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Perry

Just wanted to reach out and say I hope everything’s ok with your family. Also I had a lovely time last night!

Perry listened as his phone spoke his message back to him. Was the exclamation mark too much?

No, his first date with Jamie deserved that punctuation.

“ Ready to send it ?” Siri asked.

“Yes.”

“ Okay, it’s sent. ”

Now that Perry thought about it, perhaps his two sentences should have been separate texts. Was it crass to inquire after Jamie’s family emergency in the same electronic breath as their dinner at Zio Mario’s? Hope none of your kin are mortally injured, and oh, by the way, wasn’t the linguine carbonara to die for?

Anyway, too late now.

Perry sipped his tea and squinted through his kitchen window into the painfully bright Sunday morning. These days, his eyes couldn’t discern much scenery, but his memory filled in the gaps: the quiet, tree-lined street in Glasgow’s West End, the towers of the ancient university forming a calendar-worthy backdrop.

Still, his thoughts were planted here, beside the kitchen sink, where they’d had their first kiss, an instant before Jamie’s phone rang, his sister bearing terrible news of—well, what, exactly, Perry hadn’t a clue.

Though he could no longer read faces from more than a few inches away, he’d learned to better hear emotions in voices. With some people, it was like tuning into a distant radio station, sifting through static to find a clear sound.

But Jamie’s expressive voice, so vital to his job, contained a thousand pictures’ worth of feelings. During that brief call with his sister, it had held a deep love mixed with something darker. Hate? Fear? Yes.

Perry finished his tea, then changed into his workout clothes, purposely leaving his phone in the kitchen.

Halfway through a hundred press-ups, he returned to the device to see whether Jamie needed support.

No reply yet. He sent another message, in case his intent hadn’t been clear in the first one.

Perry

Would love to see you again when things calm down on your end

Too pushy, perhaps. He sent a pair of quick follow-ups.

Perry

We can just hang out

Or whatever

Christ, he sounded like a teenager instead of a thirty-two-year-old. But it had been ages since someone made him feel like a teenager, with that electric sensation round the edges of his face and stomach, like he might explode with laughter or boak his guts out.

Last night had been nothing like his other first dates since the big breakup. With those men, he’d minimized his vision loss and pretended he could see more than he actually could. Predictably, such attempts had left him alone, frustrated, and bewildered.

But with Jamie, he’d been real. They’d been real.

So why did their connection now seem so fragile?

* * *

“Thanks very much.” Jamie gave the applauding crowd a smile that made his cheeks feel taut. The locals adored his version of “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio, whose lyrics Jamie had adapted to skewer Glasgow’s own notorious villains.

He’d worked on that song for weeks, debuting it on his twenty-fifth birthday almost two years ago. After today, he’d dare not play it again, but at least its final performance had been a belter.

“My hour here’s over,” he told his audience, “so I’m gonnae pack up and shift to another spot. Those are the rules, mind.” With his toe he nudged his open guitar case forward a few inches, enough to drop a hint.

As pound coins plunked into the case like the world’s friendliest hailstones, Jamie unplugged his amp from the inverter and set both on his trolley. Then he straightened up to sip from his water bottle, stretch his stiff back, and have a look about.

The Buchanan Street shopping district was crammed with pedestrians soaking up the spring sunshine. Unlike folk in some other cities, Glaswegians embraced buskers as an essential part of the urban ambience.

He should have been happy. The weather was well fine, the session was lucrative, and he’d met the man of his dreams.

But the darkness sweeping back into his life swamped these transitory joys, the way harsh chords could drown a delicate melody.

He drew his phone from the rucksack at his feet, dreading another update from Belinda. Not that things could get much worse on that front, unless their father’s twisted brain had spawned another tumor in the last twelve hours.

A staccato shiver skipped between his shoulders. Perry had sent him four texts.

As Jamie read the messages, a fifth one popped up, then a sixth.

Perry

Anyway I’ve got a game Tuesday night at the Woodside Football Complex at 8

I think you mentioned wanting to see a blind football match?

Jamie’s hands began to shake. He had said that. He did want that. More than anything he wanted to see Perry again, bury himself in the delusion that his life hadn’t capsized and that he, Jamie Guthrie, could finally be real with someone. That he could be Jamie Guthrie the man, full stop, not the boy—never again the boy—who’d paused on the threshold of his father’s house, afraid to venture into the world with nothing but a guitar, a bin bag, and the certainty that if he stayed he would die.

But that decade of peace was over. He was returning to the lion’s den, and he’d be damned if he dragged Perry along with him.

Jamie’s thumbs took charge, ending his swithering with a single word.

Jamie

Can’t

He slipped the phone into his inside jacket pocket, missing on the first and second try. That terse reply probably wasn’t enough to end it—Perry was too determined and confident to be scared off that easily—but it was the best Jamie could manage in the middle of a busy workday.

As he scooped up the coins and notes, his phone vibrated against his ribs. He pulled it out just far enough to peek at the screen.

Perry

Totally understand

Thank God. Jamie had bought himself time to figure out how to end their affair gently. The last thing he wanted was to hurt?—

Perry

Is there something I can do?

“Fuck,” Jamie whispered. It took everything in him not to answer with a list of things Perry could do, starting with hold me and ending with tell me it’ll all be okay .

Perry

I don’t know anything about your family situation but if you want to talk…

Or whatever

His throat thickening, Jamie put away the phone and returned to the task in hand. When his loot was safely pocketed, he laid his purple acoustic guitar, Lisa, carefully in her case.

Now, to find a new place to play. He still had a job, after all, a job that was and always would be his salvation.

Jamie eased through the crowd down Buchanan Street, scanning for an open space at least fifty meters away from any other street performer, per the Glasgow Busker’s Code.

At the junction with Nelson Mandela Place, he stopped short as a memory stole his breath. This very spot was where he’d caught up to Perry on Friday, after chasing him through a downpour to thank him for the kind note he’d dropped into the guitar case.

More than thank him. Meet him. Know him.

If Jamie had been a wee bit slower, less reckless in his pell-mell pursuit, he would’ve arrived too late. He would have lost Perry before they could share a coffee, then a meal, then a kiss.

It would’ve been better that way, considering.

His phone vibrated again. He retrieved it, trepidation tightening its fist around his innards.

Perry

Never mind, you’re probably at a hospital or something and I’m bothering you

Jamie’s sinuses heated. He blinked back tears to clear his vision as he wrote all the words he wanted to say.

Thank u

U could never bother me

Can I come 2 yours later

I need u

Jamie deleted each truth as soon as it was typed. None of it mattered next to keeping Perry safe.

Keeping Perry alive.

* * *

Perry held the phone close to his face, watching the three someone-is-typing dots appear, then disappear, again and again. What was Jamie trying to articulate, and why was it making Perry so nervy?

The dots vanished a fourth time, with no reply sent.

Perry lowered the phone. He should stop pushing. Jamie’s family was none of his business.

But his dogged curiosity couldn’t be quelled. He was a journalist, after all.

Besides, something told him Jamie was teetering. What that something was, Perry couldn’t put his finger on. Maybe an instinct, or maybe just wishful thinking.

Perry

Is someone ill? Has there been an accident?

What if it was Jamie’s estranged father? That would explain the mix of emotions in his voice last night before he left.

Perry gasped as he realized which something had shouted Jamie’s indecision. It was nothing Jamie had said or even how he’d said it.

It was the kiss.

Not the first kiss, here by the sink. The second one, at the front door, when Jamie had turned back at the last moment and pulled Perry close, like a drowning man clinging to a beam of flotsam. That second kiss seemed to hold both their beginning and end, declaring their relationship both alive and dead.

Was it a kiss goodnight or a kiss goodbye?

Perry’s phone bleeped. He didn’t wait for Siri to speak the message but quickly pinched and zoomed the text to read:

Jamie

We met 2 days ago

I don’t owe u my autobiography

Perry’s stomach went ice cold, his face lava hot. Perhaps he’d pried too hard, too fast, but he didn’t deserve such hostility.

Perry

No need to be a prick about it

He jabbed his thumb against the send button.

Perry

If you don’t want me just say so

Another jab, harder than the first. Might as well find out here and now where he stood.

The three dots appeared briefly, then faded. As Perry waited, shifting from foot to foot, regret slithered into his mind. He’d taken not a single breath before lashing out. He should have given himself and Jamie time to cool down.

Surely he could fix this mess. Perhaps by phoning to apologize and ask for a clean slate?

The thought almost made him laugh. A call would be ten times as intrusive as a text, and Jamie probably wouldn’t answer.

But if he did, if Perry could hear that magical, earthquaking voice, the one that had stopped him in his tracks on Buchanan Street and made him scribble a barely legible note of gratitude…

Sorry I’ve no cash but I wanted to thank you for sharing your gift. Your original song was sublime. - Perry the Not-Totally-Blind Blind Guy

…then maybe they could connect again as they’d done in that first moment Friday, and in every moment last night. Maybe they’d be okay.

“Hey, Siri, call?—”

Jamie’s text dots appeared again. Perry froze.

Siri dinged. “ I don’t know who you want me to call. ”

Perry didn’t reply, only held his breath as he watched the dots that seemed to hold the weight of the world.

Jamie

…

…

…

…

…

I don’t want u