Page 7

I n the end, I had to let him go, leading him back into the bathroom and depositing the two of us in the shower. In a way, I wanted to keep him like this, smelling of me, my cum still inside of him, my sweat on his skin, the taste of him still in my mouth. But hygiene was a thing, and Bastien liked feeling clean.

I snickered. Bastien was a filthy piece of work, and where I hadn’t even known he liked being…fucked…a few days ago, I was cottoning on to him pretty quickly, recognising the small things—sounds I was teasing from him, the way his body reacted when I touched him. I also knew things he didn’t know I knew, things I felt guilty knowing, private matters.

He still wouldn’t speak, just let me slowly soap him down, clean all his dirty places. I took the showerhead off the wall and gently rinsed down between his cheeks. It obviously stung, and a pang of guilt tore through me.

“I need to get proper lube and stuff. Make it more comfortable for you.”

“I like it…” he started, then stopped like he was admitting something bad. I hated that he felt like that, but…fuck. I was a bit of an arsehole here, and I knew it.

“We should have talked about this—”

“A bit late, when you’ve already fucked me raw…twice.”

“I wouldn’t dream of giving you anything. I get tested and take PreP. Haven’t had sex with anyone else since my last full medical. I wouldn’t risk that. Not with anyone.”

“So I’m not special?” he teased. Brat.

“Shut up.” I smiled, but he wiped that smile off my face with that look of fear he still had. So much bloody fear.

“Look, I know you get tested too. I know you don’t have…you know. Anything.”

“You don’t know shit.” Defensive, as always. But I was the one in the wrong here. The one who… Shit. “Bastien, Juliet tells me things. I know stuff.”

“Juliet has no boundaries, not with you. She shouldn’t be telling you anything.”

“She said you had a full medical a while ago. She was worried and needed a listening ear. I’m a medical professional—”

“You’re a physio, man. Hardly an expert on anything. And Juliet can go to hell.”

He didn’t mean that; he was just embarrassed. Not that I blamed him, and he was right about Juliet. I’d told her off about oversharing, but at the same time, she’d had legitimate concerns. So had I.

“We need to sit down and talk. Not just…” I held up my hands, waved them around in frustration as Bastien turned off the water with a huff. The intimacy we’d shared was gone, and he grabbed the towel off the rail and walked out, leaving me stood here, stark naked and wet. With no towel.

“Bastien…”

“I need to sleep,” he threw back at me as I followed him, dripping.

I wasn’t embarrassed about my body. I was big and bulky with a bit of flab around my waist that didn’t bother me at all. I liked the way I looked, and Bastien had seen me naked more times than I cared to remember, as I had seen him. Sharing a small student flat did that to friends.

We’d always been friends. Now I suddenly wasn’t so sure what we were.

“Bas…”

“No more. Shut the fuck up.”

That was him. I could have taken his outbursts as rudeness and anger, but I knew better. He couldn’t always deal, and this would be the result. He dug around in his collection of belongings on the floor, finding pants and a T-shirt and pulled a hoodie over his wet hair while I stood there, still naked, and watched. Then he threw himself on the sofa, covered his entire body with the blanket and clearly shut me off.

That had told me then.

I spent my evening sitting in the armchair next to him while he slept and I didn’t. I wanted so badly to talk to him, to reassure him that this, all of this, was absolutely fine. Tell him that if he needed anything, I could give it to him, within reason, but that I needed things too…

No. I didn’t need things. I needed him, and that was bloody irresponsible and made me do stupid shit.

The sound of the fridge door woke me up at stupid o’clock in the morning, and I caught him making himself something to eat. I grunted.

“Go to bed, Jakey,” was his predictable response. I did. And then we just rolled on. I went to work. He went to work. I came home in the evenings to him sleeping on the sofa. He left before I got up .

In a way, it was the perfect arrangement. Roommates, coordinated living, all the familiarity whooshed me back to ten years or so ago. He filled the fridge with essentials. I added my own when we ran out of milk. I threw his blanket in the wash, and cooked an entire tray of chicken. He ate it all the next day. Then I got home to my collection of scrubs neatly hanging up on a drying rack I didn’t recognise.

Like we both lived here. Together.

The weekend came and went. I was a nervous wreck the whole time. He’d disappeared on Friday night, only to rock up on Sunday afternoon and again, in complete silence, pull a hoodie over his head and attempt to go to sleep on my sofa.

“You can sleep in my bed, you know. I want my sofa back.”

I didn’t, but something had to be said.

“You want me to go?” His voice came from under that goddamn blanket. I was starting to hate it.

“Bastien. I want you here. But I worry about your back and your sanity, sleeping on a manky leather sofa for weeks. I have a super-king-sized orthopaedic bed in there, with more than enough space for the two of us. No underlying intentions apart from that we would both sleep better.”

“You’d sleep better with me snoring next to you?”

Snarky brat.

“I’d sleep better having you properly rested.” Truth, right there.

But he was talking. That, in itself, was reassuring.

“Have you talked to Juliet?” I asked, hoping my question wouldn’t make him clam up again.

“I spent the weekend grovelling and taking an enormous amount of shit from my parents.”

I thought he might have. Also his mum hadn’t rung me for a few days, so that was another win.

“A few years ago, when you took me up to see your mum and dad—d’you remember? You had something to do, so I spent an afternoon with your mum in the garden.”

“She probably told you a load of shit she shouldn’t have. I doubt I have any secrets anymore. It’s not like I can just live my life without having everyone’s nose in my business. ”

So defensive.

“She told me when you were a child, they had you investigated for autism. Because you didn’t talk. Then they thought it was some kind of selective mutism. The doctor dismissed that because you wouldn’t stop talking to him. School said you were absolutely fine. It was just at home you wouldn’t say a word.”

“Didn’t have anything to say. Everyone else was talking all the time. They didn’t need me to add to the noise.”

“Silence,” I added. “You always liked it. When nobody spoke and all we could hear was the creaking of the floorboards upstairs.”

“Those student flats had paper-thin walls. Even thinner floors. We could hear everything.”

“Sometimes we heard nothing, and that used to make you smile.”

“Shut up, Jake.”

“You still do it, Bastien. You still don’t talk. And that’s absolutely fine, but I’m right here. And I need to know what’s going on in that head of yours, so I don’t fuck this up. Because I don’t want to.”

More silence as he took deep breaths on the sofa. Long, drawn-out ones .

“I’m not ready for that,” he said quietly.

I could accept that. For now.

The days passed, and we both seemed to function as it was. Clothes drying on that rack of his. A suit jacket thrown over my treadmill. An empty cup in the sink. The long row of medicines he now had neatly laid out on the worktop.

And once again I was startled by a rap on the door, a Wednesday morning when Bastien was at work and I was due to leave in an hour.

Someone who obviously didn’t have a key to my front door and impatiently rapped a second time against the wood and shouted my name.

Juliet.

“Hey,” I said softly with a healthy dose of fear in my voice, because I was no better than Bastien, avoiding talking to the people I really needed to speak to. Grovel to. Explain.

I had no idea how to explain.

“Don’t hug me,” she said, holding her palm out in my face. “I still have an awful lot of unresolved anger, especially towards you. But I also need to talk to you, so here I am.”

“Understood.” She was brave, braver than me.

“Coffee would be good.” She sat down on the sofa, pinching the edge of the discarded blanket, flicking it to the side.

“Coming right up.” I didn’t want to stay nor explain the blanket. Not my place. Not her business. Or maybe it still was.

My hands shook, but in a good way. This was good; this was working towards getting somewhere.

“Has he said anything?” she asked as I handed over her coffee, steaming hot, black, the way she liked it. In a cup, not a mug. I’d bought it especially, years ago when we’d first met. To impress her. I didn’t want to think about what that meant or who it made me.

“About what?” I wasn’t following her opener. Juliet wasn’t always easy to read, and right now, she was anything but. Sharp suit. High heels. Back straight. Normal. Other than her lipstick was smudged, and her hair was a mess. But she was trying.

“You know what he’s like,” she said. “He does stupid shit and then he clams up. Doesn’t speak for weeks.”

“He’s always been like that. ”

“Yes, but you can’t let him get away with it. He just sinks deeper and deeper into it all, unless you pull him out of it.”

She sounded like she knew what she was talking about. I didn’t doubt her. She’d been with Bastien long enough to know what I knew. That he wasn’t an easy man to live with.

“Jules,” I started, and she gave me a stare. “Juliet,” I corrected. “I don’t have any right to say anything, I know that. I was in the wrong here as much as Bastien, and I am truly sorry. I have no excuses.”

“You love him. I’ve always known you do, so don’t try to pull that one on me. I know you do, because I love him too. That’s why I’m here, and I hope you know that. However angry I am with you right now—disappointed, fuming, betrayed, all of that—I still need you. I need you to help me, because I’m going mad. Totally mad. I just had a meeting with the manager of the Victoria ballroom and paid them a ludicrous amount of money, which I won’t get back because I didn’t sign a cancellation clause. I didn’t think we’d need insurance. I don’t care about the money, but I feel broken. Absolutely fucking trashed. Crushed to the bones, Jake. Do you get me?”

I did, and I nodded.

“This is no surprise, though. I hope you know that. You probably laughed behind my back for months, thinking I was nuts. That I thought he’d go through with it. I was just happy, you know? I was so bloody happy, Jake, and now it’s… I don’t know how to feel.

“Maybe you should take some time off?” I suggested. Not helpful, and Juliet glared at me.

“Says the guy who hasn’t taken a day off work since forever.” She wasn’t wrong.

“I took a day off last week. Tried to intercept him and get him to sit down and relax. Talk.”

“Bad move. Makes him even worse.”

“I realise that now.”

She took another sip of coffee.

“Do you have any idea what he needs?” It sounded like a question when it really wasn’t. It was anger. Hurt. And I got it. I truly did. “As I said, I should have seen this coming, months ago. He wasn’t doing well with everything, and we had…a few issues.”

“Issues?” A question I didn’t expect an answer to .

“And I always knew you wouldn’t let him go without a fight.”

“Juliet, I would never have interfered—”

She held up her hand. I stopped talking. I had no rights here.

“You would have. Because when you love someone, you fight. And you were sinking deeper into despair with every day that passed. This bloody stag night and trying to plan it nearly broke you. I could see it, the way you struggled, just like Bastien did. He kept saying he didn’t want one, didn’t want to spend the money, didn’t want anyone there. That he wanted to call it off and just spend the weekend with you. Catch a movie. Go for a Nando’s. Something easy and normal.”

“He said that to me too. I wouldn’t let him. Thought he deserved more.”

“So did I. But here we are.”

God, I got her. The hurt was visible with every breath she took. Juliet was magnificent, beautiful and extremely smart. Strong. Invincible. She rarely let anyone see her crumble. She was fighting here too, fighting with everything she had to stop herself falling apart.

“What can I do?” I asked calmly. “Tell me how I can help you.”

“Stop fucking my fiancé? That would be a start, but then…” She sniffled. “Ex fiancé. Can’t change anything there. I get it. I do.”

“I know I sound like a dick here, but if I can do anything… anything at all to soften this for you, I will. You have to believe me when I say I never meant to hurt you. I didn’t want to…fuck. This was not the way I thought the weekend would go, and this was never the outcome I wanted.”

“Then what the hell did you expect, Jake?”

I couldn’t answer that, so I just stared at the table.

“You might not want to help me, but Bash—he needs help.” She stopped and took a mouthful of coffee. It was probably cold by now. “Because, well. I tried, and I failed. I thought I could be everything he needed, but I couldn’t. In the end, it wasn’t enough, and I can’t even bring myself to hate him for it, because he told me. He kept telling me. He knows what he needs, and he won’t ask for it. Because it makes him hate himself, and it’s awful to see.”

“Not following,” I said quietly. “You have to believe me that I didn’t know about Bastien. I didn’t know… I mean, he never, ever made a pass at me or anything like that.” Lame, Jake. I knew how pathetic that sounded, considering the circumstances. “I mean, at one point he said something, and I thought the two of you were swingers. I didn’t ask more, but he’s always been—”

“Jake. Shut the fuck up.”

Okay. That told me.

“Look. Jake. Sexuality is not black and white, and I am not claiming to be anything but a woman who fell head over heels in love with someone. Someone who needs an awful lot of things to function day to day. He needs support. Understanding…”

“Silence,” I added.

“Silence,” she agreed. “His head sometimes needs calm. But I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about sex.”

“Okay.” I swallowed, suddenly understanding Bastien far too well. I didn’t want to talk about his sex life with Juliet any more than he wanted to talk about it with me.

“Bastien needs to snap out of the guilt trip, because he does things, and then he thinks he is a despicable human being and doesn’t deserve anything good in the world. Bullshit if you ask me, but that’s him. And he will just clam up and wallow in it until…”

She swallowed.

“Until what, Juliet?”

She was fidgeting on the sofa, tying her hair back into a ponytail and then letting it go again.

“I’m not proud. Nor am I embarrassed, but I did a lot of trial and error. I researched. I even joined a club. One specialising in…you know. Sexual matters. I took classes. I tried, Jake, I really tried. But I’m only me, and however hard I tried, I…I’m not enough. I will never be enough for all he needs.”

“And you need to stop talking in bloody riddles, Jules. What the hell is it he needs?”

I didn’t know why I was suddenly being so snappy with her. Embarrassed on her behalf? I didn’t want to carry the secrets she was about to spill, didn’t want to betray the man who slept on my sofa. Yes, I certainly had kinks of my own. I’d gone to clubs, slept with more men than I wanted to remember. I’d figured out my kinks early on and honed them to my advantage. I knew what turned me on. I also knew what I really didn’t want.

I didn’t want to know.

“Jake, Bash only ever comes if he is being fucked. You know this, don’t you? Vaginal sex does absolutely nothing for him. We were trying for a baby, for fuck’s sake, and I was out there with the bloody turkey baster hoping for a miracle, and I can tell you, it never fucking came. Because he’s too bloody messed up to admit what he needs.”

“Juliet,” I warned.

“Well, you asked, and I’m telling you.”

“Not sure that’s what I asked.”

She laughed. It wasn’t a happy one.

“Bash will talk once he’s been punished. Because that’s what he needs, okay? You need to bloody punish him, and once he’s taken it, he’ll start to function again. I did my bit. I fucking tried, Jake. So over to you, big man. Do your worst. Because if you don’t? Bash will fucking lose it.”