This is Not a Love Story (27 page)

I move on to the next body, waking them and wishing I had paper and a pen, wishing I hadn’t left everything back at the cafe. But I’m shrugged off and pushed away.

I consider using the phone in my pocket to write out Roxy’s name on the screen and show them, but I risk being mugged for it, even though the phone is old and probably not worth the effort.

No one wants to know anyway. Why would they help me when I offer them nothing in return?

The smell of unwashed bodies, piss, and smoke begins to get to me, so I give up and move away.

I skirt around the back wall. It’s colder and less populated, but it is a good vantage point. I keep my eyes out for Roxy’s black mess of hair, Cricket’s dirty blond crew cut.

I don’t expect to find Pasha first, but as I pass the far corner, I’m sure I see him. His close-shaved head laid bare against the concrete—his hair so much like mine used to be—his eyes closed, sleeping, blanketless, and cold. He is alone. I can’t see Roxy anywhere near him.

It’s probably for the best. I’m sure Roxy hates me because of what I did.

As I get closer, I’m struck by how fragile he looks, how young. His wrists are so thin, his skin white as the bones beneath it.

With his face unguarded and expressionless, he appears much younger than I was my first night on the streets, and it tears at me how wrong this is. He’s just a child, lost out here in the freezing temperatures, no one giving a fuck if he gets sick or hurt.

A coughing fit that would have me doubled over racks his body, but he sleeps right through it. He stinks of alcohol and there is a dark pool of vomit near his head. But it doesn’t matter. I crouch down and put my arms around him, feeling the tremors that run through his body. He’s shaking so badly with the cold. I try to sit him up, but he just flops against me, no weight to him at all. The movement doesn’t wake him, and it scares me a little, but I tell myself he’s just drunk.

Drunk, unconscious, and freezing cold—people die like this out here. But I can help him. I can do something about it, and the alcohol will work its way out of his system.

If it
is
alcohol. If he’s overdosed on something else, it could be too late already.

I can’t let myself panic. I’ve got to get him to Cassey’s. I’ve got to get him warm.

Slipping one hand beneath his knees and the other around his back, I lift him up. His head lolls backward over my arm, exposing his pale throat, the dark thumb-sized bruises around his collarbone. His trousers are undone too, barely pulled up, the zip broken. I can see the faint dark line of hair than runs down his pale stomach from his navel to his genitals, and I want so much to cover him up, but I need to get him out of here.

I’m unable to wipe my tears and they fall freely, blurring my way as I stumble through the dark, back the way I came.

Outside, it has started to rain and a bitter wind whips the icy water around us. I have to stop when I reach the steps. I can’t carry on; my arms are trembling with the exertion of carrying him just the short distance through the underpass. Gently, I lay him down and take off the top Crash gave me to wrap around him. I’m not cold right now anyway.

It takes all my determination to make it to the top of the steps. I cross the road and walk on in short bursts, stopping every few meters until I feel like my legs are going to give way beneath the weight in my arms. I turn down Old Paradise Street. It’s a long road, but I can see the cafe in the distance, its bright sign lit up against the grayness.

The rain is coming down heavily now, plastering my hair to my head and soaking through my thin T-shirt.

I concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other, on taking one step at a time. A figure runs down the road toward us, but I don’t pay any attention. My muscles are burning. I focus on what I have to do.

But as the figure gets closer, I realize I know who is running toward us, and the relief makes me weak. My knees give way, and I fall gracelessly down on the unforgiving pavement, taking Pasha’s weight in my arms, rocking him back and forth.

Crash skids to a halt in front of me, breathing heavily.

Julian?
he signs, eyes wide as he looks from me to the boy in my arms.

I shake my head and mouth,
Pasha.

Crash reaches down and with great care takes Pasha into his arms. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so grateful to anyone—except maybe Julian when he rushed in and stopped my being beaten to death all those months ago.

“Come on,” he says in his careful way, his arms too full to sign. “Get up. It will be okay.”

C
ASSEY
IS
pacing backward and forward, peering anxiously out the steamed-up cafe window when we push open the door.

“Dear God, are you lot trying to give me a heart attack!” she exclaims when she sees Pasha unconscious in Crash’s arms. “Come through to the back.”

We follow Cassey through the tiny cafe kitchen to a box room at the back of the building. Extra tables, chairs, and supplies for the cafe are piled high along the walls. The window at the end looks out onto a back alley full of black bin bags. It’s not warm, and my teeth chatter as the cold seeps to my bones without Crash’s jumper. Cassey rushes to get a heater and something to lay Pasha down on. Her sister, Jackie, looks on, not saying a word.

When Cassey returns with an ancient-looking bar heater and a thick blanket, I help her make a space on the floor so Crash can lay Pasha down. We wrap him tightly and the heater blasts out warm air into the room, but still he doesn’t wake.

Bending over him, Cassey places her hand on his forehead.

“I’m going to give him—” Cassey looks at her watch with a fleetingly anxious expression. “—twenty minutes. If he’s still like this by then, I’m going to call an ambulance.”

I nod and sign Cassey’s words to Crash.

“I’ll come back in a bit with something hot for you two, alright?”

Cassey leaves us. I lie down next to Pasha, tentatively stroking his head, his arm, his cheek. I thread my fingers through his, wanting to feel him warm with my touch, but instead I feel the cold leach into me. The wet fabric of my T-shirt sticks to my skin unpleasantly, and my feet are so cold and wet I can no longer feel my toes. But none of that matters.

Please wake up,
I think. And not just because he can help me find Julian. Right now, I just need him to wake up and be okay.

Folding his long limbs, Crash sits down and watches us, a serious, almost pained expression on his face.

What happened?
he signs.

I don’t know.
I pull myself up wiping at my eyes and feel Crash’s fingers brush against mine, against my cheek, warmth radiating through his skin.
He was supposed to be with Julian. I thought he was with Julian. But he’s just a kid.

I feel that by putting so much faith in Pasha staying with Julian, Pasha looking after him even, that I’ve betrayed him somehow. I had no right to place such hopes on his shoulders, even if he did take them on willingly.

I stroke Pasha’s back, rubbing in a constant motion, begging him to wake up.

Shifting closer, Crash places his arm around my shoulders. I tuck my head under his chin and lean against his chest, the strong thump of his heart so comforting, so alive. I feel like I am using him too—though it occurs to me maybe he knows and maybe he’s letting me.

F
OR
A
moment there is only the slow tick of the rain against the glass, the rise and fall of Pasha’s chest, Crash’s heart beating heavy in my ear, and the low whir and click of the heater in the corner. The room is warm, I am no longer shivering, and Pasha’s tremors grow less and less.

I don’t know what I’ll do if he doesn’t wake up. I don’t want to think about it. Instead I wonder about Pasha’s background. What was it that made him come here to London, to England? I wonder that no one cared enough to stop him and if anyone did care, how they will never know how much he’s had to go through, where he sleeps at night.

Without meaning to, I picture my mother’s face and close my eyes against the pain.

But even more powerful than my memories is an exhaustion so heavy it flattens me, and I can do nothing but give in to it.

T
HE
SUDDEN
commotion in the cafe makes me jump, my heart pounding. Beyond the closed door to this small room, tables and chairs are scraped along the floor or are knocked over, and someone is shouting angrily. I tense, prepared to run for it, but then remember where I am, who I’m with, and I know I don’t need to run anymore.

Slowly, I pull away from Crash’s embrace and sit up, trying to hear what’s happening. Crash looks at me bewildered, unaware of the noise. I gently let go of Pasha’s limp hand and get up to move closer to the door so I can listen, but by now the shouting has stopped.

A second later the door flies open, nearly knocking me against the wall, and Roxy rushes in, followed by Cassey calling for him to calm down. He glances at me, then at Crash, and crumples on the floor next to Pasha, a low sound coming out of his mouth. It’s only when I get closer I realize he’s crying.

Roxy,
I sign to Crash.
Someone….
I trail off. Someone I used to know.

But someone I now barely recognize, even though it has only been a few weeks since I last saw him. He looks so different, and not in a good way. His messed-up hair is bleached some unnatural white blond, and when I look closer, I can see there are patches of hair missing at the back. The bones of his spine poke out through the fabric of his top, and it reminds me of the old man we saw at the swimming pool, surviving and yet so lost.

The Roxy I once knew is gone, his innocence wasted, his sweetness peeled away bit by bit until there is nothing left of it, until there’s nothing but skin covering bones. The thought makes me feel hollow and empty.

If I’d seen him in the underpasses, I wouldn’t have known.

“Nononono,” he moans, cradling Pasha’s head.

Behind him, Cassey looks on unhappily.

Her expression surely reflects my own. Yes, he’s here now, but where was he when Pasha was drunk and vulnerable and he needed someone? Where was he when Pasha was being fucking molested?

“I thought he’d been kidnapped,” Roxy says in a low voice, eyes narrowed at me. “Someone saw him being taken here. I didn’t know it was you.”

I desperately look around for something to write on. A fierce anger burns through me, ignited by his words.

Crash realizes what I want and passes me a delivery receipt off the side of one of the boxes, and I pick up a pulverized biro off the floor.

What the fuck did he take? How could you just leave him like that? He was freezing when I found him. People die like that out there!
The pen rips through the paper as I write, and my hands shake when I think that he still might not be okay.

I shove it at Roxy. He glances at what I’ve written and lets go of Pasha to snatch the pen off me.

Fuck you!
he scrawls across my words. “He can do what he likes. I’m not his fucking keeper.”

So why are you here?
I sign, throwing my arms wide, frustrated, knowing Roxy can’t understand me but needing to express how I feel.
You can’t just care when it suits you. He’s just a kid. He’s younger than we were!

As if she can understand the exact meaning of my gestures, Cassey shakes her head at Roxy. “You call that boy your friend, and you just left him like this.”

“Fuck it. I’m not staying here to listen to this.” Laying Pasha back down, he gets up to leave. “Pasha knows where to find me.”

I glare at him. It’s so fucking easy to just go. Roxy never had any backbone anyway. It’s why we didn’t stay together long. I knew from the first that if things went bad, he wouldn’t be there for me. Just like he wasn’t there for Pasha. I can’t let that happen again.

But I can’t let myself be like him either. Reluctantly, I reach out and put my hand on his arm to stop him. His clothes are as soaking and cold as mine.

He casts his eyes to the floor and shakes off my touch, but he doesn’t leave.

Behind us I hear a cough. Pasha’s eyes flicker open and, squinting in the brightness, he groans before throwing up on the floor.

The bonds wound around my heart release a little, and I take a deep, shaky breath. You don’t realize how tightly things hold you in until they let you go a little.

“Where’m I?” Pasha slurs, placing his cheek against the carpet, unable to focus on either of us.

He’s still intoxicated. And the state he’s in still makes me angry.

“You’re at Jackie’s cafe, Pasha. You came here yesterday with Roxy. What did you take?” Cassey asks him gently, while grabbing a mop and some paper towels from the corner of the room.

“Drunk s’all,” he mumbles.

I sink down onto the rough floor tiles to help her clean him and the floor up. She shouldn’t have to do this. It was me that brought him here.

Subdued, Roxy bites his fingernails in the doorway, keeping his distance.

Pasha zones out for a second. I put my hand on his face and turn his head until he opens his eyes again.

When Crash crouches down next to me, I want to move closer and be surrounded by his warmth. I want to share with him my relief that Pasha’s woken up.

If there is any alcohol still in his stomach he needs to get it out. Get him to drink warm water and throw up until he can’t throw up any more,
he signs.

He hands me a cup of tepid water he must have got from the little sink in the corner.

Is there a bathroom we can take Pasha to?
I write on my torn receipt and hold it out to Cassey.

Cassey nods, and with Crash’s help we get Pasha upright. I motion for Roxy to come with us, but he shakes his head, then seems to have second thoughts and picks up the blanket off the floor, drapes it around Pasha’s shoulders, and follows us to the bathroom.