Page 14 of One Last Try (Try for Love #1)

Owen

“Twenty seventeen, obviously.” I swivel the chair round and let my eyes drink in Mathias’s chest while I pretend I’m looking at his T-shirt. “Lean forward,” I command. He does, and it gives me a fantastic excuse to inspect the muscles in his back.

Holy fucking fuck sticks.

It’s difficult to make out the band names, at least the smaller bands listed under the headliners.

The T-shirt is old, and has obviously been washed and worn and washed a great many times.

The writing is faded, and in places—because I assume his muscles and shoulders are a little broader now than they were seven years ago—the ink has cracked and split.

But I’m not looking at the ink, or the writing, or the band names. I’m transfixed by the undulation of his form. The hills and valleys of his rhomboids and deltoids and trapezius muscles. My mouth is suddenly drier than instant mash. I swallow and force my eyes onto the text.

“How about,” I squeak, clear my throat, sit on my hands so I don’t reach out and manhandle him. “How about Radiohead?”

He sits back, and I just about move myself out of the way. “Sure, what song?”

“Um . . .” I turn my face away from him so he doesn’t see it flame again. And great, now my brain has emptied itself of all Radiohead songs. Come on, they were my favourite band when I was seventeen.

“‘Paranoid Android’ . . . ‘No Surprises’ . . . ‘Creep’ . . . um . . . ‘Karma Police?’” he suggests.

“Ooh, yes, ‘Karma Police.’ A little more obscure, but still genius.”

“‘Karma Police’ it is, then.” Mathias must already own the song, because he doesn’t go to any online music shop. He simply opens a folder and drags a file into the app. I use the time to glance around what was once my study.

It’s much the same. The furniture’s all the same—the desk, the chair, the armchair and foot pouffe. The shelves are the same, but they no longer bear my books and trophies. Instead, they seem to house cameras. All different types, but with one thing in common: they all look expensive as fuck.

“You know Radiohead headlined twice? In ninety-seven and twenty seventeen,” Mathias says. His eyes and fingers are occupied on the laptop, so he doesn’t realise I’m staring at him.

He keeps surprising me with all these hidden layers, all these things nobody knows about him. He loves pub quizzes, he has a surprisingly vast knowledge about melancholic bands from the nineties, he has a collection of cameras, he cares about my daughter’s welfare . . .

I shouldn’t want to know more, shouldn’t want to see how many more layers I can uncover, and yet . . .

I need to be subtle, though. He’s already a flight risk. If I go asking him personal questions, he might bolt for the door. I need to slip them seamlessly into conversation.

“You’re right,” I say. “In ninety-seven, my mates Rich and Nick climbed the fence and snuck in. Back when you could climb the fence and sneak in. Before it was an impenetrable fortress, that is. So, you’re into photography?”

Real fucking smooth, Bosley.

Mathias’s eyes flit up to the gadgets on his shelves. “A little, I guess.” He’s unbothered, I realise. Indifferent to photography. So why all the cameras?

I remember the telescope pointing out of Daisy’s window. “Astronomy?”

“Hmm?” He takes his eyes off the laptop to frown at me.

And then it hits me. He’s not into photography, or filmmaking, or watching the stars, or even watching TV despite the monster screen in the living room.

He’s into technology. I look at his computer—silent, powerful, no doubt cost more than Daisy’s car.

I spot a drone perched on the shelf by the fireplace.

A pair of wireless in-ear headphones are nestled snugly in their case on the desktop.

Even on his wrist, he sports a watch fancier than my phone.

I don’t know what to do with this particular piece of information, so I simply tuck it away in my little Mathias collection.

“Okay, that one’s done now,” he says. He plays the clip for me.

The opening notes of “Karma Police” play through his laptop’s speakers with crystal clear quality.

It cuts out at twenty-six seconds, just before Thom Yorke bellows the opening line.

I almost whine like a child being denied a treat. Right before the best bit.

“Damn, that’s such a good song,” Mathias says.

“Please stop giving me reasons to crush on you.” Those words echo in my head. I don’t say them because I’m not fucking stupid. Instead I say, “Never would have pegged you for a Radiohead fan. Aren’t you a little young?”

“Never too young for soul-crushing despondency and existentialism,” he replies, and then laughs.

“Okay, yeah, maybe a person can be too young for that. For the record, I have very broad tastes in music. I pretty much enjoy everything . . . except experimental jazz, and metal that’s basically hairy white guys screaming. Like seriously, what the fuck is that?”

I’m laughing along with him, locking all the new pieces of Mathias away in my vault.

I shouldn’t do it, should just treat him as I would any other friend helping me in a time of desperation, but I have no control over it.

He says something cute like “I hate jazz,” or “I don’t stream music, I buy it,” and my brain snatches it up like a seagull stealing chips, gulps it down without checking the temperature first or chewing.

“Who’s next, then?” he asks. “Need me to bring up a list of all the Glasto headliners?”

“Let’s do someone from my time at the festival. What about David Bowie?”

“Yes, perfect. But you know he headlined twice as well. Once in two thousand and once in the seventies. I want to say seventy-one, but I’m not sure about that. I’ll have to do a bit more research.”

“How do you remember all this info?” I ask. I’m awed. Mathias simply shrugs.

“What’s your favourite David Bowie song?” he says instead of answering my question.

“Ah, now that’s how you tell the measure of a person, by their favourite Bowie track.

” I root my fingers into my beard while I think.

Mathias’s eyes fall to their movement. Or .

. . is he looking at my lips? “Probably ‘Rebel Rebel.’” And then, for some unfathomable reason, I start humming the notes—or some approximation of the notes.

In reality, it probably sounds similar to a scarlet macaw in a bowling alley.

Through stifled laughter, Mathias squeezes out, “Good choice.”

“What about you? What’s your favourite Bowie song?”

His smile drops, and for a second I think he’s not going to tell me, but then in the quietest voice a six-five man can muster, he says, “‘Magic Dance.’” His palm engulfs his face, and I pretend it’s not another adorable titbit I’m adding to my hoard. “You know the one from the movie Labyrinth? ”

“Mate, listen, Labyrinth is one of the greatest movies of all time. Are you kidding me? I grew up on that movie. We had it on VHS and I must have watched it every day for an entire year. ‘Magic Dance’ is a fucking banger.”

Mathias removes his hand from his face. He’s smiling and pointing it directly at me.

The relief in his features is obvious. “When I was in secondary school in Caerphilly, we did a musical production of Labyrinth. I was Jareth. Probably because I was the tallest in my class, and therefore I looked the most like a full-grown man. Still remember all the dance moves, though.” He must read the plea in my eyes because he adds, “No, I’m not doing it again for you now.

It’s far too embarrassing. Maybe . . . Maybe once I know you a bit better. ”

My heart somersaults in my chest. Could this mean he’ll be sticking around a little longer?

“I’ll hold you to that,” I say, and I give him a conversational “out” by turning my attention towards the laptop.