The caressing Californian sun shone hotly down on the startling blue waters, its reflection dancing upon the gentle waves as they lapped against the side of the little boat. In the distance, the joyful cry of gulls was heard, the undisputed kings of this paradise, drenched in warmth and light and peace.
Doug swore loudly.
The sound reverberated, cutting through the quiet expanse rudely. But Doug was oblivious. His attention was fixed on his phone, frustration deforming his pretty face. Stupid goddamn phone companies and their stupid goddamn promises about roaming cover. And stupid goddamn Carl and his stupid goddamn suggestion that Doug row out to the middle of nowhere to "get away from it all".
For the seventh time, he hit "REDIAL" and pressed the phone up to his ear in time to hear the maddening no-connection tone. He swore loudly again, resisting the urge to throw the piece-of-junk mobile out of the boat into the depths below. That wouldn't help anybody, he told himself reasonably.
Anyway, Ste had said he loved him. He had heard that much, through the agonising transatlantic static of their conversation, he had at least heard him saying that. "I SAID, I LOVE YOU!"
Surrendering, he tossed his treasonous phone back into his satchel and picked up the two wooden oars again. He would call him when he got back to Carl's house, he told himself, and they would spend hours crying and arguing and apologising and laughing. For right now, the most important thing had been said. He exhaled a shaky breath. The thing he had been afraid he might never hear again.
It had been stupid to leave. He realised that almost as soon as his feet had touched the American ground. Before he left, he had felt his whole world slipping slowly through his fingers – Riley dead, the deli closed until further notice, Ste looking at him without that ever-present hint of grateful, vulnerable disbelief in his eyes. And Ste looking at Brendan in a different way…
It was instinct, he guessed. When he found the sand sinking beneath his feet, he ran. That was what had taken him from his comfortable middle-American lifestyle to the backstreets of Bangkok, from the slums of Thailand to the rolling hills of Eastern Europe, from farmland Slovenia to a small village in the north of England. "Finding the world", he had called it, when he spoke to his friends. Travel, experience, soul-searching. They were all just ways to romanticise the fact that when the sand started sinking, he was gone.
But he had grown out of that, he thought fiercely. Two years ago, when Brendan Brady had started pouring water onto the ground underneath his feet, he hadn't run. They had been his darkest hours, but he had stuck it out, fought to hold on to the things and the people he cared for, and he had lasted the distance. The Doug Carter that existed today – settled member of the community, small business owner, committed and loving partner – barely resembled the shell of a man that existed three years ago.
Still, he had run this time.
Maybe it had started as a threat. It had terrified him, that change in Ste's eyes. They had argued before, of course they had, but he had never seen that. So maybe stupidly, foolishly, in his terror, he had thrown it out there. He was leaving, going to California. "For a while". He wasn't sure what he had expected, or hoped for. Ste to jump up and pack a bag, determined to go with him? Ste to beg him not to leave, not with things like this between them? Probably all he wanted was a flash, however short-lived, of that old expression in his eyes. He didn't get it, though. Instead, he had listened mute as his lover asked dubiously if he wanted him to come too, voice filled with uncertain obligation. In that moment, it had seemed pointless to retract the threat. What did he have to stay for?
But it had been wrong. As soon as the plane bumped onto the runway in Los Angeles he had felt a sickening lump of regret moving up from his stomach to his chest until he felt like he might vomit. Hollyoaks was his home, Ste was his home, and here was he, suddenly finding himself a thousand miles away from it and from him.
It had been agonising, the movement through passport control and baggage collection, the awkward reunion with Jason and Seth at arrivals as they shed tears over their dead brother, the silent taxi-ride back to Carl's place, Doug struggling through it all to keep the acid lump of regret from rising up any further. When he had finally found himself alone in the guest room, he had pulled out his phone and with panicking fingers dialled the number he knew by heart.
"HI, THIS IS STE. CAN'T GET TO THE PHONE RIGHT NOW, OBVIOUSLY, SO LEAVE A MESSAGE. CHEERS!"
The voice was bright, cheery. Doug had felt it like a gentle, familiar caress across his tense shoulders. He allowed himself a small smile as he waited for the beep and then spoke, telling Ste he loved him and he was sorry and to call him back.
The next two days had dragged by. He spent all his time with the Costelloes, speaking about Riley, comforting them and himself with a thousand anecdotes that came back to him when he thought of his kind, courageous, loving friend. All the time he had his phone with him, waiting for that call that wasn't coming. Each day, he tried again, leaving the same message, rushing through the last few words in the same way, fearing his voice would break before he finished. And each night, as he closed his eyes, he felt a little more certain that his life would never be the same as it was.
Doug hadn't known Ste well during the time he was with Brendan. He couldn't remember where they had first met – in ChezChez maybe, when he was working there behind the bar, or in the Price Slice, buying a box of Frosties or something for the kids. He couldn't even really remember what he had thought of Ste, back then. A teenage dad, an ex-joyrider, a high-school dropout. Doug became vaguely aware of some connection with Brendan while Ste was dating Noah, but generally, he hadn't really considered him at all. Back then Doug's main concern had been escaping Brendan Brady. The strange dynamics of his romantic relationship with the barman had been of no interest to Doug. All he had cared about was extracting himself from the vice-like grasp of the twisted Irishman and unhooking himself from his hold.
That's why he had thought he understood. When he began to get to know Ste, when they began to dream of owning their own business together, when Ste began to matter more to him than anybody else, Doug had thought he understood the terrified, violent hatred that Ste had for his former boss and lover. He had been there too, after all, desperately trying to free himself of the merciless man. He knew that fear and powerlessness, dancing like a puppet at the end of his string. He understood Ste being adamant that Brendan never have that hold over him again.
But slowly, he realised. It started one very innocuous day. Brendan, being obnoxious as usual and demanding a jam sandwich in the deli, Doug asking Ste to run over to Price Slice and get some, Ste folding up his apron and brushing past Brendan towards the door.
Brendan shouted after him. "Make sure its– "
"Seedless, I know," Ste interrupted.
In that tiny, insignificant exchange, Doug had suddenly realised that his past with Brendan was nothing like Ste's. With a strange, confusing dropping sensation in the pit of his stomach, he realised that there had been a time once when Ste would have made sure it was seedless just to see Brendan's smile.
Where had he learned that he liked seedless jam, Doug wondered. Over the breakfast table, maybe, the two of them sitting close together, each surreptitiously absorbed by the other. After the night before. Ste self-consciously plonking a seeded pot of jam on the kitchen table, sitting down next to Brendan so that their knees grazed under the table. Brendan making a face at it, pretending to be bothered by such banality as he felt the warmth of Ste's leg pressing against his own. Ste teasing gently him for being a fussier eater than Lucas as he bit into his own slice of toast, wiping an errant piece of jam from the corner of his lips in the way that Doug loved.
Maybe Brendan loved that too.
Doug had hated Brendan almost from the moment he met him. But Ste, he had loved him once. The hatred had only come after. It was difficult to picture them alone together. Brendan, closed and impenetrable, coldly impervious to the pain that he caused, never betraying anything in his rigid face or black eyes. And Ste, beautiful Ste, open and loving and argumentative and impulsive, constantly worried about everyone he knew, wearing his generous vulnerable heart on his sleeve for the whole world to see. Doug wished he had paid more attention back then, studied the way they moved around each other, the way Ste had looked at Brendan when he had been so infatuated by him.
By the third day, Doug had resigned himself to the fact that Ste wasn't going to call him. Somehow, impossibly, the man he had asked to marry him only two weeks ago was lost to him forever. He felt numb.
It must have shown on his face, the terrible weight of that resignation. Carl, the grieving father, began to look at him with concern.
"It's been a tough few days for you, Doug," he said, totally unaware of the overwhelming understatement of his words. "You know, trying to support us through this, trying to be strong for us. Maybe you need a break from it for a while. Take the boat out on the water for a bit. Get away from it all."
Doug had acquiesced, mainly because the effort of sitting with the grieving family all day without pouring out his relationship woes to them was becoming exhausting. He had climbed into the red wooden boat called "Heidi" and rowed for hours, until the land was just a speck in the distance and he drifted inconsequent in the massive expanse of the Pacific. Then his phone had started ringing.
Of all the times, he thought in frustration, as he rehashed the broken, disjointed conversation in his head for the millionth time. His arms were aching from rowing, but he was determined to get back to the house, to call Ste, to find out if there was a way through this. Ste had said he loved him, that was the important part, right?
But what about Brendan? The irritating, needling, doubting voice in the back of his head kept whispering it, every time he remembered Ste's voice bellowing down the phone. What about Brendan?
Maybe he should never have asked Ste to marry him. That was when it all started to go wrong. That was when Ste had gone to visit Brendan in the hospital, had invited him to come and live with them. That was when Doug had noticed that the practiced hatred in Ste's eyes when Brendan was around had disappeared. How long had that hatred been gone for, Doug wondered, without him noticing. And if the hatred was gone, what was left?
In the distance, he began to make out the shape of the split-level beach house and the little wooden dock. Surely he would have network coverage this close to land? Hastily he dropped the oars and rummaged in his bag for his phone. His hand closed around it and he looked joyfully at the three little lines next to the network symbol. It was working.
Hurriedly, he hit the number into the keypad and held the phone to his ear eagerly, listening to the wonderful ringtone.
"HI, THIS IS STE. CAN'T GET TO THE PHONE RIGHT NOW, OBVIOUSLY, SO LEAVE A MESSAGE. CHEERS!"
Slowly, he lowered the phone without saying anything and picked up the oars again. He tried to ignore the sinking feeling in his chest. He'd try again when he got back to Carl's.