by James Lear
I’ll tell you everything tomorrow.
He texted back OK. No emojis now.
I’ll call you in the morning.
And that was the end of the conversation. What should I do? I’ve changed my mind, I wanted to say. I’m on my way to see you right now.
No. Go downstairs, put on an act, and do what you said you’d do. Phone Adrian in the morning, arrange to meet, try to explain what is happening in your life. I looked at my watch, almost seven. I had just over twelve hours to figure out what exactly is happening in my life, and to what extent it concerns Adrian. And if he’s part of the picture, what does that mean for Nicky and Alex? Will Adrian slip into their lives as easily as Dan appears to have done?
I splashed my face with water, practised looking normal in the mirror, dismissed thoughts of impending death, and went downstairs for dinner with my wife and children.
10
AND SO WE APPROACH THE END OF THE STORY. IF YOU’RE LOOKING for a happy ending full of forgiveness and acceptance, then I warn you now, you’re in for a disappointment.
I got home from France on a Wednesday. We were off to Hampshire on Friday afternoon for the wedding on Saturday, all staying at the nice country hotel where the ceremony and reception were taking place. That left me Thursday evening to see Adrian and announce whatever decision I had come to.
As it happened, I didn’t do much of the talking. Adrian asked questions, to which I gave answers. All I had decided in the intervening hours was that I would be as truthful as possible, even if that meant scuppering our nascent relationship. Better to start my new life with a clean sheet and no lies. I’ve had enough of lies. Look where they’ve got me.
The weather was still awful. We should have been sitting outside in a nice beer garden, rather than cooped up in a gloomy pub interior, seeking out a table in the least populated part of the room, which of course was right by the toilets. It was a characterless chain pub, which at least had the advantage of no music.
We were both in our work clothes: suit and tie for me, tracksuit and trainers for Adrian. We both knew what was underneath those clothes. We’d seen each other naked, and we’d exchanged photographs. We knew we were on the brink of something that we both wanted. I was ready, however much of a mess my life was.
Adrian, it appeared, had reservations.
‘I need to know what’s going on in your life, Joe. I get the feeling you haven’t been telling me the truth.’
My first impulse was to laugh; when did I last tell the truth to anyone, including myself? Little partial truths, yes, they leak out from time to time, usually in order to get me what I want—but the whole truth? All about Joe? The kind of thing you tell to a trusted friend, a partner? Well, how long was it since I’d had one of those? I stopped telling the truth to Angie the first time I wanked over a picture of a cock on the Internet. I stopped telling the truth to Stuart, my closest-ever male friend, my soul brother, the morning after my stag night. My adult life has been a series of lies. Lying to wife, children, friends. Lying to my sexual partners without a second thought, knowing exactly what to say to get what I want. Yeah, I’m straight, I’m just doing this while my wife’s away, let’s fuck and suck and forget each other, secure in the knowledge that we’re both liars who neither give nor deserve respect.
I took a deep breath, quelled the hysteria, and said ‘OK. Here goes.’ Don’t do it, Joe! Lie to him! Get him into bed! ‘My wife and I are leading separate lives; she’s seeing someone else, but we haven’t officially split up yet.’
‘I see.’ He sounded despondent.
‘My son is eighteen and still lives at home. He’ll be starting university in October if he gets the right grades. My daughter is at university and doesn’t come home much anymore.’
‘Do they know about you?’
‘No.’
‘None of them? Your wife?’
‘No. I haven’t told her.’
‘Why not?’
Good question, Adrian. Why haven’t I told Angie that I’m gay, that our whole marriage was founded on a lie? ‘Because the opportunity never came up. I was going to.’ No, Joe, that’s not true. ‘I wanted to. But then I found out she was having an affair and I just thought, well, it’s none of her business anymore.’
‘So this is all a secret then.’
Oh God, it sounded so pathetic, so sordid. ‘Yes.’
‘Right.’
Adrian took a drink, scratched his chin, looked around the pub with his china-blue eyes.
‘And what about your holiday?’
‘I’ve just come back from France.’
‘Yes.’ He paused, waiting for more. I didn’t know what to say. ‘With a friend, you said.’
‘Yes.’
He finally looked at me, his eyes full of disappointment.
‘OK, if you really want to know, I went with a guy I’ve been seeing. His name’s Graham. He’s very wealthy, and he has a house overlooking St. Tropez. He offered to fly me out there for a few days, and I was so fed up with things at home that I said yes. It was a mistake.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he’s a dickhead.’
‘Right.’
‘I’m not going to see him again, if that’s what you want to know. It’s not a . . . ’ I was going to say ‘it’s not a relationship,’ but that sounded so hollow even I couldn’t spit it out. Of course it was a relationship—based on sex and money, but still a relationship. Graham liked me enough to want to have me around. Perhaps he thought that tossing a couple of French rent boys my way would keep me content. He seemed disappointed when I walked out. Another person I’ve let down. I wouldn’t add Adrian to that list. ‘I found out that he uses drugs and practises unsafe sex.’
Adrian drank, but for the first time he looked as if he cared about me. ‘Oh. I see. Go on.’
‘I did things I thought I’d never do.’
‘You took drugs?’
‘Yes.’
‘You fucked without a condom?’
‘No. But he did. Someone else. And he’d been fucking me.’
‘I see. Like you said, he’s a dickhead.’
I was at a loss for words. Had I ruined everything?
‘Anything else you need to tell me, Joe?’
‘Need to tell you? What do you mean?’
‘If we’re going to be friends, we have to be honest with each other.’
‘Friends?’
‘Lovers then. Whatever. I can’t stand another disaster. I’d rather be single.’
‘And I’d rather be honest. So if you really want to know, I’ve been screwing around. I’ve been meeting guys off the Internet. It started off as a way of finding out if this was something I really wanted to do.’ I felt a little clink in my mind—the sound of a penny dropping. ‘Although I think I knew that already, from the first moment you touched me that day when I hurt my neck.’
‘Yeah.’ He smiled—at last. ‘I thought so.’
‘But I never thought in a million years that you’d be interested.’
‘You thought I was straight?’
‘I suppose so. I don’t know. I was confused.’
‘So you had to have sex with lots of strangers to find out.’
Fuck me, he wasn’t pulling any punches. ‘Yeah, that’s about the size of it.’
‘Right.’ He watched me, nodding his head, and then burst out laughing. ‘Well, I certainly can’t accuse you of hiding anything.’
‘None of it meant anything.’ That was a lie, of course; there were many times when I’d wondered if I felt something—Simon from the sauna, for instance. Beautiful young Pascal. Even Graham. ‘It was just sex.’
‘OK,’ said Adrian. ‘And what about us? Will that be just sex?’
‘I don’t know. How can I tell?’
He shrugged. ‘I can tell.’
‘You mean you . . . ’
‘Yes. I like you—a lot. I always have. And when we had that drink and then those text messages . . . I’ve been th
inking about nothing else.’
His face was red, his eyes wet. I wanted so badly to kiss him. ‘So why don’t we go somewhere?’
He put his hand over mine and squeezed. ‘No. Not tonight.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you have to do something for me.’
‘OK. What?’
‘Will you do it?’
‘Depends what it is.’
‘That’s not good enough. I want to know that you’d do anything for me.’
‘Fucking hell. Go on then. Try me.’
‘Here goes.’ He settled himself in his chair and counted on his fingers. ‘Number one. You will go and get yourself tested.’
‘What, like for . . . ’
‘For HIV, yes. And everything else while you’re at it.’
‘OK. Next?’
‘Number two. You will do the right thing by your wife and family.’
‘Jesus, I already pay for everything.’
‘Uh-uh. Not good enough. I mean you will tell them what’s happening, and you will make a proper break with your wife.’
‘Christ. Number three?’
‘You will stop fucking around.’
‘For how long?’
‘A month. We’ll meet again exactly one month from now, and you will tell me how you’ve got on. In the meantime, we can communicate by text or email, or we can talk on the phone, but no sexy stuff.’
‘OK.’ I drank and thought about it and came to a conclusion. ‘I suppose a quick blowjob in the toilet is out of the question then?’
‘Very funny. Now shake my hand like a gentleman.’
We shook. ‘All right then, Adrian. We have a deal.’
We embraced as we left the pub, and I felt the muscles in his shoulders and arms, felt the heat from his body against mine, and then we went our separate ways.
Holly’s wedding could not have been more perfect. The sun shone, birds sang, flowers bloomed, and everyone gathered in a beautiful old hotel in rural Hampshire to celebrate the union. Holly was still on the large side, but not unattractively so, and her dress was a masterpiece of containment and concealment. Her husband was a nice-looking posh boy called Toby, who worked for the family property development business, and I suspect his folks coughed up for the wedding. We exchanged about six words during the course of the day. The best man and the ushers looked like part of a rugby team, which indeed they were, and there was a lot of hearty shouting and horseplay as the afternoon wore on and the booze flowed. Nicky looked amazing, outshining the bride, although I suppose, as her father, I would think that. She was with Paul, the boyfriend we’d been hearing about but had never yet met. He shook my hand and looked me in the eye and tried to impress me. ‘Any minute now, he’ll call you sir,’ whispered Angie, which made us both laugh like school kids. Under different circumstances, I’d have been happy for him to call me sir—he was a tidy little package, black hair, big brown puppy-dog eyes, stubble, broad shoulders—but even I wasn’t about to try and corner him in the gents.
Yes, a perfect day, and we were the perfect family; even Alex came out of his shell and charmed a few friends and relatives. Everyone was happy and relaxed and glad to see each other. Except me.
Why? Because just as we were about to go into the garden room for the marriage ceremony itself, I saw Stuart.
Stuart, my best friend and best man, my brother in all but name, and for one night only, my lover, forgotten, blocked out, dropped as soon as I sobered up and walked down the aisle. Another wedding, twenty years ago, Stuart in a morning suit, his face pale and tense, putting on an act, but I could see it in his eyes, the desperation, the longing, the crushing knowledge that everything was over.
And here he was again, like a double exposure, walking into the present out of the past. A bad dream bubbling up from a guilty conscience? I turned away, hoping he hadn’t seen me, but when I looked back, there he was, very real, flesh and blood, twenty years older and none the worse for it, balder, more lines of course, but he still looked as if he could run a marathon without getting out of breath. I wanted to run away, but there was nothing for it—I had to act normal before anyone noticed me being weird.
‘Stuart!’ I advanced toward him with outstretched hands. ‘Good to see you, buddy!’ Ah yes, I was still good old Joe Heath, confident, successful, relaxed. ‘It’s been too long.’ I went on in the same vein, trying to think why on earth he had materialized at this wedding. How had he found out about it? And then I remembered—something else I had blocked out quite successfully—Stuart and Jackie, Angie’s sister, the mother of the bride, were great friends back in the day, they had even dated for a while, and we used to joke about a double wedding. Nothing came of it, nothing was said, and the romance turned into a friendship. When Holly was born, Stuart was her godfather. Of course he was. I was at the christening. That was before I married Angie. Before everything changed. Before people started asking me, ‘What happened to Stuart? You used to be such great friends,’ and I became a master of the evasive reply. Busy at work, busy being a father, we drifted apart.
‘You must be very proud,’ I said, a little too late.
‘You’d forgotten, hadn’t you?’ There was a twinkle in Stuart’s eye that I hadn’t seen for a long time, a confidence that he never had when we were kids. I was the confident one.
‘No, of course not.’
‘Yeah, right. Whatever you say.’ He was smiling and arching his eyebrow. ‘Angie here? The kids?’
‘Yes. They’re not kids anymore, though.’
‘I know they’re not. I’ve seen Nicky a few times.’
‘What?’
‘When she comes down to visit Holly. There’s been a hell of a lot of wedding preparation, you know.’
‘She never mentioned it.’
Stuart shrugged. ‘Why would she?’
‘Well . . . ’ But of course he was right. Nicky probably doesn’t even know that Stuart and I were friends. She was only two when we married, and after that his name wasn’t mentioned much. Maybe Jackie or even Angie explained the connection, but that kind of stuff doesn’t mean much to kids. Stuart would just be a friend of the family, Holly’s godfather, someone who gives you presents.
‘Anyway, it’s great to see you. You weren’t around last night.’ There had been a big pre-wedding dinner at the hotel at which Mr. and Mrs. Heath played their allotted parts.
‘I was working. And I don’t live that far away. I just drove down this morning.’
‘Oh.’ Why did my heart sink? ‘And I suppose you’re driving straight back when it’s over.’
‘No way. I intend to toast the happy couple properly. I’m staying here.’
‘Right, right.’ My palms were sweating. ‘That’s great.’
‘It’s OK, Joe.’ That confident half-smile again. ‘I’m not going to jump on you.’
I laughed my bantering barroom laugh. Loud enough to make heads turn. Stuart looked slightly startled and had the good manners to change the conversation.
‘I’d love to say hi to Angie.’ Very clever, Stuart. Reassuring me that my wife comes first, that I’m safely married. If you only knew. ‘Where is she?’
‘Come on.’ I grabbed his arm. ‘Let’s find her.’
It wasn’t difficult; she was with Jackie and their mother Jennifer, my mother-in-law. ‘Look what the cat dragged in!’ I said, beaming like the happiest man in the world. ‘Sure you want this kind of riffraff at your daughter’s wedding, Jackie? I can chuck him out, you know.’ The laugh again, too loud, but I couldn’t help it.
‘Well well well,’ said Angie, throwing her arms round Stuart. ‘How wonderful to see you. My God, you’re still as handsome as ever. The one that got away, eh, Jackie?’
‘Oh, we’re still good friends.’ Jackie took Stuart’s free arm, and the sisters shared him. ‘Aren’t we, darling?’
‘We sure are.’
And we all reflected on the fact that Jackie’s friendship with Stuart lasted a lot longer than her
marriage to Dave, Holly’s father, whom she divorced after years of drama and drinking, and was much happier for it. Dave was here, all eighteen stone of him, keeping a diplomatic distance from his ex-wife and trying—at dinner last night anyway—to stay sober. The thought crossed my mind that maybe Stuart stepped in when Dave stepped out, and that there was more to this lasting friendship than met the eye. Was Stuart my de facto brother-in-law? Would we all be getting together for another wedding in the months or years to come? And if so, what did my stag night mean? Two guys, pissed, getting something out of their systems, that was all, and we could have remained friends, there was no threat, nothing to fear.
I tried to catch Stuart’s eye, but suddenly everyone was on the move, and we took our places for the ceremony. Angie, Alex, Paul and I sat together on the bride’s side; Stuart was in the front row, so all I could see was the back of his head, which didn’t give much away. Nicky played her part to perfection. Holly and Toby looked radiant of course. There were readings and songs, and someone played the cello, and it was only when Angie nudged me in the ribs that I realized I was so deep in contemplation that I wasn’t paying the slightest attention.
‘Wakey wakey, Joe,’ she whispered. ‘You’re at a wedding.’
‘Sorry, I was miles away. Thinking how fast they grow up.’
Angie looked into my eyes, trying to read me. It was the nearest we’d come to real communication for a long time. She even put her hand on mine. Sadness, affection, regret . . . but it was time for us to part. We both knew it, and that little squeeze of the hand sealed the deal. We can do this nicely. Nobody needs to get hurt. We’ll move on as a family—separate but still together when it matters. All of us growing up—kids, adults—moving on, changing.
Nothing lasts. Except, apparently, Stuart’s relationship with Jackie.
Have I been in the dark for the last twenty years, while things go on in the rest of the world that nobody bothers to tell me about? Am I like one of those jungle veterans who emerges blinking into the light of day decades after the war has ended? Have I been so obsessed with my own problems that I’ve lost everything that matters? Family and friends thrown away for a few feet of anonymous cock. A couple of fantasy affairs that evaporate like mirages. Why do I think Adrian is any different? Just because he didn’t roll over on the first or second date? Because he’s playing hard to get? Maybe that’s his thing, just like Bill’s thing was getting me to dress in women’s knickers and Simon’s thing was giving out fake phone numbers. Graham likes fucking rent boys. Michael picks up men in the gym. Pete takes photos. And so on and so on. Joe tells everyone he’s married because he gets more sex that way. Everyone’s got a gimmick, including Adrian. It means nothing. This is reality—people who know each other, love each other, go to weddings and christenings and funerals, and take care of each other when their marriages fail. Parents and children, brothers and sisters, old, trusted friends who don’t let you down.