Page 3 of Compulsion

“No.” I reached over and gripped his arm. “I didn’t mean that. I’m jealous, I expect, that’s all. Things have come together for you two, whereas I….” I wasn’t sure where that sentence was going, so I let it slip away.

“It will for you too.” Even over the noise, I could tell Jack was choosing words carefully. Did I really need handling with kid gloves? Not for the first time, I wondered how the hell I appeared to other people. “You’ve had a hard time, but you’re on the right track again, right?”

“Right.” I nodded, more to satisfy him than myself.

But he was relentless tonight. In a very different way from Louis—in a far more assertive way, I must say—and I was caught off guard. “Look, Max, you haven’t been out with anyone since you came back to Brighton. That’s—”

“A couple of months,” I muttered.

“Almost six,” he replied smartly. “But there’s no shortage of guys looking your way, so why not? You’re bright, you’ve got a steady job now and some money. And you look okay.”

“Thanks,” I said drily.

He laughed. “I’m not trying to drag you into the Louis-Jack connubial bliss club. But you always loved attention.”

“You mean sex?”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing. You never thought that way before.” He shook his head, still smiling. “But not just that. You were more lively, more tactile. I mean, you’re still generous with yourself as a friend, but don’t you need something else for yourself?”

“More trouble than it’s worth,” I replied. I wished the music would stop, that Louis would come back to the table. I needed to distract my well-meaning friend, and soon.

“You know you can talk to me if you ever want to, about while you were away….”

I sucked in a breath. He must have caught the expression on my face because he shook his head again, acknowledging my resistance. It wasn’t going to happen. I couldn’t bear them knowing about it all, realizing what a mess I’d made of everything. How I’d disappointed everyone, including myself. No, I never wanted to tell them the whole sordid story.

I dropped out of Uni just before my final exams, much to everyone’s shock and disapproval, and left my digs shortly after. I must have known what a short-sighted decision it was, but my boyfriend at the time had been based back in London and offered to get me a job there. My blind lust colored it a much better opportunity than it ever was. I’d already discovered I was a crappy student, even though I was interested in my Media Studies course. In reality I partied too much, couldn’t settle to writing up assignments, and spent all my money on fast food. The struggle outweighed the benefits, in my opinion. I expected to be chucked out at any time, so I just jumped first. Or that’s what I told myself.

Jack and Louis were the only two of our group who stuck with me. They never gave me a hard time about dumping everything without a word. Jack had just passed his driving test and bought a small car, and on the morning I left Brighton like a humiliated gunslinger on his way out of Dodge, he offered to take me to the station so I didn’t have to drag my case up the hill. It was some hideously early hour of the morning too. It shamed me now to remember how I wouldn’t let him get out of the car to see me off, in case he tried at the last minute to stop me.

After a while, I sent them a mobile contact number. Nothing else, and I made them swear not to give it to anyone. They went on to finish their degrees that year and get jobs and a happy home life, like I could have done. Maybe. They had no idea what I went on to. I told them I’d moved to the bright lights for fame and fortune. They didn’t know my shit of a boyfriend never got me a job at all and very soon afterward was my ex. They didn’t know the stream of casual jobs I chased after, the one-night stands I lost count of, the crappy dives I begged a room to sleep in, the weird friends I started to hang around with purely by virtue of the fact that we were all either homeless or jobless—or both—at the same time. I called Jack and Louis and we talked now and then. But I’d never been very good on the phone, and I never wrote or e-mailed. I didn’t like to tell them exactly where I was or what I was doing. Partly in case they asked whether it had been worth it; partly because, after a while, I was ashamed to talk about it. Our lives became less and less comparable.

Those bright lights tarnished really bloody swiftly.

To give them their due, Jack and Louis never complained about my fitful friendship, and hardly anyone else asked after me. I kept in touch with some of my foster families with Christmas and birthday cards and the rare e-mail, but my placements got shorter in duration as I got older and mouthier and determined to look after myself, so I never expected anyone to follow up on how I was doing. Instead, Jack and Louis chatted to me when I did call, and when that started to be less and less frequent, they told me I could always come to either of them, if and when I needed to.

And then one day I did.

“Take it easy,” Jack said. He’d leaned close to me over the table while my thoughts were miles away. “I didn’t mean to hit a nerve.”

“You didn’t.” I’m sure he was really thinking, What the hell happened to you, made you so touchy? In the background, the music changed beat as one of the club dancers stepped onto the small stage beside the music desk. There was a ripple of listless applause.

“Was it someone special, Max?”

“What are you talking about?” My thoughts were turning toward escape. It was cowardly, but I started calculating how long it’d take me to reach the taxi rank.

“Whoever you were close to, in London. If it all went wrong, you know Louis and I want to help. No point bottling it up.”

“Leave it, Jack.” I could hear the growl in my voice. My heart rate was increasing. “You don’t know anything about it.”

“Then tell us. Tell me.” There was a determined cast to his dark eyes that made me nervous. He was moving onto dangerous ground—dangerous for me. “It’s eating you up, Max. Maybe you don’t see it, but you’re a shadow of yourself sometimes. At least, of the mate we used to know.”

“I’m fine.”

He bloody well ignored me. “Time to come out of the shell, right? If it was something bad, you’re back with friends. And if it was something good, well then, don’t dump the memories along with everything else. You shouldn’t be afraid to take people to heart. Don’t you think you deserve that?”

Don’t you think…? Did Jack have any idea at all of what I deserved?

“What did he—?”