Brendan
They're out. Steven and Douglas, they're out and proud. Every time I walk past that deli, or look down on it from the balcony of my club, they're all over each other. Laughing together; holding hands; intimate, conspiratorial. Love's young dream. Never mind that Douglas has been playing it straight all his life, what matters to Steven is that he ain't afraid now, he don't care who knows that they're a couple, he don't care who sees. And that's what makes him a better bet than me. Among other things, of course: the things I'm ashamed that I did. But it's the public thing that's the clincher for Steven, I think. That's what I never gave him, and Douglas does, and that's why Steven's fallen into this thing with him, this relationship. What else can it be? I've seen them kiss, and there's no passion there, no lust. Need, I'd call it. Not need as in, they need each other's bodies like they need to breathe. Need as in, who else have they got?
I guess they're fucking. Must be. It baffles me and it turns my stomach, but it's Douglas's bed that Steven's lying in, not mine, and it's not because Douglas knows how to start a tremor in Steven that shatters him into pieces and makes him come back together like he's someone new. Unless Douglas is a very dark horse, but... No, it's that other thing he gives him, and I can give it to him too if I have to, if that's what it's gonna take. I will give him his public love. I'm not saying I'm gonna hold his hand in the street – Jesus, we're not a couple of kids – but I'll do what he needs me to do. I will acknowledge him. Let the world see that he's mine, if that's so important to him. Christ, if it meant he was mine again, I'd let the world see me kiss him.
Jesus.
I just have to get Douglas out of the picture first.
:::::::
I went to the deli. Ordered a jam sandwich, and they didn't have a jar of jam in the place. Tut tut. Douglas was making an effort to be civilised, and he sent Steven off over to Price Slice to get the jam for me. And you know what? Steven remembered. I can't say he went with good grace – customer service skills need brushing up, he's a surly little fuck – but I was gonna remind him, Make sure it's... and he remembered for himself. Seedless. And let's face it, he ought to remember, like I remember, one time we got sticky. Put it this way, you wouldn't wanna get seeds in the places I licked it out of, so.
I sat and watched Douglas working; I swear his hands were shaking.
Steven made my sandwich when he came back from the shop. His hands didn't shake. Steven's hands are sure and they are deft. Then he ran out again, said he had to go to the bank. Wanted to get away from me, more like. Fuck.
I took the opportunity to remind Douglas of our little financial arrangement, the one he's keeping from his partner, the secret I can blow up in Douglas's pretty face any time I like.
:::::::
Douglas bit the bullet himself. He must have told Steven about the loan soon as Steven got back from the bank, and by the looks of it, it didn't go down too well. I was on the Chez Chez balcony and I saw them come out of their shop, and I heard Steven tell him, crystal clear, I'll never be able to trust you again. It's over. Then Douglas said, What's over? And Steven walked away.
What you gonna do now, Dougie boy? What am I gonna do?
Ste
How can he be so stupid? He knows what Brendan's like. He knows how long it's took me to get over Brendan, cos I've told Doug, haven't I? I've told him I haven't, you know, with anybody since that last time nearly a whole year ago. Doug knows – he ought to know – that this deli was meant to be my big chance to move on and make something of myself for me and my kids, and now he's ruined it, cos it's all been lies, and how am I meant to trust him now?
He said he just wanted to see you happy – that's what Doug reckons Brendan told him, and if he believes that, he'll believe anything. If Brendan wanted to see me happy, he would've not sacked me from the club and he would've not punched me, and he would've not lied to me and used me and he would've not messed with my head every bloody time I've seen him since like god knows when.
I had a right go at Doug. I might've shoved him.
I did. I did shove him. He didn't come back at me though like Brendan did if I shoved him. Brendan could stop me. He could scare me into stopping, or once I tried to hit him and he got me in a headlock. Doug didn't even try, cos he's not the same as Brendan, except I realised he is, in one way. He wants to control me, doesn't he? He wants to interfere, and I'm done with that. So I walked out on Doug.
:::::::
Brendan came to the deli next day. He said he wanted a panini, but that's not what he wanted. Well, not just that.
I was on my own cos Doug hadn't shown up. I sort of don't blame him: I mean, I did tell him it's over, but we've still got to run the business or how are we gonna pay back the loan that he got us into?
I told Brendan to go, and he said how can I kick him out of his own business? Unbelievable. I asked him, Why can't you just leave me alone, Brendan? I told him, This place is mine, I've started it from nothing. He just asked for his panini again like it's all one big joke to him, and I felt like... I felt pathetic, like I was gonna cry. He'd beaten me, I couldn't fight him any more. I asked him though, to just stop all his games. Please, can they just stop now?
Yeah, he said, and he looked like he only just realised what he's done to me. He looked sorry. Then he put this brown envelope down on the counter, and he said we need to talk when I've calmed down.
And then Doug walked in, with this big bunch of flowers. White ones, dunno what they were. What do I know about flowers?
Brendan said to him, Who died? And then he just started laughing cos they were for me – Doug had bought flowers for me, and Brendan knew just from that that Doug didn't know me at all. Then Brendan went away.
I looked at Doug standing there with his flowers, and I didn't know why I ever thought we could be together. I can't do this, I said to him, and I picked up my stuff and Brendan's envelope and I walked out. Let Doug manage on his own for a bit.
:::::::
What Brendan had given me to read was a copy of the loan agreement that Doug had signed. I tried to read it all but it was... I couldn't understand it except bits of it. I got the general idea though: it looked like Brendan could do anything he wanted, in return for lending us the money.
I saw Cheryl, or she saw me cos I was sitting out with a coffee trying to work out what to do, if there was anything I could do. I thought she must know that Brendan had put up the money, because if Brendan's keeping secrets from me, and Doug is, why wouldn't Cheryl be doing it too? But she was surprised when I told her about it, so Brendan had kept it a secret from her as well as from me. Only, Cheryl gave him the benefit of the doubt. She reckoned I should talk to him. Look, I know he can be difficult, okay – understatement of the bloody century – But he's come this far without interfering. Maybe he wants to keep it that way.
So I let her talk me into going round there, to their place, to talk to him like he'd asked me to. And I tried, but he stopped me. He made out like he was busy, but he could do me a favour and fit me in at three-thirty. I know he just did it to play with me, so it's on his terms like everything always is. And then he said he'd book a meeting room in town to keep it official. Wouldn't want anyone getting the wrong impression. I think he meant Cheryl, but he might've meant me. As if.
He sort of dismissed me then, and I went home. Then I thought, I didn't know where I was meant to be going for this meeting, so I texted him, Meet 3.30 where? And he made me wait, but then I got a text back saying the address of the place. It was a hotel. And he said, I'll pick you up at 3. I texted straight back, No thx. C U there, and I put a kiss by mistake but luckily I realised in time so I deleted the x then sent the message. Then I looked up the buses, and it was gonna take for bloody ever to get there, so I ended up getting ready in a big rush.
Brendan
Steven was late. I knew he would be, once he turned down my offer of a lift; he don't make things easy for himself, that boy. It was getting on for four o'clock when he was shown into the conference room where I was sat waiting for him.
I had a doctor once. Young lad – old enough to be qualified to work in a hospital, obviously, but still with the awkwardness of youth about him. He was living in our spare room. Lynsey and Chez both took a fancy to him, they were falling over themselves to catch his eye. It was embarrassing: he was embarrassed, Matthew was, I could tell. And I could tell that he was queer.
I talked to him, this doctor fella. He was an interesting guy, had a first class degree, knew the Latin names for everything and knew about all the ills and all the treatments and all the drugs and all the doses. And when I took him to bed, I stripped away all that learning, as easy as I stripped away his clothes. By the time I finished with him, he couldn't have told you what bone the hip bone's connected to, because there was no space left for anything of the mind: all he had was what I was giving him, the sensations, the pleasure, the thunder and the rush. The only thing he could remember was my name – I know that, because it's what he shouted into the pillow when I made him come. I'd made a learned man into the sum of his primitive parts, and I felt triumphant.
Steven wasn't like that. Steven never had that far to fall. He was always raw, the atavistic nature of him barely hidden at all if you knew how to get at it; and I knew from the start where to scratch. But when he walked into that conference room, he was different. He looked composed and controlled.
He was in a suit, for a start. Grey suit, blue tie, and a white shirt with a collar that grazed his Adam's apple when he swallowed. He'd taken it seriously, then; this was a business meeting, and there was nothing about him of the boy I'd chosen getting on for two years ago, a couple of years out of his teens and unsure of his place in a world that had done him no favours. This was a man who knew his own mind, if not his own value.
He sat down, made a big show of getting his folders and whatever out of his bag and placing them on the table in front of him, and he looked at me, level and clear like he was daring me to jerk him around. So I jerked him just a little: You finished? I said once he'd dropped his bag on the floor and was ready to talk. I told him I was gonna make him an offer that he could take or leave.
I could feel that his temper wasn't far from the surface, and that made me feel calmer, more in control. He reckoned I was loving this, but Just so you know, he said, I'm not having you coming in on my business, okay?
I been in since the beginning, Steven. A little jerk on his chain, and he was a little rattled, and he said he never would have agreed if he'd known. But you did, I said; and I'd got him on the back foot, and I didn't need to wind him up any more. I didn't want to. There was a time and a place to tease him to make him squirm, but this wasn't it. I needed him to see the good I'd done for him, and to believe I was serious. Now look what you have, a business worth fighting for. And then I made him my offer: I'll be silent partner. You run it, I won't get involved.
I watched his face, trying to work out what he was thinking, but all I could see was how beautiful he was.
He didn't believe what I was telling him, course he fucking didn't. So I dropped all the strategies, and I took him seriously, I listened to his points and I addressed them. He reckoned that I can't resist interfering in everything he does. I told him, You didn't even know I was involved. Cards on the table: You've proven that you can run the place. I've left you alone and that won't change. You'll be in charge, no strings attached, I promise you. And it was the god's honest truth. This was for him, for his future. It wasn't contingent on him coming back to me, although as I stood over him I could see the tiny moles on his neck beneath his ear and I remembered how they felt against the tip of my tongue, their barely perceptible rise on the smoothness of his skin, same as the ones on his chest and in the crease where his buttock meets the back of his thigh. And I thought maybe if things went well and I kept my word, he might start thinking of me differently, and then maybe...
Ste
I didn't think he would do that for me. I'm older and wiser, Steven, he said, and it was true what he was saying, he hadn't tried to interfere with what the deli was like and how I ran it, just like Cheryl had said. And there was what Doug said to me ages ago when we were talking about how Brendan said he would've given me the money if I'd asked. Maybe he feels like he owes you, Doug said. And when Doug told me who he'd got the loan from, what was it he said Brendan had told him? He said he just wanted to see you happy.
Maybe it's all true.
And he was standing over me, and he seemed bigger than he used to be, and he was calm, and his voice was low and it sounded like it sounds when he knows we're gonna go to bed. Used to. How it used to sound when he used to know we were gonna go to bed. I thought I could hear his heart beating; but it might've been mine.
And if I sign this now, is that really it? I needed to know, if I was putting my trust in him again, that he was being straight with me this time.
You won't hear a peep, so long as I get a return on my investment of course. He smiled at me then. Sign.
It's an investment. Brendan's invested in my business. I signed. And then he suggested a drink, to celebrate my freedom, he said. I told him no, because I hadn't had anything to eat.
Let's get something to eat, he said. Toast the future. Yeah?
I wasn't sure. I can't suddenly forget everything he's done, can I? Only, maybe he really has changed. I mean, he's just asked me to have dinner with him, and when has he ever done that before?
Okay then.
:::::::
We left our things in the room, the paperwork and stuff, and we went downstairs to the hotel bar. I only wanted a coffee, not a proper drink, and Brendan had the same. He was relaxed and funny, you know, like he used to be sometimes, and I remembered things that I've tried to forget about along with the bad stuff. There was good stuff, see: me and Brendan used to have a laugh, didn't we, and that's the thing that no one else would ever understand, not Amy, not even Cheryl.
He went off out to the reception to book a table for dinner. I watched him go. When did his shoulders get so massive?
When you sleep with a girl, you're the strong one, even if you're skinny like me. That's how it is, you're the one that does the asking out, and when you're together, even if they let you know that they're up for a bit of, you know, it's still up to you to look after them and be gentle and not let go too much cos you're bigger than them and they're – well, they're a girl and you're a bloke, and you've not got to hurt them.
It was different with Brendan. Well, the what-goes-where bit was different, obviously, but that's not what I mean. I mean, the size of him, how strong he is, the feeling that he knew what he was doing and he knew what he wanted, and he knew how to do everything. And I didn't have to think when I was with him, when we were fucking. I could do what I wanted and I didn't have to worry, cos he was there, and he'd got me, and I didn't even know til I was with Brendan that I'd never in my life really truly let go before. I could let go with him, because he was there to catch me. That was when I came to life. The real me, I mean.
:::::::
He was sitting across the table from me in the hotel restaurant, and he had his jacket off, and his shirt was stretched tight across his chest. I tried not to look. I'm not going back to him: that wasn't what this was about. But I'd scared myself with the things I'd been thinking, because being that near to him was making me forget why we aren't together. I made myself put my guard up. I wasn't gonna make it easy for him.
I was right.
I didn't want the steak. Brendan said it was better than the fish, and he told the waiter we'd both have steak. I said no, and I ordered the salmon for me, only when it arrived it was steak for him, and steak for me. Brendan must've changed my order when he went off to the loo.
It was only a bloody steak, but it made me think, didn't it? If he thinks he can decide what I'm gonna have for my tea, what else does he think he can decide for me? So I said I was going to the toilet, and I got up and I found the waiter and I asked him, Has Mr Brady booked a room for tonight? And he had.
And if he hadn't, if he'd left it and we decided, both of us, that we wanted to stay the night, and then we both decided to book a room, then maybe everything would be different now.
I asked for my things to be fetched down from the room, and I left Brendan behind, I left the hotel and I went to wait for the bus. How stupid does he think I am? If you ask me, I'm glad I found out now that he hasn't really changed, because what if I'd slept with him again? If he still thinks I'm the same person I used to be, then what's to stop him treating me the same as he used to? And I can't let him, because the more I love him, the more it hurts me when it all goes wrong.
I thought he might come looking for me while I was waiting for the bus. I let the first one go, but by the time the next one arrived I'd been there fifteen minutes and he hadn't tried to find me, so I gave up on him and got on the bus and went home.
