Pricks and Pragmatism

by J. L. Merrow

  I watched him perch awkwardly on the edge of an armchair and tried not to sigh. He was like a tortoise, I decided. Retreating into his shell every time I tried to get close.

  Was he even actually gay?

  Still, as long as he let me stay here until the end of Finals, what did I care? I sat forward again. “If you’ve got some food in, I’m not bad at cooking. Or we could get a takeaway? If you’ve got the money, that is,” I added, as it was probably time we got the business details out of the way. “Tom told you I’m skint, right? So I can’t afford any rent, but I’m happy to pay my way in other ways. You know—you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Or, you know, any other bits you want scratching…” I left it hanging, but I didn’t lick my lips. I’ve got some class. And he’d probably have run off screaming.

  I could see Russell’s Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallowed. “Tom said…he said you didn’t have any money.” He frowned. “But you don’t need to…you know.” He stopped, looking like he’d rather be at the salon getting a back, sack and crack.

  Shit. He wasn’t gay. I was going to kill Tom.

  Russell was still talking. “You’re welcome to stay here until after your exams. Or, you know, whenever.” He looked at me earnestly, his face clashing horribly with his T-shirt. “It’s, um, kind of you to offer, but I don’t want you to feel you have to, well, pay me back.”

  Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Did he have the first fucking idea how he was making me feel? What was I, some kind of charity case? I supposed it made him feel noble or something. Or maybe he was just worried where I’d been. I felt like screaming at him, with his stupid nerdy glasses and his bony elbows and his beardy weirdy face even his mother only pretended to love.

  But I had my Finals in three weeks’ time, so instead I just smiled sweetly and said, “Thanks, Russell. Now, how about that takeaway?”

  I’d calmed down a bit by the time the food came. Well, the lagers probably helped. We had Chinese, and it was pretty good. I hadn’t had a takeaway in a while; Sebastian was so bloody anal about what he ate. It used to drive me wild. Russell ordered shredded chilli beef and special fried rice and I chose chicken chow mein and monks’ vegetables, but we shared it all anyway, sitting down to eat it off the low coffee table in front of the telly, which had been another big no-no in Sebastian’s flat. Sometimes I’d been surprised he ever let me sit on his bloody sofa.

  “You always watch the football?” I asked Russell once I’d got to the full-but-still-picking-at-it stage. Because really, he didn’t seem like the sporty type.

  He looked down at his plate, where all the bits of tofu he’d picked out of the vegetable dish were wobbling in a sad little pile. “Er, yes. But we don’t have to if you don’t want to watch it,” he added politely.

  “Russell, you’re doing me the favour here. You’re letting me stay here. You don’t have to pretend you don’t mind missing stuff just because of me. Besides, I like the football. I just thought you might not, that’s all.”

  He shrugged. “Most people assume I keep it permanently switched to National Geographic. You know,” he added, with a perfectly straight face, “sometimes, when I’m feeling particularly daring, I turn over to a comedy show.”

  I laughed, genuinely. Maybe he was all right after all. And I kind of liked the way his eyes crinkled up at the corners when he joined me in the laughter.

  “Tom told me you were studying English,” he said after a while. “Do you know what you want to do when you’ve got your degree?”

  I nodded. “Journalism.”

  Russell cocked his head on one side. “You sound very certain about that.”

  I was. “I’ve known it was what I wanted to do since I was twelve.”

  He smiled. “Lucky you. I just sort of fell into engineering—was good at science, didn’t want to stay at university the rest of my life. Have you had anything published already?”

  “Yeah, a couple of freelance pieces. You have to make a name for yourself in this business.”

  Russell nodded. “Where did they appear? Anywhere I might have read?” He actually looked interested.

  “I had an article published in Attitude,” I said, trying not to sound like I was boasting.

  “Really?” he asked, leaning forward. “Which issue?”

  “The one with Gareth Thomas on the cover.” I told him. And yeah, okay, I was totally boasting. Russell had that smile on his face, the one that was mostly in his eyes. He’d seen that issue, all right. A lot of people had. It’d been big news, the first professional rugby player to come out while still playing. And a bloody good picture of him too.

  “I think his thighs must be about the same measurement as his waist,” Russell said dreamily. Yeah, he was gay, all right. Then he blinked and finished his beer. “Another?”

  “Yeah, please.”

  I watched Russell as he headed into the kitchen. All right, so he was no Gareth Thomas, but then who the hell was? I work out, but it’s cosmetic with me. I wouldn’t last five minutes in a rugby scrum. ’Course, Russell wouldn’t last five seconds, but he wasn’t badly put together for a possibly-thirty-year-old geek who didn’t get enough exercise. He had nice broad shoulders, which I always like, and in his case helped to counteract a suspicion of a few too many Mars Bars. He was taller than me, which again I like, but then most men are. It doesn’t bother me. Muscles look more impressive on a shorter frame. Small but perfectly formed, that’s me.

  Russell came back with another couple of cans and plonked them on the coffee table. “So how come you didn’t do a degree in journalism?”

  “A lot of places—the best places—still don’t respect you if you’ve done a vocational degree. There’s a lot of intellectual snobbery.” I shrugged. “It’s all bollocks, but you can’t change the system from outside.”

  Russell laughed softly, and I looked at him, surprised. “You know, I can just imagine you getting into the system and turning it upside down,” he said. “Like some kind of nanobot, fixing it from the inside.” He flushed and hung his head down so his hair brushed up against his beard. “Sorry. I sound like a total geek, don’t I?”

  It was sort of cute. “Hey, geek is the new black, haven’t you heard?”

  “No, and I don’t think anyone else has, either,” he said, his eyes still all crinkled up from the laughter. “Look, I need to get to bed.” He stood. “I’ll, um, show you your room first? It’s the one that’s not mine.” He gave a nervous laugh, like he was worried I might get mixed up and jump him in the night.

  I gave up. I stripped down to my boxer briefs, cleaned my teeth and crawled under the flowery duvet in Russell’s spare room, wondering what the hell he thought was going on here.

  Chapter Two

  I slept late next day, really late. It’d been so long since I’d slept alone, I hadn’t realised how much I relied on the sounds and the movement of someone else getting up to drag my lazy carcass out of bed. Russell had gone to work, of course. He’d left a key on the kitchen counter, together with a note saying I should help myself to toast and Frosties and he’d see me around six.

  So I did some push-ups in front of the telly and had a couple of slices of toast (Frosties? For real?) and then I headed back to Sebastian’s to pack up my stuff. There wasn’t a lot of it; just clothes, books and my laptop, so it didn’t take long. I thought about calling Sebastian up at work and asking if he’d drive me over to Russell’s with my bags, but it wasn’t worth the hassle. It wasn’t like he owed me anything, after all. And I was bloody certain I didn’t want to owe him. So I dug into the emergency fund and got a taxi.

  I’d hung my clothes in the fitted wardrobe, unboxed my textbooks and was deep in Critical Analysis when the front door opened. “Hi, Russell,” I called out, trying not to lose my place in the book.

  “Hi.” He kept going to the kitchen, and I realised he’d been shopping. Russell was rustling.

  I leapt up. “Let me help you with those bags. So, we’re cooking tonight?” />
  “Er, yes.” The closer I got, the more he seemed to shy away. It was like we were right back in that café.

  “Great! You want me to do it? I mean, you’ve been at work all day. What do you fancy?” I rummaged through the bags. “Pasta okay? I can do a half-decent carbonara, or spag bol, whatever you prefer.”

  “Well, er…”

  “Great! You go and sit down, and I’ll get it started.”

  I hummed as I cooked. I’d missed this—cooking what I wanted, when I wanted. And I had a feeling Russell would appreciate whatever I turned out, even if it was a total disaster, which it wouldn’t be, because I’m not a bad cook. Mum taught me, despite my dad moaning on that I should be outside kicking a football, not hanging on her apron-strings all the time, as he put it.

  Russell popped his head into the kitchen a couple of times to ask if I needed help, so I got him to wash the salad and get the drinks ready. I think it helped; he didn’t seem half so nervous by the time we sat down to eat. “This is really good,” he said ’round a mouthful of pasta.

  “Thanks.” I’m a sucker for compliments on my cooking. “Do you cook much?”

  He made a sort of self-deprecating gesture. “Well, I do, but nothing like this.”

  “This? This is simple. Look, I’ll show you next time, all right? I mean, you’re a chemical engineer. How hard can cooking be for someone like you?”

  Russell smiled down at his plate. “You’d be amazed.” He looked up again. “I, er, looked up your article, by the way. I had seen it. I just didn’t recognise the by-line at the time. Obviously. It was really good. Insightful. Not something that gets written about a lot, domestic violence in gay relationships.”

  I shrugged, trying not to show how pleased I was that he’d made the effort. “Well, that’s the key, isn’t it? You find something no one’s written about before—or that they haven’t looked at in depth. I mean, a lot of stories you see are hot topics—everyone jumping on whatever bandwagon’s in fashion that day. But the real secret is to be ahead of the trend, find something fresh and exciting.”

  “So it wasn’t just a case of writing what you know?” I froze, and Russell back-pedalled furiously. “Sorry. That’s none of my business. I shouldn’t have—sorry.”

  I unclenched my fingers from around my fork and laid it down carefully on my plate. I don’t know why I’d got so uptight about it. It wasn’t like he was the first person who’d ever asked that. I suppose I just felt like I could take it easy with Russell. Like I didn’t have to be on my guard, so when he asked the question, it threw me all the more. I took a deep breath. “I’ve been there. A long time ago. When I was sixteen. Not since then, though.”

  Not since I made a rule never to move in with anyone I couldn’t walk away from in a heartbeat.

  “Sixteen?” Russell frowned. “Wasn’t that a bit young to be living with someone? I mean, I assume you were living with him?”

  “Yeah. See, my dad…well, we never really got on that well, and once I told him I had a boyfriend, it just sort of fell apart. We had a blazing row over this bloke whose name I am not going to tell you, because I promised myself nothing of his would ever pass my lips again, and Dad basically told me to either split up with him or get out and not come back.” So I’d moved ’round to Nameless Bastard’s, and found out too late my dad hadn’t been totally wrong about him, even though he’d been going at it from the wrong direction.

  I’d never seen Russell look so unhappy. “I can’t…I can’t imagine that. My parents just accepted it. Well, I think they’d already given up on me ever having a girlfriend by the time I told them, anyway. I know it’s a lot more difficult for some people—but to get thrown out by your own parents at sixteen…” He paused and pushed his plate away, like his appetite had disappeared all of a sudden. “And then to have the bloke who’d caused it all knock you around…”

  “Yeah, well. Like I said, it was a long time ago.” I smiled at him and put a hand on his sleeve. “I’m over it now, trust me.” I gave a gentle squeeze to his arm. “Don’t worry. It hasn’t put me off men.”

  Russell leapt up like a startled rabbit, and muttered something about washing up as he disappeared into the kitchen. I laughed to myself, and got my books out again. Exams in nineteen days, after all.

  We settled into a routine pretty quickly. Well, I’d had plenty of practice fitting in with new blokes, although it still felt bloody weird that we weren’t sleeping together. Russell would go off to work, and I’d head up to Uni, and when he got home I’d cook him dinner. I was ready for a break by then, so it worked out well. He liked most things I cooked, but he was a total pushover for pasta. Carbonara, arrabiata, Bolognese—you name it, he loved it.

  Weekends were a bit different, but I made sure I went out to the library, or the gym, or just out for a run so I wouldn’t be in his face too much. I could tell he was the sort of bloke who felt weird getting on with life as normal with a stranger in the house. Made me wonder why he’d agreed to have me, seeing as he wasn’t actually having me, but I was hardly going to call him on it, was I?

  It was one Sunday night, about a week and a half after I’d moved in, when we realised that as neither of us had gone shopping, it was going to have to be either be a takeaway or cobble up something awful with the last few cans in the cupboard. “What do you fancy?” I called out to Russell, my head still deep in the kitchen cupboard as if some fresh food was going to magically appear there any moment.

  “Um.”

  I backed out of the cupboard and noticed he was looking a bit red in the face. “Were you looking at my arse?” I teased him.

  The face got redder. He swallowed. “Fish and chips?”

  So we walked down to the marina and went to the chippy there. It’s pricey, but then they cater to the yachting crowd, so what do you expect? After Russell had paid for the food, we wandered down to the waterfront and sat on a bench to unwrap our greasy parcels.

  The chips were thick-cut, hot and smothered in salt and vinegar, just like I’d asked for. I munched appreciatively. Funny how food like this always tastes better eaten out of doors. Russell nodded out to sea, where a few raucous seagulls were swooping lazily over the waves. “I used to live there.”

  “What, on top of a buoy or something?”

  He laughed. “On the Isle of Wight. Ever been there?”

  “Well, a couple of day trips, but apart from that, no. We used to holiday in France when I was a kid. Brittany.” I remembered the French novels on his bookshelf. “Where did you learn French? Did you live there for a while or something?”

  Russell suddenly got very busy with squeezing out a sachet of ketchup onto his chips. “No. Evening classes.” He looked up and grinned at me sheepishly. “I heard they were a good way to meet people.”

  I laughed. “Well, if you enjoy meeting middle-aged housewives suffering from Empty Nest syndrome…”

  “Actually, half of them were men.” He grimaced. “Straight men, and not one of them a day under sixty-five. I think pensioners must get special rates or something.” He took a big bite of battered cod and chewed thoughtfully for a moment. “So what were they like, those holidays in Brittany?”

  I shrugged. “Okay, I suppose. Brittany’s a lot like Cornwall, really.” I grinned. “Except the accents are easier to understand. And you don’t tend to get clotted cream teas. We used to rent a gite out in the country and drive to the beach and stuff. I used to go shopping with Mum in the local market, and then we’d cook while Dad read the paper and moaned about the country going to the dogs. Britain, I think, not France, although to be honest I never really listened when he went off on one of his rants.” I stuffed down a couple of chips. “I used to wish we’d go to a hotel, or a campsite or something. You know, where there would be more people around. But Dad didn’t like that kind of thing. He used to say he went on holiday to get some peace and quiet, and he didn’t want hordes of other people’s kids spoiling it for him.”

  Russell nodded, like h
e’d heard the same sort of thing from his dad. “We never went anywhere very much. I think my parents’ view was that if you lived somewhere like the Isle of Wight, you didn’t need summer holidays.” A chip cooled in his fingers as he reminisced. “I used to dream of going abroad for a proper holiday like all the other kids at school did.” He laughed. “The closest I ever got was a long weekend in the New Forest.”

  “Yeah? Where did you stay?”

  “Er, the New Forest? I was a bit young to take notice of place names. I remember a pub that did some really nice ham sandwiches, though.”

  I laughed. “You were living the high life, all right.” I picked at the remains of my haddock, trying to decide if I was really still hungry. “I used to live ’round there. Lyndhurst.”

  “Your family,” Russell said hesitantly. “Do they know where you are now?”

  “Nope, and they don’t care.” I stood, crumpling the paper with the remains of my supper and chucking it in the bin.

  Russell’s moustache drooped. “They must care. They’re your parents.”

  I leaned on the railings and stared out to sea. “Well, for starters it’s just my dad, now. Mum died just before my sixteenth birthday.”

  I felt Russell come to stand beside me, his body shielding me from the chill of the breeze that had picked up while we were eating. “Luke, I’m sorry.” He was silent for a moment. “How did she die? Or would you rather not talk about it?”

  “It was a long time ago. Brain tumour.” I looked out to sea again. “She just keeled over one day. At least it wasn’t a long, drawn-out illness. I don’t think she even knew it was happening.”

  “It must have been really hard for you. Especially with everything else going on…”

  I turned and gave him a smile. “Are your parents okay?”

  “Oh, yes, they’re fine. Still living on the Island, in the house I grew up in. Every so often they talk about moving to the mainland, but I don’t think they ever will.”