Lenny snorted softly. “No. They had my whole life mapped out for me, but I kinda ruined it when I dropped out of uni, dyed my hair blue, and told them I liked cock.”
“‘Liked’?”
“Still like, obviously, but either way, they weren’t impressed. They moved to Saudi Arabia last year, and I couldn’t give a shit.”
“Do you have anyone else? Brothers and sisters?”
“Nope.”
“Me neither.”
“Guess we’re both pretty sad, then.”
“Speak for yourself, mate. I’m all right.” Nero released Lenny’s arm, slowly, like he was waking from the kind of dream he never had. “Want another beer?”
“I’ll get it.”
Lenny disappeared inside. He returned to the doorway a minute later with more beer and a jumbo packet of wine gums.
Nero waved them away, hoping Lenny might venture outside.
He didn’t.
Nero rolled another spliff. Combined with the beer, he’d probably had enough, but the night air was warm and addictive, and so was Lenny’s company. He watched through heavy eyelids as Lenny polished off his wine gums. “Sweet tooth?”
“Always. It’s worse when I’m stoned, though.” Lenny screwed up the packet and tossed it lazily over his shoulder, giggling as it ricocheted off the wall.
Nero chuckled. He’d been smoking weed so long he rarely experienced the side effects Lenny was enjoying now. “So, the spelt worked for you?”
“Huh?” Lenny blinked, then nodded as his weed-slowed brain seemed to catch up. “Yeah, I liked it. It was . . . nutty? But not bitter like brown bread is, you know? I hate that shit. My mum was obsessed with it when I was a kid. All my mates had white bread sarnies with plastic ham and Laughing Cow, and I had these hessian doorstops with beetroot in.”
Nero laughed again, harder this time, a sensation he barely recognised. “She must’ve loved you a bit, then. I read somewhere that white bread is killing off the human race.”
“Oh, it is. But I didn’t give a shit when I was eight, I just wanted to fit in.”
“And now?” Nero burned with curiosity. Lenny was like no one else he’d ever met, and he didn’t strike Nero as a man who bothered much about conforming.
But the sudden shadows in Lenny’s gaze made Nero wish he’d kept his bonehead questions to himself. Even Lenny’s whisper-light sigh felt like a punch to the gut.
“I kinda found myself at uni,” Lenny said. “All those years I’d wasted with my head in the books, treading the path other people had drawn for me, fell away. I met gay guys, trans guys, lesbians, and I felt . . . home, I guess. Clubbing, dancing, fucking around. No one cared who I was or where I came from. They saw me as I was in the moment—young, gay, and free. It was okay—it was good—to be different, you know?”
Nero nodded, though he had little understanding of the world Lenny described. Gay? Not quite. Free? Never. “How close to being a quack did you get?”
“Not very. I sacked it off a few months in.”
“To do what?”
“To realise that prancing around, drawing attention to yourself, is as dangerous as killing yourself to fit in.”
Lenny’s tone was bleak. Nero’s head wanted to ask more, but his heart said no. He passed the joint to Lenny, then slid down the wall, gazing out over Shepherd’s Bush, mentally ticking off the landmarks that made up the skyline that was often his only companion on nights like these—the bookies, the laundrette, and the dodgy kebab van that parked up every night outside the pub. At 2 a.m. it was winding down, but there was still a crowd of late-night pissheads around it, queuing up for their dose of grease.
The sight sparked a vague idea in Nero’s foggy brain. He chased it down, but it was gone before it became anything coherent. His eyelids grew heavier, and his bed called his name. Reluctantly, he forced himself upright, wobbling as the night of booze and biftas caught up with him.
Lenny smiled like a lazy cat. “All right?”
“Yup. I’m gonna sleep. You working tomorrow?”
“You tell me. You’re the boss.”
