He glances at me.
“With all the stupid shit he’s done in his life? Trust me, you could never be worse than him.”
“But I care about it, I really do. I didn’t think I’d care so much. Until a few months ago, I didn’t even think I’d go to university, but now…”
I put a hand on his shoulder.
“Would you mind giving me a hand?” he asks.
“M-me?”
He nods.
“I don’t really think I’m the right person.”
“Please! Mum’s not exactly Einstein, and Ryan just screams at me and gets all pissed off.”
“I’d like to, really I would, but…”
He shakes his head, annoyed. “Okay, I get it. Don’t worry.” He opens his book again and slumps his elbows on the table.
“I can’t,” I tell him quietly.
He glances up at me.
“I’m not good.”
“What do you mean?” Evan looks at me, waiting for me to go on, but I don’t know if I really want to. I don’t like talking about certain things, and I’m not crazy about people knowing things about me – about my life – that could come back to haunt me.
“I wasn’t good at school. I had a few problems.”
“Were they serious?” Evan looks right at me, worried.
“I was kept behind a few years.”
“What happened? Did you fail your exams?”
I shake my head. “I missed a lot of school for…physical reasons.”
Evan scrutinises my expression.
“Then when I came back, I wasn’t the same. My head wasn’t in it, I couldn’t be bothered… I had no motivation. I couldn’t work hard anymore, and being surrounded by a class full of people younger than me didn’t help. I tried for a while, but I couldn’t be how I was, or how they expected me to be. So I got angry and dedicated myself to other things, like being the class clown. I guess it was to let out my frustration, but also because it was the only thing I was good at. I was the class dickhead.”
“And you still are,” Ryan pipes up behind me, before sitting with us.
I look at him for a moment, unsure whether or not to carry on. It’s embarrassing to talk about this in front of him, because Ryan is…well, Ryan. And I’m just Nick. I’ve always felt uncomfortable around him, even though Ryan never used my problems to take the piss out of me. But I still feel inferior, likeI’mthe younger brother. I feel like I could never be a good example for him, inspire him. I never felt like someone he’d look up to.
When Ian arrived, I was scared that Ryan would cling onto him instead, start seeing him as his hero. So I tried to get between them, excluding Ryan because I was afraid that he’d start to exclude me. I know, it was a shitty thing to do, but that was my first reaction. I was scared of losing him, losing his admiration. But Ian wasn’t like that: Ian united us, made us close in a way we never thought was possible. He made us whole. And I was about to ruin everything.
If Ryan didn’t have that huge heart of his, I wouldn’t be here today, eating in his girlfriend’s café, chatting to Evan. I wouldn’t feel like I was part of them.
“It took a while for me to graduate.”
“Oh,” Evan’s surprised.
“I didn’t get into university.”
Saying it, even now, evokes the same feeling: that I was a failure, someone who was only capable of prancing around a beach with his arse on display.
