Heartbreak Boys

by Simon James Green

He nods.

  “You probably need to catch your flight,” I continue. “Let’s go.”

  “OK,” Tariq says. “But, Nate? I am sorry. Just to reiterate that. And also, one thing that will never change – we’ll always be each other’s first kiss.”

  “Actually, Tariq, I’m sorry, but you weren’t my first kiss.”

  And I grin, then we walk out of the coffee shop, knowing that he’s got a million questions and that I’m not gonna answer any of them.

  I stroll back into the check-in hall feeling lighter and happier than I’ve felt in a long time, so much so that I don’t even really find it that annoying when Dylan strides up to us, totally ignores me, and goes straight for Tariq, saying, “Everything OK?” like I might have upset him, and that Tariq needs Dylan’s protection against big bad me.

  Tariq nods and smiles. “Yeah, good.”

  “Where’s Jack?” I ask.

  Dylan shrugs. “Dunno. We talked and he went off.” He turns back to Tariq. “We gotta go.”

  “What do you mean, ‘he went off’?” I ask.

  Dylan grimaces in irritation. “He went off! Walked off, what else do you want me to say? I’m not his keeper!”

  “Well, where was he going?”

  Dylan stares at me a moment. “Er, we’re at an airport so take your pick from literally hundreds of destinations! Tariq? Come on.”

  I blow out a breath. Dylan is such a prick. I don’t know what Jack ever saw in him. Except Dylan’s pretty, of course, so I guess there’s that. Pretty people get away with being utter shits, and no one seems to care.

  Anyway, Tariq and Dylan head off to security, and I’m left just standing in the middle of check-in, thinking I should stay there because maybe Jack’s gone to the toilet, or to get a drink, and will be back soon. But when he doesn’t show after ten minutes, I text him. And then, after another couple of minutes, I text again. And then I actually call, which is when you know it’s serious.

  It goes straight to voicemail.

  Something’s not right. I felt it wasn’t right in the way Dylan told me that Jack “went off” but now I know it. I do a three-sixty turn, the airport and people swimming around me, but there’s no sign of him. I call Elliot, but Elliot is getting a back rub at some walk-in massage stand and Jack isn’t with him. I tell Elliot to get himself over to me, and he’s there in about five minutes, but there’s still no sign of Jack.

  “We could ask if they can do one of those lost child announcements over the tannoy system,” Elliot suggests.

  It’s a good idea, and there’s a big part of me that hopes we’ll rock up at the lost child centre, and Jack will be sitting on one of the chairs with a balloon and a lollipop, waiting for us. But he’s not, and he’s still not there after about five announcements made over the whole airport.

  “Could he have headed back to the Airbnb?” Elliot says. “Maybe he was upset after talking to Dylan, and wanted to be alone for a bit?”

  It’s possible. I message him and leave a voicemail saying we’re heading back to the house, and to meet us there, and to call as soon as he picks this up. But as we sit in silence on the tube back into central London, I have this increasing nagging feeling in my stomach, and when we get back to the Airbnb, and there’s still no Jack, and no word from him whatsoever, I just run and find my parents because I don’t know what else to do.

  In the middle of me gabbling the story to my folks, a text pings through:

  Gone back home. Don’t worry.

  I don’t know what happened at the airport to have caused this, but right now, I don’t even care. I just want Jack back with us and I want him to be OK.

  “I’ve gotta go and find him,” I tell Dad.

  He nods. “Yeah. You do. You owe him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing, just go.”

  “No, wait, tell me what you meant by that.”

  Dad sighs. “Nate, everything that boy has done on this trip, he’s done to try and make you happy. Going to see Elliot was his idea, because he thought you’d like to see him again. Inviting Elliot along was his idea too, because I think he thought you … liked him liked him.”

  I stare at my dad.

  “And now I think he needs you.”

  I don’t have time to process what he’s said; I need to get myself together, get on a train and get back home.

  “Take my card,” Mum says, handing me her Visa.

  “Really?”

  Mum just nods, where once she would have given me a lecture about budgeting.

  “OK, thanks,” I say, grabbing my wallet, phone, keys and a rucksack.

  “And, Nate? Talk to him, then both of you get back on a train and get down to Plymouth,” Dad says.

  “Why? Shouldn’t we just stay—”

  “You have to get to Plymouth,” Dad repeats. “That’s the whole point.”

  “Point of what? What do you mean? What’s going on?”

  “Get him, and bring him to Plymouth. This trip isn’t over yet. You’ll see.”

  Dad looks at me, deep into me, like he’s never looked at me before, and I swallow, a chill running through me. But I know not to argue. And I don’t have time to argue anyway.

  The last thing I hear as I head out of the door is Rose.

  “Go get your husband, Nate!”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  JACK

  Dylan’s words echo through my head all the way home. It’s always all about you. It’s all show – I can’t ever tell what’s real. Who even are you, Jack? Embarrassing. You’re a caricature. You could tone it down but you insist on making yourself a target. What is it – do you just crave the attention?

  It was OK. I could take it. I kept thinking, Nate doesn’t think this, Nate likes me, but then Dylan twisted the knife:

  “I see what you’re doing on Instagram, trying to make it look like you and Nate are a thing, but you’re not, are you? Know how I know? He wouldn’t want to be with someone like you. Nobody would. That’s why I ended up doing what I did, Jack. I was going tell you after prom just to save us all the heartache of having prom ruined, but guess what? You had to go and ruin it anyway, just so the spotlight was on you again!”

  As soon as he’s said it, I know he’s right. I don’t really care about his whole character assassination – I mean, I’m pretty used to that. But the stuff about Nate cuts me up. All this time, slowly, I’ve been letting myself think that maybe something could happen, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Despite the fact that never once has Nate told me, or even suggested, he might feel like that. All fiction. A made-up fantasy world, with a great big fake idiot at the centre of it.

  But I’m still OK. I need to sort my head out, but I’m still OK. Until Dylan says the one thing that I’m not ever gonna be OK with:

  “Quite a lot of us are sick of your shit, so, only fair to warn you, I’m hearing whispers that a lot of us aren’t gonna be part of the LGBTQ-plus society next year, like, maybe it’ll just be you and Nate. He can get a taste of what it’s like to be with the clown no one wants to hang out with.”

  No way. No way am I gonna let Nate be dragged into all the crap I have put up with. I’m not going to let him be isolated and disliked. That was exactly what he was so scared of for so long. He doesn’t deserve that.

  So maybe the best thing I can do for Nate is just let him be. I think, I honestly think, he will be better off without me. Because even if we’re just good mates, he’ll be dragged down. The others will see to that.

  So I go. When I finally turn my phone back on, and see Nate’s frantic messages and voicemails, I send a message back, just to let him know I’m OK, even though I am far from OK, but he doesn’t want to be bothered with that, and there’s no one else who would care how I was feeling. So I bury it, like I’ve always buried it, because there never really was anyone in the first place, and I guess there maybe never will be, and I’ve survived this long, so I’ll just carry on.

  Maybe, in September,
I’ll just keep my head down, get on with school stuff, speak less, not engage. I’ll do what everyone wants; I’ll be the version of Jack that doesn’t pull any focus, doesn’t annoy everyone, just exists. Let them win. There’s no prize for me anyway if I win, so what sort of victory would that be?

  Mum’s in when I get home, which is annoying because you know when you just need to be alone to wallow in gloom? She looks up from a pile of legal papers on the kitchen table. “What’s happened?”

  I shrug. “Nothing. I’m just back.” She studies me, but I ignore her. “Is there any chocolate milk?”

  “It’s weird you would come back and not let me know.”

  I shrug and open the fridge.

  “Did you fight with Nate?”

  I sigh, looking through the fridge shelves. “No.

  We’re … cool.”

  She closes a folder. “Jack? There’s no chocolate milk. I wasn’t expecting you back this soon.”

  And it’s that piece of news, the complete lack of chocolate milk, which pushes me over the edge. I can feel my bottom lip start to wobble. “I need to lie down,” I mutter. “Tired.”

  And I hurry out of the kitchen, up the stairs and straight to my bedroom.

  I can’t do this.

  I can’t be this.

  I thought I was strong, but I guess, in the end, I’m not.

  Eventually…

  I sleep.

  Relentless hammering at my front door wakes me up.

  Jesus.

  If it’s another recipe box firm asking if they can “speak to my mum or dad”, I swear I’ll ram one of their organic root vegetables where the sun don’t shine.

  I stumble downstairs, groggy, angry, empty, hungry, with sore eyes, open the door, and see Nate standing there, looking utterly wrecked, drenched from head to toe, with a carton of chocolate milk in his hands.

  “Hey,” he says.

  And I’m so happy to see him, so overwhelmed he would come all this way, so full of love for him, I burst into tears.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  NATE

  You know those comedy movie chases where fruit carts suddenly push out in front of the hero, and old people with walking sticks cross the road right in front of them? Well, that was my journey back home from London. The world must see you are in a massive rush and get a real thrill from throwing everything in your way to thwart you.

  London Underground was full of tourists, clogging up the tunnels and standing on both sides of the escalators so I couldn’t hurry past. A broken-down train at Acton had caused severe delays. Somewhere else, a passenger had been “taken ill”. I made my train from St Pancras with two minutes to spare, gasping and puffing into a crowded carriage where I was forced to sit on the floor because there were no seats. We departed slightly late, and that meant we got stuck behind some random freight train, so we limped on, only getting as far as Bedford before grinding to a total stop. Twenty minutes later we were told the freight train had managed to derail itself, the whole line was now suspended, and we had to await a rail replacement bus service. An entire hour later and this thing turned up, like this double-decker relic from the Second World War, chugging along, blowing out vast plumes of noxious black smoke. I didn’t even care by this point, I was just happy we were moving again as we bounced and lurched around the roundabouts of Bedford, making our way to a main road. Somewhere near Market Harborough, the bus had had enough, the engine overheated, and it refused to budge. Lots of adults with clipboards and fluorescent tabards made a big show of telling everyone this was “not their fault” and they were “doing their best”. It was at this point an elderly woman sitting next to me called her daughter, and lo, said daughter agreed to drive from Market Harborough to Nottingham. There were three other places available in the car, and I was prepared to offer them a kidney at this point (if the old lady needed one) but I had to be in that car.

  There were a number of businessmen and women making a lot of noise about an important meeting, and I could see my plight might not be considered grave enough so I did the only sensible thing – I lied about my age. I made out I was fourteen, therefore implying they had to help me because I’m a real live kid, and although it kills me to admit it, they all bought it, and while that’s great, I also really hope I start to get a bit of facial hair soon.

  By the time I finally arrived in our suburb of Nottingham I was exhausted, hungry, cold, but I was here, I’d reached where Jack would be. I even managed to buy him some chocolate milk from the shop. But fate had decreed a water main would have burst along the high street, with torrents of water flowing down the road. All it took was one ill-timed car, driving a little fast as I passed one particular huge puddle, and I was covered, head to toe in muddy, sludgy, water.

  And so, there I am, complete drowned rat, stinking and tired, as I hammer on Jack’s door.

  Jack looks wrecked too.

  Also crying.

  “Oh my god, it’s just chocolate milk!” I tell him.

  “Shut up,” he says, pulling me in through the door and slamming it shut behind. “You came.”

  I nod slowly. “I did. Here I am. Ta-da.”

  He stares at me, his eyes wet and questioning. “What the hell happened to you?”

  “Well, I’m covered in shit, basically. Possibly literally. Can I have a shower?”

  He nods.

  “And then we should … talk?” I suggest. Whatever it is Dylan said to him obviously hit him hard. Maybe he liked him more than he was letting on. Maybe he’s more cut up about all this that I thought. Whatever the reason, I want to make it better. I want to be for Jack what he is for me. I want to be strong for him, so he can feel strong too.

  He nods again.

  “I’ll need some clothes,” I say. “It doesn’t have to be any of your best pieces.”

  That makes him smile. “It’ll probably just be a Jack Wills hoodie and joggers, is that OK?”

  “I think I’ll cope.”

  Jack has one of those amazing rainfall showers in his huge bathroom, and I could have stayed in there all day, but I’m the quickest I’ve ever been. I change into the soft navy-blue hoodie and grey sweatpants he’s left folded up for me and pad out on to the landing, where I find Jack, in a grey onesie, beckoning me towards his bedroom. “Mum’s in,” he whispers, which is all the explanation anyone ever needs.

  I sit next to him on his double bed, and my first thought is how incredibly grown-up it is to have a double bed, and that I really need to speak to my parents about that.

  I don’t have to ask – he tells me exactly what Dylan said to him, word by horribly cruel word. And I’m struck again by the thing Dad said before I left, about how Jack has done everything on this trip to try to make me happy, and now again, when Dylan suggested my life would be made hell back at school, Jack’s only thought was to stop that from happening by trying to put some space between us.

  “You’ll be better off if you don’t hang out with me, Nate. That’s just the truth.”

  “No,” I tell him. “I don’t care.”

  “But you will,” he says.

  “Thing is, Jack,” I say, standing up, and starting to mooch about his room, “if this trip has shown me anything, apart from the arse ends of various parts of the UK, it’s that I never needed to be scared of what other people said or thought, because when I’m with you…” I pause, because there, on top of his chest of drawers, is a photo in a frame of me and him when we were twelve. We’re grinning at the camera, arms around one another’s shoulders, faces red and slightly sweaty. I trace my fingers over our faces. We were so happy.

  “My birthday party. We’d just done Laser Quest,” Jack says, behind me.

  I put the photo back. “Where did you find it?”

  “It’s always been there.” Jack shrugs.

  I swallow and look at him. It’s always been there. Through all the years we never spoke, all the years I thought he hated me, his dull, boring, one-time friend. But he never did.
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  “I remember, we were a team of fearless twelve-year-olds, and we had to play against that group of, like, uni students because they’d screwed the bookings up.”

  “We annihilated them.”

  “We may have been small, but we were fierce.” I smile. “I’m ready to do that again, Jack. I’m ready to be fearless. As long as we can be fearless together. I don’t give a toss what Dylan says, or any of the LGBTQ plus society, or anyone else. If it’s just you and me against a constant shitstorm, I don’t care. As long as it is you and me. Like before. Like it always should have been.” I look at him. “Agreed?”

  He doesn’t look convinced. “Nate…”

  “No, you need to agree, Jack. I’m not taking any other answer, so you either agree, or—”

  “Or what? What you gonna do?”

  I chew my lip a bit. “Well, you’ll leave me no option. I’ll have to wrestle you. Don’t make me wrestle you, Jack.”

  He laughs. “Look, maybe … maybe if I tone it down a bit, you know? Next year at school? I could … you know, be less … I could be less.”

  My eyes widen. “Why would you even say that?”

  “Because like everyone has always told me, I make myself a target. I’m too gay.”

  I scowl at him, then glance at a very noticeable blank space on his wall. “What should be here?”

  “Oh. It was a Beyoncé poster. I took it down.”

  “You’d better not have destroyed it.”

  “I’m not a monster, Nate.”

  “Where is it?”

  He indicates his desk. “It’s—”

  “Put it back up,” I tell him. “Right now.” I glance around the rest of the room while Jack Blu-Tacks the poster back on the wall. His fairy lights aren’t even on, so I immediately rectify that, the string of twinkling white lights immediately creating the vibe of classy gay teen boy this place was lacking.

  “That’s better,” I say.

  Jack sniffs. “Maybe.”

  “You don’t have to change a thing, Jack. You’re living your truth, and no one should take that away from you. Me, I don’t even know what my truth is, but…”

  He raises his eyebrows.