Unknown number
Hi Skater Boy
Got your letter, we should speak.
Betty
14.Christopher
Thursday
The walls of this toilet cubicle feel like they’re crushing the air out of my lungs. My breath is short and shallow, my palms and forehead are clammy. My skin is burning up underneath my sweatshirt, despite the arctic cold flowing from the air conditioning unit in the restroom.
How could he do this to me?
After all I’ve been through, how could he?
I glance back at the phone again, rereading the message to make sure I haven’t made a mistake, but it’s there. Clear as day.
Stephen
So, erm. I don’t know how to tell you this, but Ryan and I are in a relationship. I wanted you to hear it from me before anyone else. Xx
What the actual?
Stephen’s meant to be my best friend. How could he get together with my ex?
Like, where is his moral compass? It’s meant to be gays before baes, not be a hoe with my ex-bro. That was the one hard and fast rule: steer clear of each other’s exes. Which shouldn’t be thathard for Stephen compared to me. His list is longer than the silence when he says somethingfunny. My list consists of one person: Ryan. Well, two if I’m counting those two days that Alexander and I were boyfriends.
And it’s not like he’s living in a city where there’s slim pickings. There must be tens of thousands of gay guys in London he could have chosen from. And out of all of them, he chose the one who was off-limits. Avoid one guy. That’s all he had to do.
I open up Instagram and go to Stephen’s feed, flicking through his stories and scrolling through his posts, looking for traces of Ryan anywhere. Ryan had liked several of Stephen’s posts, all the way back to…
I stop on Stephen’s post about the two of us in London back in June.
The same night I bumped into Ryan at Circa.
The night he kissed me.
There are no likes from Ryan on any of Stephen’s previous posts.
My chest tightens and my head throbs. He didn’t. He wouldn’t. There’s no way Stephen would have hooked up with him the very same night, and that this has been going on since June.
But I’ve already gone down this rabbit hole, so I might as well follow it. I click through to Ryan’s profile, but I’m met with a dead end. His account is private. Ugh! Why did I have to unfollow him when we broke up?
Because you’re stubborn. Kelly’s words reverberate in my ears.
Wait, was this the advice Stephen was asking me for? The deliberation about whether or not he should get into a relationship with Ryan? I furiously type out a message while I grab a sheet of loo roll and dab at the angry sweat seeping through my pores on my forehead.
I delete and rewrite my message several times, squeezing thephone like my stress ball, trying to reduce the anger inside and temper my response.
Christopher
Answer me this. When did you first hook up?
I get up and pull the flush handle. It doesn’t work and I try again. On the third failed attempt I give up. What a shitty fucking start to the day.
I make my way back out to the office and see the new assistant staring back at me as I approach my desk. Training up a new employee is the furthest thing from my mind right now. Where would I start? What would I show him? What do I need help with?
