“I hope you come,” she said. “I…I love you, Graeme. Just not that way.”
“I love you, too, Mave,” he said, borderline weeping. “Just not that way.” The conversation they’d had that ended it all had concluded with those words.
They said a few, final goodbyes, and Graeme tapped to end the call. He lowered his head and his shoulders sagged.
“I’m sorry,” Ryan said, surging forward and standing beside Graeme so he could rub his back.
“Mavis is getting remarried in two weeks, and she wants me to be there,” Graeme said, drawing in an unsteady breath and forcing himself to raise his head.
“Are we happy or sad?” Art asked, moving to stand on Graeme’s other side. For once, he seemed completely genuine and serious as he rested a hand on Graeme’s back in solidarity.
“Happy,” Graeme said after a short pause. He forced himself to square his shoulders and take a deep, cleansing breath. He cleared his throat, then said, “I’m really happy for her. I hurt her badly when I…told her the truth. But one of my best friends, Benny, was there for her, and now they’re getting married. It’s good for both of them. They suit each other. They’ll be happy and have lots of babies and make everyone proud.”
A heaviness that Graeme didn’t expect descended on him. They would be everything that the world he’d grown up in said people should be but that he wasn’t, and he would forever be the failure and anathema that they despised. No one would ever be proud of him again.
He was about to spiral into a truly dark place when Art asked, “You know what this calls for?” as bright as a new penny.
“What?” Ryan asked, his voice more measured, his arm resting protectively around Graeme’s shoulders.
“This calls for a trip to Brighton,” Art said.
“Brighton?” Graeme blinked at him.
“Absolutely.” Art clapped his hands together, beaming. “Brighton is one of the gay capitals of the UK. We’ll pack ourtools away, clean up, drive down to the seaside, hit the pier and all the gay clubs, and get massively, wildly drunk. It’ll be brilliant.”
Ryan pinched his face. “I don’t know if?—”
“Yes!” Graeme gusted out. “Yes, that’s exactly what we should do.”
He’d never been to a gay club in his life and he’d only been to Brighton once. He didn’t really drink, and he was slightly terrified of the idea of going out on the town with someone like Art. But the way his heart felt just then made him more reckless and adventurous than he’d ever been in his life.
“Perfect,” Art said. “Let’s get moving.”
SIX
Standing there,watching Graeme nearly fall apart as he battled his way through the phone call with his ex, nearly broke Ryan. He put together the pieces of what must have been happening as the conversation went on, even though he could only hear one side of it. He couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to have an ex-wife ring to say she was marrying his former best friend. It was so far out of the realm of anything he’d experienced that all he could do was bleed internally for Graeme.
He wanted to wrap the sweet, young man up in his arms and kiss all his pains better. His first instinct was to slow things down, breathe with Graeme, and process the emotional pain carefully. So he was completely surprised when Graeme jumped on Art’s idea to get as loud and brash as possible in response to the shock.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked Graeme an hour later, after they’d all showered and dressed in clean clothes, Graeme and Art both borrowing things from Hawthorne House’s extensive clothes room, as they piled into Ryan’s car. “If it’s too much for you, we can stay home and go for a walk or something.”
“What are you talking about?” Art argued, shoving Ryan’s shoulder slightly as he climbed into the back seat. “Situations like this don’t call for a walk, they call for a party.”
“For once in my life, and I absolutely mean once and the first time,” Graeme said, putting on his seat belt in the front passenger’s seat, “I agree with Art. I need to go someplace where I can forget everything for a bit.”
“Brighton is perfect for that,” Art assured him, scooting forward and throwing his arms around Graeme and the headrest from behind. “I will have you so distracted that you won’t remember your name by the end of the day.”
Ryan glanced over his shoulder at Art, one eyebrow raised, as if he was asking, “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
Art ignored him, though, and Ryan started the car and pulled out of his parking place.
Brighton wasn’t that long of a drive. In just over an hour, they’d made their way down to the coast, found a parking spot, and were sitting on the crowded, sandy beach eating a late lunch of fish and chips in traditional newsprint.
“We used to come down here when we were kids,” Ryan told Graeme and Art, who sat on the other side with Graeme in the middle. “Mum and Dad would squeeze everyone in the car in a way that must have broken at least a dozen parts of The Highway Code and motor us down here first thing in the morning.”
“I bet you lot were the sort to stake your claim on a prime spot of beach first thing, and then to make so much noise and faff throughout the day that everyone stayed clear of you,” Art laughed.
“How did you guess?” Ryan asked with a smirk before eating a chip.
