Page 24 of Someone Like You

Unaware of the upheaval he’d caused, Phil snapped the can open and raised it to his lips, taking a large swig and granting himself a moment to savour it, then took another one, and another.

“Ah, that’s good. Don’t care what you think,” he said before Ian could beg to differ. “I love it. Gimme ten more.”

“At least I don’t have to worry about you getting drunk,” Ian tried to joke, but the comment obtained the opposite effect of a joke.

“I wish I could get drunk,” said Phil, suddenly sombre.

“I could blame it on the alcohol. I could spew out all the things I’m holding back, get this crushing weight off my chest and just brush it off as drunken nonsense, conscience clear.

I could…” The can cracked in his hand. “I could kiss you and pretend I don’t remember. ”

The chair shrieked and tumbled to the ground as Ian bolted up to his feet. The noise was deafening, but not nearly as much as the lingering echo of Phil’s words — words he’d dreamt to hear in some more cinematic variation, but he’d firmly believed would never be more than a delusional fantasy.

Phil licked his lips with a sniff, looking miserable and exhausted. His throat bobbed when his eyes lifted up on Ian, glassy and strained with emotion. “Do you feel it, too?” he asked in a trembling whisper that crumbled towards the end, losing all colour. “Is it killing you, too?”

Ian couldn’t breathe. There was a knot in his throat and the pain in his chest was sinking its talons deeper and deeper, tearing through all his defences.

From where he was standing, he could see the hope slowly draining out of the gleam in Phil’s eyes, morphing into a grief Ian couldn’t bear to see.

He turned his back to it, to everything it represented, with hands clenched into fists.

“We can’t have this conversation, Phil.”

The dam was cracking. All the denial in the world couldn’t stop the flood from breaking through now.

The creak of the chair pushing back told him Phil had stood up before he sensed him behind himself.

“Ian.” The sound of his name sounded like a prayer. “I know it’s not just me.”

The blow came down without any mercy, forcing Ian to close his eyes to withstand it. He had to hang on tooth and nail to his honour to resist the urge to pull Phil into his arms and hold him until it hurt. Even though everything was already hurting.

When he found the strength to turn back around, he braced for the punch of Phil’s pleading look, but nothing could have prepared him for that yearning agony riddled with guilt. It was like looking into a mirror of how he felt inside.

“This can’t happen, Handsome,” he murmured.

Phil swallowed. “I know.”

“You have a fiancée — a lovely one.”

“I know . ”

“Then stop lookin’ at me like that.”

“I wish I could.”

One thing Ian had never doubted, not even for a split second, was Phil’s devotion to Abigail. He still didn’t. And yet those beautiful, kind eyes he was such a goner for oozed love while scrutinising him so close up he could’ve counted the green specks in them one by one.

Phil took a bold step forward. Ian couldn’t move.

“Get out my face before I do something we’d both regret,” he warned, even though every inch in his body was burning to reach out and touch . He wanted it too much — just to hold him, to feel him. Just once.

Just once…

He tried to back away, but Phil shakily fisted his hoodie as if seeking support and drew him back to himself with a begging look.

“Please, just… just give me a minute.”

It wasn’t a sin. Hugs weren’t kisses. Hugs weren’t sex. They were allowed. They could have this. Just this. Just one innocent thing. It wouldn’t hurt anyone.

Following an ancestral instinct, Ian wrapped his arms around Phil, letting him rest his head on his shoulder until the tension melted from his body.

But even then, even after Phil went limp and exhaled a breath of immense relief, Ian didn’t — couldn’t let go.

This single minute might be all they’d ever get.

He cradled Phil’s face into his palm, stroking the bristly beard, the affection thrumming fierce and violent in his ribcage.

Phil just closed his eyes and leaned into his touch, fingertips digging into Ian’s pecs, quietly absorbing the comfort of the embrace.

‘I love you,’ Ian thought, drinking in the trusting abandonment of Phil’s gesture.

In that blind trust he found the same desperate longing that was devouring him from the inside.

It would’ve been so easy to get used to this — Phil’s breath upon his chest, their bodies moulded into one another, and the peace, the completion, the feeling of all the jumbled pieces Ian was made of finally clicking into place.

He couldn’t fathom how something that felt so natural and simple could be so impossible.

He took a deep breath, chin pressing against the side of Phil’s head and, tapping into his last vestige of self-control, he murmured: “You should go.”

Phil sighed in surrender. “Yeah.” He lingered a few more seconds, rubbing his cheek against Ian’s hoodie one last time, then pliantly stepped back. He cleared his throat. “See you at the fountain at 6?”

“Aye.”

An unspoken agreement was signed with that: they would never talk about this.

Ian escorted Phil to the door. Even Kibble crawled out of her hiding place to say goodnight, rubbing herself on Phil’s shins until he crouched down to give her a proper scratch between the ears.

Duffel bag in place, beanie on his head, Phil took the bike and the helmet and jogged down the three steps leading down to the street. He stopped there, staring at the scratches on the helmet in his hands, and cast a mournful look back at the door.

“In another life—”

“We don’t have another life, Phil.”

Phil’s lips tightened. “In another life,” he said, “maybe I’d meet you first.”