Heated Beat 01 - My Mate Jack (MM) (9 page)

Jack:
I know you’re not dead. My mum saw your dad in Tesco.

January 18

09:55 a.m.

Jack:
Whatever.

January 31

11:58 p.m.

Will:
I finished the XS project. The file is attached.

February 1

08:48 a.m.

Jack:
Does this mean you’re talking to me again?

February 3

08:34 a.m.

Jack:
Obviously not….

July 2004

Leeds. England.

W
ILL
SPUN
his office chair in a lazy circle. Working in a call center was a crock of shite, especially one servicing a gas company at this time of year. Whose central heating broke down in July? And who cared? Not Will—he just needed the money, which was why he was spending his summer break locked inside a dingy office.

A phone rang. Will grabbed his desk to break the spin of his chair. He turned his headset on. Nothing happened. It took him a moment to realize the ringing was coming from his own phone.

He dug the phone out of his bag.
Private number
flashed up on the tiny screen. He pressed the call button, but he already knew what he’d hear—nothing. He’d had many calls like that in recent weeks, spooky and silent. Sometimes he felt convinced he could hear someone breathing, but other times he knew it more likely an automated call center had his number jammed in a glitch in their database. He knew all too well how often that happened, and this time, there was no sound on the line, nothing at all, not even the whir of a computer-controlled communication system.

Will killed the call and tossed the phone on his desk. He was alone in the office, handling the dull as dust six-till-twelve graveyard shift on his own, like he did most Thursday nights at this time of year. So far, he’d handled three calls, and one of those had been an order for chicken chow mein. He was bored, seriously fucking bored, so he turned to his favorite source of distraction—pissing about on his graphics software.

He shoved a disc into the drive on his desk. The office computers were far better than the computer he had at home, and he often took advantage of his lonely evening shifts to get his uni work done. He loaded his project folder and opened the image he had in mind to develop over the next year. It was a multilayered piece already, but he’d seen a robot poster he fancied a crack at. He opened his sci-fi folder and scrolled through his saved images. An unnamed file caught his eye. He clicked on it and realized his mistake too late to stop Jack’s album cover filling the screen.

Will sat back in his chair and scowled at the screen. The media pack he’d produced for Jack was some of his best work—too good to delete—which meant every time he saw it he found himself looking through the futuristic, electrostyle masterpiece and instead seeing the photograph of Jack snogging a bloke. The stupid bloody photograph that haunted Will’s dreams, taunted him from beyond his subconscious like it was something that mattered, rather than the daft teenaged angst Will had come to accept it actually was.

Most days, at least. It had taken him a while to become so pragmatic.

Will closed Jack’s file and opened another, where he’d saved the regular e-mails he and Jack had exchanged up until last Christmas. He clicked through them, lingering on Jack’s, checking for any sign he’d missed that Jack had been showing an interest in blokes, but he found nothing, like every other time he’d repeated the exercise, which was more often than he cared to admit. He’d got over his anger with Jack—after all, it wasn’t as though Jack owed him anything after a quick bunk-up two years ago—but communication between them had slowed in recent months, and Will no longer let himself sit up at night, waiting on something that made his bones itch.

Fuck that shit
. Will checked the date. It was July 30 and he hadn’t spoken with Jack in more than a month. Healthy distance, that’s what Suki called it the long nights Will had sat up chewing her ear off, and eventually he’d come to realize she was right. He’d seen nothing but Jack for far too long, and it was time for a change.

Shame Will missed him so much it hurt.

A
FEW
weeks later, Will shut down his office computer after a tedious Friday evening at the call center, gathered his things, and headed for the door. He caught a bus home to an empty house and took a shower. Ten hours trapped in the airless call center had made him smell like arse.

He emerged from the bathroom to eight missed calls from a Reading number. Curious, he dropped some money into the payphone in the hallway and called it back. It rang out a few times. Will wasn’t sure what made him try again, but on the third go a woman answered.

“HMV, Reading. Can I help?”

“Erm.” Will floundered. HMV? What the fuck? “I got some missed calls from you, at least I think I did. I might have dialed back the wrong number.”

“Your name’s not Will Barter by any chance, is it?”

“How did you know?”

The woman laughed. “Because there’s a note taped to the phone telling me to listen out for your call. Hang on a moment, I’ll go and get him.”

Him
? The line switched to some awful lift music while Will drummed his fingers on the wall. The woman was gone for so long his money ran out. He was scrabbling about for change when the phone rang again.

Will grabbed it, breathless. “Hello?”

“Will? That you?”

Jack. Fuck. Will hadn’t heard his voice for more than a year. “Er, yeah. It’s me. Jack? It is you, right? What the fuck are you doing in Reading?”

“Work.” There was a rustling at Jack’s end, then quiet, like he’d shut a door on a room… or a shop, full of people. “A few of us came over to launch an album for XS and play some festivals. I’ve been ringing your phone for weeks. I’ve got a set at Reading tonight, then I was thinking of playing Leeds tomorrow, if you’ll come with me?”

“You’re in Leeds?” Will swallowed hard. With Jack far away in Ibiza, it had been all too easy to pretend he didn’t exist. That Will wasn’t breaking his heart over something that had never existed in the first place.

Jack chuckled. “Not yet. I’m in Reading now, but there’s a gig going at Leeds and no one at XS wants it. I said I might plug the gap, but I don’t want to party on your turf without you. What do you say? Up for a mash-up?”

“Um….” Will was lost for words. He’d pretty much resigned himself to never seeing Jack on UK soil ever again, though the explanation for his sudden reappearance explained the strange silent phone calls.

“I can get you in for free, if you’re worried about money. I can meet you at the gate.” Jack paused. Will could almost see him wrapping his fringe around his index finger, chewing on his bottom lip. “You’re still fucked off with me about Christmas, aren’t you?”

“It’s not that.” Will sat down amongst the mess of junk mail and take-away menus. “I’m still in Leeds because I’m working, remember? I’ll have to change my shifts around.”

“Do you think you can?”

Will shrugged before he remembered Jack couldn’t see him. “I can try. Does your mobile work in the UK? I can call you later if I figure it out.”

“Yeah, it works.” Jack sounded deflated. “I might not hear it, though, if I’m on stage. Leave me a message. I’ll call you back.”

There wasn’t much left to say. Jack hung up and left Will sitting in the hallway of his deserted student house, pondering what the fuck to do next.

W
ILL
GRIPPED
the phone so hard it creaked, like it would surely snap. “I’m not going. I can’t go, can I? It’s a stupid fucking idea, isn’t it?”

Suki laughed, though it sounded kind rather than mocking. “I don’t know, babe. You haven’t seen him since last summer. Maybe you should go, clear the air a bit. You haven’t talked about, well, anything with him, have you? You’ve been blanking him since that magazine thing. Never gave him a chance to explain.”

“He didn’t
want
to explain.” Will scowled at a piece of chewing gum stuck to the ground. Kicked it. “And it doesn’t bloody matter anymore, anyway. I’m over that shit.”

“Yeah? So what’s the problem? If you’re sound with it, go to the festival and party with your oldest friend.”

Put like that and combined with Will’s unwillingness to admit how screwed up his feelings for Jack still were, there wasn’t much Will could say. Besides, he was outside the festival ground, hiding in a phone box, just a few feet from where he’d agreed to meet Jack. There was no going back now, and his panicked call to Suki’s parents’ house in Staines had done nothing to ease the sickening churn in his belly.

Will garbled a good-bye to Suki and rang off. He lingered a moment longer in the phone box, like he could pocket the claustrophobic sanctuary and take it with him. A sense of the ridiculous crept over him.
Man up, you daft twat.

He forced himself out of the phone box. The heat of a rare scorching day took him back to the previous summer in Ibiza, when he’d stepped off the plane and near enough run straight into Jack’s arms—platonically, of course. It wouldn’t be like that this time, if Will ever found the balls to cross the road. He didn’t know much, but of that he was certain. Something undefined had changed between them, and Will wasn’t sure he could face it.

He crossed the road anyway and scanned the busy entrance, searching among the stewards and students passing out leaflets for any sign of Jack. Not that he knew what he was looking for. So much had changed; Jack could’ve dyed his hair purple for all Will knew.

A warm hand clamped down on Will’s shoulder. Jack. It had to be, no one else could light Will on fire by touch alone, and sure enough, he turned and found himself face to face with all sandy-haired six foot of Jack bloody Lawson.

Jack offered a tentative grin and pulled Will in a man hug they’d shared a thousand times over. “All right, mate?”

Will mumbled into Jack’s shoulder.

Jack pulled away. “What’s that?”

“Sorry I’m late.”

“Who cares?” Jack’s smile widened enough for Will to believe him. “You’re here now, ain’t ya? Where’s your bag? You can dump it in the van if you want.”

“I didn’t bring a bag. I live twenty minutes away.”

“Oh. Okay. Do you want to come and see some new DJs play, then? I’ve found this wicked Geordie kid I want you to hear. Are you coming in or what?”

Despite the blunt, playful question, Jack seemed nervous. He looked just the same as Will remembered him, but there were shadows under his eyes and his hands twitched. Will wondered if Jack had succumbed to the drug culture around him in Ibiza. Wondered if the heavy air between them was chemically manufactured and not his own fault after all.

But the fantasy didn’t last long. Will stared at Jack for a long moment and realized that maybe Jack wasn’t the problem. Perhaps it was Will, and perhaps it always had been. So much hung between them, both imagined and real, but as the noise of the festival reached Will—the music, the crowds—and the sun warmed his face, he realized he didn’t care. He’d been Jack’s friend for as long as he could remember, and this was what they did—partied outdoors around campfires, raving to dirty beats… this
was
them. Bottom line: there was no “or what.”

“I’m coming in.”

Jack laughed like he’d been set free. He grabbed Will’s arm and fixed an all-access pass he produced from nowhere around Will’s wrist. Then he hustled Will through a security-manned gap in the fence, and Will let himself be carried away by the magic of just being with Jack, the magic he’d been without for so long he’d forgotten how good it felt.

They found a beer tent and loaded up on plastic cups of nasty lager; then Jack led the way to the intro stage. The new DJs were good, and as the music took over Will’s soul, he felt the last strains of tension seep out of him. He’d always loved festivals—the freedom, the spirit—and combined with Jack glued to his side, talking his ear off, there was nothing else in the world.

At least nothing that seemed to matter.

They drank their way through the heady summer crowds. Jack was recognized from time to time, but when they got to the VIP area beside the stage Jack was going to play on later that night, the attention faded. To Will, it felt like
everyone
lounging around the campfire was someone he’d seen on the front of a magazine.

Jack got them more drinks, nodded to a few people he knew, then steered Will to a quietish corner where they could see the stage.

Will sat on the grass and leaned back on his hands, looking out over the crowds. “So this is how superstars do festivals? No portaloos and shithole tents for you, eh?”

“Yep. They call it glamping… glamorous camping, get it?” Jack chuckled, though it sounded hollow. “To be honest, mate, I don’t like it much. Feels like I’m missing all the fun, but work’s work, you know? This is the first time I’ve been so early to a gig in ages.”

Will snorted. “You’re never early to anything.”

“That’s not true.” Jack stared at Will a moment, like he was waiting for Will to fill in the punchline. “Um, anyway. How’s things with you? I saw your old man yesterday. He said you aced your end of year exams.”