by JL Merrow
Rupe smiled. “All right.”
* * * *
These days, there aren’t any boats on the lake in Sandown. They took down the boathouse—god knows what happened to all the boats—and planted up beds of reeds and rushes. Made it look as natural as possible, and now it’s home to ducks and moorhens and migrating swans. It makes a nice backdrop to the new dinosaur museum, which crouches by the road like a pterosaur ready for takeoff. All interactive stuff and animatronics inside, it’s nothing like the collection of dusty old bones I visited on the top floor of the library as a kid. The sea front’s still the same, but Laurie and Sarah don’t run along the sand like they used to. These days, it’s their kids Rupe and I have races with.
Yeah, Rupe and me are still an item. He’s on the telly these days—got a part in EastEnders. Still makes me crack up, hearing him talk like an East End barrow boy. He tells everyone I taught him all he knows about being common. I know people wonder why he’s with someone like me—but then, they never get to see the real Rupe. Only the parts he plays, whether he’s officially acting or not.
It wasn’t easy, staying together, with him at Cambridge and me at Sussex, but we managed it somehow. Oh, we had our ups and downs, like everyone—even broke up a couple of times—but we never seemed to stay apart for long. The worst time was when I got it into my thick head Rupe was cheating on me with one of his Footlights mates—but then his dad died, and it shook me right out of my petty jealousy, seeing Rupe so devastated.
I never did come out to Mum. She just sort of worked it out on her own. It was probably for the best. Rupe’s the one who’s into dramatics, not me.
And every year, I try and bring him down to the Isle of Wight sometime in the summer. So we can sail around the fort in Withnail, and remember what turned out to be the best holiday of my life.
THE END
ABOUT J.L. MERROW
J.L. Merrow is that rare beast, an English person who refuses to drink tea. She read Natural Sciences at Cambridge, where she learned many things, chief amongst which was that she never wanted to see the inside of a lab ever again. Her one regret is that she never mastered the ability of punting one-handed whilst holding a glass of champagne.
She writes across genres, with a preference for contemporary gay romance and the paranormal, and is frequently accused of humour. Find her online at jlmerrow.com.
ABOUT JMS BOOKS LLC
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