Eighteen

Sex, for me, has never been the mindless pleasure-filled paradise my peers would have me believe. It’s never been that simple animalistic act driven by lust and need that people often describe it as. For me, it’s always been accompanied by some great complex maelstrom of emotion.

There is some pleasure, of course. Beautiful, transcendent, and glorious. But it’s fleeting. Guilt and regret, shame and remorse; those feelings always linger long after the pleasure has receded.

I felt all of those things in the moments after that first time.

I’m not sure what Ellie felt. Maybe she felt regret too, it was possible. But she’d looked happy.

Ellie, who I cared for, but didn’t love.

I was ridden with guilt because I’d said something I didn’t mean. Regret, because I wished I hadn’t. Shame, because I’d turned myself into one of those boys who lied to girls to get them to have sex with them. Then there was the remorse for all of that.

Maybe because of how my first time was, this has laid the foundations for every sexual encounter I would go on to have thereafter.

After, we cuddled silently for a bit before Ellie’s phone started ringing from across the room. She picked it up to her mother shrieking down the phone. I couldn’t hear the words, but the sounds of a tinny, angry parent reached me. Ellie said very little to her mum. She didn’t argue, raise her voice, or deny anything. At the very end, in a very childlike-sounding voice, she apologised before hanging up.

“She’s on her way.” She came back to sit on the bed by me, looking entirely unbothered that she was likely grounded for the foreseeable future.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Is it gonna be bad?”

She shrugged. “She’ll be annoyed for a bit, pretend I’m grounded, then get sick of me moping around the house, and that’ll be it.” She leaned in and kissed me again, smiling against my lips. “Totally worth it.”

My cheeks turned hot. “What time is it?” I asked.

“Just after ten. When’s Alfie’s parents due back?”

“About twelve, they said.”

“Sorry, I’m not gonna be able to help you clean up downstairs.” She didn’t look sorry in the least.

“They told us not to bother. They have a cleaner coming tomorrow.”

“God, Alfie’s a spoiled brat. It’s sickening.”

I nodded in agreement.

We sat there for a bit, and though everything felt different, changed, a little frightening, I felt the morosity begin to lift from my chest a little. Finally, she let out a sigh and stood. I watched her pull on her red dress before I realised.

“Ellie, you can’t put that on – it’s covered in my sick.”

“I wiped most of it off,” she said, nonchalantly. “But I will borrow this if that’s okay?”

It was the hoodie she’d bought me for my birthday. I nodded, and she proceeded to slip on her black shoes.

“I should get up too.” I sat up feeling exposed and vulnerable, naked but for the duvet pulled over my lower half.

“You’ll probably need to borrow something of Alfie’s. Your shirt looked sort of ruined.”

“Great.” How would I explain that to Beth? Be sensible.

I’d had sex, but I had used a condom. Was that sensible?

After Ellie left, I showered in the ensuite and wrapped myself in a towel. Then I went looking for Alfie, Josh, and my phone. In Alfie’s bed, I found Josh, fully clothed, mouth wide open, and dead to the world. I pulled out a pair of sweats and a tracksuit top from Alfie’s tallboy, put them on, and ventured downstairs.

By some miracle, we’d managed to restrict the chaos to the Den; the living room looked almost untouched except for a stray beer bottle and a glass with some pinkish liquid at the bottom. Outside, a strong wind was rattling the balcony doors, which hadn’t been closed properly.

As I went to shut them, I spotted my phone on the concrete, face down with its bright blue rubber cover facing up. As I reached down to pick it up, I was kicked in the face by the memory. I was the one who’d been out here. I’d been out here on my phone, in fact.

A chill spread out from the base of my spine and over my entire body, leeching it of all warmth. Somehow, my phone was undamaged and still had some battery left.

With mounting horror, I went to my recent calls.

Caspien was at the top with the word ‘outgoing’ and a number (4) beside it. I’d called him four times? I wanted to die.

I remembered the voicemail with painful little detail. I only knew it had happened, but when I tried to think about what I’d said a chasm of nothingness opened up in my brain, white and bottomless.

I knew what I might have said. What I could have said. What I probably said while under the influence of alcohol. I’d managed not to throw up, but bile rose now. I folded myself over the balcony railing and groaned.

Alfie found me like that a short while later.

“Mate, I feel the same,” he said, clapping a hand on my back. “How much did we drink?”

“I honestly lost count.”

“What time did the girls go?”

So he didn’t know George had gone home without Ellie. Or couldn’t remember. He would find out eventually. Despite what Ellie said last night, I didn’t believe that what had happened this morning would not reach Alfie by way of Georgia. Then he’d feel crappy about my not telling him.

“Ellie stayed,” I told him. “She just left. Her mum was pretty pissed.”

Alfie stared at me in silence for a beat, his alcohol–poisoned brain taking in the information. Then his eyes went wide. He covered his mouth with his hands and leapt back a step.

“Judey!! Judey, my dudey!! You finally gave it up!! So proud of you, so fucking proud!!”

“Mate, can you stop shouting for the love of god? My head.”

“Fine, fine,” he said, quieter. “So, how was it? Tell me everything.”

“Piss off. As if.”

“Oh, come on, don’t be like that! Happened in my house didn’t it? Wait, not in my bed? Please tell me not in my bed.”

“Josh is in there.”

“The room my grandma sleeps in then. Cool. Cool.” He burst out laughing, the sound scraping and scratching at my hangover.

I rolled my eyes and bent my head, focussing on keeping the bile down.

Christmas came and went without much fanfare that year. The big house was quiet. We’d heard Gideon had gone to his house in London, and I assumed Caspien would go from Switzerland to there and back again after the term ended. The three of us cooked and ate at home, staying in pyjamas for most of the time.

Beth was still in this strange new phase of being, which mainly meant more hugs and far more generous gifts. As my birthday was so close to Christmas I always had one lesser and one greater gift. I assumed the iPad to be the greater but when Luke pulled a Cannondale road bike out of his van on Christmas morning I could only stare at it, stunned.

I felt a little embarrassed by what I’d bought them: a voucher for the French restaurant in town they liked. But they’d hugged me and thanked me as though it was enough.

Mocks were set for the last two weeks of January, so I had to at least pretend to study during break. (We’d do mocks in both upper and lower 6th and I’d scrape through both which scared me so shitless I’d pulled out something miraculous in my A’s.) Along with this was, though a year early, the start of our prep for Uni applications. Ellie was applying to Edinburgh to do Veterinary medicine – she’d had pictures of the city on her wall for years and posted those aesthetic Instagram reels daily of its cobbled streets and hilltop castle, so there was no question of it being her first choice. There’d never been any assumption that I’d follow her there, and though she’d never said it directly, I knew she planned for us to carry on seeing each other long–distance.

In my case, St. Andrew’s had the best English Literature degree in the country, but the entry requirements were insane, so I was eyeing Durham, Warwick and Oxford. Warwick was the least demanding in terms of entry; achievable certainly. Durham was the north of England, further from home, more alien, more daunting; I’d never been further north than London, and Oxford felt part fantasy to me. I’d always dreamed of going, but it would rely on my results being better than even my teachers thought I’d achieve. Even if I somehow did get in, the expense of living and studying there might be too much for Luke and Beth.

But I felt better having narrowed it down. And the entry process for Oxford was akin to some herculean trial, so it was probably good that I’d started preparing for it now.

The Monday after New Year, Luke returned to work, and Elspeth told him that Gideon was due back the following day.

So, on Wednesday – the day before school started back – I called the mansion. Elspeth answered, and she wished me a happy new year, asking if I’d had a nice Christmas, before she went off to find Gideon.

“Young Jude! How nice to hear from you! Did you have a wonderful Christmastime? And it was your birthday too – how charming!” He sounded so feverishly cheerful I wondered if he might be drunk.

I asked how his Christmas was.

“Lord, it was exhausting. Far too many soirees with friends, you know?”

I didn’t, but I said yes anyway.

“Truthfully, I much prefer my own company. Glad to be back in the old mausoleum.” There was a pause. “You’ll be calling to ask about Cas, I suppose?”

The sound of his name felt like a warm breath on my neck.

“Um, eh, no, I wasn’t,” I said but I immediately regretted it. I did want to ask about him. Of course, I did. It just wasn’t the reason I’d called. I tried to decide how embarrassing it would be to ask about him. Had Gideon spoken with him? Did he know about my drunken call the night of my birthday?

“I actually have something here for you that he asked me to give you,” Gideon said.

Everything in me drew up sharp. I couldn’t breathe. “He...you do?”

Gideon let out a little chuckle. “Yes, head on up whenever you can.”

I wanted to drop the receiver and bolt right up there. Cycle my new bike as fast as I could. Instead, I took a breath and said as calmly as I could, why I’d called, “Actually, I wanted to ask a favour.”

“Anything I can do, young Jude, you know you need only ask.”

“Well, Mocks are coming up – they start on the 19th – and I just wondered if you wouldn’t mind me coming up to use the library for the next few weeks. Probably every night. It’s just here is a little—”

I hadn’t finished speaking before he dramatically explained that he was mortally offended that I should think I had to ask. He’d given permission for me to use it months earlier and hadn’t rescinded it. He’d even bought books for there that I’d recommended. I was always welcome at Deveraux.

I thanked him and told him I’d come the following day after school.

The entire day, my stomach leapt and lurched as though I were on a boat amid a stormy sea. I’d barely been able to sleep the night prior. Cas had given me a gift. He had bought me a birthday present. Then I thought about Gideon’s exact words as he’d spoken them: I have something here that he asked me to give you.

Maybe it wasn’t a gift. Maybe it was something I’d loaned him or left behind in his room. Had he given it to Gideon before or after my drunken phone call? The phone call which over the last few weeks had come back to me in terrible little fragments of misery.

I hate you.

I hate you.

I hate you for leaving me with this.

After my party at Alfie’s, Ellie had been grounded. And since she spent Christmas in France with her Dad’s family, I hadn’t seen her (except via a video call) since that day. That morning.

I’d spent the days after the incident waiting for Ellie’s parents to call Beth and tell them everything that had happened: how we’d been drinking and I’d been sick and Ellie and I had stayed together and how we’d likely slept in the same bed, maybe even had sex. But it never happened.

It turned out Ellie told her mum I’d gotten really upset about my parents and the baby and begged her to stay with me, which she’d done because she cared about me. She’d apologised and taken her punishment and pleaded with her mum not to tell Beth because Beth, too, had been through a lot.

It worked.

The longer I went without seeing Ellie in the flesh, the more distance that came between me and her and it – the sex – the more it faded from my memory. Inside, I felt exactly the same as I had before it. What lingered was those feelings of guilt and shame; anytime I gave them the floor, they crept into the spotlight and refused to leave the stage.

Ellie had come into first period that morning looking bright with happiness and like I alone was the source of it all. She waited until we were in the corridor to tug me into a doorway, reaching up to kiss the underside of my jaw.

“I missed you soooo much,” she whispered, edging her lips toward my mouth.

“Me too,” I replied, closing my eyes.

“Guess what? I’m only grounded until after exams.”

Her parents had originally told her it was for the entire term.

“Amazing.”

She nodded, a shy, tempting look coming over her eyes. She took my hands and leaned up to whisper into my ear. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Me too,” I said again.

Cruelly, I wanted to forget it had happened at all. I hated how irreversible and permanent it felt. I hated that I spent every day checking my phone for contact from Caspien. I hated, too, that despite everything I felt about what I’d done and was doing to her, how much further I was prepared to hurt her the very moment he walked back into my life.

But still, I longed for that moment.

I rushed dinner down that night so quickly that I almost choked on it. Then I slung on my backpack and cycled the Cannondale to the big house. It was bitterly cold, the winter air sharp and glittering as a knife, but I never felt it. My blood was warm from nervous anticipation.

Elspeth was in the kitchen stirring a large pot of something that smelled delicious. She gave me a hug and offered me a bowl of soup.

“I’ve just eaten, but thank you, maybe later,” I told her.

She said she’d put a bowl aside with a dinner roll in case and told me Gideon was in the red sitting room if I wanted to say hello.

I found him reading on one of the armchairs, long graceful legs crossed at the knee and wearing his gold circular reading glasses. The light was low in the room; only the wall lights and a small glass reading lamp on a table beside him turned on. He sat up as soon as I came in. He placed a bookmark between the pages and closed it, set it on the side table, and stood.

“Jude, hello, there you are.”

“Hi, Gideon,” I said.

He paused and tilted his head, studying me. “You look different; what did you do?” He waved a hand in front of me. “Did you get taller?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Hmmm, there’s definitely something different about you. I’ll figure it out.”

He gave me a small secret kind of smile, threw an arm around my shoulder and steered me out of the room. As we went towards the library, he twittered away about how London was dreadfully loud, dreadfully wet and dreadfully cold. I was trying to figure out how to ask him about Cas’s gift and not sound desperate but I didn’t have to, because when he opened the door to the library I saw the parcel. Large and flat and wrapped in dark blue paper with gold ribbon, it sat propped up on the table in the centre of the room.

There was a white envelope next to it.

“I’ll leave you to open it by yourself,” Gideon said with a serious sort of voice. He gave me another soft pat on the shoulder and shut me in the room with Caspien’s gift.

The fire had been lit and crackled softly behind the guard as I approached. I had an inkling of what I thought might be inside, but it didn’t prepare me for what I found when I peeled off the thick paper.

My own face, fey and dreamlike, stared up at me.

He’d filled it in with watercolour, a palette of pinks, greens, and blues. Light caught on my rosy lips and cheeks, and sunlight poured through the window. Behind me was a view out onto the estate, rolling dips and hills which I knew led all the way to the sea. He’d added something too, something that wasn’t in the room with us that day: a delicate pink flower that sprouted from deep green vines curled around the composition so that it stood in as a kind of frame. The art itself had been mounted inside a thick, white ornamental frame, giving it a sort of delicate grandeur. I stared at it for a long time, imagining his hands moving over the curves of my skull and the bone structure of my face. His delicate fingers tracing each eyelash and freckle. I thought about what I’d have said or done had he given me this in person, and I was suddenly glad he wasn’t here.

At the very bottom, in the smallest, most elegant script, it read: Jude in the window, by C.L.D.

Everything I’d tried to ignore suddenly fell away, and I wanted him, again, desperately, ferociously. It made every loose, easy, calm thing inside me turn hard and pointed and violent. I lost myself in that ocean of feeling for a few trembling moments before I tore open the envelope.

Jude,

Happy Birthday.

From,

Caspien.