Jodi winced. “Sorry. It kind of threw me.”
“I get that, but why didn’t you tell me later on?”
“You weren’t here. You went to work on Monday and you didn’t come home till Wednesday morning. I was over it by then.”
It was Rupert’s turn to be contrite. A factory fire in Stockwell had pulled Green Watch out of their jurisdiction and stretched Rupert’s shift so far into the following day there had been little point going home before the next one. “How do you feel about it now?”
Jodi shrugged. “Dunno. Some days it doesn’t seem to matter, and others it’s the worst shit in the world.”
“What is?”
“That I have to start from the beginning with the things I want the most, and I don’t even know if you want them too.”
They’d reached the chip shop, and Jodi ducked inside, leaving Rupert with his mouth open.Is he serious?How on earth could Jodi not know Rupert wanted him back—wanted him now—more than anything in the world?
He followed Jodi inside and found him at the back of the queue, staring at the hot-hold counter, clearly bemused. “I don’t know what I usually have.”
“What do youwant?”
“Are we still talking about chips?”
“You tell me.”
But Jodi couldn’t, and Rupert knew it. He tapped his finger on the warm glass of the hot-hold counter. “You usually have two steak pies, large chips, mushy peas, and a battered sausage.”
“Two pies? Really?”
Jodi looked so horrified that Rupert couldn’t help chuckling. “Shall we just get one to start with? Ease you in?”
They settled on a pie, a bag of chips, and a couple of jumbo sausages, and took it all home to share. On the way, Rupert waited for Jodi to pick up the conversation where he’d left off, but he didn’t, and back in the flat, without Tottenham’s busy streets as a buffer between them, an awkward silence took hold, suffocating the tentative good humour they’d shared in the chip shop.
Rupert picked at his food, his agitation growing as he watched Jodi do the same, like they’d got off the roundabout for the hundredth time and gone back to the start. Frustration overwhelmed him. “I’m sick of this. It’s doing my feckin’ head in.”
He got up and tossed his plate on the coffee table, storming into the kitchen without waiting for Jodi’s response—if there was to be one. Chances were, there wouldn’t be. They’d become experts at half conversations that went nowhere. Masters of scratching a wound until it was open and bleeding and then leaving it to fester.
He didn’t expect Jodi to follow him.
Jodi chucked his own plate in the sink. Chips scattered across the draining board. “It’s doingyourhead in? At least you know what you’re fucking missing, if you’re missing it at all? Maybe you’re not. Maybe you dodged a bullet, eh?”
“What?”
“Oh, come on. Just because we were together before, doesn’t mean we should’ve been. Doesn’t mean we were happy, does it?”
“Happy? Of course we were— What the fuck? What makes you think we weren’t happy?”
“You don’t seem happy now.”
“What have I got to be happy about? So, you know we were together ... doesn’t change much. You still don’t want me.”
“Don’t I?”
“Do you?” Rupert hadn’t meant to challenge Jodi so bluntly, but the words were out before he could stop them, laid bare between them.
“Idowant you,” Jodi said. “I just don’t know if that means I wanna bang you and leave or hold you all night long after. And I don’t know how to learn. I thought it would come back to me, eventually, but Dr. Nevis says it probably won’t, that if I want to be with you, we have to start over again. And I don’t know how to do that. Or if you even want to. Why the fuck would you? Why would you—”
Jodi’s voice cracked. He clamped a shaky hand over his mouth briefly, then let it drop, fixing Rupert with a gaze that hurt Rupert’s heart. “I’m broken, Rupert, and I can’t be fixed. Why the hell would you want me now?”
“Jodi.” Rupert closed the distance between them and gripped Jodi’s shoulders. Only Jodi’s injuries stopped Rupert from shaking him. “Jodi, you’re not bloody broken, you hear me? And I do want you, as much as I ever did, I just ... I don’t know what that says about me. I’m your carer, Jodi. I shouldn’t be thinking about stuff like that. It’s not right. ”
