Never helps.
Saturday. Allan’s flat. Dinner.
Femi is cooking, which is ambitious given that his entire culinary range runs from pasta to slightly different pasta. Allan’s helping, which means Allan’s doing the actual cooking while Femi passes things and looks at him like he’s discovered gravity.
They’re disgusting in a good way.
Allan’s flat is a second-year upgrade. Actual furniture, a working oven, posters on the walls, somebody chose instead of inherited. There are photos on the fridge: Allan and his family.Allan and Femi are at a food market, Femi holding a churro like a trophy. They’ve already got fridge photos.
‘Pass the salt?’ Allan says, and Femi passes it, and their fingers touch, and they both smile like the salt shaker is a love letter and the piss-take is loaded, ready, but I can’t because my ribs are doing that tight thing again.
There’s a girl here, too. Karen, Allan’s flatmate, who’s studying biomedical science and has opinions about everything, and keeps refilling my wine, which I’m letting her because the wine helps.
We eat, we talk. Normal stuff, lectures, Christmas plans, a club night next week that Femi doesn’t want to go to, and Allan is already buying tickets for.
I’m funny. I make Karen laugh twice and Allan once, and Femi gives me the look, sayingyou’re performingbut doesn’t call it.
Allan’s hand rests on Femi’s thigh under the table like it belongs there. Out in the open, no napkin hiding anything. Just there, in the light. Femi leans into him when he laughs. They kiss once, briefly, casually.
Nobody looks away, nobody checks the door. Nobody calculates the risk.
The wine turns sour, figuratively. Literally, it’s fine. Cheap Tesco Merlot does the job.
‘You seem happy lately,’ Allan says to me. He’s doing the dishes, and I’m drying, and the others are in the sitting room arguing about a film. ‘Like, properly happy. You seeing someone?’
Stomach. Drop.
‘Nothing serious.’ The words come out before I’ve built them. Pre-fabricated. Already drying the next plate.
Allan doesn’t fill the silence. He’s learned not to. He waits with a plate suspended, a habit Femi says he got from his mum.
‘He’s—’ My mouth is halfway to a sentence I have no plan for. It hangs in the kitchen between us, uncommitted, and a wet plate in my hands slips an inch, and I catch it against my chest. Cold water runs down my jumper. Allan lets the silence be what it is.
‘He’s not local. I don’t see him much.’
A half-truth. A full degree of a lie. Karen’s laugh comes in from the lounge—she’s lost the film argument, Allan bet Femi five quid she’d be the first to cave, he collects later. Ordinary sounds from a flat where people live during the day.
‘Fair enough.’ He grins. Allan grins widely and easily. Femi doesn’t. ‘Whoever it is, though, you look different. Good different.’
I dry a plate. Put it on the rack. My hands move, my face is neutral. The key is in my wallet. The flat in Chorlton. All of it fills the space where talking would go.
Femi catches my eye across the room. Raises his eyebrows.You okay?
I nod, smile. The performance is easy. I’ve been performing since I got to Manchester. The student who doesn’t care, the boy who doesn’t try, the hookup who doesn’t stay.
Except this one itches. That’s new.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Outside the window: Manchester at eleven on a Saturday. Takeaway queues, smokers on pavements, a couple walking hand in hand towards the Northern Quarter. Two blokes, nobody looking at them. Nobody is calculating, just walking.
I think about Femi’s hand in Allan’s. How it just existed. On the table, under the table, in the car park, when we said goodbye. Continuous. Uninterrupted.
I think about the belt loop and the beat he held before letting go, about the flat in Chorlton where my name isn’t on anything.
The tram stops, and I get off. The walk to the halls is ten minutes, and I pull my jacket tighter, and the key shifts against my thigh.
Femi holds Allan’s hand. In the daylight, in front of everyone.
