“Do you?”
We had to get this discussion out of the way. It was eleven years overdue and although it was me who had placed it on hold, I knew it had to be done for the sake of my sanity. Our sanity.
“I know you weren’t at fault for Jonah.”
He turned round to face me too quickly. “What?”
“Jonah was in love with you. It wasn’t your fault. I didn’t blame you for it.”
“Fuck, Wren.” He exhaled loudly. “We never…”
“Talked about it when it happened but we both knew.”
I waited for something, something to come out of his mouth to tell me he understood.
“I don’t know if he ever was in love with me.”
“He idolised you. He hid it, but in our third year it became so obvious.”
“No. Well, yeah, but not like that. Not fucking like that.”
“Tell me what it was like then.” I sat up, stared at him. Waited.
He folded his arms and became an island. Isolating himself.
“Before you, Jonah told me he was curious about what it was like to kiss another man and asked if I’d done it before.”
I nodded. “He told me. You’d been drunk…”
“Not that drunk. I’d done it before. Kissed, gotten another man off, he’d gotten me off…” He shrugged. “Jonah asked me about it – I can’t think for the life of me why he asked me, maybe I’d stuck up for one of the lads who had just come out, I don’t know. It was ages ago. We kissed.”
“Anything else?” I was more than curious.
“A bit more. It wasn’t repeated.”
“You never repeated anyone.”
“And Jonah knew that. I made sure he knew it. Afterwards – we did mention it when we were alone, which was weird because I thought he’d want to forget about it.”
“He fell in love with you.”
“He didn’t, Wren. He fell in love with an idea. He went out with girls after me and him and gotten friendly. Then he met you and he was in love.”
“And he told me he’d been in love with you for years, since you’d met.”
“I was an easy target. He knew I wouldn’t get involved with anyone and I had pretty much just fucked women since him. He wasn’t going to be able to be in a relationship with me which made it a safe thing to say.”
“Did he cheat on me?”
Callum shrugged. “I don’t know. If he did, no one ever found out about it. I don’t know what he said to you. He didn’t end it. But you never told me why you did apart from you thought he was in love with me.”
* * *
Winter.The snow had yet to arrive but the tabloids were predicting a ‘big freeze’ and people had started to panic buy at the supermarkets. Liverpool had to be the coldest fucking place on the planet right now. I had two pairs of socks on and a pair of sweatpants that were fleece lined.
“Have you heard from Callum?” Jonah said. He’d spent the last twenty minutes flicking through his phone, looking at messages.
I put my book down. I’d been here for the last three days and we’d barely spoke. “He phoned me yesterday.”
