What’s that got to do with anything? Or is it okay for you to take your pain out on Billy while cursing him out for doing the same? He lost all the same things you did.
True facts. But we were different men. Billy’s emotions were noisy bright lights, but they made sense. I understood. Perhaps even he did too. Mine were dulled by years of suppression, and when they spilled out, unchecked, I had no idea what to do with them.
I pulled up by the dilapidated barn and got out of the van. It was darker out here than in town, and the stars shone with obnoxious light that cut through the shadows. Foxes screamed in the distance. Hoarse, ragged cries that suited my mood. I ducked into the barn and sat on an old tractor tyre. At some point I’d have to go home and watch Billy pack his things and leave. But before that could happen I needed to scrape my heart from the floor and shove it back to the pit it had come from.
It was easier than admitting I loved Billy too much to let him go.
Billy
Gus came back in the morning. He waited outside in the van, like he had in the beginning, and I climbed into the passenger seat as if we hadn’t started the day before naked and fucking and ended it tearing chunks off each other.
He was on the phone, leaning back in his seat, his eyes half closed. “Yeah, yeah. I know. Me too. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
The call ended. He tossed his phone on the dashboard, and Mia’s face lit up the screen, radiant and beautiful, with her arms wrapped around my stone-faced brother. It felt like a reminder of everything at stake. I turned to Gus, but he was already putting the van in gear and driving away.
Mia’s face faded. I sat back in my seat and watched Rushmere slip by in the light of the early morning. I had no idea where we were going, and it seemed fitting, but the quiet was suffocating. It scratched at me, spinning my mind a hundred miles an hour as I sifted through the chaos for something—anything—I could say to break it.
I fought to keep my gaze on the window, but it drifted to Gus all the same. His big shoulders were tense, his knuckles tight, and beyond that, he looked tired. The devil in me pondered if he’d been up all night in someone else’s bed, but my heart shouted it down. I knew what Gus looked like when he’d been up all night fooling around, and it wasn’t dark circles and pale skin. Hooded eyes, and a jaw so set it had to be giving him a migraine.
The van needed fuel. Gus pulled into the supermarket petrol station. In the weeks that we’d worked together, we’d fallen into the routine of me loading the diesel while he went and paid in the kiosk, but he got out before I could and yanked the hose around the van to the fuel cap.
Taking the hint, I sloped into the kiosk, paid for the fuel, and bought him a bacon twist.
He took it and dropped it on the seat between us. “Thanks. Did you get your receipt?”
“What for?”
“So Luke can pay the money back from the company account.”
I held it out.
He shook his head. “Give it to him yourself.”
“Okay. Are you gonna ignore me all day?” I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth, but there was no taking them back.
Gus stared at me, unblinking. “I’m not ignoring you.”
“You haven’t spoken since I got in the van.”
“Neither have you.”
“And you didn’t come home last night.”
“You think I was in someone else’s bed.”
It wasn’t a question, or an accusation. Just bland summary of the dumbfuck assumption I’d made about him the day before. “I don’t think that. I just feel bad because I drove you out of your own house by being a wanker.”
“You’re not a wanker, Billy.”
“No? I was wrong, though, wasn’t I? About the messages?”
“So what if you were?” Gus turned the key in the ignition, and the van rumbled to life. He pulled off the forecourt and back onto the road. “You weren’t the only one to think I’d messed this up by being a manwhore.”
“I don’t think you’re a manwhore.”
Gus snorted. “Mate, if we’re going to have this conversation, leave the bullshit behind, okay?”
It still felt weird to hear him curse. And it felt even worse to realise he honestly believed what he was saying. “I don’t think you’re a manwhore. You don’t get to decide that I do based on the fact I have the temper of a five-year-old.”
“What do I get to decide then?”
“I don’t know. Whatever you want.”
“And what’s that?”
“I don’t know that either. You never told me.”
“Maybe I don’t know either.”
“Or maybe you do, and you’re afraid of it.”
“Maybe.” Gus turned off the A road and into the next town over from Rushmere. Big houses and quaint cottages lined the streets, and he pulled up outside one with a skip on the driveway.
He cut the engine, and the sudden quiet smothered us. “But it doesn’t matter what I’m afraid of, or what scares you so much about who you think I am. Whatever this mess between us is, we have to forget about it. Luke needs you. It’ll break him if you leave again.”
“This isn’t about Luke.”
“Yes, it is. It has to be. So if we can’t get past this, maybe it’s my turn to pack up and leave.”
He got out of the van.
I followed and trailed him up the drive to the cottage that was mid renovation. “What? You can’t leave.”
“Why not? Everyone else did.”
“Yeah. And look where it got us. More screwed up than a fucking soap opera. Gus, it doesn’t have to be
