As if Ollie could refuse. As if he wanted to. Or perhaps he did, but the pull to be with Shay was somehow stronger than the vice around his heart.
He sat on the bench and lit a cigarette he didn’t really want. Watching it burn gave him something to do, but he didn’t smoke it. Just waited… for Shay, or for something else. Who the hell knew?
Shay sat beside him, close but not close enough. “I did a thing.”
“A thing?”
“Yeah.” Shay twisted on the bench to face him. “When you left the other day, I asked Corina some questions about you.”
“What kind of questions?”
Shay bit his lip. “The nosy kind. I’m sorry.”
Ollie leaned forwards and away from Shay, gaze fixed on the ground, and took a deep drag on his half-burned cigarette. “What did she tell you?”
“Not much. Just that you were some BBC hotshot before you were MIA for a few years. She didn’t know any details, and I’m glad of it—I felt super guilty afterwards, like I’d plundered your confidence or some shit.”
“You did.” Ollie’s tone was flat. No anger or rebuke, merely cold fact. “What difference does my life up until this point make to yours?”
“If I knew that, I’d have either asked you or not asked at all.”
Ollie sighed. Shay hadn’t been joking when he’d said he didn’t often make sense about emotions he hadn’t put to music yet. “You could’ve asked me.”
“Would you have answered?”
“Probably not, but that’s my prerogative. Why do you need to know my life story?”
Anyone else might’ve matched Ollie’s sharp tone. Defended themselves with the belligerence Ollie perhaps deserved. Shay slipped his arm around Ollie’s tense shoulders and said nothing for a long moment before he hummed a low tune Ollie recognised, though he couldn’t put a name to it.
“I suppose it’s because you know mine,” Shay said softly when his tune had played out. “You know so much about me—more than I know myself—and I know nothing about you except that you kiss like a fucking demon… and you hate being on tour with me. With us.”
“I don’t hate being on tour—”
“Yes, you do,” Shay snapped. “You think I can’t see how miserable you are? That I don’t notice when you duck out at mealtimes and stay up all night with your laptop? That you can’t wait to get off the bus and away from me—fromus—whenever we stop?”
Ollie laughed. “You think I’m trying to get away fromyou? That everything you’ve seen in me only manifested itselftwo weeksago? Mate, you’re either arrogant as fuck or tapped in the head.”
“Which do you think it is?”
“Both. Neither. I don’t fucking know.” Ollie flicked his cigarette away with less care than he usually would. He scrubbed his hands down his face. He hadn’t cried in years, but the weight of Shay’s gaze on him scratched a wound that made his eyes sting. “Look, I’m not some international man of mystery, I’m just messed-up, okay? It’s got nothing to do with you or the tour. I’m like this at home.”
“Where is home?”
“Stanmore. It’s a few miles north of—”
“I know where it is.”
Ollie’s hands started to shake. He let them drop from his face and folded his arms. Shay tugged on his elbow, his fingers slipping too far up Ollie’s arm until Ollie flinched and yanked it free. He didn’t look at Shay. “I don’t like being on the road. I mean, like, literally on the road. I’m okay if I’m driving, but I’m a shit passenger.”
Shay shifted on the bench. Ollie couldn’t tell if he’d moved closer until his arm began to throb again, as though Shay’s hand was hovering over it. “You get carsick?”
Ollie snorted. “No, Shay. I don’t get carsick. It’s more like a phobia, I guess, like a fear of flying, though I’m not sure what I’m actually afraid of anymore, and I can get on a plane just fine.”
“Have you had it a long time?”
“No.”
Ollie braced himself for the next question, but it never came. Shay leaned forwards and mirrored Ollie’s pose, hunched shoulders, elbows on his knees. Another silence settled over them, but it was lighter this time, as though Shay had lifted a shadow from Ollie’s mind.
