This is Not a Love Story (8 page)

I fling the stupid blankets over the railing, sink down onto the wet floor, and sob.

Phillippe waits until I’ve finished, then offers me a sandwich made from two pieces of stale bread shoved together, no filling. I realize dejectedly he’s just as lost as I am, and that he wants to stay with me mostly so he doesn’t have to be alone.

The sun is on my back as I sit, my head dropped between my knees, and think.

If I go alone to the white house and hand my paltry list of demands over to Vidal, he’s going to laugh in my face. Peter’s right, he’s not going to help me. Why would he?

Even if I allow myself to be fucked and used by every punter who walks into that house, Vidal wouldn’t give a toss. He has hundreds of boys willing to do that for less trouble and inconvenience than the answer to a question.
Who’s Malik?
he’d say. And what could I do about it?

Because he can’t understand me, I realize I’m no longer including Phillippe in any of this, although I am assuming he’ll go wherever I go.

Every detail from the night before plays out in my head. Everything I heard Malik say, the taste of the drink, the faces of the other boys I can remember. Julian watching me as I drew his face, that look. Falling asleep with him and… dreaming. Was it a dream? Can I let myself believe it wasn’t a dream right now? And even if it wasn’t a dream, even if it was real, maybe it was because of the drugs, the sleeping pills. Maybe they dissolved our inhibitions along with our consciousness. But that would mean we had inhibitions to be dissolved, that underneath our fears there were wants and desires. And for me there are, without question, but for him?

Maybe I’ll never know now. Maybe the most erotic moment of my short life will slowly blur in its drug-induced haze, remembered only in agonizing fragments. Maybe it will be my undoing. Maybe I am already undone.

“Romeo?” Phillippe touches my shoulder. “Do you think we should maybe go somewhere else? They’re not coming back. I’m sorry,” he adds when I lift my head and stare at him icily.

No, I don’t fucking think we should
maybe go somewhere else
. I don’t fucking know what to do, and right now staring at the fucking wet floor seems like a great idea to me.

I’m so frustrated he can’t understand me, and I can’t snap at him.

Without warning I remember the last argument I had with Julian, which wasn’t really an argument at all, just me being fucking obnoxious. The force of it is like an iron fist gripping my chest and then ripping my heart out. I stifle a sob and push myself up off the slippery floor.

Okay, we need to get out of here.

And just like that, I make a decision. Where do we go when things get bad? Who is my only solid connection to Julian?

Gem.

Julian would find me there, I know he would. How have I suddenly switched it around to Julian finding me? And how is he going to do that if they’ve… if he’s….

I dig my fingers into my skull.

I need to move and not think. I glance up at Phillippe. I beckon him to come. And using every last ounce of energy in me, I take the stairs three at a time and run.

It’s painfully exhilarating, and Phillippe is doubled over holding his chest as I use the last of the money I earned yesterday to buy two tube tickets. Time is ticking away unbearably fast and walking will take hours. If we were taking overground trains, I’d jump the barriers, but the tube is too well policed these days.

Inside, the station is crowded and disorientating—the last time I used the tube was months and months ago, long before I became officially homeless—and I forget how easy it is to take a wrong turn and end up waiting for the wrong train.

We descend deeper under London, staircase after staircase, escalator after escalator.

Down here the darkness rushes, and the sooty blackness has a sound that echoes off the curved white tiles and mixes with the hundred-year-old scent that permeates the air.

I peer into the blackness of the tunnel, never really sure which direction the train is going to appear from, while Phillippe runs his hand against the dirty white tiles at the back of the busy platform, swirling patterns and drawing pictures.

We get plenty of backward glances, a few unembarrassed stares. And I stare back. If only they knew how easy it is to fall through the gaps—a few unsteady steps and suddenly you’re gone.

P
HILLIPPE
STANDS
behind me as I bang frantically on Gem’s door. It’s a bad move. She thinks it’s trouble and won’t open unless I tell her who it is. Fuck.

I point at myself and then at Phillippe’s mouth. He shrugs, and I put my head in my hands.

Just tell her who it is for fuck’s sake
, I will him.

Gem shouts again, threatening to call the police, when Phillippe
finally
gets it and stutters my name.

The door swings open.

“Romeo? What the hell?”

A less-glamorous-than-usual Gem looks from me to Phillippe and then down the corridor.

I give a small wave to Joel hiding behind the door to the living room, but I can’t bring myself to smile.

“Who are you?” Gem demands, dark eyes fixed on Phillippe. I’d never admit it, but she scares me a little bit. “And where’s Jules?”

Phillippe squeaks his name, but I can’t look her in the eye. I don’t want to break down in front of her. I’m stronger than that.

I lean my pad against the wall and feeling slightly detached, write,
I don’t know. He was taken last night by the people we were staying with
.

She stares at my writing as if the words aren’t quite right and then ushers us both inside, before just about dragging me into the living room.

“Joel, go play in your room for a minute, yeah?”

“Can’t I see Romeo?”

Gem shakes her head firmly. “Not now.”

Phillippe hovers in the hall until Joel takes his hand and whispers something. Gem watches warily as they walk toward Joel’s bedroom.

“Joel, take Phillippe to the kitchen. Give him a biscuit and a drink,” she calls, then turns to me. “Your friend out there had better be trustworthy.”

I nod before letting my legs fold under me and collapse back onto the couch. Gem looks different without a mountain of makeup on, more real, less… something I can’t quite put my finger on. Slowly she lowers herself down next to me, a grim expression on her face.

“Tell me everything,” she says in a flat, dull voice, as if this is somehow what she has been expecting all this time, as if she’s resigned to Julian having a less-than-pleasant fate.

All at once I wish I hadn’t come here. She’s not going to reassure me that he’s going to be okay. She’s already accepted that he’s gone. And I can’t deal with that.

But I write everything down anyway, everything I remember, excluding my dream. At first I’m not even sure she’s reading. She just seems to be staring at the paper so she doesn’t have to look at me. She doesn’t say anything for a long, long time.

And when she does speak, “Joel’s going to be devastated” is all she says, flatly, quietly.

A sudden painful thought occurs to me, and I write it down without really thinking.

Is Julian Joel’s father?

Joel is lighter skinned than Gem. Julian would have been fourteen, maybe fifteen. Gem is older. It’s not impossible.

But Gem reads my question with such a look of shock and wonder on her face that I feel stupid and embarrassed. She gasps out a laugh, and I fold my arms protectively across my chest.

“Please tell me you’re not as innocent as you look, Romeo. You do know how it works, don’t you? A man and a woman… not two….” She sighs, rolling her eyes.

Of course I fucking know. It wasn’t such a stupid question, and I can’t see why she thought it was.

I stare sullenly at the glass coffee table and the way the sunlight makes colors shine through the surface to pattern the carpet beneath.

“Julian wouldn’t have left you, you know that. He would have done anything for you,” she says softly. I close my eyes and will her to shut up. I feel her hand on my knee.

Mainly to stop her feeling sorry for me, I pick up my pad and write the first thing that comes into my head.

Yeah, anything except talk to me about how much selling himself was hurting him. He always talked to you, though.

“Are you joking?” she stares at me incredulously. “Honey, Jules is just about the shyest, most verbally reluctant person I’ve ever met.”

He was never shy with me. Except about sex.

“Well, that says a lot about how you make him feel, doesn’t it?”

But we always came to you. I thought he wanted to talk to you because he couldn’t talk to me.

“We’ve been friends a long time, and in all that time, we’ve never once had a conversation about how he felt or was feeling. To be honest, I think he came here because he didn’t want you to have to deal with him when he wasn’t feeling strong.”

That’s stupid
, I write, but I know it’s true.

“You changed him, Romeo. After he helped you when you got attacked by that gang, he was different. He was more himself, more sure of himself. I thought it was drugs or something when he first brought you here. I thought he was high because I’d honestly never seen him so happy. But he was happy because he was taking care of you, and then later on he was happy just because he was
with
you.”

She looks down at her long fingers and taps her elaborate nails against the fabric of her jeans, sighing deeply.

“You were always wary of me, and you were right to be, I suppose. I was jealous of you at first.” Her deep brown eyes hold mine. I won’t look away. She smiles tightly. “I am still jealous, but I wanted him to be happy, and he was.”

I grab my pad and not caring that I’m wasting pages by covering them in tears, write,
Stop it, stop talking about him like he’s gone, he’s not fucking dead. I’m going to find him. I WILL.

Joel and Phillippe are laughing in the kitchen. Joel has that effect on people, and I know why Gem doesn’t trust anyone with him. She goes to see what’s going on, and I curl up on the sofa in despair.

I stare out the window at the drifting clouds and the slowly dimming sky, too torn apart to think coherently anymore.

Gem goes to get ready for her next client, and Joel comes and sits on the floor in front of me. He knows I’m sad, but he doesn’t know why. I’m holding the picture I did of Julian. Holding but not looking at it. Stupid, really.

“Why isn’t Jules with you?”

My pad is on the floor next to us. I let my arm fall limply over the edge of the couch and write,
I wish he was
.

“Why is he gone away?” Joel frowns, looking puzzled.

I look up and see Phillippe watching us from a chair in the kitchen.

Someone took him away. I don’t think he wanted to go away.
Which is of course the wrong thing to write.

Joel is upset. I hold him as tight as I can in my apathetic arms.

He cries next to my ear. “Are the policemen going to find him? When someone is taken away, the policemen find them and bring them back.”

And what am I supposed to say to that? Am I supposed to lie, or am I supposed to tell a four-year-old that we’re nothing, that we don’t matter, that to everyone else it’s better that we don’t exist?

W
E
CAN
’
T
stay at Gem’s, and saying good-bye to Joel is awful. It feels as though something has ended, and I’m never going to see him again. Of course Gem hasn’t said she doesn’t want me to come back. She would never say that, but I know I won’t come back unless Julian is with me.

Phillippe follows me out into the freezing night.

Without anything to tether me, I drift back to the streets I know. There is some strange dark comfort in being here again—even the threat of seeing Lloyd here doesn’t bother me. As we walk along the black embankment, it occurs to me we could die of this cold tonight. But even though my hands and feet are now completely numb, and Phillippe is shaking uncontrollably beside me, all I feel is emptiness.

Eventually we come to Joe Brown’s cafe. Everything is dark and shut up, and we curl up together and sleep around the back of the building our feet in the glass Julian broke.

“Romeo?”

I wake with a start to find Cassey peering over me a deeply concerned look on her face.

“Oh my God, Romeo, I thought you were dead!” she cries, holding her hands over her heart.

It’s still dark, and I’ve no idea of the time as she takes us inside to the dimly lit back room where she used to give me toast to share with Julian. She tells us to sit down in the tatty armchairs and get comfortable, while she grabs every blanket and towel she can find to cover us and make us slowly warm. We don’t move but to breathe.

Leaving us briefly to open up the cafe, she returns with hot sweet tea and chocolate biscuits. She doesn’t ask about Julian, but she watches Phillippe and me closely, as though she’s working something out.

It’s so painful warming up after such a long time being cold. So painful I sob as the feeling comes back into my fingertips. I can’t walk at first, and the two of us just sit like statues, hoping we’ll never have to leave.

Around midday, Cassey gets Phillippe to help clean the tables out front, and when Jodie, the only other member of staff, comes in to start her shift, Cassey closes the door and sits down in the back room with me.

“What’s happened, Romeo?” she asks softly. For a moment the light catches in the wispy hair that frames her face before she absently tucks it back in her loose bun.

I wonder if she has children of her own to look after. I wonder why she runs this cafe—it can’t make any money. It’s perhaps one step up from a soup kitchen.

It must be some sort of self-preservation that kicks in when you dip below the point of survival, when you’re on the very brink, but I ask her something I’ve never asked anyone before—Julian and I were too proud, or too stupid—and I write,
Can we stay here tonight? Please?