Page 5

T he taxi ride home was awful, regret pouring out of me with every breath that left my lungs. I wanted to roll back the hours and erase the past. Yes, all self-inflicted, and the look on Bastien’s face as I left—that had been on me. I should have stopped, said no, not done a bloody thing I would never be able to undo. Bastien did stupid things, yes. He sometimes went off the rails, but he was a straight dude. He’d always had girlfriends, one after the other. He wasn’t into dudes. That was my prerogative, and one I didn’t talk about. Bastien didn’t ask. He’d once held up my phone, the screen displaying one of the dating sites, and he’d raised an eyebrow, given me a chance to tell him, but I’d winked in panic-ridden shock, and that had been it. Mostly, we skirted around the subject with professional ease. Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to. I didn’t want to talk about it. I mean, who talked about who they fucked? I certainly didn’t. Not with my colleagues, not with my parents and definitely not with Bastien.

Which made no sense since he was my closest friend. The guy who knew me inside and out. Apart from…

Shit. I fucked him and then abandoned him. And he was getting married in two weeks.

I fielded another call from Juliet and switched my phone to silent. Then I tried to make sense of my thoughts as I let myself into my flat. Third-floor, glass-fronted balcony, views over the fine city of London, a bit of greenery to the left and Hampsted Heath in the distance, the place had cost me dearly, but it was worth every draining mortgage payment. A modern space with huge windows letting light in and my breaths out. These were things that were important to me. I needed space and light and warmth and air. Solitude and peace. I also needed Bastien, something that had always been compatible with everything else. Bastien who was busy and here, there and everywhere but who always answered my calls and came to see me when he felt it had been too long since we met up. He always said he loved me, in that casual way, but that was what you said, wasn’t it? What you told your mates?

Well, I didn’t tell Gertrude and Hillary and Rafe and the rest of my colleagues at the clinic that, despite being very fond of them all. It wasn’t the done thing, and I doubted Kieron got those sweeping declarations of love from Bastien. I grimaced at the thought and screamed randomly at my fridge. I didn’t really have any close friends apart from Bastien and Juliet and a few of his exes who checked in on me once in a while.

Bastien.

Heartbreak was one thing. Living your whole life with your heart singing for one person and one person only was another. The slow realisation that I might never see Bastien again?

Soul destroying.

That was me being overdramatic again. What happened on the stag night stayed on the stag night. Apart from that, here was Juliet’s name on my phone again, and I really should man up and take her call.

Which would mean me covering for Bastien in some way and no doubt lying to her.

I didn’t pick up. Instead, I got on my treadmill and ran for half an hour with my angriest metal compilation playlist in my headphones as the sweat poured off my body. Fear and anger and adrenaline were a lethal combination, and the run didn’t help. My heart was still beating too fast, anxiety rampant in my chest as I took a too-cool shower.

That didn’t help either, but at least I had no more missed calls from Juliet .

Not a word from Bastien, not that I expected it. I had to resign myself to the fact that this was what happened to people who never spoke again. Another growl of rage escaped my mouth as I kicked a poor, innocent toilet roll across the floor then paced my living room wishing I could figure out what to do next and how not to hurt, because I hurt. I hurt badly. So badly I couldn’t even put words to it.

I needed to eat, but there was no hunger left in me. Nothing. My bag was still by the front door, where I’d dumped it carelessly along with my discarded shoes.

Pathetic, Jake. Fucking pathetic piece of shit.

Tiredness swept over me, and I tried to go to bed, only to get up again and shout at my exhausted reflection in the bathroom mirror. I couldn’t settle. Couldn’t breathe.

What had I done?

I didn’t expect the strong rap on my door. Because there was only one person in the world that made that kind of knocking sequence. A calling card that would forever be ingrained in my brain.

And here he was, pushing the door open with his shoulder, his keys between his lips. Bastien had a key to my flat, and I had a key to his, and he was carrying a ridiculous amount of stuff and…

The dog.

“Bastien, what the hell?”

He said nothing. Just plonked his belongings down on the floor and stood there staring out the window like he’d forgotten how to use his mouth.

The dog yapped. I wasn’t a dog person. Nor was Bastien, and she was running circles around his legs, shooting out into the communal hallway and back in again like an overgrown rat with sugar rush. Yap. Yap, yap, yap.

“What now?” I asked, arms flailing in the air. “Why are you here?” I was irritated beyond belief, mixed with a heavy dose of relief. Nice rhyme, but it made no sense.

“I rang Kieron to see if he’d let me stay for a while, but he wasn’t keen on the idea. Neither was I, to be honest.”

“Right?”

“So I came here.”

“Juliet?” I questioned.

He shook his head. Okay. He seemed to have run out of words. And what could I say? It wasn’t like he’d come here to declare his undying love for me, expecting us to skip into the sunset. No, this was typical Bastien. Running from his problems, one bad decision at a time.

He wasn’t here for me. He was here because who was the only person who would take his sorry arse off the streets?

Me, of course.

Always me. And here I was again, doing just that.

“You coming in then?” I said weakly. I hated myself. Hated that I couldn’t just slam the door in his face, lick my wounds and put this massive error of judgement behind me. Start over. Perhaps finally stand up for myself and chuck him out, but I couldn’t find a good enough reason to do it. So instead I nodded. Foolishly. I knew that.

“Can I stay?” he mumbled, barely audible over the dog. Still yapping. Driving me mad.

“Of course you can stay." Good old reliable Jakey to the rescue. “Why did you bring the dog?”

“I’m not okay. ”

That admission seemed to make him completely deflate, like he’d been held up by an invisible rod that had now simply collapsed. The remaining bag, a rucksack on his back, landed with an alarming thud. The sound of plastic against the hard floor made me grimace.

I had nothing to say, no words of comfort up my sleeve, because I was not okay either. I felt broken, in every way imaginable.

“I just need to lie down and sleep this off,” he said, stepping out of his shoes and stumbling towards the sofa, on the verge of collapse, whilst I stood there dumbfounded, watching him. “Juliet said I had to take the dog. Couldn’t leave her there.” He stuck a cushion under his head and pulled the blanket I kept neatly folded on the back rest down over himself, like this was okay. Like everything was fine.

Nothing was fine. My stomach was churning, and I wondered if there was anything left of this morning’s hotel breakfast to throw up.

But at least he was here.

The last place I needed him to be, admittedly .

He fell asleep because that is what Bastien did. Snored away on my sofa while I sat in the armchair, my feet on the coffee table. Perhaps I dozed off for a while, because the sun was slowly setting in the distance, the warm summer air having heated the flat up like an oven. I got up and opened the balcony door only to have a massive panic as the dog darted outside and did its business all over my pristine concrete balcony floor, yellow liquid dripping off the edge down towards the neighbour’s balcony. Not good.

Fuck him and his bloody dog. At least the dog was sensible and tottered back inside, where I found my humanity and poured water into a cereal bowl and placed it on the floor. Yeah. I’d heard the story. He’d bought Juliet a dog for her birthday in February, and Juliet had thrown a hissy fit. Bastien loved that dog. Ugly-as-shit little thing that now stood next to my feet and panted. Did it expect food?

Well, I had no shame so started going through the pile of bags by the door. Plastic supermarket carriers full of clothes. I spotted a dog lead, and…aha! A bowl and a half-full bag of meaty kibble. There. Dog fed. Job done .

That didn’t make me any less antsy, though, and I went back and snuck a peek in the rucksack. Phone. Laptop. Leads. A massive amount of medication in the main compartment. Plastic sheets of pills with ridiculous names. I knew them all. Of course I did. But I was a decent human being, so I left them where I found them.

Okay, I wasn’t decent, and I still felt too weirded out to unpack that can of worms myself, but I put his phone and laptop on charge and left the rest for him to deal with later.

He slept for hours, only waking up to drain the glass of water I’d left next to him. He didn’t touch the packet of crisps or the cereal bar, and perhaps I should’ve woken him again, stroked the hair out of his face…

I wanted so desperately to talk to him, get all the answers to the questions in my head, but the words were stuck in my throat, and nothing came out whenever I leant forward in the hope that he would wake up and speak to me, give me some kind of reassurance that everything would be okay .

When dusk fell, I stuck the lead on the dog and walked it. Her. Flossie. It was written on her collar, but I’d remembered that much. Just her and me in the dusky evening light. She did her business, and that filled me with some weird pride. I nodded to a fellow dogwalker, his beast looking like something that would chew up Flossie and spit her back out in mere seconds. Still, the walk was just what I needed. It was good to clear my head.

When we got back to the flat, Bastien had just woken up—probably the dog barking excitedly—and was slowly trying to sit himself up, only to lose his balance and crash awkwardly into the coffee table. Very him, but he managed to steady himself back up in the nick of time, as Flossie leapt into his arms, and he cradled her, staring out the window like I didn’t exist.

“Can we talk?” I tried softly, noticing he’d eaten my snacks. My pathetic peace offering.

“No,” he replied quietly. “Nothing to say.”

“We need to talk,” I insisted. “How the hell are we going to do this if we don’t talk? ”

“Just let me…rest.”

That was it, apparently. He fell back against the armrest, the dog yapping helplessly as it got stuck in the crook of his arm. He let her go. She yelped and scurried off somewhere.

Bloody dog.

He sometimes got depressed, and his anxiety could be paralysing. That was just who he was, but I’d never seen him like this before. This apathy to everything around him. I wondered if I was to blame or if he really had lost it this time.

“You can stay as long as you want. As long as you’re okay. I’m right here if you need me.”

That was me trying. He said nothing back.