‘I never promised you anything beyond what we have,’ Neil said.
Rory flinched.
Barely.
His head pulling back an inch. What replaced it was worse: the guarded look. The mask going on.
‘Right,’ Rory said. ‘That's what you're going with.’
‘I'm being honest.’
‘No. You're scared. That's not the same thing. You know that.’ He turned from the window. His eyes were bright. ‘You told Gemma about me. You drove to The Barn. You called yourself my boyfriend in front of an eight-year-old without flinching. That wasn't promising nothing. That was building something.’
‘I was trying...’
‘And now you're telling me I can't come to a birthday party because someone might notice?’ He took a step forward. Imploring, not threatening. ‘I've been there. I... can't do another James.’
The name landed. Neil knew the story. Rory had told him in this kitchen, over pasta, in short flat sentences the way he laid down ground colour. Married. Fine art lecturer. Twenty-three years older and a wife called Linda who taught primary and didn’t deserve it. Two years of stairwell kisses and a phone that was never on when she was in the room. At a gallery opening, Rory was introduced as a colleague. The word landed in his stomach and stayed there for eighteen months. He was twenty-three.
He thought that was what it cost. Then he walked. Linda never knew. That, Rory said, was the part he carried.
‘I'm not a secret you visit after dark. And if that's still what this is after five months, then I need to know. Because I can't do that again.’
Neil stared at him. His hands were flat on the table, the old stance. Body defending a position his heart couldn't hold.
‘I need to go,’ he said.
‘Of course you do.’
‘Rory...’
‘Go.’ Tired, not angry. He'd pushed as far as he could and found wall. ‘Go home. Check your lock. Alphabetise something.’
Neil picked up his jacket. Walked to the front door. Stopped.
The words didn’t come.
He left.
The flat received him with its usual indifference. He checked the lock. Checked it again. Stood in the hallway with his jacket still on and his keys cutting into his palm.
The painting on the living room wall. Two figures in gold. The space between them, frozen.
He sat in the dark. The sterile surfaces. The alphabetised shelf. The spice rack with the cinnamon in the correct position. Rory had asked to come to his son's birthday party and he'd said no.
He pressed his palms over his eyes. Breathed. The dark behind his hands.
The fridge hummed. Outside, a car. Friday night, other people's lives continuing.
He'd become James.
He'd made Rory into the dark room. The Friday thing. The person who existed behind a locked door and was invisible in the light. And Rory had survived that once, at twenty-three, and had told Neil about it. And Neil had taken him back to it anyway.
Thursday. School. They didn't speak.
The corridor between English and Art was forty-seven steps. Neil had counted them months ago, when the counting had beenmeasurement as excuse. Now it was the distance between two people who'd said hard things and hadn't found their way back.
He walked the route twice. Rory was in the courtyard both times, visible through the window, crouched beside the mural, brush in hand. Working. The studied concentration of someone aware he was being watched and choosing not to acknowledge it.
