by Liz Jacobs
“Having a good time? I thought I saw you dancing with Nat,” Izzy said in his ear.
“Yeah, it’s been awesome.” He made eye contact. “Thanks for getting me.”
She looked pleased with herself. “Anytime.” She caught Dex by the hand and pulled him into her sweaty embrace.
Now that Nick knew they weren’t together, he felt a little … he supposed it was envy, really. He had never felt easy with anyone, not even Lena. Maybe with his sister, but that was different; that was family. They looked so comfortable, Dex sagging against Izzy, dark arm wrapped around her exposed pale shoulder. Nick jumped if you touched him. How must it feel to trust like this? He couldn’t imagine. So he just watched them and pushed down anything that could darken his mood. He could feel how a stray thought could pop his temporary joy, and he skated carefully around it, closed his eyes, pretended he was still dancing.
“All right, I’m going back out,” Izzy declared. “There was a dark-headed bloke over there somewhere I needed to look at more closely.” She went without another word. When Nick turned to Dex, Dex was laughing. He had one hand over his dreads, probably in an attempt to keep them out of his face. It made him look rakish.
He caught Nick’s gaze. “Don’t expect to see Izzy much if you go to clubs with her. This is her MO.”
Nick had absolutely no problem with that, which he felt, just then, the need to acknowledge. “I have no problem with that.”
“As long as you know what’s in store.” Dex settled next to Nick like Nick didn’t set his teeth on edge. Maybe he was mellowing out.
“Are you mellowing out?” Nick asked and then heard a record scratch in his head. Oh shit. When he dared to glance over at Dex, Dex was laughing, head resting against the wall.
“I so deserved that, man,” he said. “Look, I’ve been a dickhead to you, completely inadvertently, and—” Nick’s heart beat hard in his chest. “It wasn’t you. At all.” He pinned Nick with a look. A look that shivered through Nick’s spine. “Basically, I wanted to apologize for that. I’m going to be less of a dickhead from now on. Promise.”
Nick had no idea what to say. All he could think was how Dex’s eyelashes were ridiculous and made his eyes look made-up. How Dex’s throat glistened with a sheen of sweat. How much he really, really couldn’t have been having these thoughts at all because he—couldn’t. It wasn’t an option.
“It’s totally fine,” is what he said. “I appreciate it, anyway.” Then he nodded toward the writhing dance floor. “I’m just gonna—”
“Yeah, sure, go.” Dex nodded and plucked at his own T-shirt, unsticking it from his body in an easy movement.
Nick didn’t linger. He ran off.
+
But Nick couldn’t ignore things when it was just him in bed, in the dark. He twisted this way and that, tried to get comfortable and fall asleep, but the swirl of all that had happened chased him. He turned over onto his stomach, pillowed his face on his hands, and looked out into the London night. Maybe if he confronted all the crap instead of running from it, he’d actually be able to fall asleep. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. Maybe he could fool himself for just a minute.
Embarrassment writhed inside him, though. Now that he was sober, memories popped up in erratic shifts. Why did I do that? Why had he danced like an idiot? Why had he gone at all?
He had been rude to Dex, too. He squeezed his eyes shut and felt anxiety pooling in his stomach in a way that nauseated him. Why hadn’t he thanked him properly? There was probably something he could have said, but he had no idea what it was, because Nick rarely knew the right thing to do or say.
He groaned and covered himself with the duvet. The close, sweaty air underneath didn’t help, but maybe if he stayed there forever, he’d never actually have to deal with any of it. Suffocating on his own humiliation—what an ending.
Dex was a problem. Nick didn’t know why Dex being gay flipped Nick’s view of him, but it did. Now Dex was—no. Dex was nothing.
Nick was thousands of miles away, but the yoke of all he had to be extended far beyond that.
He wasn’t this. He wasn’t Natali and her confidence in who she was. He wasn’t Dex and his grace, his easy pride and acceptance of all that he contained.
Nick was the product of all things unspoken, all things fearful and untold. Don’t tell anyone you’re Jewish. It’s good, you pass, you don’t have the family nose. You have light hair, thank God. Your sister’s got the sad Jewish eyes, but you—you took after your dad. You’ll be okay.
Later, he’d begun to say these things to himself. Things like, Don’t mention how the sight of your middle school best friend sends your heart fluttering in a way that it never, ever should. You want to be him, that’s all. You want to know what it’s like to be that good-looking, to have that confidence, to feel your feet planted on the soil they were meant to stay on. That’s all it is. That’s all it’s ever been.
Don’t breathe a word of how you cried in the shower every day for a whole summer because you knew you were different and that the door your path led to was forbidden.
Don’t say it. Don’t even think it.
You aren’t that. You can’t be. That is not for you.
Move thousands of miles away. Accidentally meet people that you’ve always longed for and wanted to be like. Wonder, every night, why they picked you out of a sea of people who were so much more than you could ever be. You, a mess. You want to be just like them.
But you can’t be. Because you have to go back. You will always, always have to go back.
Dex wasn’t the problem. It was Nick. It had always, always been Nick.
8
Dex was lulled watching the stations pass him by. It was off-peak, a rainy Saturday morning slog of a train ride. The train was half full of poshos off to the Cotswolds for the weekend, or so Dex imagined. Ostensibly, he was slogging through piles of research on his laptop. In reality, however, he’d stopped paying attention once they’d passed Reading. He was thinking about the first time he had visited his parents at their new home, and he was thinking about Al.
He remembered how when he decided to pick Al up from school, everyone had begun to file out, and he had watched white face after white face, all uniformed and chatting and so very much belonging. Girls walking hand in hand, long, shiny hair playing in the breeze, boys climbing each other in games of macho one-upmanship. And there, slinking out all on his own, had been Al. One of maybe three black faces that Dex could see. One of a handful of dark faces in all the school, probably.
Small, awkward—an alien in a sea of sameness. Dex’s heart had clenched, and he felt almost sick at the sight of it.
His mum hadn’t mentioned this part. He should have known, should have thought, but he’d been so busy up his own arse, he hadn’t actually realised.
Al had come up to him, and his face said it all. Dex had cuffed him on the shoulder, wrapped his arm around his neck, and they trudged home together, Dex learning the route for the first time. His own family, in the Cotswolds. Unsettling didn’t begin to describe it.
If he had seen the looks sent his way in just those twenty minutes of waiting, he couldn’t imagine what it was like for Al. Day in and day out, consistently the black kid, the weird kid, the small kid who had yet to hit a growth spurt.
Now Dex thought about what would greet him at home. Home. It didn’t feel like home. Nothing about it felt like home, not even the familiar worn furniture inside his parents’ small but modern house. The kitchen was state-of-the-art, incongruous with all of their things. It was hard to believe his dad had landed the financier to the spies job he had now, but there it was.
Guilt about wanting to be back on familiar London ground pushed firmly to the back of his mind, he focused on the article he had in front of him and did his best not to think about what he looked like to the crowd of commuters around him. The only black guy heading towards the same destination.
+
Mum had gone all out with the fry-up. As s
oon as he was through the door, Dex smelled hot buttered toast, fried eggs, mushrooms, beans, all of his favourites.
“Hiya,” he greeted, dropping his bag carefully in the foyer.
“Dexter!” Dad’s voice boomed out from the kitchen. Mum was at the hob, looking exhausted but cheerful as she spooned out beans onto toast. Dad looked well, his nose half in his phone, tablet off to the side. Dex wondered how he didn’t spill coffee onto any of his electronics day in and day out. Al was nowhere to be found.
Dex sank into a chair. He’d had to get up at arse o’clock to make his train, and one cup of terrible train coffee did not make up for that. “Smells amazing,” he told Mum as soon as she slid a plate in front of him. “Got any coffee?”
“The kettle’s just boiled, hasn’t it?” She leaned down and kissed him on the forehead, ran her hands over his locs. She probably thought she was being subtle, but he always knew what that tiny wrinkle of her nose meant. When will you get rid of these and get yourself a proper cut? He shook his head and began shoveling food into his mouth.
Dad put down his phone and pushed his glasses off his face as he watched Dex eat. Dad. He looked distinguished with his grey temples, but it was always a shock to see it. Every time Dex saw his parents now, they looked smaller somehow. Just a bit more worn, just a little more tired. Was it possible that they changed so much in the few months and weeks, or was he being weird and imagining it? They were in their late forties, and Dex had heard somewhere that that wasn’t old at all. But it was close to fifty.
“Well, here you are, love.” A miraculous cup of coffee appeared next to Dex’s plate. “Can I get you anything else? Do you want a bit of a kip after breakfast?”
Dex wanted nothing more than to sleep, but that hadn’t been the plan for this weekend. “I’m all right. Sit, relax.”
She waved him off, but then sat down with her cup of tea anyway. Now he had both of them staring at him indulgently as he ate. He swallowed a bit of egg and laughed. “All right, what?”
“Oh, it’s just good to see you, isn’t it?” Mum laughed. “You look good. Maybe a bit thin.”
That was crap, obviously, but she always said that. “How are you? When did you get off your shift?”
She squinted at the clock on the microwave. “Just about two hours past, I suppose.”
Dex winced. She’d always had a mental schedule and would appear at home at all hours of the day long enough to make sure everyone was clothed and fed and properly looked after and then disappear for a double shift at the hospital. Sometimes, Dex had come home to find her slumped over on the sofa, book open in her lap, dead to the world. She was the queen of the twenty-minute kip. It was starting to take its toll, though, he could see. The skin under her eyes was darker, thinner; the short hairs at her temples had begun to salt-and-pepper like Dad’s. “When do you go back in again?”
“Oh, not till tonight, got plenty of time,” she said, waving him away. “Now, more importantly—have you got a new boyfriend yet?”
“Muuuum.”
Dad just laughed at them both, pulled his glasses back down onto his nose, and went back to checking his phone and iPad all at once.
+
Al didn’t emerge until nearly noon. By that time, Dex’s mum had already gone into her bedroom for a nap, Dex had had a throw-down with Izzy over text on how it had not been his turn to do the washing up, thank you very much, and Dad had gone into his office—also known as the room where Dex now slept—for some unexpected conference call.
“Oh hey,” Al said with little inflection.
“Hey yourself.” Dex gave him a few minutes before following him to the kitchen. He parked his hip on the counter, watching Al struggle with his breakfast. It was like he had all of his limbs in the right places, but making a cuppa at a normal speed was beyond him. Dex sort of wanted to grab the kettle away from him for his own safety, but didn’t, knowing how easily it could enrage him. Al, for his part, ignored him until he had his tea and toast.
“Do you want me to make you a fry-up?” Dex asked cautiously, and did a double-take when he saw the Waitrose label on the bread. He lifted the loaf in silent question to Al, who just shrugged and shoved a piece of toast in his mouth.
Mum had always gone to Morrisons, or Sainsbury’s. For a while when Dex was about ten, it had been Asda. This was new.
Dex flopped down on the chair across from Al. Al was starting to fill out more, and it was possible he’d grown an inch or so. Dex honestly couldn’t tell anymore. It was like time and distance was warping his awareness of what he knew his family to be, starting with the unfamiliar house down to how many wrinkles mum had at the corners of her eyes. Disorienting. It was like someone had come in while they’d all been away and rearranged everything in ways you couldn’t pinpoint but knew were all wrong.
Dex waited until Al’s cup was half-empty. “Want to do something today?”
Al shrugged without looking at him. Dex hated this gulf between them. He had no idea how to navigate it. But if Al was going to be all teenage ambivalence towards him, Dex would just have to push it.
“We’re doing something today, and you get to pick whether it’s you showing me around town—”
“It’s raining.”
“—or it’s me holing up with you in your room and playing Nintendo. Loudly. By myself.”
His tone must have worked, because Al froze with his toast halfway to his mouth and gave him a panicked look. Then he swallowed the toast, bunged the rest of it on his plate, and said, “Fine. We’re going out.”
“Good.”
+
Al used to be a pretty chatty little kid. Half the time, Dex had no idea what he was saying, but then, he also hadn’t always been listening. His ears were perked up now, but Al was silent. They trudged down High Street with nary a word said between them, apart from Dex asking Al if he’d been to this place or that.
When would I? or Why would I? Dex was beginning to wonder if Al hadn’t been replaced by a pod person. He was also vaguely approaching the end of his rope, so he turned up the collar of his jacket, slipped his knotted hands into his pockets, and let the silence stretch out. At least Al had come out with him.
Cheltenham was, as anticipated, exceptionally posh. It was also exceptionally white. Beautiful Regency-era buildings housed all sorts of shops catering to, Dex imagined, all sorts of yummy mummies and their moneymaking husbands. Cafes and restaurants lined each street, with historic buildings and museums announcing just how cultured and one of a kind this place was. Dex couldn’t deny it its beauty, but he wasn’t precisely enjoying it.
He pictured his mum running errands in between work shifts, wondered what it felt like. He’d got so used to London and its relative diversity. Hell, Birmingham hadn’t been bad, either. This felt like a wake-up call he hadn’t asked for. And this was where Al was growing up now, the weird kid on the outskirts.
Dex watched him trudging along next to him, looking like Mum, where Dex was all his dad. They barely appeared related, but Dex felt like a wolf protecting his cub whenever a passerby gave them a look of any kind. Was he being paranoid? Or did the two of them really stand out like sore thumbs? Another thing he’d lost perspective on. You never forgot, precisely, but sometimes the sharpness of difference got eroded, just a little, on familiar ground.
This wasn’t familiar in any way.
His phone buzzed in his pocket.
How’s the Cotswolds you big posho?
Izzy. Dex rolled his eyes before responding. Stunning, what do u think
Al led them around the corner until they passed a big shopping centre, but didn’t go in. They kept walking.
I think it’s probs crap and u need to come home we miss u <3
It was awful that his spirits lifted at that. It had only been a few hours, but he felt so out of his depth here. Guilt at wanting to be back in his own flat with his own friends encroached once again, and once again he pushed it back.
It’s been like 6 hours u
ok?
“Look, it’s raining and I don’t feel like being stalked in shops today, so can we just go home now?”
Oh. Dex tried to catch Al’s eye, but Al was scowling, looking straight ahead. Dex deflated. Cheltenham. Of course they’d be followed around each shop if they went inside.
“Yeah, sod it. Let’s just have a cuppa and see what’s on the telly.”
They went.
+
By the time he got out of the tube on Sunday, it was freezing and the sun had already set. He felt the drizzle all at once, London welcoming him back into its cold, grey arms. Not even the rain could ruin this return, though.
Al had relaxed a little bit around him, or maybe just got used to him in twenty-four hours, but Dex never got much more than a shrug out of him anyway. They’d stayed up late watching crap telly and drinking Yorkshire tea with digestives, and Dex had got a text off of Izzy with a picture of everyone at the Arms making sad faces at the camera. We miss uuuuuuu [heartbreak emoji], it had said. He’d sent a picture of his tea and Al. Later, he had tossed and turned on the study sofa and looked at Nick’s face turned obligingly sad towards the camera. He didn’t stop until he fell asleep.
Dex heaved his bag more firmly over his shoulder and trudged back to the flat, knowing that he had failed to help Mum and Dad out with Al and also got approximately zero work done.
He was so happy to be back home that he didn’t even care that Jonny had, once again, left beer bottles on the coffee table and was nowhere to be seen. Dex dropped his stuff in his room, then went in search of Izzy, but when he knocked on her door there was no answer. He looked at the time—was it too late or too early for them all to be out? And without him.
He frowned, trudged back down to the kitchen, and flicked the kettle on. Maybe this weekend was anxious mood, tea, and crap telly, and that was fine, because tomorrow was a brand new day or whatever. It was cool. He was fine with that.