“And your Nan’s the same?”
“Well, not that bad, but…she’s like sixty, Darren, she won’t like it either and…”
“Wait, so, did she guess and you denied it?”
“Yeah,” Jayden said weakly.
Darren shrugged. “Then what’s the big deal? If she didn’t throw a fit and let that slide—because I’m sorry, but you set off gaydar like a broken window sets off a burglar alarm—then I doubt she’s going to butcher you or anything.”
Jayden bit his lip, pushing at the anxiety, and squeezed Darren’s hand. He’d rubbed all the cold away, and the calluses were doubly rough after two weeks of abuse. “Can we go?” he asked suddenly.
“Go where?”
“I don’t know. Home, maybe. I want…” he flushed a little, but managed it, “…I want to kiss you again. Properly. I’ve missed you.”
“Well, my whole family’s home,” Darren said, “and Misha opens doors at random, so…”
“So let’s go to mine,” Jayden urged, and Darren shrugged, draining his cup. Jayden took it as assent, and ordered another couple of cups to go while Darren wriggled back into the borrowed coat. It was definitely Scott’s, but Jayden made a mental note of it and decided he would have to drag Darren to the sales at some point to get one of his own. He looked gorgeous in red with that dark hair and white skin and the high, faint flush in his cheeks from the cold when they finally stepped back out onto the high street, curls squashed back under the hat. That hat. The shape of his face…how had Jayden not quite noticed those cheekbones before? They could cut diamonds, they were so sharp, but his fluffy hair hid the lines of him, and…
Jayden stuffed his free hand into his pocket, and itched to tell Darren to screw the walk and get the bus home. It would be quicker—but Darren was a cold-weather-creep and didn’t so much as pause at the stops, and not for the first time, Jayden wished one of them were a girl so they could at least hold hands.
“Do you, um, want to come out on Saturday?” he rushed out instead, and Darren raised his eyebrows questioningly. “Charley gets back from Blackpool on Friday night and we always go out on Saturday after, before school starts again. We’re going bowling this time, and…Will you come? She wants to meet you, and I’ve missed you this last couple of weeks, and…it’d be nice, I think.”
Darren pulled a face. “Charley as in Cross?”
“Yeah.”
“The girl who keeps harassing me on Facebook?”
“Um, probably, yeah.”
“Blonde hair, too much eyeshadow…”
Jayden shoved him; Darren grinned. “You coming or not?”
“I don’t know,” Darren said. “She kind of scares me.”
The spark of humour suddenly diffused the sexual tension, and Jayden laughed. “Well,” he said. “I promise not to let her ambush you. Or rip your arm off.”
“Rip my arm off?”
“She’s grabby.”
“…And you’re trying to get me to actually go?”
“Yeah,” Jayden said, daring to reach out and squeeze Darren’s elbow briefly at the traffic lights. “Please? It’ll be fun.”
Darren shrugged. “All right,” he conceded, blowing across the top of his coffee, “but I promise no skill at bowling.”
In the quieter confines of the residential streets, Jayden dared to give in, and slid his gloved fingers into Darren’s bare ones. Even through the wool, his skin was cold, and he laced their fingers together and squeezed.
“I missed you,” he repeated, instead of what he really wanted to say, but then Darren smiled, his glasses shifting on his nose, and, really, this was perfect just as it was.
* * * *
Charley was waiting on the wall early on Saturday evening, looking roughly two hundred and thirty dollars in her frayed jeans and hot pink padded vest. She never looked a million dollars, though she tried, but her enthusiastic hug and the croon of approval at his new jeans made Jayden feel like maybe he was a million dollars.
“So, what’s this secret?” she asked, looking around as if he was actually hiding the secret behind a lamppost somewhere. “You said secret, now I get to hear it!”
“I invited Darren.”
She squeaked and beamed. “As in, boyfriend Darren? As in, cute gay guy who’s macking with you on Friday nights and I don’t get to hear about it? As in, the Darren who took you on that perfect date you never went into detail about?”
“Yes, yes, and yes. In that order,” Jayden added as she tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and bumped their shoulders amiably.
“Good,” she said decidedly. “I want to meet him. I mean, I should! I’m your best friend, he’s your boyfriend, it’s sinful we haven’t met yet.”
Jayden pinked. “Well, you know. I just kind of…I wanted to get that all figured out before I introduced you.”
“And is it all figured out?”
No. They hadn’t really talked about the depression. Jayden hadn’t seen it, not really. And it was still early, it was still all so new, but…but the b-word was boyfriend now, not ‘the b-word’, and Jayden knew about Darren’s glasses and he’d felt that little scar on his collarbone where he’d broken it last Christmas in Austria, so…
“Yes,” he said.
“I sense a story,” she sing-songed, but for once didn’t ask, tucking her head against his shoulder briefly at the traffic lights. “I stalked his pictures, just so you know, and he’s cute.”
She had no idea, Jayden thought privately. He’d stalked them too, and those glasses and that hat never made an appearance. There was a black beanie hat that showed up in some really old photos with Scott, but Darren must have been twelve, and his face had been too round and young to have the same gorgeous effect. So, really, Charley had no idea.
“You’ll see,” he said confidently. He’d bribed Darren with a Mars bar and kisses on Thursday. He’d promised to wear the hat, though he’d groaned and wriggled out of a direct promise on the glasses.
“Is he meeting us there?”
“Yeah. He lives on the Beauchamp estate so it’s a bit thick of him to walk round to mine first only to double back.” The bowling alley was just off the town centre, and therefore closer to Darren’s house than Jayden’s was.
“I don’t know; you could have had steamy snogging sessions over your English coursework,” Charley said, faux-innocently.
“My parents are home. It’s Saturday.” He’d only been able to avoid Mum’s suspicious glances because she knew about the post-New-Year tradition with Charley and the others.
“You haven’t told him about him yet?”
“Charley, I haven’t told them about me yet,” Jayden said.
“You should,” she opined as they paused at the last set of lights. “I’m serious, Jay. Your Mum’s lovely, she wouldn’t mind. She’ll want to meet him! They won’t care.”
“Dad might.”
“Of course he won’t,” Charley said equally firmly. But there, Jayden suspected she might be wrong. Dads never took this sort of thing well. What kind of father would be okay with a gay son?
“Let’s just not talk about this,” he said as they turned the corner onto Station Road, which, naturally, contained no station. “Let’s just enjoy the evening and laugh at Darren’s bowling skills. He says he hasn’t got any.”
“He can partner with me, then,” Charley said, then promptly squealed and released Jayden to dash ahead and throw herself on Mike with a secondary shriek of delight.
Heather and Mike had been the other half of the unit that had been the four of them in primary school—but unlike Charley and Jayden, they came from wealthier families that didn’t want their darling children in the state school system, and had been sent to private school, Mike to St. John’s and Heather to Woodville. This was why the post-New-Year meet-up was so traditional: it helped hold the four of them together, even if their lives were already spiralling off in different directions.
“So where’s this boyfriend of
yours?” Heather, a tiny little blonde pixie of a girl, demanded of Jayden, latching on to his arm in a very similar manner to Charley. “Charley said you were bringing your boyfriend!”
“Yeah, he’s coming, and can you not all just scare him off again?” Jayden asked.
Heather scoffed and preened. “Me? Never. I just want to meet him. Is he cute? What’s his name?”
“Darren Peace.”
Mike—a lanky six-foot tower of scrawny ginger teenager in the middle of an awkward growth spurt—blinked. “Seriously?”
“Um…yes?” Jayden frowned.
“You know Darren?” Heather prodded.
“Peacemaker, sure. Didn’t know he was gay, though,” Mike said and whistled lowly. “Damn. Who knew?”
“I’m sorry, you actually know this guy?” Charley interrupted.
“Yeah, he’s in my German class,” Mike said. “He’s really gay? You sure, mate?”
Jayden reddened. “Pretty sure,” he admitted, and Heather giggled. But Charley narrowed her eyes.
“I mean,” Mike held up his hands. “To be honest, I always thought he was kind of…asexual or something. He’s not into girls, anyway. So I guess…I’m just saying you wouldn’t guess. Charles, don’t get pissy.”
“Is he closeted?” she demanded of Jayden, and Jayden shrugged.
“Kind of,” he admitted. “Not, you know, really, but he’s not really told people.”
“What’s he like?” Heather punched Mike in the arm; he winced.
“I dunno, jeez,” he said. “I never talked to him much. He hangs around with Summerskill and Smith usually, and if he’s not in class, he’s practising in the music room. Cello or something.”
“Violin,” Jayden supplied, and Heather giggled.
“A hot violinist,” she said and hummed, twirling a strand of her brilliantly blonde hair around a finger. “I could go for that. You’re sure he plays for your team exclusively, Jayden?”
“He does now,” Jayden said warningly. “Look, it’s cold and I told him ten past, so can we just go inside and get some drinks and fries or something?”
Inside was warmer, but sitting at one of the plastic tables just allowed both girls to mob him for details. This was what he got, Jayden thought sourly, for having his first relationship long after they all did. And being gay, perhaps, as they’d never mobbed Mike so badly about Tina. Now, they took turns poking his arms and demanding all sorts of weird details, everything from Darren’s middle name (which Jayden didn’t actually know) to his choice in underwear.
“I haven’t seen his underwear, Charley, Jesus!” he exclaimed when that question came, and she scowled at him.
“You will.”
Jayden went red.
“You will what?”
It was a violinist thing. Or a musician thing, or a Darren thing in general, but that magical appearing-out-of-nowhere thing he did? It wasn’t limited to the theatre or Milzani’s. One moment he wasn’t there, and the next he was, standing by the table in his battered leather jacket with his hands in the pockets of his ragged jeans, that amazing hat trapping his curls into a little flattened halo around his ears and the top of his jaw, and the most spectacular black eye Jayden had ever seen.
“Oh, my God,” he said.
“What happened to you?” Mike asked.
Darren blinked at him. “Huh.”
“We went to primary school together,” Mike nodded at Jayden. “So, what happened to your face?”
“A twat happened to my face,” Darren said sourly, and Jayden pulled him into the spare chair by his sleeve. The leather was chilly. “Some pikey tried to nick my phone off me in the park Thursday night.”
“Did he get it?” Charley asked. Heather, faced with someone new, had gone into her suddenly shy mode and said nothing, fiddling with her hair, and staring from under her eyelashes.
“Nope,” Darren said. “Hence, y’know, the face.”
“Looks kind of hot actually,” Charley said, leaning both elbows on the plastic. “You’re definitely gay?”
Darren shrugged, a small smile playing at the edges of his mouth. Jayden locked his hands over Darren’s elbow and squeezed lightly. “Sorry.”
“No, you’re not,” she said, and grinned. “Sooooo, you’re dating Jayden?”
“Apparently.”
“Do you love him?”
Darren’s left eyebrow arched upwards. “It’s a bit soon for that, isn’t it?”
“Well, why are you dating him then?”
“He’s fit,” Darren said flatly, and Jayden snorted with laughter. Far from taking offence, it was probably the most Darren had bared his heart regarding them, and in any case…well, it was a bit soon. Darren hadn’t had a spotlight moment with him, as far as Jayden knew, and to push it would just scare him away.
Charley, however, wasn’t happy with that reply, and made a sharp motion. When Darren winced, Jayden surmised he’d been kicked. “Charley,” he admonished. “Leave him alone. We going to bowl or not?”
“I’m not done interrogating yet!” Charley insisted, but Mike was already standing and rummaging in his pockets for money.
“Come on, Peace, let’s see you bowl like a man,” he challenged.
“Oh, bugger,” Darren offered, but obligingly followed.
Chapter 15
Monday afternoon, Jayden took the time to ask in the middle of a lesson. Want to come over after school?
K x
He dawdled long enough in the dance studio, talking to Charley before her club started, and used enough of the back corridors to visit his locker and the toilets to check his hair, that by the time he moved through reception and out to the gate, the usual suspects had gotten bored and left, and a familiar blazer was just visible in the trees. Darren had been away for a whole week—Mr. Weber had taken the orchestra on a trip to Vienna, apparently—and Jayden hadn’t seen him since Darren had reeled him in by the hand after Saturday night’s bowling and kissed him like Jayden had the only oxygen left on the entire planet. It had taken until Wednesday to start thinking again.
And now here he was, and Jayden was nervous all over again, as if something had changed.
“Hey,” he said, grinning like an idiot, and Darren smirked back, that half-smile that twisted at the edges. Jayden wanted to kiss it, but he wasn’t mad.
“Hey yourself,” Darren returned easily. “Any reason for the summons?”
Jayden shrugged. “Just…Mum’ll go to The Brightside after work, and Dad just watches the sports news when he gets home, so…”
“So effectively, a house to ourselves,” Darren said and grinned. “Nice thinking.”
Jayden flushed at how it sounded, but nodded anyway, clutching his bag strap with both hands and wishing things were different so he could hold Darren’s hand instead. Wishing he could kiss him outside school. Wishing it would make him normal and right, like all the other guys who had girlfriends in his year.
But it wasn’t, and he clutched his bag and listened to Darren’s idle tirade about a group project they’d been given in his geography class, and didn’t dare to reach out, even in the quiet confines of his street, once he saw Dad’s car in the driveway.
“Dad’s home,” he said warningly, rummaging for his keys, and Darren nodded.
“Nice dandelions,” he said, indicating the three-foot square patch of grass that Mum called a lawn, and Jayden flushed. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Darren went St. John’s and had an expensive violin and a leather jacket and paid for everything all the time. Jayden lived in a terraced council house. There was no way Darren lived in a house like this, he probably lived in a four-storey mansion. Jayden had never even been to Beauchamp, but he could imagine it. All mile-long driveways and automated gates and bay windows and…
“Dad, it’s me!” he yelled, hiding his anxiety by rattling the door as loudly as possible and banging it off the wall. Suddenly, the hall looked tiny. It was barely five feet wide by the stairs, and the carpet had once been
blue but was now grey, and Dad had just left his boots in the middle of the mat…
Darren toed off his shoes and unceremoniously kicked the door shut behind him.
“Um,” Jayden said. “Want a Coke or something?”
Darren shrugged. “Sure.”
The kitchen was worse. Dad had left the bread out and crumbs all over the counter. The table was plastic badly masquerading as wood, and the tiles were linoleum, not the expensive slate stuff Jayden was sure Darren must have at home. They didn’t even have a dishwasher, and last night’s dishes were piled high in the sink. And to top the entire embarrassing moment off, Dad was sitting at the table with The Sun, work shirt undone and scratching at his three-day-old stubble.
“Hey, kiddo,” he said, nodding at Jayden and ignoring Darren entirely. “How was school?”
“Fine,” Jayden said shortly, raiding the fridge. “C’mon, Darren, let’s…”
“Oh, my God,” Darren interrupted, and held up a packet of the oatmeal shortbread Mum always bought from the supermarket. “Can I steal one?”
“Steal the lot, kid,” Dad grunted. “Livvy’s trying to get me to like ‘em. Healthy eating or some such bollocks.”
Darren grinned. “Mother does that,” he said. “She thinks celery’s a snack.”
Dad stared. “Jesus. You poor brat,” he said and squinted. “You’re not vegan, are you?”
Darren wrinkled his nose. Jayden laughed, torn between embarrassment and relief at Darren not sneering at his father, and shoved a can of Coke into Darren’s free hand. “Of course he’s not, Dad, that’s retarded,” he offered and hauled Darren back into the hall by the sleeve. “Sorry about him. He does shifts at work, so he’s not always here in the afternoons, but I couldn’t remember when he left this morning, and…”
“I get free food, I’m happy,” Darren deadpanned and followed him up the stairs. “I like your house,” he said, poking the potted plant Mum had abandoned on the landing last week and hadn’t rehomed yet.
“It’s tiny and a mess.”
“It’s lived in,” Darren said. “It’s nice. Except for maybe this wallpaper.”
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