Laying a Ghost (19 page)

John exhaled. “We got there Saturday morning, and we were drunk within a few hours. Dave knew all the pubs, all the places to go ... don’t think he got more than a Third in his degree in the end, but I doubt he ever sobered up enough to care.”

Nick rocked back and sat, the packed sand hard underneath his ass, and waited for John to continue. The sound of the waves down the beach was rhythmic in an imperfect sort of way, the breeze a bit colder than Nick would have liked, despite the warm sunshine, and for the first time in as long as he could remember, he was content to wait.

“We didn’t have much money, but people were buying us drinks when they found out we were visiting, and it didn’t take much to get us drunk. And we were all looking to get off with someone, even Michael, because he’d had this row with Sheila the week before about him looking for work on one of the rigs, and they’d split up. Didn’t last -- they were always fighting back then -- but right then he was pissed off and looking for something he could spite her with.” John gave Nick a wry look. “I loved him, but I never said he was perfect.” He arched his eyebrow. “Am I boring you yet?”

“No.” Nick put his hand down on the sand between them. “So what happened?”

John stretched out his legs and rolled onto his side, propping his head on his hand. He scattered a handful of sand across Nick’s hand, silky and cool, and began to cover it with a concentration that seemed absolute. “We’d got house keys, and we weren’t that far from Dave’s place, so we didn’t care that we’d left him two pubs behind. More fun just the two of us anyway. There was a club and we had enough for the cover charge, so we went in. Michael -- well, he was a good-looking lad. Still is. Wasn’t long before he’d got off with this girl, and they were away in a corner with his tongue down her throat before I’d even finished my first pint.” He glanced up. “Aye. It bothered me. Partly for Sheila’s sake, because I liked her and I knew she’d be hurt when he told her, but being a selfish wee bugger, mostly for my own.”

Nick’s hand was buried now, the infinitesimal grains pressing against his skin. It felt odd, as if it wasn’t attached to his wrist anymore, separate from him.

“Then I saw this lad watching me from the dance floor, only it turned out I’d been the one staring at him, and he gave this little jerk of his head and --” John circled Nick’s wrist with his fingers, warm and gritty, and tugged, freeing him. “I went to him and we danced, not even pretending that we weren’t together, though he never touched me. No one noticed; no one cared. Or if they did, seeing as most of them were students, they wouldn’t have said anything. Probably thought it was cool being gay, or something.” John made an expressive face, linking his fingers with Nick’s. “We ended up in the alley behind the club, kissing and touching, and Christ, I think I’d have let him have me there, if he’d asked, but he didn’t. He’d have been in his early twenties, I suppose, and he said he had a flat, said I could stay the night, but I wouldn’t. So I took him back to Dave’s. House was empty, and when we got to my room, I just let him show me, let him tell me what to do --”

John’s voice slowed, and his fingers tightened for a moment before relaxing again. He slid his hand free and began to brush the sand from the back of Nick’s hand, taking as much care as he had with the burying of it.

Nick stayed still, letting John do whatever he needed to. He tried to picture it -- John as a younger man, in a dark alley beside a club, pushed up against a wall, being kissed and fondled ... then the two of them in a stranger’s bed, on sheets that smelled unfamiliar, naked skin on naked skin ...

Swallowing, Nick asked softly, “And it was good? You liked it?”

John blew across Nick’s hand, the warm air lost in the cool breeze after the first instant, clearing away what sand was left clinging to it. He looked up into Nick’s eyes and smiled. “Aye. I was too drunk to be shy, but not so drunk I couldn’t enjoy it, and he was -- kind, I suppose. Hurt me a little when we finally got around to fucking, but that was my fault for rushing him.” He sat up, his shoulders tensing slightly. “Michael came in to me the next morning. Found us saying goodbye. He was dressed, which is more than I was, and I was half-wanting him gone, but randy enough even with a hangover to be hard just from kissing him, and so Michael got an eyeful.”

It was hard for Nick to imagine what John might have felt at that moment -- he’d led a fairly sheltered life in some ways, something he certainly wouldn’t deny. “Did Michael take it badly?”

“I didn’t give him the chance. The man -- Richard, his name was -- took one look at Michael and left us to it. The way I was acting, he probably thought Michael was my boyfriend or something.” John shrugged. “I just went to pieces, and Michael being Michael, he closed the door before Dave heard me, came over, and gave me a shoulder to cry on.” John looked mildly embarrassed. “Literally. I told him everything I hadn’t been telling him, found out it wasn’t exactly news to him, and God knows why he did it, because he can’t have wanted to, but he kissed me.”

John glanced at Nick. “I’ll not say I didn’t hope -- just for a moment -- but he was doing it to show me there was no chance, more than anything, I suppose. And then he remembered he was eighteen, and a lad, and not supposed to be emotional at nine in the morning, and he threw up in the wastepaper bin.” John looked thoughtful. “I like to think it was because Dave had started frying some bacon and it was a wee bit much on top of all the lager he’d been drinking, rather than the kiss.”

“I feel like I can say with a fair amount of confidence that it wasn’t the kiss,” Nick told him. If they’d been inside, he’d have leaned over and kissed John just to reassure him, but he couldn’t help but be conscious of where they were, of the fact that even though it seemed like they were alone, they might not be.

It was kind of weird, actually, the instinct to want to kiss John. He and Matthew had never kissed like that. Not casually, not in public. Most of the time, not even when they were fucking. It hadn’t been a part of their relationship for some reason. It had never occurred to Nick that it might have been a way of keeping Matthew at a distance until just now.

Still, he found himself warming to Michael, who’d comforted John and not rejected him. “I’m glad that he was so good about it. I’m sure it would have been a lot harder if he’d reacted badly.”

“Back then, the way I felt about him?” John shook his head. “It would have broken me. But he didn’t. And I repaid the favor in the train on the way back by telling him just how hard I’d thump him if he breathed a word to Sheila about the tart he’d picked up. In fact, I took her off his hands.”

“What do you mean?”

John grinned. “We got back and told people I was the one who’d got off with Karen -- not that Michael did more than kiss her, because it turned out she’d a boyfriend waiting at home -- and he was the one who’d spent the weekend missing Sheila, and didn’t she know he only wanted to work on the rigs to save up enough to buy her a ring?” John rolled his eyes. “So we’re back at me freezing my arse off on the mountain six months later feeling sentimental because it’d never be the same again -- though seeing as it was another two years before they tied the knot I was a bit previous there -- and now I’m going to shut up, because you must be sick to death of hearing me talk.”

“I’m not.” Nick looked up from the small pattern of rocks he’d been creating in the sand. “I like knowing about you. I want to know.” Maybe it was because his own life seemed repetitive when he thought of it, the same stuff happening again and again, but everything about John and John’s life interested him.

“Well, now you do.” John gave a sigh that sounded more relieved than anything. “I maybe should’ve saved something back for a rainy day, but that’s about it. I’ve spent the last twelve years meeting men like Richard -- even went out with a few of them more than once, although it never amounted to much -- and admitting what I was just never -- it was never the right time, somehow, and now it’s too late.”

Nick rested his chin on his knee and looked out to sea. There were birds circling, and he didn’t know if they were seagulls or something else entirely. “Why is it too late?”

“I tell people and not only do they find out what I am, they find out I’ve been lying to them for years. Somehow I can’t see it going down well.” John sounded not bitter but resigned, as if he’d become so used to the situation that it didn’t bother him anymore. “You think I’d do that to my friends? To my mother? She’d be shamed in front of everyone and it’d be my fault.” John shook his head. “It’s too late,” he repeated.

“So you’ll just be alone and miserable for the rest of your life because you don’t want to
upset
anyone?” Nick asked disbelievingly, lifting his head and looking at John. “You can’t be serious.”

John looked stubborn. “It’s different for you. You’ve never settled down any place. I’ve lived my whole life here and I care what people think of me. Care what my mother and sisters would say. I
know
what they’d be like. I know how they’d change and I can’t -- I don’t want to see it in their faces.”

Nick was totally unprepared to deal with this. He didn’t have any idea what to do that might be helpful. He did, however, know that he wasn’t interested in spending the next however many years sneaking around behind everyone’s backs. He’d been prepared to live alone here, but he wasn’t prepared to pretend he was alone when he wasn’t.

So he brushed his hands off on his thighs and offered the right one to John. “Okay,” he said, as John reached out tentatively and they shook hands. “Well, I’m glad we met. And I appreciate all your help. I’d like it if we could be friends.”

There was a moment when he didn’t think John was going to get it, but the man wasn’t stupid. Not about most things anyway. The bewilderment and hurt faded off his face to be replaced by comprehension.

“That’s not going to work,” John told him. “I don’t think you’re serious, and I don’t think you’re the kind of man who bullies someone into a decision they’re not ready to make.”

“I understand.” Nick didn’t let go of John’s hand. He thought anyone looking at them would think they were two men making a deal of some kind.

Maybe they were.

“And I don’t expect you to make a decision right away. But I’m glad to hear that you think you’ll be making one eventually.” Nick couldn’t help but worry that it would be a decision he wouldn’t like, but he couldn’t focus on that, not now.

“I didn’t say that.” John’s hand tightened as if no matter what he said he wasn’t prepared to let Nick just walk away. “Nick -- you just got here. And for all that I’m ready to lose myself in loving you because it’s the easiest thing in the world to do that, I can’t just -- You could go. You
will
go. And if I’ve told people ... when you do, I’ll have nothing left.”

Nick couldn’t help the little niggling feeling of annoyance over the assumption that he’d been lying when he said he
had
nowhere else to go. He had money set aside, true, but he didn’t plan to go back to his former career, not without Matthew to manage the details, and he didn’t have anywhere else to live. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Tell me that after you’ve spent a winter here. When it’s dark most of the time and you’re stuck in your house with nothing to do but think. And tell me how you plan to live unless you go back to what you were doing -- and if you do, then you’ll be leaving and we’re back where we started.” John let go of Nick’s hand. “You turned up with less luggage than a tourist here for a weekend and you expect me to think that aye, you’re stopping, you’ll be here next week, next month, next year? And friends? When I can’t see you without wanting you? Oh, aye, I’m feeling very fucking friendly towards you, trust me!”

Frustrated and feeling like nothing he said was going to make a difference, Nick stood up. “The stuff I brought with me is pretty much everything I own. There’s a box of books that I shipped, but I’m a lot less complicated than you seem to think I am.” He sighed. “And I’d rather be your friend than nothing at all, if we can’t be.. more. That’s what you’re telling me, right?”

John got to his feet and stared at him in a bewilderment that seemed to be genuine. “I’m not telling you that. You are. And either you’re complicated, or I’m thick, because I can’t understand you at all right now. I want you. And it’s not just about the way you can get me hard with a look because sex was the last thing on my mind when I walked into the graveyard after you last night. I just -- I don’t want anyone to know about me.”

Nick nodded, folding his arms to quell the urge to reach out and touch John. “I know. I know.” His chest ached with tension. “So ... we’ll just give it some time?” He didn’t want to do that, not really, but it wasn’t looking as if he had a choice.

“You’re saying that but you don’t look happy about it.” John gave him a perplexed frown. “I don’t -- can you just tell me what the problem is? Why it matters that everyone doesn’t know our business? Please. I want to know. Because it’s as much for your sake as mine. If you’re serious about settling down here, then you’ve got to fit in, and telling everyone that you’re gay isn’t going to help with that.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Nick said. “I mean, I don’t mind keeping it quiet for a while. I understand why you’d want to. But I don’t want to plan on living the rest of my life like that.”

“Then you hadn’t better plan on spending the rest of your life here.”

“And that’s okay with you? You’re all right with just accepting the fact that you have no other choice but to be unhappy?” Nick was frowning. “Because
I’m
not okay with that. You deserve better.”

“I don’t want to be unhappy,” John protested. “I’m doing this to
avoid
being unhappy. And I
was
happy up to ten minutes ago -- meeting you -- God, Nick --” He stepped closer and reached up to cup Nick’s face with a hand that always seemed to be warm when it touched Nick. “Do you not know what that was like?”

“I think I do.” Nick searched John’s eyes for a reassurance that he couldn’t have even put a name to. “I know what it was like to meet you. I didn’t think I’d ever feel like this about anyone. It’s crazy.” It had to be; they barely knew each other, and there were so many things stacked against them.