Broken (17 page)

“Wow. Lucky bastard.”

It’s more like a curse,
I think to myself. If it were an option, I would pay to erase some of my memories. To have a mind which remembers everything so vividly, feels everything so deeply, can be agonising.

“I know you dropped out of college. Why?” Again, he looks surprised.

“It was too much like school. I thought with higher education being optional I’d have more freedom. I was wrong. I don’t deal very well with authority.”

“Now
that
doesn’t surprise me.” He grins and it’s stunning.

Reaching out, I run my fingers through his short hair and settle them on the base of his neck.

“What was your favourite food as a kid?” he asks.

“Beans on crumpets.”

“Your favourite toy?”

“Hmm. Either my Discman or my Tamagotchi.”

“You had a Tamagotchi?”

“Didn’t everyone?”

“
I
didn’t. My mum got me a cheapo version from the market and it broke after two days. What’s your best Christmas memory?”

A knot twists around my stomach. “I didn’t like Christmas.”

“What the hell?
All
kids like Christmas. What’s wrong with you?” He’s joking, but his smile fails to infect me.

Everything is wrong with me
.

Christmas. It’s such a
happy
time. Excitement, laughter, everywhere. At least that’s how it’s supposed to be. For me, it served as an amplifier for the sadness rooted deep inside my mind. One Christmas stands out in particular. I don’t know why. It was Christmas Day, 1996, and I was thirteen years old.

As always, my grandparents were staying with us. Presents were open, dinner was over, and we sat in the living room swapping cracker jokes, with Top of the Pops playing on the square TV next to the tree. My nanna was slightly drunk, my granddad was checking out the TV listings in the bumper Christmas edition of the Radio Times, and my parents were digging through the annual tub of Cadbury’s Roses.

Everyone looked so happy, chatting, laughing, and wearing their paper hats. Except Max, who was too old and cool to join in with the festivities, choosing instead to sit in the corner playing with his first ever mobile phone. That was a huge deal back then and he couldn’t wait to tell all his friends at school, seeing as it was too expensive to text them.

I tried to emulate their joy, but I felt like I was dying inside and I didn’t even know why.

I told everyone I was going to my room to play my new Now 35 cassette. Laughing, my mum called me a miserable sod and when I left the room I heard my dad tell her I was just a regular, antisocial teenager. My mum was right, maybe not in the playful way she meant, but I
was
miserable. I was breaking right in front of them and nobody knew.

When I reached my room, I switched on my small TV and lay down on my bed. As everyone predicted,
2 Become 1
by the Spice Girls made Christmas number one and I remember that video as if I’d watched it just an hour ago. Silent tears ran down my cheeks as Emma Bunton twirled around in her burgundy coat and purple boots, her blonde hair piled into a bun on the top of her head.

I cried for hours that night. I cried until I struggled to breathe, until the muscles in my arms ached from holding my knees to my chest. I cried because I hurt, because I was lost, exhausted, bursting with pain I didn’t understand. There was no cause, no reason. I cried because I was broken, and I’d never felt so alone in my life.

“Guess I couldn’t cope once I found out Santa wasn’t real,” I joke, but I know Theodore sees through my sarcasm. His eyes search mine, like he’s looking for me, the
real
me. Part of me wants him to find me. The other wants me to run away to my bedroom and cry myself to sleep like I did on that Christmas Day.

“Okay next question. Where were you when you found out Princess Diana had died?”

“My bedroom. I remember falling asleep on the couch the night before and my mother waking me up in the small hours, telling me to go to bed. On my way up the stairs she told me about the crash, but I didn’t think much of it. Then, the next morning I woke up to Max telling me she was dead and it was all over the news.”

“Did you cry?”

“Yes.”

“
Yes?
”

“Contrary to popular belief, I’m not made of stone, Theodore.”

“I didn’t cry, but Tom did. I caught him in his bedroom watching a special feature about her on the news. To this day he swears it was because he stubbed his toe on the wardrobe.”

“So where were you when you heard?”

“I was on a plane flying back from Majorca. It had been our first holiday out of England and I was buzzing for months about going. Did you holiday a lot?”

“We went abroad once a year. I’ve been to most of the Greek and Spanish islands, as well as Turkey, and Paris a few times. Tenerife was my mother’s destination of choice, though. I know Playa de Las Americas like the back of my hand.”

“You’ll have to take me on a tour one day.”

“I need a smoke.”

I’m stood up and walking to my back door before he can reply. Standing on the patio outside my French doors that overlook the large garden, I pull out my cigarettes and pluck one from the pack, bringing it eagerly to my lips. The movement sets off the security light as I spark up, flooding the dark air around me. I drag in the calming nicotine, admiring the soft plumes of smoke as they swirl into the floodlight.

“Did I say something wrong?”

Turning slightly, I notice Theodore standing in the doorway. “No, Theodore. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

Shoulders hunched, he stuffs his hands into his pockets. “Are you coming back inside?”

“In a minute,” I say, holding my dwindling cigarette in the air. After I force a smile to reassure him, he wanders back off through the house.

Noticing my cigarette has burned to the filter, I toss it on the ground, stomp on it, and light up another. I’m nervous, maybe even scared, but I’m not entirely sure of what. Now that I’m alone with Theodore, my plan to tell him everything doesn’t seem so certain anymore.

When I eventually head back inside I find him hovering by the stairs. “Where’s your bathroom?” he asks.

“There are two upstairs, or you can use the toilet over there.” I nod to the door down the hall, just past the kitchen.

He walks along the hall and I see him reach for the wrong door handle. I almost stop him, even take a step forward, but I don’t. My father was the only other person who knew what I use my study for, and in about three seconds, Theodore will too.

Door open, he stops just inside, not moving even though it’s obvious that isn’t the toilet. Padding over to him, I step past his body and enter the room, studying his eyes as they dart from wall to wall. Confusion laces his expression as he weighs up the framed cover art hanging on the far wall above my desk. Gingerly, he walks a little further inside and stands in front of the floor-to-ceiling shelves that house my books.
My
books. Books that
I
have written.

“No fucking way,” he mutters under his breath. I remain silent, nervously awaiting his reaction. “These aren’t…I mean you’re not…”

“JD Simmons? Yes. Yes I am.”

“I-I don’t understand,” he says, blinking rapidly. “He…I mean
you
…You’re really fucking famous. To
me
anyway. Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t
anyone
tell me?”

“Nobody else knows.”

Theodore’s gaze continues to travel down my bookshelves. “So that’s why he only deals with you? Because he
is
you.”

Nodding slowly, I stare at his face. His eyes are wide with what looks like excitement as he runs his index finger along the spines of my books.

“Why? Why aren’t you shouting from the rooftops about it? You’re letting an invisible man take the credit for all these amazing stories.”

“I don’t do it for the credit. I do it because I don’t have enough room in my mind to keep the stories inside. I do it because I can’t talk to people and I need to get my thoughts out. I do it because when my fingers are on that keyboard I can be someone else.”
Someone better.

“Wait…” he says, plucking one of the books from the shelf. “Into the Darkness. David Simon. This isn’t yours.”

I take the book from him and stroke the front cover. It’s been a few years since I’ve looked at this one. “Sometimes I self-publish under that name.”

“Why would you need to self-publish with your success?”

“Those are my gay romance stories. They’re not mainstream.”

“Surely you have the power to
make
them mainstream? You own a
huge
publishing house.”

Half smiling, I exhale a short laugh. “It doesn’t work like that, Theodore.”

“So your dad knew? I guess he must have if Holden House is your publisher.”

“He did. He encouraged me. I never planned on publishing anything, but he talked me into it. Holden House wasn’t so big back then, but we took a chance and the rest, as they say, is history. I released a couple that didn’t really go anywhere, then when
Secrets in Rome
made the New York Times bestsellers list, we were blown away. I’m sure it was pure luck.”

Theodore shakes his head, taking the book from me and placing it back on the shelf. “It wasn’t luck, James. You are a wonderful, inspiring,
powerful
writer. I-I’m struggling to get my head around the fact that you’re…” he trails off, laughing to himself. “JD Simmons is my fucking superhero. I…this is insane.”

Superhero.
I’m no fucking superhero.

“Every time I think I’m getting to know you, something happens that makes me realise I don’t know you at all. I wish you could just…” His words fade and he sighs heavily.

“Just what, Theodore?”

Reaching out, he palms my cheek. The contact makes my heart jump in my chest. “I wish you’d show me who you are. I feel like we’re dancing in circles.”

Show him.

Slowly, I reach for the top button on my shirt, my pulse hammering in my throat as I start unfastening it. I can’t
tell
him who I am, my mouth is too dry, my tongue suddenly paralysed, but I can
show
him.

I have to.

Theodore’s hand slips off my face as he shrinks back a step. “What are you doing?”

My nervous fingers tremble as they continue to open my buttons. Taking a deep breath, I fix my stare onto his puzzled face and shrug out of my shirt, rolling it down my arms before letting gravity take it to the floor. I study his eyes as they wander up and down my chest. His jaw drops slightly and for a moment I expect him to turn away in disgust, but he doesn’t.

Straightening his arm, his gentle fingertip traces the jagged edge of one of my scars, just above my navel. A gasp of air catches in my throat and my instinctive reaction is to flinch, pull away,
run
…but I supress it. 

“What happened?” he asks, his voice low, barely audible. “Who did this to you?”

“I did.” Two tiny words, yet they’ve popped open the valve on a crushing tyre of pressure that’s been bound around my heart for as long as I can remember.

Removing the pad of his finger, he replaces it with the palm of his hand, smoothing it over my mutilated skin, across the scars, over the burns.

“Why?”

“I’m broken, Theodore. I always have been. I always will be.”

His other hand appears on the damaged flesh and I can’t understand how he can bear to touch me.

“I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder four years ago. It isn’t going to go away. I’m not going to get better. A life with me could destroy you, Theodore. My mind isn’t fun. It’s dark. Twisted. And if you’re going to walk away, I need you to do it
now
.”

His fingers travel up my body until they land on my neck. “I’m not going anywhere, James,” he whispers, pressing his forehead against mine. “Take me to bed. Not to fuck. Not to sleep. Let me hold you. I need to hold you.”

My heart hammers against the walls of my chest but I can’t make sense of the emotions running through my body. I turn slowly, concentrating on every step as I lead Theodore upstairs. Crawling into my king-sized bed, I curl up on my side and watch with bewilderment as Theodore settles in next to me.

He scoots close, our clothed knees touching, and drapes an arm over my waist, anchoring me to him. “Why, James? Why did you hurt yourself?”

Sighing, I stare at his shoulder, too ashamed of myself to look him in the eye. “Physical pain is easier to deal with. The pain in my head, the ache in my chest, if I don’t release it…transfer it, it feels like it could kill me.”

“Do you still do it?” he asks, his voice strained.

I still can’t look at him. “No. I stopped a long time ago.”