Nine

To:[email protected]

From:[email protected]

Dear Cas,

You left me again today.

It wasn’t as bad as the first time. Or maybe I’m just getting better at losing you. Or maybe it’s because this time felt different. The way you looked at me as you left this time said: this isn’t done. I think it did, anyway. I’ve always thought we were tied together somehow. I’ve thought that a lot since you left. That my place on this earth, the whole purpose of my existence, was to be next to you. Like destiny or kismet or the red string of fate they talk about in Chinese mythology. Something will always bring us back to each other. I believe that, Cas, I really do. I don’t know what brought you back to me last night, but it’s given me some hope that you’ll come back to me again.

Last night has been coming back to me in fragments. The sounds you made. Some of which I ignored, others I couldn’t hear through the suffocating need I had for you.

I know I should feel ashamed of the things I did to you. But I also feel like a deep itch has finally been scratched and that there was something so undeniably right about what I did to you. What we did to each other. It wasn’t how I imagined it would ever be between us, but maybe it was right. Maybe it had to be like that if it was ever going to be anything at all. I’d still do it differently if I could.

I remember you asking me to make it hurt, and even worse, I remember wanting to.

Christ, Cas. I thought I had almost rooted you out, and now I can feel you again, coming back to life inside me. I know you care. Deep down inside somewhere, I know that you must care what happens to me. You said that you won’t block my number because I might need you for something important and I’ve been wondering what you meant by that. What kind of thing would you deem important enough? An alibi? Money? Danger to my person? After you left the first time, I thought about hurting myself. Would that have been important enough? I’ve never uttered that out loud to another person, I don’t think I’d utter it out loud to you – though Luke read it in a letter I’d written to you – and writing it here feels okay. Like the purging of an intrusive thought.

I told you that I hated you, but you were right, I don’t. I love you.

I think I’ll always love you.

P.S I haven’t stripped the bed yet.

Love,

Jude

A

I felt free of something. That uncertainty that had held me back from Finn was no more. The line had moved.

Or rather, I had crossed it.

I couldn’t remember what I’d been afraid of to begin with; I could fuck a guy. I’d proven that I could.

I just needed to prove that I could fuck a guy who wasn’t Cas.

Code was one of only three nightclubs in Oxford city centre. It was known for its live bands and ￡2 shot menu. Other than that, it was a vile, sticky place that needed the sort of deep clean they gave mortuaries and hospitals after a pandemic. It was about a fortnight after Cas had left again, when I found myself at least five shots deep and talking the ear off some guy from Corpus Christi about how shit I thought Tarantino was.

Adam, tall with dark eyes and a full, fuckable mouth, agreed. Nikita had gotten some coke from a girl on his floor and I had learned last year that I had a low – okay, very low – tolerance for the stuff, so doing even half a line would mean the others would come check on me every five minutes to make sure I wasn’t having a heart attack. This particular night, thanks to that coke, I was feeling better than I had in months. If not years. I was already planning on asking Nikita to ask whoever it was to get me a batch big enough to get me through the rest of the year.

Fuck, maybe I could complete my degree high as a fucking kite. Maybe I’d never need to come down again.

“You’re so fucking hot,” Adam said, leaning into my ear.

As far as I’d been aware, I was talking about The Hateful Eight. Or rather, the piece of shit, waste of everyone’s time and money, that was Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. I grinned at him, not at all fussed about leaving our discussion of the film there.

“Thanks, so are you,” I knocked back the bright green shot Bast had put down in front of me, thesixth of the night by my count, and leaned in to kiss the mouth I’d been staring at for the last hour.

We were in a darkened booth by ourselves, though I’m not certain I’d have cared if we weren’t, not that night, not with the fireworks going off under my skin. He sucked on my tongue like he might suck on my dick, which, coupled with the way he slid his hand between my legs, had me hard in his grip. Although since coke also made me hard, it could have been that.

“Mmm, really wanna fuck you,” he said as I broke off the kiss.

For some reason this made me laugh. “Um, yeah, I don’t do that.” I lifted my beer and drank. Or at least, I thought it was mine. The table was cluttered with abandoned drinks.

“You tried it?” he asked.

I shook my head, and Adam’s eyes lit up in the dark.

“Fuck, it’s so good. Bet you’d love it.” He put his mouth to my ear. “I’d finger you so fucking good first.”

I blinked at him, letting the image settle as I looked at his hands. Strong-looking. He was in the rowing team, which showed in the muscled outline through his t-shirt. I tried to imagine my legs spread and him between them while his fingers slid inside my arse. What was the big deal if he wanted to fuck me? Maybe I should try it? Maybe I’d love it. Maybe I’d been missing out all this time and—

Some drunken guy toppled into our table, knocking over glasses and spilling beer bottles. I stood quickly to avoid the runoff.

“Seriously, mate?” yelled Adam over the music.

“Fuck, shit, I’m sssorry,” the drunken guy said while his friends rushed in to help him back to his feet.

“Christ, Jamie,” the guy’s friend said, levering him up off our sodden table. I looked at the friend, who was smiling at me apologetically. My mouth opened with surprise.

I hadn’t seen Finn since Caspien’s appearance at his party, though, he’d texted me the next day.

Finlay:

Sorry about last night. I was a dick.

Then, an hour or so later when I hadn’t responded.

Finlay:

I should have told you he was going to be in town.

I hadn’t hadn’t known what to say. My head had been too full of what I’d done with Caspien that I’d barely remembered Finn existed.

I felt ashamed of that now as he smiled at me awkwardly and slightly embarrassed. His gaze bounced to Adam, still grumbling about spilt drinks at my side. He apologised again, before guiding his drunken friend away from us.

“Fucking first years,” Adam said, standing. I didn’t bother correcting him. “I’m going to dry this off; be back in five. You want another drink?”

“Rum and coke,” I said without thinking. I watched him go, broad shoulders and big arms, which I suddenly remembered I wasn’t into.

I looked across the club to find Finn talking with one of his housemates who wasn’t Alex. I now realised the drunken guy was his tall friend Pete, who I’d met a couple of times.

As I stared, his housemate turned his head toward me, a disapproving look on his face. Finn glanced over once, and then I saw him pat his mate on the shoulder and move off toward the stairs that led up and out of the club. It was a split-second decision that involved very little thought. I grabbed my jacket from the corner of the booth and went after him.

Finn was a little way down on the opposite side of the street when I caught up to him, one hand in his pocket and the other scrolling through his phone.

“If you’re looking for a Grindr hook-up right now, this is gonna be awkward,” I said as I reached his side.

He stopped, eyes going a little wide at the sight of me. He said, “I deleted the app.”

“Shit, things are serious.”

“Yes, very. We’re getting married in the south of France next summer.”

“Sounds idyllic. What does he do?”

“Bottom.”

I laughed at that. Then an expectant silence filled the air.

“Look,” I said.

“Listen,” he said at the same time.

I gestured for him to talk first.

“I’m sorry I was a dick at the party. I said some stuff...” He looked very embarrassed suddenly.

“It’s fine,” I said, and I meant it. “I guess sorry for turning up when you didn’t want me there.”

Finn shook his head. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want you there, Jude, fuck. Of course, I did. But when I knew he was gonna be there, I didn’t want to put either of you in a weird situation.”

“Thought you hated him?” I asked. “Why’d you even invite him?”

He gave me a look. “I didn’t. But he said he was going to be in Oxford; he invited himself. I’d have much rather had you there than him.” He shifted awkwardly on his feet, kicking at a slightly raised pavement slab. “I don’t know what the deal with you and him is.”

“There isn’t one,” I said. “There isn’t a deal. We’re...nothing.”

Finn lifted his head, some inscrutable look in his eye. “You sure?”

“Did he say something?” I asked him, unsure how I felt about it if he had. I knew he’d never tell Finn we’d been anything.

Finn frowned, then shrugged. “He just asked why you were there, how I knew you. I said we were friends.” His voice was a little strange as he said this. “Then he asked me where he could find you. Should I not have told him?”

“No,” I said. “I mean, yeah, it’s fine. He’d have found me anyway.”

“Anyway, I’m sorry I made shit weird...” he said, looking at his feet again.

I shook my head. “You didn’t, I promise.” I was still high, and there was a gentle simmer of arousal in me, and Finn was looking at me like he always did before he’d take me into his mouth.

But more than all of this, I heard Cas’s voice: I’d like for you to stop seeing Finlay. Well, fuck that. Fuck him.

“So, you care about me?” I asked him. I saw a note of alarm creep into his face. “At the party, you said you’d made it abundantly and pathetically clear that you cared about me.”

He cringed, cheeks reddening. “Fuck, did I? Right, well I’m off to walk into oncoming traffic.” He moved off, and I reached out to pull him back. Pulling him close enough that a tilt of my head would bring our lips together.

“I liked hearing it,” I said.

He smiled, almost shyly, and began playing with the button of my shirt.

“What about the hot as fuck rower you left behind in there?” He nodded in the direction of Code.

“He likes Tarantino,” I said.

“Fuck, that’s disappointing.”

“Tell me about it,” I sighed. “So...do you have anything good to drink at your place?”

As his eyes lit up and he nodded, I wondered if I should feel cruel.

Finn liked me, cared about me even, and I suspected though I liked and cared about him too, that I was doing this for all the wrong reasons. But under the drizzly skies of Oxford that night with the borrowed euphoria from the coke in my veins, I only cared that I could do it.

That I could do whatever and whoever the fuck I wanted to without Caspien’s permission, and that included Finn.