Another Cup of Coffee (10 page)

His awkwardly-shaped triangular cup was too hot to hold, so he sank bank into the over-plump purple seat to examine his surroundings. The other customers, all wedged into similarly curved armchairs, also seemed to be immersed in their own worlds, either cradling solitary cups of hot liquid or tucking into breakfasts at breakneck speed, lest their plates be whisked away before they'd finished.

As he surveyed the fixtures and fittings Jack accidentally caught the waiter's eye, and hastily turned away.
Nice eyes too
. He allowed himself a second to consider making a move. Blue eyes and blonde hair. Like Amy's …

Gazing blankly towards the window, Jack tried to picture the guy he'd spent the early hours of the morning with. Fairly short, dark hair, stocky, a northern accent, and a good thick dick, which had utilised one of the condoms he optimistically kept in his jacket pocket.
Christ
, he thought to himself,
I'm not even sure of his name. Mark? Matt
? How on earth had he allowed his life to get like this? It wasn't even as if he could use alcohol or drugs as an excuse. He hadn't drunk more than two pints of beer all evening, and it'd been years since he'd experimented with the various methods of getting high. The kick he got from casual sex was enough of a drug anyway. Kit said he was too high on the power of conquest to need artificial stimulants.
Used to say.

It was nearly two weeks since he'd heard from Kit. Two weeks without snatched coffee, daily texts, advice, moans, gripes and grumbles. Jack had relived their conversation over and over again. He just didn't get it.

Eleven years ago she should have acted like this. Eleven years ago she should have been hurt and insulted. He'd used her, pretty openly too in the end, but she'd simply shrugged it off. ‘The situation' she had frequently declared, ‘suits us both,' and he'd believed her.

Rob, always the king of clichés, had told him at the time that it would “all end in tears.” Jack cowered over his half-empty cup as he remembered how he'd openly laughed back at Rob when, on finally ending the thing he'd had with Kit, their association had remained amicable. Six months later Kit had met Phil and been happily settled with him within weeks, enjoying a far more regular relationship with a bright future.

As soon as Kit had begun to see Phil seriously, Jack had gone mad. It was as if, once she was being taken care of by someone else, the last hurdle of his uncertainty had been taken down. He'd met like-minded folk via the various gay sites that littered the Internet, even in those days, and with them Jack had visited club after club, bar after bar. Some of these new acquaintances had turned into his earliest, often terrifying, short-term conquests, but most were simply friends, who he continued to meet and go clubbing with, as his confidence began to grow within the world he'd entered.

Jack's life, from that time on, became split in half. Not a secret life and a public life, but a gay social life with new friends, and a working and social life filled with old friends. Sometimes the two groups crossed, but largely they sat alongside each other, running side by side on comfortable parallel lines.

About three months into Kit's relationship with Phil, Jack had met Ryan. He was built like a bear, but was as gentle as a lamb. He had fallen hopelessly for Jack, who'd liked him back, but not enough. For when he had introduced Ryan to Kit and she hadn't been particularly impressed, Jack had unceremoniously dumped him. There was no way he could seriously date someone Kit didn't like.

Since watching Ryan crumple before him, Jack hadn't let anyone get emotionally close to him again.

He'd broken Amy's heart and badly hurt Ryan. Jack was determined not to do that to anyone else ever again, and he didn't ever want to feel that way himself.
Anyway
, he told himself,
I don't need anyone special
. He had his friends, and he was attractive and, Jack privately admitted, arrogant enough to get regular sex, so why worry?

Over the last two weeks Rob had started to twitter on about ‘chickens coming home to roost.' Jack had listened to his friend's well-meaning advice, and then completely ignored it, preferring to throw himself into the fledgling bookshop web site by day, and into gay bar and club life by night. Only six of the past fourteen nights had he spent alone. He never took anyone home to his flat though. He'd never been one for drama on his own doorstep.

The waiter reappeared at Jack's side, ‘Can I get you anything else, sir?'

He's got a nice smile too
. ‘Another coffee would be great, thanks. Maybe a Danish pastry if you have any?'

‘Almond, custard, cinnamon, fruit? I could go on.'

Jack laughed. A real, genuine laugh. He felt like he hadn't laughed for weeks, and it took him by surprise. ‘Almond would be great, thanks.'

‘No problem.' The waiter, whose name badge announced him to be called Toby, headed off on his new task.

Jack's eyes followed him. His brain sternly reminded his body that he'd fucked some other guy only a few hours ago, and that to make any sort of move now would be low, even by his current standards.

Jack began to fiddle with his mobile. He'd tried to call Kit several times over the past fortnight, but the voice-mail seemed to be permanently on, or else the call was stalled by Phil, who claimed Kit was either out or busy.

It was no secret that Phil didn't really like Jack. He'd never been able to understand the strength of his wife's relationship with an ex. Wallowing in self-pity, Jack imagined that Phil was secretly pleased that they'd fallen out.

‘I've put extra sugar in your drink already.' Cutting into Jack's thoughts, Toby produced a tray holding a cup of black coffee and an almond croissant. ‘Don't argue. You look like you need it.'

Then he turned away before Jack, open-mouthed, could say thank you, protest, or do anything other than meekly drink it.

Sixteen

October 16
^th
2006

Honey, what's going on? You've never been late with a story before. You're usually the one who keeps us to schedule! Sorry if there's a crisis or something, but we need those Christmas stories by yesterday. Can you email them ASAP?

Thanks, Pearl

Kit re-read the email and then glanced down at her doodle-covered notebook. So far she'd decided on a naughty fairy theme, possibly with a secret Santa's grotto. Beyond that she'd produced nothing. Not a single word of erotica in nearly two weeks. Normally she would have produced two stories in that time.

There was a soft knock on her office door. Phil pushed it open, ‘You OK, love?'

‘Not really.' Kit swivelled the laptop around so he could read the email.

‘How much have you done?'

‘Nothing.'

‘I see.' Phil knelt beside Kit as she sat on her black leather chair. ‘Look love, I'll help all I can, but I can't sort this thing with Jack out for you. Especially as you say you can't explain it to me.' He stroked her sleek red hair.

‘I know. It's silly and irrational. Thanks though, but it's no good pretending you like Jack now.' Kit turned to face Phil, her shoulders drooped, ‘I'm not keeping secrets, love, I just can't explain.'

‘It's OK. He's OK.'

Kit spoke in a quiet, matter of fact way, ‘Come on Phil, you've never liked him. This must be a relief for you.'

From the first moment Jack had met Phil, he'd tried to include him, to make Kit's new partner part of his friendship with Kit, but every attempt had proved awkward and stilted, and in the end both sides had graciously, and without rancour, given up trying.

‘No.' Phil shuffled into a more comfortable position, ‘I've never got on with him that well, it's true, Jack's too into himself for my liking, far too me-me-me,' Phil raised his hand, seeing Kit was about to argue, and continued, ‘but he's important to you. Call him. What's the worst that can happen?'

‘I have no idea. I'm not sure why I feel like this anyway.'

Phil's brow crinkled, ‘Feel like what exactly? I'm having trouble understanding this one, Kit.'

‘You and me both.' Kit reached up and put her arms around her husband's neck, ‘I really appreciate you being here. I love you, Philip Lambert.' She kissed him on the nose, ‘Now get lost and make sure those lovely children of ours are ready for school. I have to write some flannel to appease our American cousins.'

For days Kit had replayed every conversation she'd ever had with Jack in her mind. She knew she wasn't, and never had been, angry about his coming out. If you're gay, you're gay. If you're gay with the need for an occasional female fuck to reassure yourself that you've got your preferences right, then so be it. After all, she'd reasoned, these days being gay was so fashionable there had to be plenty of folk that saw it as an alternative lifestyle, living happily cheek-by-jowl with those whose preference could never have been anything else. Kit didn't care which of these categories Jack fell into, and she suspected that if she could have asked him he wouldn't have known.

The morning after Jack had come out to her, Kit recalled that they had slept together again, just as they always did when they weren't working. It was as if nothing had been said, right up until they reached the local tea room they had hit the town in the search of a late breakfast …

June 3
^rd
1995

Jack passed Kit the sugar and stirred his own mug of coffee.

‘I think I'll give up having sugar,' she had pushed the bowl back to its original place on the lemon-yellow easy-clean tablecloth, ‘Time to start watching the weight if I'm going to be on the pull again.'

Jack flinched at her directness.

‘Come on honey, you've just told me that we aren't exactly going to be together forever.' Ignoring the screaming voice at the back of her head that told her she loved this man, Kit marched down the boringly practical route, accepting things; giving the world a face which said she was blasé about everything. Burying how she felt.

‘So, when did you first start to suspect that you wanted to share more than football chat over a pint of beer with the male half of the population?' Kit asked, as she began to make headway into the mountain of toast and marmalade before her.

Jack looked carefully at Kit, searching to see if she generally wanted to have this conversation. ‘You don't mind me talking about it?'

‘Of course not. Anyway, what are friends for?' Kit wiped some of the tangy orange spread from her lips, ‘I'm all ears.'

Appreciating the opportunity to share his early suspicions, Jack eagerly confided in her, ‘You know we were talking about how music can remind you of salient time in your life? Well, whenever I hear “Unbelievable” by EMF, then I'm taken back to where I began to suspect I was a bit different. The Ziplight.

‘The what?' Kit accidentally spluttered toast crumbs across the table.

Jack put his head in his hands, ‘It was a disco at uni every Friday night. Oh God, how old am I, a bloody disco!'

Kit mopped up the mess she'd made, ‘Calm down, Grandad, I remember discos being called discos too! So, the Ziplight? That really is a crap name.'

‘I know, but that at least is not something I'm responsible for.'

Kit put her hand out to stop Jack's violent stirring before he splashed his drink across the table, ‘What about “Unbelievable” then?'

‘It's so clear in my memory. It's as if I close my eyes, I could almost be there.'

‘So, sit back, shut your eyes, and describe what you see to me.'

‘Well, OK. I'll try.' Jack sat back and attempted to recapture the scene for Kit.

‘It was a Friday night. A crowd of two hundred or more students would all be cavorting together in your approximation of something which might possibly be called dancing. Mostly first-year undergraduates like I was, all cramped into the dark, sweat-smelling hall, whose floor was virtually an ice rink of spilt alcohol by about eleven at night. The girls all wore interchangeable, brightly-covered oversized cardigans and black Lycra miniskirts, and flirted shamelessly with the lads, in their eternal black jeans and slogan covered T-shirts. Everyone thought they were dressed so distinctively, and yet we were all more or less interchangeable with the next.

The DJ was always positioned in the middle of one side of the room, away from the bar, which was usually at least six layers of thirsty students deep, each waiting impatiently for a plastic pint glass of Tiger or McEwen's lager. Now and then the odd would-be sophisticate would order a bottle of Beck's, or a Diamond White if it was a particularly heavy night.

There, for the first time, I saw I didn't quite fit, although I hadn't yet worked out why. My whole teenage life I felt I was watching an alien world through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars.

My mates and I usually danced together most of the night. Outlandish movements to “Sit Down” and, of course, “Dancing Queen”!' Jack grinned wider as he recalled how he, Rob, Paul and his other friends had regularly managed to clear the floor as the attended masses watched, goggle-eyed, at their wild response to such numbers.

Returning to the point of the conversation, Jack shifted uncomfortably. ‘I had no trouble in attracting the attention of the girls. In fact, it always irritated me how keen some of them were when they didn't even know me. I watched the boys, the men, and felt safer. I assumed at the time that it was because they didn't demand anything of me. But I had also liked some of the girls well enough, so I shrugged off the out-of-place feeling and kissed them, screwed them, used them, and left them, anyway. After all, I was a teenage boy, that was what I was supposed to do wasn't it?'

October 16
^th
2006

Kit yawned into her coffee, and snapped back to the present as Peggy approached. ‘Keeping you up, are we?' Peggy placed a warm croissant and accompanying pot of butter before her bleary-eyed friend.