Page 53 of Best Supporting Actor

“Okay,” Jay echoed, but as he watched Tag leave, he felt unhappy, unsettled even.

It was only as he was lifting his messenger bag over his head that he remembered Tag saying, when he'd arrived this morning, that the reason he’d been late was that he’d slept through his alarm. Was it possible he’d do that again? If he did, Henry would be furious—and Tag would take that badly. Jay bit his lip, uncertain what to do. Maybe he should give Tag a call at one-thirty, just to make sure he did wake up? The company had its own WhatsApp group, so he had Tag’s number. But what if the reason Tag had slept through his alarm was because his phone was on mute? Henry insisted they muted their phones during rehearsals, and it was easy to forget.

Jay glanced at the closed door, unsure what to do.

“For fuck’s sake,” he muttered at last, yanking the door open and jogging out, hoping he wasn’t too late to catch up with Tag.

When he burst out the front door of the centre, Tag was nowhere in sight, but Jay had noticed he always headed left when they finished at the end of the day, so he went that way, hoping for the best. A couple of minutes later, he caught sight of Tag disappearing round a corner. Relieved, he followed, and when he turned the corner himself, Tag was about fifty yards ahead of him, walking quickly, purposefully. If he kept jogging, Jay would soon catch up with him, or he could just call his name. But he didn’t do either of those things. Instead, he found himself slowing his pace to match Tag’s and hanging back. Hesitating.

Tag’s phone rang then, and he yanked it out of his pocket, seeming eager to take the call. By the time he put it away again, they’d been walking for a quarter hour, and it was too late for Jay to just casually call out to Tag. It would be obvious that Jay had been following him, and how would he explain that? He was struggling to explain it to himself beyond his weirdly intense need to make sure Tag made it back to rehearsal on time.

Glancing around, Jay began to notice that the houses were looking rather less salubrious. After a few more minutes, the area had become distinctly down at heel, and it only got worse as they continued. When Tag finally came to a halt, it was in front of a house that frankly summoned up the wordslumin Jay’s mind.

Surely Tag hadn’t been livingherefor the past three weeks.

Maybe Jay was being a judgmental, privileged prick, but itwasobjectively awful, wasn’t it? The door Tag was currently opening—which seemed to involve a lot of key jiggling and shoulder-barging—was a battered-looking thing with peeling paint, surrounded by blank-faced, grimy windows, and there was an actual car up on blocks in the neighbouring garden. Jay blinked at the sight. So that reallywasa thing people did and not just a useful poverty cliché they used in television dramas.

How hard-up would Tag have to be to live here? He was getting paid the same as Jay—and okay, that wasn’t enough to fully cover Jay’s accommodation, never mind any other expenses—but this place surely had to cost a lot less than Jay’s apartment. And Tagwassupplementing his acting salary with bar work. Jay wondered how much Tag would be making from his shifts at theBear and realised, with some shame, that he hadn’t the faintest idea how much people were paid for that kind of job.

As Tag disappeared inside the house, and the door closed behind him, Jay suddenly felt very much out of place and very aware of his expensive clothes. This was nothing like the well-heeled area where his riverside apartment was situated, with its hipster coffee shops and micro-bars. It didn’t even look like there was anywhere he could grab a bite to eat; he hadn’t seen so much as a corner shop, never mind a deli.

What was he supposed to do now? He couldn’t just hang around outside Tag’s house to make sure he got up on time. Hell, he’d probably get mugged. Maybe he should walk back into town, grab a sandwich at his favourite lunch place down the road from the Salter Street Centre, and then head back this way later? With luck, he’d run into Tag on his way back to the rehearsal room, and everything would be fine.

Relieved to have landed on a solid plan, he was just about to get going, when a car pulled up, and an angry-looking woman in a pink velour track-suit got out of the driver’s side, slamming the door behind her. As she stormed up the short path to Tag’s front door, Jay noticed the word ‘juicy’ was plastered over the bum of her leggings in sparkly silver sequins. She knocked aggressively on the door.

What the fuck?

Half a minute later, the door opened, and Tag stood there, looking pissed off but entirely unsurprised to see her.

She pointed a hard, angry finger at him. “Any damage to that room is coming out of your deposit!”

“Fuck that!” Tag replied angrily. “Youoweme. It happened while I was at work! Either get me another room or pay me my rent back.”

“It was fine till you moved in,” she snapped. “Let me see it.”

Pressing his lips together, Tag stood aside, waving her into the house with sarcastic politeness. She barged past him, and he followed her inside.

Jay stood, uncertain, on the other side of the road. He stared at the grim little house, his stomach churning with a weird sort of dread. Which was both stupid and pointless—nothing was going to happen to Tag—but still, Jay felt oddly protective of him and couldn’t bring himself to leave while Tag looked like he might need help.

Barely five minutes later, the door opened again, and the angry woman stalked back out.

She turned to glare at Tag, who was standing in the doorway. “You know what?” she said in a nasty tone. “Go for it. Sue me. Seriously, I don’t actually give a fuck. It’ll take you months and cost you thousands. Your choice.” Then, yanking a bunch of keys out of her pocket, she stalked back over to her car, got inside, and peeled away.

Tag just stared after her, his expression angry and bleak. Then his gaze shifted—and he saw Jay.

As Tag’s eyes went wide, a jolt of alarm shot through Jay. He began walking forward, crossing the road and heading up the weed-strewn path. “Tag, listen,” he said, his tone calm but driven. “I’m sorry. I—I followed you. I know I shouldn’t have, but I was worried you might sleep through your alarm again and—” He came to halt, realising that he was now less than an arm’s length from Tag, who was staring at him in disbelief.

The silence between them was suddenly deafening, the small space that separated them unbridgeable. But Jayhadto bridge it. And so he reached out, gripping Tag’s shoulders with both hands and saying, “Are you okay?”

Tag stared at him, and his eyes, which were usually so bright and determined, brimmed with such misery Jay couldn’t stand it. “Tag,” he said, and it was a plea.Let me in.

“I should never have fucking come to York,” Tag rasped, his voice cracking. “I gave up a regular job for this, and now I’m broke, Henry thinks I’m useless, I don’t even have a fucking bed to sleep in and—” He made an inarticulate sound that was something between a scoff of laughter and a sob and swiped at his eyes with the back of one hand.

Jay’s heart pinched hard. “Henrydoesn’tthink you’re useless,” he said firmly, squeezing Tag’s shoulders. “And what’s this about not having a bed?”

Tag shook his head, then said, “Come in. I’ll show you.” He began to turn, dislodging Jay’s hands from his shoulders, leaving Jay feeling curiously bereft even as he followed Tag into the house and down a narrow corridor. Tag opened up one of the doors and leaned back to invite Jay to look inside.

“Shit,” Jay breathed. The room looked like an actual bomb had hit it. Plasterboard, dust, and bits of wood lay everywhere. He glanced up at the ripped-open ceiling—almost the whole thing had come down. If Tag had been sleeping there when it happened… Jay’s scalp prickled, and he realised he was furious. “Was that bloody woman trying to blame this onyou?”