But you gave me the will to earn it.
The tram to Chorlton at seven in the morning is a different species from the evening one: commuters, not students. People with purpose and early starts, and the resigned faces of adults who’ve accepted that consciousness at this hour is the price of rent.
I get off at the usual stop. Walk the route by body now, not by map, the left at the corner shop, the terraced houses, the particular crack in the pavement I always step over because it’s shaped like a lightning bolt.
His building, green door, I buzz. Hold. Nothing.
Buzz again, the intercom crackles. Nothing.
I crouch. The letterbox is brass, tarnished at the edges. The gap underneath the door is maybe an inch, just enough. I slide the paper through. Hear it land on hardwood
I stand. Don’t knock again. Don’t wait.
Walk.
A different sheet, a different proof, same plain paper.
You don’t get to decide what’s good for me. That’s my choice. It’s always been my choice.
The green door, the brass letterbox. The inch of gap, the paper sliding through. Landing. Silence.
I press my palm flat against the door. Hold it there, the wood is cold. Behind it: the table, the key. The kitchen where he drew his line.
Something moves. Inside. A shift of weight, a floorboard, the particular creak that happens between the hallway and the kitchen. I’ve made this creak at 2 am in bare feet, walking back to bed after a glass of water, the flat’s own language that I learnt without?—
He’s there. On the other side of this door. Close enough that the wood between us is the only thing.
I take my hand off. Walk.
This paper took the longest. Two hours at the desk with the fairy lights leaking under the partition and the bloke next door snoring for once instead of wanking, the silence, generous for once.
I’m not Hugo. This is not Cambridge. And you’re not who you were then.
Took two hours because every other version was longer, and the longer versions were the old Ewan, the one who’d wrap a truth in so many sentences it arrived at a tolerable temperature—the one who’d explain, justify, perform.
The door, the letterbox, the paper, the sound.
My palm stays off the wall. The creaking doesn’t happen. Stand, turn, walk.
The tram back to Fallowfield. Rain on the windows, Manchester doing its thing. I press my forehead against the glass as I did in September on the bus home from the first lecture, watching the same terraced houses and Greggs and grey slide past.
Different boy, same glass.
Fourth morning.
The green door opens before I knock.
Laurence.
My—fuck.
He looks—I catalogue it before the thinking starts, as my brain always catalogues him, body first, analysis second. The stubble, he never has stubble—dark under the eyes, not shadows, cavities. Structural, architectural tired, shirt wrinkled—the same shirt, three days unwashed, unironed.
He’s holding the three pieces of paper.
Stacked. Read. The edges are slightly curled from being held too long by hands that shook.
‘Come in.’
