I glance behind me, at the corner table. Someone studying, notebooks spread across every inch, laptop open, a pencil between their teeth. Lost in it, barely present in his own body. An oversized jumper worn loose, rings on three fingers, nails painted dark. Hair that sits between lengths, between intentions.
I look back at Ron. He’s not looking at the corner table. He’s very specifically, pointedly, not looking at the corner table. He rubs his thumb on the base of his pint glass—a tic I’ve never seen.
‘Good beer,’ he says. Takes another drink. A shift in his expression. Something looser, almost confused. ‘So. The bloke you’re seeing?’
Warm it up, get the subject talking—his friendlier mode.
‘Ron.’
‘What? Normal question. Brother to brother.’ He’s making eye contact with me now. Proper eye contact.
I play the game, give him scraps. ‘There’s a lad in my mathsclass. Fit, boring. Not worth the?—’
A pause. He rests his thumb on the base of the glass. Then: ‘Been a long week.’
He says it at the table. Ron doesn’t open with his own week. Ever. He opens with my week, my term, my life; he’s auditing from two hundred miles away. His week stays off-camera, the thing that makes my week possible.
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’ He rolls his shoulder. ‘Just long.’
I wait for more. More doesn’t come. Ron has never in his life offered a second sentence about his own day without being asked twice. The ask would be an opening, and openings cost Ron money. Stay quiet.
I file it underknackered, allowed.Ron being allowed softness is a novelty I’m not going to poke.
I drink. The music changes. Someone laughs too loudly near the bar. And Ron’s eyes drift—a breath, no more—back to the corner. The person at the table hasn’t moved. Still studying. The pencil is now behind one ear, the light catching a silver ring. They push a strand of hair back, and Ron’s hand tightens on his glass.
‘Another round?’ he says. Already standing and already moving towards the bar, which happens to require walking past the corner table. He doesn’t look as he passes.
That flicker stays unexamined. Ron’s investigation is already inside my perimeter, and my own secret is loud enough to drown out whatever that was. It’s his.
I’ve got enough.
Sunday. Femi and Allan. Chance encounter on the walk from halls to the Arndale because Ron wanted ‘proper coffee, not that machine stuff in your kitchen.’ We pass them on Cross Street. Femi in his puffer jacket, Allan’s arm through his, both of them wearing the ease of a couple who’ve had good sex and a lie-in and aren’t hiding either.
‘Ewan!’ Femi’s face lights up—real, uncomplicated. Then he sees Ron, and the wattage drops fractionally because Femi knows things now, and the brother’s presence is a variable he hasn’t solved for.
Introductions. Handshakes. Allan is easy, open, and asks Ron about London like he’s genuinely interested. Femi stands close enough that his sleeve touches Allan’s—habit rather than performance.
Ron watches, and I track him watching. The arm-linking, the casual touches. Femi leans into Allan when he laughs, and Allan shifts to make room, reflexive, practiced, visible to every person on this street, and neither of them is calculating the cost.
‘Your mate’s got it sorted,’ Ron says after, when they’ve turned the corner, and the street has swallowed them. He sips his coffee. ‘Nice lad. Boyfriend, out in the open. No secrets.’ A pause. ‘Why can’t you just do that?’
The cut, clean. Because he built me. Knows where the joins are weakest.
‘It’s not that simple.’
‘Why not?’
Because the man I’m sleeping with could lose his career if I linked my arm through his on Cross Street. Because the man whose bed I sleep in four nights a week has only a letter on my phone. Becausesimpleis a luxury for people whose love doesn’t carry a disciplinary code, and I’ve used the word love without meaning to, and that’s.
‘It isn’t.’
Ron drinks his coffee and looks at the street. Says nothing.
Nothing is worse.
Sunday afternoon. I’m in the bathroom. Thirty seconds, maybe forty. The tap running, the mirror, my own face giving nothing back.
