We’d been driving about fifteen minutes when the silence became too much for me, and something that had been burning a hole in my head since I’d heard it came tumbling out.
“Riz had profiles on a bunch of dating apps then.”
Simon said nothing, but the air changed.
“He had several … it was a lot to sign up to in the couple of months you guys were broken up. Were you two … were you guys open?”
Oh, the longest of silences.
“We had certain understandings.” It now made sense why Riz’s mysterious phone calls potentially being another man hadn’t been that worrisome for Simon.
“Right,” I said.
“You don’t approve.”
I flexed my hands on the steering wheel. “It’s not my place to comment.”
“You’re judging.”
I swallowed. “No. It’s just not my thing. Open relationships and me. It’s not my cup of tea, but I don’t have any negative opinions on those who do like them.” That was a lie. I hated the idea of it. The thought of someone I loved coming home smelling of another man. It made me angry to imagine it. But plenty of people had happy, healthy, open relationships, so my job was to shut my mouth.
“Bullshit,” Simon said. “You are a one-hundred-per-cent-monogamy type of guy, and anything else is less than in your eyes.”
I could have argued. I should have argued. Should have said anything. But I didn’t. I let a silence emerge, and then I let it grow.
I could sense Simon getting more and more tense.
“It’s none of your business,” he snapped.
“I know, I’m sorry I asked—”
“And for your information, I’ve had plenty of monogamous relationships. But sometimes they’re not. It depends on me, on them, on the situation. Riz and I started exclusive, but then we opened up, okay?”
I held up my hands in defeat. “Sorry that I asked. I wasn’t trying to offend.”
He sneered. “I suppose in your world it’s boy meets boy and then if one of you even looks at someone else it’s tears and handbags at dawn.”
It was my turn to be offended. “I think this conversation has run its course.”You don’t fucking know me, you prick.“Like I said, sorry I asked.”
After forty minutes of driving, we passed signs for Salisbury. The mid-sized town, which, due to English anachronisms, was a city because it had a cathedral. It was advertised as being pretty, but was a very plain town with a modern centre and a plethora of ugly housing. Riz lived in the southern area near the hospital.
We parked up a few streets away. “Arden,” Simon said. He’d been quiet for twenty minutes. “I’m sorry about what I said earlier. I was rude.”
“It’s fine, don’t worry.” I closed the car door quietly when, really, I wanted to slam it hard enough to wake the dead.
“Arden,” he said again.
“It’s fine.” I began to walk but then stopped to add more. “We have differing views. Just as well we don’t think of each other in that way because we’re clearly not compatible.” I turned from him and started to walk again. But slow enough to see his face fall.
Good. Don’t insult me and then think you’re in with a chance.
What Riz and he did or didn’t do was their business. But if I could manage the lip service to pretend that it didn’t bother me, then he could show me some basic compassion, too.
My self-righteous fury lasted a few streets. If you were imagining Riz lived in some lovely red-brick mansion block or converted Victorian townhouse, then I direct you to my previous comments about Salisbury being overrated in terms of aesthetics. No, Riz lived on a new-build estate with all the charm of a tractor reversing downa motorway. Winding cul-de-sacs paved in a yellow stone, with faux-Victorian three-storey houses jostling for space on sections that surrounded us. Anaemic trees attempted to grow on the verges, and the lawns were too small. Like most new-build estates, it struck me as off somehow, the ratio of street to house to green and the depth of the buildings back from the road didn’t work.
Simon walked a few steps behind me. I could feel the aggravation emanating from him. “The back door, we should go through there,” he whispered. I was too annoyed to even make a joke about gay men and the rear option.
I grunted in response. We slipped through the gate at the side of the house and into the small back garden. Riz’s place was a semi-detached red-brick two-storey property. The house that it joined onto had another floor on top, giving Riz’s the look of being a wing to this grander home.
