“You scapegoated your sexuality because you’d already decided I was going to abandon you. So you drew this wild fucking conclusion that if I didn’t get regular sex I’d do a runner, and you made that the entire reason we couldn’t be together. Only, I don’t give a fuck about that, and I thought I’d made that pretty obvious.” He drinks from his bottle, but doesn’t take his eyes off me. “You were so convinced I’d leave that you figured pushing me away would lessen the pain because at least it’d be on your terms.”
I fucking hate how rigorous and succinct his dissection of me is. I guess he had been thinking about it a lot over the past year.
“You did leave me, though,” I say, the words half whispered. It’s a stupid non-argument, and Harry knows this too.
“Because you wanted me to. You spent more time pushing me away than you did just enjoying us being together. You tried to set me up with another guy because that’s how much you didn’t want to be with me.”
I can feel the tears building again.
When am I ever not crying in front of this man?
It’s not that I didn’t want to be with him. I did more than anything. It’s that . . . I was afraid.
“Because . . . because . . .” I say, then scream. Just once. To get the frustration out of my voice. It doesn’t work, but I realise . . . it’s not frustration.
It’s sadness, and a decade of repressed anger, and loneliness, and fear. Undiluted, unfiltered, unchecked terror that he would one day, as everybody else has done, decide that I’m just too much.
“Everyone I’ve ever cared about has left me.” I don’t even bother trying to stop the tears. “Why would you be any different? I wasn’t scapegoating my sexuality. I was simply doing a thorough risk assessment.”
I close my eyes and let my head fall back against the mattress, and I feel Harry scoot over to sit beside me.
“My dad left, over and over again. First, he left Mum and me, then he left his second wife, then his third. Who knows how long this one has before he leaves her. You know she’s pregnant? I’m going to have a brother or sister.”
“I’m not like h—”
“You’re not him, I know that. You’re nothing like him,” I interrupt. “But then Mum left me. Daisy’s leaving me. I don’t speak to any of the boys from school any longer.” I sigh. “I wasn’t always this much of a slut. Way back when, I tried to have a few relationships, but after I let those guys fuck me, they wanted nothing more to do with me. I know you’re not the same as mydad, but what’s the common denominator here? It’s me. Eventually, everyone leaves me.”
It’s better if I don’t develop feelings first.
“Lando . . .” Harry wraps his baby and ring fingers around mine. “Your mum didn’t leave through choice.” His voice is agonisingly soft. Patient. “She’d still be here if she could. By your side, forever.”
Fuck, this hurts. I drag a hand down my face. “It’s unfair of me to include my mum in this, but that’s how I feel. You have seven hundred brothers and sisters. You don’t understand what it’s like to be this . . . alone and terrified.”
“You’re right. I don’t. That doesn’t mean I’ve never felt lonely, though. Imagine growing up in a house with six kids, and being the middle boy. Sure, there were people around all the time, but it always felt like a scramble just to be seen. Everyone was always better than me at something, more deserving of my parents’ attention. Smarter, taller, richer, better at sports, more successful, more beautiful, more ill. I remember once when I was like thirteen, I had to have my tonsils taken out. I got the whole week off school, just me and Mum at home all day. Then my fucking sister went and got in a car crash, so I was totally forgotten about.”
I groan, half wanting to laugh because only Harry could make another person’s near death experience into a reason to be pissed off.
“I’m not saying I had it as bad as you, but I need you to realise that not everything is the way it looks. I was so lonely until I met you. You . . . were . . . are, I think, the other half of my soul.”
I turn my face towards him, resting my temple against the mattress. “You’re telling me the other half of my soul has chicken grease on his jhorts?”
Harry barks out a laugh. “Yup.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I reckon we give ‘us’ another shot.”
Instead of answering him, I rotate on the spot, so my face is smushed into the duvet. I know Harry’s watching me. I feel him, hear the bottle glugging as he takes huge swigs from it.
“I’m scared,” I say without lifting my head away, the words muffled.
“Honestly, me too. And I can’t promise I’ll never leave.”
I peer at him. He gives me a cheesy Gromit-esque smile-and-shrug combo.
“I wish I could say I know for certain I wouldn’t, but shit can change. I can’t even promise myself forever. What if you cheat on me? What if I get hit by a bus?”
Now I’m smiling. “Okay, first, you’d do more damage to the bus with those thick rugby cakes of yours, and second, I would never cheat on you.”
