Page 10 of Lunar Blackout

“Sorry, I was in the shower.” His cheeks flush in a cute pink hue, and I’m tempted to open the door more to see how saturated we can get them if he saw my wet naked torso.

“Can I come in?”

It would seem I am about to get my wish. I open the door and as expected his cheeks go from pink to red. I direct him to the sofa as I walk myself to my bedroom. Passing the kitchenette area I flick the switch on the kettle—tea is certainly going to be needed for whatever is about to go down here.

I quickly throw on my running shorts and my UBNSA polo shirt, my wet skin clinging to the already form-fitting top. I should have tried to dry more, but my eagerness to solve this issue with Iolo is a bigger priority than my physical comfort.

Back in the living area, Iolo isn’t on the sofa I directed him to, but instead is making us tea. “Hope you don’t mind,” he says, seemingly overthinking what he’s doing.

“It’s why I put the kettle on, after all.” He smiles at that, a heartbreakingly sad smile. I grab the milk from the fridge and pass the glass bottle to him. As he reaches out and grabs it our hands brush, and I notice that my imprint in my shorts has suddenly become more noticeable. I really should have put a pair of boxers on first.

We take our drinks over to the sofa. Iolo sits but I choose to stand in front of him, I need to be defiant, unapologetic in bringing up this subject.

“What’s going on?” I declare as the same time as Iolo says softly “I need to explain.” It would seem we both want the same thing. Resolution.

SEVEN

IOLO

I should have known he’d want answers, but now I’m here, standing in front of him, this conversation I have been trying to avoid for ten years is making my heart ache, and I can feel moisture building at the edges of my eyes.

I will not cry.

I cried back then, ten years ago. He’d asked me out, and then I saw the truth and it broke me. I promised myself I would never let Winston, or any other man, into my life again. Men aren’t reliable; they can’t be trusted, but science can, so I threw myself in more than I ever intended, and with the family connections it made my rise to the top of the Welsh space industry my destiny.

Winston sighs as he walks from standing defiantly over me and sits next to me. He slumps his built torso and rests his handsome face in his hands. “I just don’t know what I did ten years ago, what I did to ruin this?” He waves his hand between the two of us. “To ruin us.”

This annoys me slightly. The more I think about it, the more I can’t quite understand how he could be so oblivious to what he did. “What do you remember?” I ask, my tone pointed, clearly angry and upset. He looks at me with concern in his eyes. If I were a pessimist, I’d assume it was concern for his own preservation, but I genuinely believe he’s concerned about my feelings. Which doesn’t align with what I’ve told myself he is all these years.

“It was the final day of the inaugural UBNSA Training Camp. After a week of being your roommate, I finally gave myself the courage to ask the most handsome man I had ever laid eyes on out. When I close my eyes I can still see the impossibly large smile beaming on your face when I asked you. Even the thought of it now makes my heart swell like it did then. I pulled you in and kissed you, and it felt like the first kiss I had ever had, the ones before and since have felt empty and clinical compared to the sparks that flew.

“I went about my day as planned, excited to see you before we had to leave, and something had clearly happened. You’d gone cold, hostile to me, rejected me even. I’d dealt with rejection all my life, but this was the first time it had ever felt like a stab to the stomach. I’d opened my heart to you, I thought you did too, and then you stomped out the flames, leaving only ash and embers of the passion I burnt for you. For a while I wanted, needed you to apologise to me, but eventually I moved on. But now hearing that I did something to you too, it’s bringing all the pain back again, and it hurts as much as it did then.”

Well, I wasn’t expecting that. If I didn’t know what he was choosing to leave out of the story, I would fall to my knees for this man and make his impressive imprint in those thin shorts even bigger. But I know what happened. What he did.

“And what about Justin?” I say without looking at him, After a few seconds of silence, I look at his face, expecting to see guilt in his eyes, but instead all I see is more confusion.

“What the hell has Justin got to do with all this? He’s a friend, was my closest friend besides you at camp.”

I sigh, and take a sip of my tea, building the nerve to be able to say what I’ve wanted to say for a decade. “I saw you both. After you ‘opened your heart to me’, I saw you two, and what I saw was not close friends, it was more.”

“Okay, now I am really confused, cause I have never done anything romantic or intimate with Justin. So tell me, Yolo ap G-rough”—he is clearly trying to push my buttons—“what exactly did you see?”

I close my eyes and I see it as clearly as I did back then. “I was walking back to our chalet, I knew you’d probably be in the gym because—” I wave my hand over his body. “—I knew you would be, and since it was a short cut through the camp, I went to walk through the gym. As I opened the door I saw—” I pause, sighing, my knee bouncing faster than ever before, my nervous system telling me to abort the mission, to pretend everything is still fine, but I know I have to continue, “I saw you, and Justin, coming out of the sauna together, towels round your waist. Yes I’m an overthinker, so I reassured myself it was nothing, but then Justin said ‘You can’t tell a fucking soul about this. If people find out about this my head, heck my dick will be on the chopping block’.”

Winston blinks at me, his confusion slowly morphing into something else. I’ve not seen him look at me like this before. He looks genuinely angry.

“So you gave me the cold shoulder for that?”

I’m sorry, what? Oh wait, I meant to say that out loud, “I’m sorry what?”

“What do you think you saw Iolo?” Good, he’s back to saying my name correctly now.

“I told you what—”

He interrupts me. “No, you said what you saw, not what you think you saw, what you think was happening between Justin and myself. So tell me, what do you think you saw?”

Is he trying to make me doubt my own memory? I never had him down as a gaslighter. “Don’t tell me that I’m misremembering.” My Welsh accent thickens as I get angry.