Life After Joe
Page 11
He had wanted me to meet with Joe. The offer on the flat had fallen through, and it was standing empty. I supposed there were things we should talk about. But that had been too hard. Joe had gone quietly home to Marnie on that Christmas Eve, and knowing him, she never saw the join. I hoped not. Lou had told me she was pregnant. I hoped that would make the difference to Joe, pay him off for his gamble. I hoped he would be happy, but I was quite sure I never wanted to lay eyes on him again.
Aaron was all I wanted. I had counted days and walked into his arms when he came home, and broken all the rules. Was this where I paid? He was pale in the passenger seat beside me, arms folded over his chest. He said, “I still love him, Matt.”
I nodded. I’d have loved him too if I’d had the chance. They had met at college, Rosie and Aaron, and had been settling in for life. “I know.”
“When he died, I didn’t know what had hit me. My…my fucking hair started to go grey, like in some stupid film. Overnight. Can you believe that?”
I turned to him. I put out a hand, making it be steady, and gently brushed his crown of stars. “Yeah, I can. It’s all right, love. Just talk.”
He frowned and seemed to come back from a distance. “Well, I meant to,” he said. “But not about that. Listen, Matt—I’ve had an offer of a job, and…it’s good, but it’s a tough one to call, and…”
A job. Of course. I could not help myself: I shifted back to stare out over the countryside and after a moment put my face into my hands. The oil industry could take him anywhere, couldn’t it—his alternative energy concepts probably further still. He was, as I had rapidly worked out, something approaching a genius. He and Rosie could have worked together. The only time I felt inadequate in his company was when he was leafing through the books of technical drawings Rosie had left behind, many of them sketches that brought Aaron’s ideas to life. Okay. I had thought myself bad off having to do without him for his North Sea months. I might soon be looking down the barrel of a year in Brazil—or forever, because what did I have that could hold him? “Where?” I said miserably.
“Er…That’s the thing. They’re a new outfit, setting up shop near Seascale. In one of the disused Sellafield nuclear labs, as it happens. They’re looking at ways of decommissioning old power stations, cleaning them up and securing them. Finding better ways to use them in the future. I’d have a long commute, but…I’d be home every night, and I don’t know how you’d feel about that. Living with me day in, day out—I might be more fun in small doses, you know…”
I lifted my head. I echoed unsteadily, “Seascale?”
“Yeah. In Cumberland. Be a pain in the arse to get to, I know. But they’re offering a fortune. I could…If you want, I could buy Joe out of his half of your flat. I know how much it means to you, and…Matthew, sweetheart. What on earth’s the matter?”
I scrambled over the handbrake to get to him. He caught me halfway, lifting, preventing me from doing myself an injury. “Fuck the flat!” I sobbed. “I never want to see the place again. I just want…”
I couldn’t get further, but he knew. His arms were closing around me. He said, breathlessly, crushed and shaken with laughter, “Okay! We’ll find somewhere in between the coasts. I hear Hexham’s nice…Oh, Matt, what did you think I was going to say?”
About the Author
Harper Fox weaves her stories from her home in rural Northumbria in the UK. She loves northern England all the more because it is the country of her adoption—her grandfather came here as a refugee from Lithuania during the Second World War. The landscape inspires her to poetry of the magical-realist kind, and her work has appeared in several British literary magazines. She is not quite sure why the area also inspires her to erotic M/M prose, but she doesn’t look the gift horse in the mouth.
Harper has been published by Carina (her first success), Samhain Publishing and Loose Id. She has written M/M stories all her life, and she hid them in drawers until the hard drive was invented. She loves being able to share her romances with a readership now, as well as the backgrounds they’re set against, which are some of her favourite places in the UK.
She is lucky enough to have lived for the past twenty-four years with her SO, Jane. She isn’t that old, really—they met when they were very young. Honest.
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ISBN: 978-1-4268-9036-9
Copyright © 2010 by Vanessa Stafford
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