Be My Best Man

by Con Riley

  “I mean,” Andrew says, “Mum took me aside and reminded me that you had to be pretty scared under all that bravado. You should have seen yourself back then. Your first reaction to anything was to come out with your fists up. Mum got me to imagine what it must have been like to wake up somewhere strange. And not for the first time, either,” he adds, his voice lowering. “How many foster placements did you have before you came home?”

  “I—” It’s a question he’s not expecting. “I-I don’t exactly remember.”

  “That’s what Mum said I had to bear in mind each time you swung a punch in my direction. She said all wild ponies will kick, if you get them cornered. Much better to stand still and wait so that they learn to trust you.”

  Jason misses their mum so vividly for a moment that he presses his lips together, wincing when his lip stings.

  “What’s this about, mate?”

  It’s hard to know how to answer. “I’m just trying to work out how seriously I should take someone lashing out instead of talking to me.”

  “Lashing out?” Andrew’s tone sharpens. “Are you okay?” Then it softens a little. “Did you and Vanya argue?”

  “Not exactly.” They hadn’t had a chance to argue before Vanya lost it so completely. And, to be honest, it’s that suddenness of reaction that’s brought Jason across London, worried sick for Vanya’s wellbeing more than angry with him. Andrew interjects before he can say so.

  “Make it up with him. Do it fast.” He’s insistent. “I don’t care what you’ve fallen out over, if you let him slip away, you’ll regret it.”

  Jason rallies to hear Andrew sound so certain, but he still has questions. “Why?”

  Andrew’s reasons are simple. They come in three parts, and the first is superficial.

  “Because if you two aren’t talking, it will make the wedding awkward, and Chantel’s already having kittens over the whole thing.”

  His next reason holds more weight. “Because Chantel thinks he’s the bees knees, and she must be a good judge of character because she chose me.”

  His third reason is killer. “But mostly, because he makes you happier than anyone has in the entire time I’ve known you.” His pause is long and drawn out. “Did you realise that’s almost a lifetime? I’ve known you for more than thirty-five years, and yet I swear to God, this is the first time I’ve seen you want to love someone like you believe you’ll get to keep them.”

  “I hardly know him, and I certainly don’t lo—”

  “Idiot.” Andrew’s fond tone softens his insult. “Mum always said you weren’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.”

  “She did not.”

  “Oh, now I remember what she used to say: you’re as dumb as a box of rocks.”

  “She didn’t ever say that either. What she did say was that me passing fewer exams than you didn’t make me stupid.”

  Andrew quits teasing and gets to the point. “Well you were definitely an idiot to ever expect love from Garry Hirons and look at how well you knew him. You’d be a bigger one to expect less from Vanya.” His sigh is audible. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you. He’s already in love with you. You know that, don’t you?”

  Jason shakes his head, words beyond him right then.

  “He’s in love all the way up to his neck. If your gut is telling you to make up with him after a quarrel, you should.”

  Quarrel doesn’t even come close. There’s so much Andrew doesn’t know yet, so many layers of deception Jason can’t leave without unpicking.

  But when Andrew says, “I only want you to be as happy as me,” Jason listens and slowly climbs the staircase.

  When he gets to the top floor, it’s not as bleak inside as Jason remembers, the space almost cosy now the central part is tented by long swathes of thick fabric. It is cold though, despite sunlight striking the windows to shed light on a small kitchen area and on a neat row of desks covered with small objects.

  He crosses the room, his footsteps loud in the silence.

  Panicked cursing comes from behind the tented fabric.

  “It’s me,” he quickly calls out and then keeps his back turned, not ready yet to see Vanya. All he wants are answers. If he’s ever going to have some peace of mind, this conversation has to happen. He starts with what’s most important.

  “Are you okay?”

  Vanya’s answer is quiet. “Yes.”

  “I was pissed off last night because I found out this was where you were living. Why did you lie to me about that?”

  “Didn’t lie.” Vanya sounds about as wrecked as Jason feels. Hearing that doesn’t give him any pleasure so he reframes his question.

  “Why didn’t you tell me the complete truth?” When Vanya doesn’t answer quickly, Jason turns to face him, focusing somewhere over his shoulder rather than on his bone-white features. “Only I can’t stop thinking about all the times you could have told me. You should have told me. Were you ever going to?” He points out the window when Vanya fails to answer. “It was sheer accident that I found out. I was over there when I saw you. And do you know why I was there in the first place?” He continues when Vanya’s pallor hints at pale green. “I followed you off the Tube after we got back from Moreton-in-Marsh. I only decided to at the last moment. But not because I suspected you of anything. No. Because, like a fool, I wanted to spend more time with you. I tried to catch up with you, only you vanished into thin air.”

  He tilts his head towards the roof across the alley. “That’s when I noticed a For Sale sign on that warehouse. I thought it might make a good renovation for Dom, but then I saw you. I saw you. No wonder I spent the whole night and next day stewing.” He translates out of habit. “Stewing means simmering for a long time. I stewed on what the fuck you were doing in a squat texting me bare-faced lies about you and Anna being hard at work while the whole time you were….” He digs a hand through his hair, his voice coming out quieter. “You had your arms around her.”

  And that’s one part his mind keeps skittering away from, reminded all too clearly of other last-minute excuses and lies while Garry dated women.

  “I saw you with her.” He struggles to keep hurt out of his tone. “But that wasn’t the only thing that confused me. It can’t be a coincidence that you’re squatting in a building that I mentioned. You heard me talk about this place, and yet you never thought to tell me how you used that information, did you? You used it, and you used me. That’s what I was pissed off about the most when you arrived last night. I was angry with good reason, but I didn’t get a chance to say why.” His hand rises without conscious permission, fingertips pressing the small split in his lip. “You lost your shit before I could tell you.”

  Vanya’s eyes widen hugely. “I did that?” He sounds stricken. “I-I’m sorry.”

  Jason can’t look at him. “Nowhere near as sorry as me.” Even he can hear his own dejection. It’s kind of pathetic, so he steels his spine and goes on. “Last night, all I wanted to do was have it out with you and then throw you out on your arse. But you reacted so….” He shakes his head and takes a half step closer. His gaze drops to the tatty Converse Vanya wears. For so long, he’d assumed the mismatched laces threading them were a fashion statement. Now even he can see beyond that. His shoes aren’t designer-distressed, they’re simply old and knock-off. Maybe he should be grateful Vanya hadn’t been wearing anything more substantial before he kicked out last night.

  He definitely shouldn’t be worrying about him wearing shoes made from such thin fabric at the start of winter.

  So what if they won’t keep out icy water or snow?

  Vanya’s comfort isn’t his problem.

  Jason ignores the frayed holes in his jeans too, refusing to linger on his thin T-shirt either. He shouldn’t feel sorry for this man now that the scales have dropped from his eyes.

  Still, regret that he won’t get to drag Vanya to the nearest Marks and Spencer right now to dress him warmly for the season is somehow crushing.

  He tries
to hold onto anger that should feel righteous.

  It slips greasily through his fingers when Vanya seems so wretched.

  Talk to him, Andrew had urged, but it’s hard to find the right words when he doesn’t know whether to shake Vanya by the scruff of the neck or hold him.

  “Your reaction,” he finally gets out. “Your reaction last night…. I don’t even know how to describe it.” What the hell had he ever done to make Vanya fear him? “You were scared of me, and I don’t know why. So here I am, sick with fucking worry like a damn fool over someone who told me lie after lie and then flipped out. I can’t figure out the last part, but maybe you can answer these questions, because I swear to God that I can’t.”

  He gulps because this is their last chance.

  There’s no point in persisting if Vanya can’t give him some straight answers.

  “I started by wondering why anyone with money would choose to live in a squat like this. That’s what illegals do, not people who have their papers. Then I asked myself a different question. Just how legal are you?” He draws in a breath that wavers in spite of his best attempts to sound firm. “See, it took me a while to believe I could land someone like you. Now I feel dumb for ever thinking you could love—” He shakes his head. “I feel dumb for thinking you could feel the same way I do. Did. But lately I stopped focusing on the surface level, on you being so much younger and better looking. You made that easy. I felt lucky—so lucky—and that blinded me right until I saw you through that window. It deafened me as well, so I didn’t listen to what Garry said about personal shoppers not getting visas. But he’s right, isn’t he?”

  His voice echoes as it rises.

  “He must have been right or you wouldn’t be living like this, would you?” He takes another step forward, sick to his stomach when Vanya visibly flinches. Jason presses on regardless, too far gone to ease off when each word hurts so much to get out. “You wouldn’t live in an abandoned building that’s this cold, and you wouldn’t lie about your occupation. Instead, you let me think….” His voice trails off weakly. “You let me think….” This time, the shake of his head feels final. “Well, you let me start to think a whole lot of things about you.” His voice comes out rough. “I don’t care about your job or the money you took for it, Vanya, if that’s even your real name. It says Ivan Petrov in your wallet.” He pulls it from his pocket and tosses it to Vanya who fumbles like his fingers have no feeling. “Frankly, I’m past caring,” he lies. “It’s clear that nothing I knew about you was the real truth.”

  “I-Ivan is real name,” Vanya stutters. “Vanya is form for friends.”

  “For friends?” It’s not exactly a huff of laughter that comes out. “I’d hate to see how you act around people you don’t like.” He’s deadly serious again when he says, “Here’s the thing, Ivan, or Vanya, or whoever the fuck you are. I took you home. Not just here. I took you to my real home. I wanted you there.”

  He had.

  So much.

  “And I told you all those stories, stuff I hadn’t told anyone else, ever.” He turns abruptly and crosses to the tables rather than make eye contact while feeling so raw and open. “I took you home, but you must have been laughing at me the whole time.”

  “No.” Vanya sounds sure about that, like he sounds certain when he says, “Never laughed. Not ever. None of this was joke, I’m promise.”

  Jason wishes so fiercely that he could believe that like he wishes there was an explanation good enough to write off this much deceit. His head drops when he knows that there simply can’t be. Still, he can’t help probing, picking at a scab that won’t heal until he quits poking at it. “There’s an envelope in your wallet addressed to a hostel. I went there before you came over last night to try to get my head around why you’re squatting. It’s a shit hole, no denying. But there’s heating and hot water, so I have to ask you again, and let me be clear: this is the last time I’ll bother.” He’s emphatic, each word punctuated with clear diction. “What the fuck makes you choose to live here like this when you have another option?” This freezing, unlit space makes even less sense now that he knows Vanya doesn’t have to live here. “Give me one good reason.”

  His pause stretches for long seconds.

  Vanya doesn’t answer.

  It shouldn’t surprise him, yet Jason’s heart sinks, only aware at that moment at how much hope he’d hung on a rational explanation. Without one, there’s no future.

  There can’t be.

  Surely he should have seen this coming?

  He turns away and takes a few blind steps that bring him close to the row of desks. The far end is covered with gauzy wedding favours, almonds wrapped in beribboned bundles like in the fancy wedding magazines Chantel pores over.

  They’re exactly what she hoped for.

  Another desk holds tiny containers of children’s bubble mixture, along with bags of golden coins he usually sees on trees at Christmas. The desk closest to him is draped with her dress. It’s a riot of colour now instead of plain silk—fun and young and perfect rather than sophisticated—its hem covered with wild flowers. Each bloom is unique, each stitch perfectly placed, but it’s a lone bee that stings.

  That’s for him.

  He’s sewn into a wedding he never wanted. Now it’s all that he has left to salvage.

  He can’t look away from it while he asks another question that feels redundant. “Anna’s not a wedding planner, is she?”

  “No.”

  He’d already guessed on some instinctive level, but hearing it for real is much worse than he expected. “Does Chantel know?”

  “No. I’m wouldn’t—”

  “You wouldn’t what? Lie to her?” He turns to see Vanya flinch for a second time that morning. It should be enraging when he’s the one who’s hurting. “She’ll be devastated.” He too almost flinches when Vanya lurches forwards to grab hold of his hand.

  “Don’t tell.” Vanya tightens a grip that’s icy. “Please.” They stand so close to the window that Vanya must see the split to his lip clearly. It’s only a minor irritation, but Vanya reacts like it’s awful, fingers shaking when they touch his skin. “How…?”

  Don’t lean in, Jason sternly orders himself.

  Don’t you dare grab both his hands and hold them until they warm up.

  “You don’t remember kicking me?” He looks away when Vanya’s eyes well.

  “No.”

  It’s not fair that he sounds so broken.

  His next “No” is more a sob than a word.

  Jason can barely speak with his jaw clenched, but he grits out, “I wish I could believe that.” A drop of water splashes as it hits the windowsill, but he ignores it. He has to before he does something stupid like offer comfort.

  “I can’t see you again,” he insists, more for himself than Vanya. “I can’t, but I won’t have Chantel’s big day ruined.”

  He thrusts a jacket he can no longer bear the sight of at Vanya and leaves him with a final warning. “Don’t even think of letting her down. If you do, I’ll go straight to immigration.”

  Maybe he should get some satisfaction from Vanya’s third flinch.

  Instead, he goes home feeling hollow.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Vanya hasn’t moved from the window when Anna returns later. He’s frozen in more ways than one, slow to unfold his fingers from the jacket he tightly clutches to his chest and unmoving when she drapes it across his shoulders. He’s also slow to respond when she asks what happened. Perhaps he doesn’t need to. She stops questioning, encourages him instead, her voice low-pitched and soft, to take one step after another away from the spot where he last saw Jason. She’s right, part of Vanya’s consciousness recognises. There’s no point in staring down at the alley for so long after he left, like that might somehow summon him back.

  Jason’s gone.

  He’s gone, and that’s exactly what he deserves.

  Anna pulls back the curtain around their sleeping area, only taking
her hands off him for a few moments while quickly texting Kaspar. “He’s on his way,” she promises, like that might fix all Vanya’s problems, shushing him when he protests, his voice harsh and croaky.

  “No.” His throat hurts as he speaks, like he’s spent the last hour screaming instead of staying silent when Jason demanded answers, words refusing to line up in English while stress kept his tongue tied. “This is the only shift Kaspar has all week. He needs to stay at work.”

  “You are more important.” She won’t be persuaded to text Kaspar back to cancel. Vanya searches for his phone to do it himself before he remembers he doesn’t have it. For all he knows, it still lies shattered in pieces halfway down Jason’s hallway.

  Closing his eyes doesn’t dim that awful vision.

  It just summons an even worse one.

  The last phone he’d owned had been broken as well, crushed underfoot by vigilantes in the alley where this whole nightmare started.

  He doesn’t realise how cold he is until Kaspar arrives with steaming cups of take-out tea and coffee. He scalds his tongue as he sips, but he’s a little more coherent when Kaspar asks questions.

  “Tell me what happened,” he demands, much like Jason had only a while earlier. However, when Kaspar adds, “Ivanushka, I know you didn’t want to talk last night, but you have to tell me what happened,” he can’t find any reserve to hold back. Kaspar’s seen him at his worst, still physically recovering months after his beating, and he’s woken often to his nightmares. There’s precious little left to shock him.

  “Jason found out about us squatting. He found out everything. About me lying to him from the beginning and about me telling you about this place.”

  “Okay.” Kaspar huffs out a long breath. “You say he knows everything. That means he knows why you’re here in the UK?” He frowns when Vanya shakes his head. “But did you tell him why we moved in here?” His gaze flicks to Anna. “Did you tell him about the break-ins and our money getting stolen and about how it’s only short term? Did you tell him that we’re not arseholes, that we’re taking care of the place and that we’ll leave it tidier than we found it?”