“So you’re good in the kitchen, too,” I say, sticking another potato into my mouth.
“Why, what else am I good at?”
I smile suggestively at him and his face blushes slightly. I actually didn’t mean what he’s thinking, but when I’m with him, anything is possible. It’s as if we’re constantly exposed to each other, as if we were incapable of keeping even our breathing to ourselves.
“I’m terrible at everything, and Noel…” I shake my head. “We’re each worse than the other.”
He smiles kindly.
“If I didn’t work at Veldons and basically eat every meal there… I don’t know where we’d end up.”
“But your brother knows how to do all those things…”
“Yeah,” I sigh sadly. “He’s good, right?”
“The best.”
I nod, pained. “It’s just that he… He doesn’t do much anymore, you know… It’s as if someone’s switched him off. Some days, I’m scared he’ll just give up on his job – it’s the only thing he has left. If it weren’t for everyone in town, for all the help they give him and all the love they’ve shown him…”
Silas places the cutlery down onto his plate, his kind eyes on mine.
“Sorry. I didn’t want to bring the mood down.”
“He’s your brother, your family. I want to know everything about him.”
“Seriously?”
“Absolutely.”
“Why?”
“Are you really asking me that?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing, Silas.”
“That’s not very encouraging.”
“I don’t mean with you.” I take his hand and stroke the back of it, slowly. “I mean… With myself, my life. I’m at a dead end and I can’t seem to find a way out.”
“Are you still talking about the whole situation with Noel? Or are you talking about yourself?”
“I’m talking about everything. Come on… How long can I go on like this? I can’t take care of him, or…” I exhale, suddenly exhausted. “I didn’t want to just throw all my problems at you like this, sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry for anything. I want to know what’s going on with you.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t involve you.”
“I knew what I was getting myself in for.”
I manage a small smile.
“And…” He squeezes my hand. “I have no intention of pulling away.”
“Are you sure?”
“Without a shadow of a doubt.”
“But my life is a total mess right now.”
“I’m not scared of a little chaos. Have you met my family?”
I laugh with him.
“I don’t want to make any more mistakes.”
“Are you talking about us?”
I nod, anxious.
“I’ve already ruined one person’s life. Someone who didn’t deserve it.”
“Can I ask you what… How… Why did things end between you and Rachel?”
“It hadn’t been working for a while. I can’t say it never worked, because that would be lying. We had some good times, but we didn’t have that kind of intimacy for a while towards the end.”
Silas raises an eyebrow.
“She knew.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Between us, it didn’t…” I stare into his eyes, waiting to gauge his reaction. “W-work.” I feel my face flame under the heat of his gaze.
“Oh… Ohh…” Silas’s eyes widen, and he drops my hand, bringing his own to his mouth.
“At first it was fine, but… I don’t know… It kind of went downhill. We grew apart but lived under the same roof, shared the same bed…”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know if I can say.”
“I think I can handle it. I want to know.”
“It was almost as if there were only friendship between us, affection. Which isn’t something you should feel towards the person you’ve decided to spend your life with.”
“Okay…” Silas waits, his lips parted, afraid to read the truth in my eyes.
“She thought I liked men.”
Silas stands there, frozen.
“She said that maybe… That I might be able to like both, but… But…” I look at him, my heart in my throat. “She knew about you, and worked out that, maybe…”
Silas gets up quickly from the table, walking away.
I get up, too. “I tried.”
Silas turns and studies me.
“Other men weren’t the problem.”
Silas shakes his head, confused by me, by my senseless speech.
“I couldn’t sleep with my wife, but I couldn’t feel anything for anyone else, either. It wasn’t how things were supposed to be.”
“What are you trying to…?”
“I didn’t feel… Right.”
“I can’t…” Silas covers his face with his hand. “I can’t believe… You got married. To her.”
I nod.
“And now you’re telling me that…” He takes two steps backwards.
“It all started when I came back here for the funeral. You were there, in the front row. And I… I could only see you. I only wanted you.”
Silas shakes his head slowly. “Then you came up to the hill.”
“I knew I’d find you there. You sat down with me, took my hand… You kissed my fingers, dried my tears… You held me close, and I…”
“I shouldn’t have done that. Oh, my God, was it my fault?”
“No.” I step closer to him, taking his face in my hands. “It was as if you opened my eyes.”
“It’s been years, though…”
“And your touch is still the same. I’d recognise it anywhere, everywhere…” I smile at him. “It’s just the feeling you give me.”
“What feeling are you talking about?”
“It feels like coming home.”
His eyes brim with emotion.
“When I left, when I went back to my life… Nothing was the same. At first I thought it was grief, and so did Rachel, but then…” I trace the shape of his lips with my fingers, and his hands come to rest on mine. “I thought you hated me. But you were there for me. And you said you always would be.”
“But you left again.”
“I had to go home. To her. I still hadn’t realised then that I’d never feel at home unless I was with you.”
“Why now?” he asks me. “Why did you wait all this time?”
“I didn’t know how to get close to you again.”
“That’s a poor excuse, don’t you think?”
He backs away, wandering over to the window.
“You told me you loved me. I didn’t know how to say it back.”
“Because you loved someone else.”
“I’ll never be able to do it, you know: to make you forgive me.”
Silas looks at my reflection in the glass.
“I don’t know how I can move on from all this, Leo.”
“And I don’t know how to move on from you.”
He shakes his head; he doesn’t want to hear my version of the truth. He’s afraid to believe it, but I’m here to help him.
“I’ve tried – God knows I’ve tried. It was a losing battle from the start. I knew, since that first stolen kiss, that I’d never be able to do it.”
“You were the one who started it.”
I smile at the memory. “Of course I started it. How could I not have?”
His eyes capture mine in the reflection of the window.
“I’d been thinking about it for months. I thought about you constantly. I couldn’t do anything but think of you – and that had never happened to me before. And every time we were alone, every time you brushed against me or smiled at me… I felt like I was losing a little piece of myself. And when I tried to kiss you and you pushed me away… I thought I’d imagined the whole thing.”
I remember that day. I remember it as if it were happening before my eyes.
I went looking for him after our last match. He was on the subs bench and I was out on the pitch, fighting up until the final whistle. I managed to score the winning try just seconds before the end of the game, meaning we were first in the league. The other kids were jumping all over me, and all the fans came down from the stands, but he… He just stayed standing next to the bench on his own. I remember I felt as if time had stopped, as if everything around us were being sucked away – as if we were being sucked away, and my breathing with us. Then someone tore me away; I lost sight of him for a few seconds and a girl tried to kiss me. It felt all wrong, as if I were doing the wrong thing, losing the most important thing in my life. I turned back around, the girl still in my arms, but he was nowhere to be found.
I abandoned everything: the team, our supporters, the festivities. I went running to him. I didn’t even change out of my kit. I found him in the stables with his beloved horses.
“Why did you leave?” I asked him. He didn’t even turn to look at me.
“You really don’t get it, do you?” he responded, stroking the horse.
“What am I supposed to get?”
“Forget it.”
“I won’t forget it.”
“You should be out celebrating your win.”
“I don’t care about winning, about the others.”
“It didn’t seem that way a few minutes ago…”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“I told you to just forget it.”
“I don’t want to. I can’t.”
“You should leave, and never come back.”
“What…?”
“You can’t come back. Don’t you get it?”
His tone, the way he was trying to keep his emotions bundled in his throat, the fact that he wasn’t even brave enough to turn and look me in the eye… I felt my chest constrict. Everything was finally so clear. So shocking and right and good and… Ours.
I grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him around. And then it happened. My mouth was pressed against his. It only lasted a few seconds before Silas pushed me away and slapped me. He looked at me, confused and hurt and terrified, before trying to push past me and escape. I grabbed him by the arm and brought him back to me; his eyes were begging me not to mess him around, not to hurt him.
“Don’t do this if you don’t…”
I grabbed his face between my hands and did it. I kissed him. His mouth was soft and uncertain, my own determined and greedy. I pushed him against the fence behind him, pressing my body against his. I inhaled his anxiety, exchanged it with my own. I basked in his taste, his scent, his hands slowly weaving into my hair. I crumbled into his heat, which felt so familiar – so mine.
It only took me one moment of him to realise that I wanted every moment. And from that second, all my moments would be about him.
We were eighteen. We were young and scared, but we were us.
We had us.
And I was so certain that no one could ever have taken that away.
No one but me.