into one of the bays. He could get in it and drive back to London and never ever come here again.
Leave his best friend and his new wife to live their lives without him.
Which couldn’t make all that much difference to them, since he lived in London and they lived here, and he wasn’t who Kevin thought he was anyway.
He unlocked his car and climbed in. He wasn’t actually going to drive away. That would be shitty and cowardly. But he felt more like himself with his hands on the wheel, surrounded by the familiar smells of oil and leather.
He’d been telling himself for nearly a year that he’d come out to Kevin eventually. But he’d basically been lying. He would have liked to have come back here on special occasions, just like he had this weekend, and acted like everything was exactly the same as always. And that he was the same too. Alfie Bell, a little bit wild, a little bit wicked, but with his heart in the right place. A good, honest lad. The sort you’d be proud to raise. To call your friend, your brother, your son.
Maybe he’d drive for a bit. Find a pub where he could be just like everyone else. Have a beer. Smile at the lasses. Be one of the lads.
And then come back, better and stronger and feeling less like two people, both of them unfit for purpose. Probably no one would even notice he was gone.
He pushed the key into the ignition, turned it, and the car roared into life as only a TVR could. He slipped out of the parking space and turned onto River Drive, accelerating as it widened out into Sea Road. There was very little traffic, and he let himself flirt at the edges of the speed limit. The sense of power was effortless. Free.
He opened all the windows so the air went tearing past, ruffling his hair. The sea was a distant shadow, the beach a flat gleam, the old funfair a skeleton of metal. He used to hang out in the amusement arcades with Kev, trying to hook cuddly toys they didn’t want, and squandering twenty pence pieces on those machines where you bet on mechanical horses. And never won.
In the summer, they rode the rickety old rollercoaster and chased each other in circles on the dodgems. He’d even had a Saturday job working the waltzers. He’d felt free then too, riding the boards through the whirling carts as if he stood on the deck of a ship.
As he drove by the Rattler, he impulsively veered off the road and into the car park. It was a pub in the station house of the abandoned railway line that used to connect South Shields to the colliery at Whitburn. Part of the building was actually a carriage from one of the old steam trains, the ramshackle Rattler itself. It apparently called itself “a bar and restaurant” these days, rather than a boozer, so it wasn’t exactly Alfie’s sort of place. At least, it wouldn’t have been. Except in London he went, without even a trace of shame, to cocktail bars and wine lodges all the time.
Cold as it was, he took off his jacket and tie and left them draped over the passenger seat. And so nobody paid him much attention as he stepped inside. It was kind of dark in there, with lots of wood panelling and little booths tucked into the carriage bits. A winter-afternoon-with-the-family type pub, but not very crowded now. Which was fine. Probably just what he was looking for.
There was a man propping up the bar. He had his back to the room, but his weight was resting on one leg, which outlined the curve of his spine and, well, everything that came after.
Alfie tried to ignore the flicker of discomfort that he noticed these things. That he was a man who found bits of other men provocative. Whether or not they were trying to provoke him.
His thoughts felt as loud as a siren.
It didn’t help that he kept trying to imagine how it might feel. If he knew that man. If he could go up behind him and press their bodies together. Gather him up. The tight-fragile bowstring of his too-thin back. The succulent invitation of his arse.
Yes. Succulent.
Provocative and succulent. Alfie Bell was fucking doomed.
He went to the bar and ordered a pint of John Smith’s, stealing what he hoped was a discreet look at the other guy. He had a pale, sharp face, all angles and edges and taut little frown lines. His hair was silver blond, as fine as dandelion fluff, dyed bright pink at the tips, and long enough to brush his shoulders.
Alfie stared at his beer.
The bloke next to him: gay, right?
Another glance: he was drinking ros
é.
He had to be.
Alfie wondered if he could say something. He knew how to chat up girls. It was easy. You smiled and you said, “Get you a drink, pet?” And they smiled back and said yes. In theory, it should have been no different with men, except Alfie got all nervous about it. His ex-boyfriend, Greg, said everyone did and you just learned to deal with it. But Alfie had never been nervous before. And that made him even more nervous.
“Can—” he tried, “can I get you a drink?”
The man started and turned. Behind the heavy frames of a pair of vintage glasses, his eyes widened. Then his face went blank, shuttered up like shop windows, but not before Alfie had caught the flash of pure, bright hate. It was the kind of look he had lately learned to fear. He’d seen something like it on his father’s face. An instinct of revulsion.
So maybe the bloke wasn’t gay after all. Maybe he was a quirkily dressed homophobe. An idea that didn’t seem too far off the mark when he snapped, “Why the fuck would I let you do that?”
He spoke like Alfie, though: as if somebody had sanded down the rough places of his accent. It would have been nice. Comforting. Something else they had in common. Except for the things they didn’t.
Alfie stared at him. Straight into those fury-glinting eyes. “Well, I don’t know.” He kept his voice calm. Confidently unbothered. Even if inside he was a mess of confused hurt and anger that someone would just despise him on sight. Based on nothing. “Maybe because you’ve nearly finished and want another?”
The man glared. “I don’t.”
“That’s fine, then.” He turned away as indifferently as he could manage.
Over the years, Alfie had got pretty good at dealing with shit like this. Well, not quite like this. But certain sorts of people would take one look at him, even if he was doing something perfectly normal like walking to work or buying a coffee, see only height and strength and the edge of a tattoo, and try to start something. To show off. Or make themselves feel big. When he’d been younger, he’d encouraged it. Even liked it. The attention. And the power of knowing he made others uncomfortable. Now, he didn’t care. He had enough on his plate without also letting strangers convince him he had something to prove.
But there was still no way he was backing down. Just because of some overreacting little prick in arty specs. Can I buy you a drink? was hardly Can I stick my dick in you?
He took a long swallow of his pint. He wasn’t going to rush, but he was going to finish it and then get the hell out of here. And try not to think about what had just happened. Or the man who was still standing beside him. He could almost feel him somehow, body heat and a sort of trembling ferocity. Weirdo.
Suddenly the stranger spoke again, his voice tight and high, still pissed off. “What the fuck was that about?”
Alfie turned slowly back.
God, even mindlessly angry, he had such pretty eyes. Soft green, apple-coloured, framed in gold lashes, bright behind glass.
And that was not a helpful thought.
He was confused. Annoyed and trying not to be, and lonely and attracted and a fucking mess. “I suppose I just thought you looked”—hot—“like you needed another drink. And that you might be”—hot—“interesting to talk to.”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “Riiight. So you buy me a drink, and we talk, and our souls connect and our minds meet, and what then?”
“What then?”
“Yes. What then?”
Alfie tried not to squirm. In his experience, women definitely did not do this. When you said, Can I buy you a drink? they didn’t immediately call you out on the subtext. He genuinely wasn’t sure if he was meant to be punching the guy or trying to kiss him. Right now, he kind of wanted to do both.
He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Look. I’m sorry. Yes, I made some assumptions, and I can see that’s offended you. I tried to talk to you because . . . because . . . I fancied you, alreet . . .” Shit, his accent. “But that doesn’t mean I expect anything. Or that I’m going to, y’know, force you against the Rattler.”
A tinge of colour crept over the man’s pale cheeks. But then his face went blank again. “You fancy me. Yeah. Okay. Very funny. You can fuck off now.”
It was probably good advice. And a less lost Alfie might have heeded it. “Mate, what’s your problem? I tried to hit on you, you didn’t like it, I’ve said I’m sorry. What more do you want?”
There was a long silence. The man traced a circle round the rim of his wineglass until it shrieked. His hands were thin, like the rest of him, the nails ragged, stripped to the quick, the skin dry and flaking. He had a piece of green wire coiled round the fourth finger of his right hand. “This is a joke, right?”
Alfie was pretty sure he was missing something, but he had no idea what it was. “Which bit?”
“All of it. Any of it.” The stranger adjusted his glasses, pushing them back with the heel of his hand, holding Alfie prisoner on the other side. His mouth—God, he had pretty lips as well—curled into a sneer. “You’re just supposed to be gay?”
Okay. Enough was enough. “Why, was I meant to check with you first?”
“Hah.” That one little word contained a whole world of un-amusement.
Alfie drained his glass with grim determination, left three quid on the counter, and turned to go.
The other man’s voice called him back one last time. “And you fancy me?”
Alfie glanced over his shoulder. “Yes, I blummin’ fancy you. My mistake.”
2
Alfie got out of there before anything else could go wrong. The cold air came at him like some kind of anti-hug, but it was actually almost nice. It felt real, unlike everything that had just happened.
Which was what, exactly?
He told himself that this was going to make a great story for when he got back to London. How he came out at his best friend’s wedding with the line “I like cock” and then got savaged by a guy he could snap with one hand.
His gaydar had probably been irreparably stunted by twenty-eight years in the closet. He was like one of those animals that got raised in captivity and couldn’t cope among their own kind when they were released into the wild. One of those whales that just hung around near the rescue boat being sad and confused.
“Prove it.”
He spun round. The pissed-off guy had followed him out.
“What?” It was only a short distance to his car. He’d feel a bit of a prat running away from a tiny bloke in a pink jumper, but he was also starting to wonder if he hadn’t tried to pull a genuine mental case.
“You want me?” For the first time a trace of something that wasn’t outright hostility crept into the other man’s voice. Something a bit uncertain, a bit . . . needy. Alfie knew he was being an idiot, but it sort of turned him on. “Then prove it.”
Alfie’s first instinct was to tell him he was nutters and make a dash for his car.
The man folded his arms tightly across his chest, hugging his own elbows. It wasn’t exactly a pose that said, Come and get it, big boy. “I’m right here. I’m waiting. Come and show me just how gay you think you are.”
This was weird. This was wrong. Totally weird and totally wrong. But it was also exactly what Alfie had wanted since he’d laid eyes on those narrow hips, the fragile spine, and the hinted mysteries of that taut, restless body. Well, not this exactly. It would have been a pretty niche fantasy. But the possibility of . . . something.
He took a few steps forward. Until he was standing sociably close. Then intimately close.
Since being gay had become undeniable, he’d had one serious relationship and a bunch of hookups. They’d basically been okay. Nothing special. In the moment, they’d made him feel realer. Afterwards, not so much. And he was still a bit shaky on how they worked.
Women were easier. There were rules about who did what. Which tongue went where.
With guys, it was like meeting someone for the first time and not being sure whether you were su
pposed to hug or shake hands. An embarrassing tangle waiting to happen.
He’d also never tried to kiss anyone who seemed so absolutely opposed to being kissed. While also apparently inviting it.
He slipped a hand around the back of the man’s neck, sliding gently beneath the fall of his hair. He wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to do next, but as it turned out, he didn’t have to think about doing anything. Because everything just sort of happened.
For a moment, he was standing there, being confused, touching skin that felt ridiculously, impossibly tender, and wondering if maybe it was acceptable to do a bit of hair tugging, since there seemed no way to actually get to the kissing bit without a pretty significant change of angle.
But then the guy moaned. Actually moaned. Soft and helpless and fucking gorgeous. And he rocked forward, falling against Alfie’s body like he’d lost the ability to do anything else. His hands clutched at Alfie’s shoulders, then clung, clumsy-awkward, just a little bit desperate, and Alfie suddenly felt about ten feet tall and strong and right and wanted, and from there it was all effortless. All instinct.
He dragged the other man close, maybe a bit rougher than he meant to be. Made a snug little cradle with his spare arm. Got him tucked into it. And then he was bringing his head down, and the guy—shit, he didn’t even know his name—was tilting his head back, and there was this moment when all there was in the whole fucking universe was a pale, moonlit mouth parting in anticipation, in welcome, and then they were kissing.
Kissing like Alfie had always imagined it was supposed to be. Movie-star-magic-silver-screen-fireworks-in-the-sky kissing. Endless and restless, like the sea beating in the distance. Like listening to a shell, except it was everything and everywhere, the taste of salt water rich and sharp between their lips.
And a strange sort of sweetness too. It took him a moment to place it.
“Hey,” he whispered, breaking the kiss. “Hey, you smell of flowers.”