“Gay,” Jude offered, flat. “If that wasn’t already obvious.”
“I figured.” Warren smiled, then let it drop. “Still.Christ. That’s brutal.” He looked away for a moment, then back again. “You didn’t deserve that.”
Jude gave a half-smile, more reflex than feeling. “No one does. But it happens.”
They let the quiet settle for a bit, but it didn’t feel heavy. More necessary.
Warren leaned back. “So… Worthbridge. Why here?”
Jude’s gaze dropped. His appetite had disappeared somewhere between the question and the memory it dragged up. He pushed food around his plate, then shrugged.
“Needed somewhere quiet. Clean slate. Job came up. Seaside town. Figured I’d take it.”
Warren nodded. “From Leeds?”
Jude shook his head. “No. I left there early on. Spent a few years in London.”
Warren grinned. “No way. My old stomping ground. Whereabouts? Did you teach there too? Maybe we crossed paths? Roamed the same school corridors? Went to the same uni?” He gestured between them with a faint, teasing wave. “Reckon that’s why there’s this… thing.”
Jude’s breath caught.This thing?What exactly did he mean by that? The same pull Jude felt humming under his skin, or just polite familiarity. He didn’t dare ask. Instead, he focused on his plate, on the scrape of cutlery, anything keeping him from meeting Warren’s eyes.
“Worthbridge is my first teaching post,” he said quietly.
There was a pause. Jude felt it before he heard it.
Warren sat back, searching Jude as if adjusting his mental maths.
“Started late,” Jude offered before he could stop himself and had to grab the beer, taking a mouthful to swallow around the bitterness. “Took the Access route into teaching. So no previous school. No uni.”
Another pause.
Then Warren tilted his neck. “How come?”
“The usual cliché. Messy breakup. Hit reset.”
It should be enough. It had always been enough.
But Jude could feel Warren watching him. Not in the way other people had. With pity and understanding. There was something else in Warren’s gaze. A if he knew the story had legs and wasn’t as simple as two people parting ways. And he wasn’t just looking at Jude then, but through him.
He hated that.
Also… didn’t.
Warren’s chest rose with a breath getting ready to pivot. Change gears before it got uncomfortable.
“Well,” Warren tapped his fingers on the table, “for what it’s worth, I rate late starters. You’ve got real history behind you. Lived experience. Makes for a better teacher, if you ask me. Gives you something real to bring to all that… history.”
Jude let out a short laugh, dipping his head as he glanced down at his plate. “Guess so.” He poked at a half-eaten chip, the edges of a smile tugging at his mouth. “Though I’m not sure how my personal odyssey from Leeds to London to Worthbridge qualifies me to teach the Reformation or the Treaty of Versailles.”
Warren smiled. “You’d be surprised.”
Jude looked up at that, arching an eyebrow.
“Not that I’ve got the faintest idea what the Treaty of Versaillesis, mind you.” Warren bit his lip. “But I can tell you all about oxbow lakes.”
Jude laughed. “Well, I guess nothing prepares you to explain the rise of fascism to a room full of Year Tens like having once shared a flat with three chain-smoking conspiracy theorists in Elephant and Castle.”
“Bet they thought the moon landing was filmed in a chip shop.”
