by Alexis Hall
“I’m sorry, Alfie.”
“’S’okay.”
“I know I was the worst date in the world but—”
“You weren’t.”
“I ran out of the restaurant in tears,” said Fen, deadpan, “and then nearly killed us.”
Alfie grinned. “Nobody’s perfect.”
“Oh stop it. I’m trying to tell you that, in spite of everything, I actually had a really nice time tonight.”
“Me too.”
He waited for Fen to leave but . . . he didn’t. He was playing with the green band around his finger again, looking anywhere but Alfie. “There’s part of me that wants to say, Fuck it, and invite you up.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Because I’m not that selfish. We’ve already established I’m a mess and, honestly, you’re terrible at casual sex.”
Alfie tried not to panic. He’d always had rave reviews before, but half a year with Greg probably couldn’t compensate for every experience he hadn’t had. First crush, first love, first mutually hesitant fumbles. Probably he’d missed his prime gay years and now he was doomed. “I didn’t think I was that bad.”
“I didn’t mean the sex. You were . . . well . . . it was the first time I’ve felt anything that wasn’t grief for what seems like forever. But when you look at me, I can see you wanting things.”
“Well, yeah, I want to do you.”
“Oh come on, Alfie Bell. It’s more than that. You’re giving me these big date-me eyes.”
“I don’t get it. Ten minutes ago you were freaking out because you didn’t want to lose me, and now you’re telling me I want too much from you.” He huffed out an impatient breath. “I’m a grown-up, y’know. You don’t have to protect me from stuff. If you wanna go to your room, fuck my brains out, and send me on my way, I’m good with that. If you wanna sit down and figure out summin else, I’m good with that too.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Alfie was pretty sure this was a trap, but he had no idea how to avoid it. “Well, yeah, I would. And, honestly, I think you would too. I know I’m not big on musicals and I really like eating meat, but we get each other, Fen. We come from the same place.”
“I’m not some boy-next-door fantasy you can escape to at the weekend.”
“I have actually noticed that. If you were, you’d have been way nicer to me and your house would always smell of freshly baked bread.”
For a moment, he thought Fen might laugh, but instead, he made a frustrated noise, his hand clenching convulsively against his knee. “But this isn’t my life. This isn’t who I am. I shouldn’t be here, working in a flower shop in the town that’s always hated me.”
“But you are here.”
Fen’s head drooped. “I know. But I . . . don’t know how to do anything else anymore. How to leave. How to stay. How to go back. How to move forward.”
“And I can’t . . .” Alfie was going to say help, but he managed to catch himself in time. He knew, he already knew, Fen would hate that. “Hang around while you figure it out?”
“With you here I might not want to. I might just . . .” But Fen didn’t say what he might just. Instead, he turned away, offering Alfie only the shadowed outline of his profile. “That was how my mum and dad fell in love, you know. He used to come and visit the shop. Every week on a Tuesday. Except she told me it wasn’t really him she was waiting for. She was waiting for me.”
Alfie was glad for the darkness in the car. It made them a sort of bubble, him and Fen, Fen’s love and grief.
While on some rational level, he recognised he, too, had probably been planned, decided upon, tried for, he wasn’t sure he’d ever been waited for. Well, except in the most literal sense. His mam had once told him it had been like carrying a fidgety whale around inside her. Billy, typically, had been no problem at all. Slipping into the world like a seal.
Until he’d had to tell them he was gay, he’d always pretty much taken for granted that his parents loved him. But it was family that held them. A pattern of days spent together. The inevitably of ancestry. It was good, though. Important. A lot more than most people had.
But it wasn’t like this. The sort of love that gave you yourself and changed you with its loss. The sort of love you’d cling to, however you could. Even if it meant coming back to somewhere you’d left long ago. To the place it had lived.
“It would be too easy,” Fen was saying, “to end up waiting for you.”
Alfie was quiet, thinking, the moments squeezing awkwardly past.
“You really think,” he asked finally, “if you make yourself miserable enough here, deny yourself anything—or anyone—that could make you feel good, it’ll be enough to drive you out of South Shields?”
Fen gave a brittle laugh. “Well, it worked before.”
“It won’t work this time.”
“Oh really.” He couldn’t see, but he imagined Fen doing the sneery thing with his eyebrows. “What makes you so sure, Alfie Bell?”
“Because you came back for your mam. And you can’t beat love with pain.”
“Tell that to Winston Smith.”
“That was a very specific case of rats in the face.” A slight pause. “And don’t stare at me. I’m not completely ignorant, y’know. I might not know what mineesis is, but I’ve read a book.”
A gleam of light caught at the corner of Fen’s eye, and Alfie wondered if he was crying again. Then he reached up and pulled his glasses down. “I have to go.”
“Look.” The words tumbled out of Alfie like he’d dropped them. “Just think about it, okay?”
Fen wouldn’t look at him. Just pushed open the passenger door.
“I’m going to stick around for the weekend. Just in case like.” Arching his hips awkwardly, and nearly doing himself an intimate injury on the steering column, Alfie navigated his wallet out of his back pocket. Dragged out his business card. “Call me if you change your mind. Or whenever. I mean, even if I’m back down south, you can still call me. Next week, next month, next year. Call me and I’ll be here.”
He flapped his hand hopefully at Fen, who was neither getting out of the car nor reaching for the card. So Alfie leaned over and slid it into the breast pocket of Fen’s waistcoat. Felt the familiar responsive tremor in his body.
That seemed to jar Fen into action. He gave the slightest of nods and slid onto the pavement. Closed the door behind him with a neat click.
And that was that.
Fen was gone: a sleek, slightly dandified figure, lost in the shadows of his mother’s shop.
12
Dear Mum,
* * *
I can’t tell if I’ve been very sensible or very stupid. Story of my life.
I keep remembering this time when Alfie Bell got suspended from school. Which should have been the happiest week of my life. Except it wasn’t.
It was Thursday, summer term, one of those wet-hot days—muggy, you’d say—when the sun couldn’t get through the cloud. Everything hazy yellow, the air so heavy with salt it was like breathing sweat. We were in Assembly in the sports hall, which was where we always had Assembly because it was the only room big enough to hold us all.
I hated that room, with its grey walls and its high windows which were tinted grey as well. It was always too hot or too cold. And it smelled of sport and cruelty and old cabbage, though why it would smell of cabbage, old or otherwise, I never understood because you weren’t allowed to take food in.
We sat on plastic orange chairs we had to put out and put away again every morning. That day, there was a butterfly throwing itself against one of those high grey windows. I remember its wings were red and black. And in the silences you could hear it, this slapping sound that shouldn’t have been so loud, but was. I don’t think anybody was listening to anything else. I’ll never forget the smell of the sports hall, and I’ll never forget that sound either. The sound of a butterfly relentlessly dying.
And, suddenly, Alfie Bell sto
od up. And then he began blundering his way between the rows. He was going through his ungainly stage, all size and no grace, hands like footballs, knuckles practically dragging along the ground, the biggest boy in school. He’s grown into himself now, so much so that I almost forget how tall he is until I have to stretch up to kiss him. Maybe I shouldn’t like that, maybe it should make me feel small or weak or threatened, but it doesn’t. It’s like I’m reaching for something and he’s giving it to me, and some part of me finds it all so ridiculously romantic, it’s a wonder I’m not flicking a foot back like the heroine in a rom-com. All we need are pastel skies and a field of daisies, and a soaring orchestra to bring us to the credits and happy ever after.
In some other story.
Anyway. Alfie Bell and the butterfly. It seems such a trivial thing, looking back: just a kid, standing up in Assembly. But at that age, school, with its rules and routines and savage hierarchies, is your whole world.
So that kid had changed the world.
Silence followed him, down the rows, down the aisles, across the floor. Though by the time he reached the monkey bars, the Headmaster was demanding to know what the hell he thought he was doing.
“Nowt,” said Alfie Bell calmly, and began to climb.
When he reached the top, he swung himself out over nothingness, one hand slung casually between the bars, the other reaching towards that grey window.
I still remember the tightness in my heart. I hated him and I loved him and I was so very afraid he’d fall.
Everyone was yelling at him by now, but he still wouldn’t come down. Not until he’d coaxed the butterfly onto his palm, and trapped it tenderly beneath his huge, blunt fingers. As soon as he was safely on the ground again, they marched him out of there, so I don’t know what happened next. I just know he got suspended for a week. But I imagine him outside, his hand uncurling to release that red-winged creature safely into the sticky, summer air.
I think Alfie Bell has decided I’m his butterfly. And some part of me desperately wants to be. I would love to be held in his hands, sheltered and made precious, especially now, when I feel so very alone.
The first time I went with him, I used him like a knife or a bottle of whisky. But, truthfully, it was easy, far too easy, to get past the anger and the shame. And that’s what scares me most of all.
I think I’ve half forgotten what it’s like to feel good, so it creeps over me like a spilled secret or a broken promise, this deep, sweet relief that’s as wrong as wrong can be. And how weak must I be to turn in to it so readily? A space of joy as wide as Alfie Bell’s outstretched arms. Is that all my love is worth? After everything you gave me, I can’t even give you a little grief.
I know you wouldn’t want this. You’d want me to be happy and comforted. You’d want me to live my life. But I can’t just carry on, unchanged. There are a thousand places I could hide. But I won’t let you be nothing. You made your choice. And this is mine.
Except Alfie Bell would make it so easy to make different ones. I want so badly the way he looks at me, the way he touches me. I want all of it. The person I remember how to be—just a little bit—when I’m with him. He’s pursuing me, actually pursuing me (or, at least, he was before I turned him down), in this old-fashioned, troublesome, silly, slightly overwhelming way. And I’m supposed to be more sophisticated than this, but I love it. He’s always been like this, this axis pulling the world into shape around him. But now it’s all for me, and it feels exactly the way I used to daydream it would.
How can I let him give me this now?
I keep trying to convince myself it’s about me, not about him. That if things were different he’d be nothing more than a relic of my adolescence, stripped of all power. Or perhaps it’s not that simple. Perhaps he’ll always be some part of my loneliest self. The boy who hurt me so much I had to make him a fantasy. Except he’s so much more than my memories of hurt. So much more than my silly imaginings. And now that I’m lonely again, and full of hurt, he’s here, and he’s offering me . . . well, I don’t know exactly. I’m not sure he does either. Except the hope of it is rich as pollen between us.
But the truth is, I’m not Alfie Bell’s butterfly. He can’t save me. I’m lost and wingless, wanting only the shelter of his hands.
* * *
Love always,
Fen
13
Eventually Alfie ran out of circles he could drive in, so he went back to the B&B. His room smelled a bit like cabbage, which was probably the fault of that damn flower Fen had given him. He thought about throwing it away, but he didn’t . . . couldn’t. Just left it sitting there stupidly in the plastic cup he’d nicked from the bathroom.
It was late enough to count as early, but he didn’t really want to get into bed and lie there sleepless in the dark. God knew what he’d start thinking.
He paced about his room in the greyish-orange non-dawn. At least in London, he was always too knackered for this kind of emo shit. Work, play, home, not necessarily in that order, cycling endlessly. Reliably. Comfortably. Maybe it was where he belonged.
He tried to imagine Fen there, but couldn’t. Couldn’t see Fen in his gleaming, overdesigned apartment. It would be like putting some bright, wild bloom in a hothouse. But then he remembered that Fen was as much a creature of the south as Alfie was. He probably lived in a bohemian warehouse conversion in Shoreditch—one of those places with exposed brickwork and no dividing walls. Hell, he’d probably shared it with his boyfriend, who Alfie immediately pictured as one of those lacquered London gays who drawled all the time and wore pointy shoes.
If he kissed Fen in London, would he still taste of the sea?
And why was he even thinking about that? He’d probably never get to kiss Fen again. A realisation that felt like getting punched in the face. Alfie slumped into the chintzy chair by the window and, in pure desperation, phoned Greg. Who actually picked up. Because he always did.
“Tell me this is a booty call, Alfredo.”
“Uh, hi. Uh. Not really. Why would you think that?”
“Because why else would you phone your ex-boyfriend at four in the morning?”
“To talk?” Actually, it did seem pretty outlandish. “Shit. Sorry. Did I wake you?”
Greg made a soft, languorous sound like he was stretching. “I haven’t gone to bed yet. I entertained a couple of gentleman callers, courtesy of Grindr, and now I’m watching Diagnosis: Murder.”
Alfie dragged the curtain out of the way and stared at Ocean Road. There was a choppy lightness at the edge of the distant sky, like someone was pulling open an envelope, but without the glow from the kebab shops and curry houses, it was proper dark down there. And quiet too: no traffic, no birds, just the shush-shush of the sea. It was like he was the last man in the North East. You never felt like that in London. There was always somebody else awake. Something else going on. “You should get a job.”
“Why on earth would I want one of those?”
“Because then you’d lead a normal life, so you wouldn’t be up at four in the morning watching crappy TV.”
“It’s a cult classic, darling. Why don’t you come round? The intrepid Dr. Sloan is helping a reporter whose dancer partner has been stabbed at a disco.”
Alfie would have loved to. He would have taken a bottle of wine. Maybe more than one. And Greg would have fallen asleep in his lap. “I’m in South Shields.”
“What? Again?”
“Yeah, sometimes people leave London more than once.”
“I know that. Sometimes I go to Bath to stay in my parents’ house. I just meant . . . why?”
“I wanted to apologise to Fen.”
Greg made a sceptical noise. “And how did that go?”
“Okay, actually. I mean, he didn’t throw plant water at me this time.” Best not mention the toilet thing.
“So now you’re cleansed and redeemed and can move on with your life?”
“I guess I kind of have to.”
“You do
n’t sound very happy for a man who has achieved catharsis.”
“Well.” Alfie opened his mouth to explain. Failed utterly. And Greg didn’t press him. Just sat with him for a while, in silence, the soft rhythm of his breath down the line providing a faint sense of connection across the miles between them. At last he found some words. But they turned out to be pretty basic. “I asked him out.”
“Seriously?”
“It wasn’t straight off or anything. Took him to dinner first.”
Greg laughed. “You’re such a romantic.”
“Don’t take the mick, man. I’m not in the mood.”
“I’m not. I’ve always liked the way you just . . . do stuff sometimes, instead of second-guessing yourself or worrying about what people will think of you.” He was slurring a little, and Alfie wondered if he’d been drinking.
“So you’re saying you admire my commitment to looking like an idiot?”
“I’m pretty sure looking like an idiot is the very definition of romance.”
“I’m pretty sure it isn’t.”
“Put it this way,” said Greg after a moment. “I can’t think of many people I’d be willing to look like an idiot for.”
Alfie found himself staring at his cabbage—the exterior petals had spread, revealing a roselike swirl of dark pink. “He still said no.”
“Because you . . . Because of your past?”
“Not exactly.”
“What was it, then? Didn’t you click?”
“I wouldn’t have asked him out if we hadn’t clicked. There’s clicking. There’s . . . lots of clicking. We clicked all over the bonnet of my car.”
“Gosh, you didn’t click me on your car.”
“Greg.”
“Sorry. Sorry. So what happened after you, err, clicked?”
Alfie let out a long breath that sounded more like a groan. “His mam died.”
“Right then?”
“No, no, like over a year ago.”
“Oh phew. I mean, not phew. That’s awful. But less awful than her dying while you were trying to put your dick in her son.”