Eighteen

He looked like a dream. His hair long but styled, bright gold in the late afternoon sunlight. He wore a loose, cream-coloured striped shirt, the neck open and a delicate gold chain nestled against his throat. Shorts showed off tanned legs I knew were dusted with fine gold hair. Then I noticed his arm. Bandaged in a sling tied across his chest; I’d thought it had been resting on the table.

“What happened to your arm?” I said as a greeting.

He blinked, clearly expecting another question, and tried hiding it beneath the table.

“It’s actually my hand,” he said evenly. “Two fractured metacarpals.”

I went toward him, or rather, my feet did. He closed his laptop and turned his body toward me as I took a seat at the nook.

“You won’t be able to play piano with that,” I informed him.

He still had that same soft look on his face as he looked at me. I didn’t know what it meant, what to do with it.

“No,” he said with a small, bitter smile. After a moment, he slid the green drink across the table to me. “It will help if you can keep it down.”

“What’s in it?”

“Best you don’t ask.”

“Poison?”

It was a joke, but he tilted his head, acknowledging the reference. It wasn’t as unpleasant as I feared: the consistency was the worst part; thick and gloopy, viscous as it slid down my throat. But almost the moment it settled, I began to feel some magic at work. The roiling in my stomach calmed a little, the nausea abating. I stopped sweating, though my body was still very hot.

“You’ll be wondering why I’m here,” he said at last.

“Uh, sort of, yes. Gideon never told me you were coming.” I told myself I wouldn’t have come if I’d known.

“It was very last minute – he doesn’t know I’m here yet. And I didn’t know you’d be here until I found you on the couch last night.” At this, he looked away, and I couldn’t decide which part he was lying about. When he met my eye again, he said, very sincerely, “If you want me to go, I will. I can stay at a hotel; it’s not a problem.”

I should have told him to go. The last time I’d seen him, I was an animal. I’d made threats that I was ashamed of now, and I was afraid of what I might do. I knew I shouldn’t want him anywhere near me, not again. But I was Jude. And Jude loved Cas. And so I also knew I would never tell him to go again. I regretted many things that had happened between us, and would regret a lot more before we were done, but none more than telling him to go that day in Oxford.

“This is more your house than mine; I can go.”

“I don’t want you to,” he said quickly. I thought I detected a note of panic in his voice. “We’re adults. Surely we can live under the same roof for a few weeks without killing each other?”

A few weeks? He was staying that long? I swallowed.

“It’s not killing you I’m worried about, Cas.” I knew he understood my meaning because his breathing hitched very slightly. “Where is he then? Will he be joining us?”

His breathing changed again before he shook his head and looked down at the table. “No. I...we...He’s still in Boston.” I’d never heard him speak with as little certainty before about anything. Certainly not about Blackwell. Stupid hope rose in my chest.

“What happened?” I asked. “Have you split up?” I was amazed to learn that I didn’t know what I wanted the answer to be.

“No. Nothing like that,” he said. “Everything’s fine.” The words rang completely hollow and I hated that I bloody cared.

I stood on slightly unstable legs. “Okay, well, I need to go for a walk and clear my head, I still feel bloody awful.” Feeling half-dead but exhilarated at the same time. His presence still had the same effect on me it always had clearly. “I’ll be back in a while.”

I was at the stairs when he called out after me. I turned. He looked so beautiful sat there, some godlike figure draped in cream and gold and light: too perfect to be real.

I needed air, a lot of it.

“Thank you,” he said, smiling that soft bloody smile again.

I almost fell over. Had he ever said thanks to me for anything before? If he had, I couldn’t remember it, couldn’t remember his mouth ever shaping into those words before.

I muttered something inaudible and bolted up the stairs and out of the front door. I was halfway down the street when I realised I hadn’t a clue what he had even thanked me for.

When I got home a couple of hours later, Cas was making dinner. Chopping lettuce one-handed as chicken, mouth-wateringly, roasted in the oven. I hadn’t been aware he cooked. The sight of him there, his back to me, soft classical music playing while he prepared dinner was so completely out of one of my fantasies, that I couldn’t move for a moment. I just watched.

He was dextrous with a single hand. Even when he rinsed a large tomato and set it on the board, he was able to cut down its centre and slice it into fine segments.

“You could help,” he said without turning. “I’m working at a handicap here.”

“I don’t know, I’m quite enjoying watching you struggle.” I went towards him and took the knife from his left hand. Cas was left-handed, and I thought about how lucky it was that this wasn’t the one he’d hurt.

“How’d it happen?” I asked as I began to slice a bell pepper.

“I was playing tennis,” he answered smoothly.

“With Superman?”

He snorted. “No, it was an awkward fall. I put a hand out to break it and broke my hand instead.” He was pulling open the door of the oven to check inside. “Ten more minutes, I’d say. Are you hungry?”

I’d had a burger and chips at Five Guys about a half hour ago. “Yes, starving.”

“Good,” Cas said.

“How did you even get it in there one-handed?” I said as I pulled the chicken out of the oven ten minutes later.

“With extreme skill.”

We let it rest and set the table, an easy silence weaving around us as we did. I sliced bread while he poured water. He handed me the knife and asked for a few slices of the breast while I took a large leg. I caught myself just looking at him: Cas was here. We were here together. How had this happened? I tried not to think about fate, and kismet, and the universe sending me signals and focused on my chicken.

“You need me to cut that for you?” I asked as we sat down to eat.

He shot me a glare, the first I’d seen since this morning, and I smiled. Then he proceeded to cut his chicken one-handed.

He could cook. The chicken tasted wonderful, succulent and flavoursome, but I was getting full quickly. Not wanting to offend him, I kept eating.

“So when do you return to Oxford?” he asked, conversationally.

“Beginning of October. I volunteered to help out with Freshers Week.”

“Christ, why on earth would you do that?”

I shrugged. At the time I’d offered, I hadn’t known what I wanted to do with my summer, only that I wanted to spend as little time as possible at home. This was before Nathan’s offer.

“Freshers are always fun,” I said.

“Were you?” he asked. “A fun fresher.”

He couldn’t possibly have known what he was asking. Couldn’t possibly have any understanding of how broken I still was the September I’d arrived in Oxford. Yes, I’d drunk-called him a few times, but they were hang-ups. He didn’t know the depth of my misery.

I stared at him as I shook my head. “No, Cas. I was a fucking miserable fresher.”

His hand stalled for a moment, before he continued eating. A slightly more uncomfortable silence filling the space between us.

“So what does your hand mean for school?” I asked him.

His jaw clenched almost imperceptibly as he reached for a piece of bread. “I will lose a semester. Most likely two.”

“Shit.” I stared at him. I knew his music degree was a year longer than a standard university degree here; I’d looked it up, meaning he had two years left at the conservatory even before breaking his hand. “I’m sorry.”

He looked at me, a slight frown on his face. “Why? You didn’t do it. It’s my own fault.”

I didn’t think falling over was anyone’s fault. “Is it painful?”

“It’s fine.”

I made a hearty attempt to finish my plate. Though I hadn’t even filled it the way I normally would, I had to put down my fork when I’d only cleared about a third of it. I gulped my water and sat back.

“What are your plans while you’re here?” he asked me, lifting his own glass to take a small sip.

“I haven’t made any. Figured I’d split the time between lazing around the pool and doing some touristy stuff.”

“This is your first time here? London, I mean.”

“As an adult. I came with my parents when I was little.”

I thought I saw a note of pity on his face before he blinked it away.

“You should go to the British Library, I think you’d like it,” he said. “It’s in St. Pancras, and Bloomsbury isn’t too far from there: there’s a string of bookshops. And perhaps the VA. It’s been a few years since I’ve been there, but it’s a good way to spend the day – they have a nice café and gift shop. I don’t know if you love the theatre, but The Globe is definitely worth seeing in the summer too, no one wants to watch King Lear in the rain. But avoid the Tower at this time of year, it’s like Piccadilly Circus, which I would also avoid. Unless being in the centre of a litter of pigs is your thing.”

I wanted to do all of those things, I decided. Even Piccadilly Circus.

I’d probably regret it, but what was one more regret in the catalogue of Caspien related regrets?

“What are your plans? Want to come tourist-ing with me?” I stuffed a bit of chicken in my mouth just to have something to do with my hands. “Stop me falling prey to any embarrassingly obvious traps.”

He looked at me a long time as he considered this, an unreadable expression on his face.

“If you like,” he said at last.

The following day we went to the Globe: they were showing a matinee of Henry IV Part One. I’d looked it up the night before and suggested it to him as we each lay sprawled on one of the sofas in the living room. The Olympic swimming coverage was on TV, but we were only half-watching it - me on my phone and him with a book open on his thigh that he hadn’t picked up since I’d come into the room.

We were a little late arriving and so had to squeeze into the open-air theatre quietly. I’d wanted to take the Tube, but Cas had given me a look as though I’d suggested we go swimming in the Thames instead and asked Ken to call us a car.

The place felt ancient and I spent a lot of time not watching the play, instead looking up and around at the old wooden structure and imagining people hundreds of years ago doing the same. Tiers of covered oak seating circled the almost gladiatorial-style ground floor, the place was steeped in history. Finally, I forced myself to watch the play, as Cas was doing intently beside me.

Shakespeare wasn’t my favourite; I knew this was basically blasphemy as an English Literature student, but I found him dense and waffling, and it took too much effort to concentrate while reading him. That performance to this day was the best I’d ever seen his work performed. Something about the location and the actors, maybe they too delivered their best work given the stage they were on. Their inflections caused soft ripples of laughter from the audience where they were supposed to, the delivery with the sharp edge of wit it was written with. It felt like I got it, finally. It was only that day that I realised Caspien’s horse had been named after a central character in the play. I’d looked at him when the character had staggered on drunk, during an early scene.

“Where is he?” I asked as we wandered north across Southwark Bridge after. “Falstaff.”

“Boston,” he said. “He’s at a ranch outside the city. I try and ride him on the weekend but it’s not always possible.”

“Oh, so what, he went on a plane?”

“Yes, they have an equine section between first class and business. There’s hay and sugar cubes, and the cabin crew brush them down every two hours.”

It took me longer than it should have.

He laughed. “Christ, your face.”

“You’re a dick.”

“And you’re just as gullible as you always were.”

I stopped walking and stared at him.

Cas stopped and turned to look at me.

He sighed. “It was just a joke.”

“Which part?”

“About the horses. They put them in their box stalls and onto smaller planes. Sometimes they tranquilise them.”

But he knew. I knew he did. You’re just as gullible as you always were.

“I still shouldn’t trust you, though. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

“I wasn’t trying to tell you anything; it was a stupid joke, Jude.” Then, very seriously, he said, “Your eyes are different, you know.”

I said, “I don’t know what that means.”

“I can’t tell what you’re thinking as easily as I used to.”

Good,I thought initially; it was good that how I felt about him was no longer ringed in neon, flashing loud and obvious. People were trying to get past us on the bridge as we stood there, staring at each other, but I hardly noticed them.

“I’m not the same person I was when you left.” When you left me, was what I meant.

“No,” he said. “No, you’re not.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that so I started walking again.

“Are you hungry?” I asked him once I was by his side again.

“A little.”

We chose a sushi place near Monument. It was too bright and too busy, and I was glad that conversation would be difficult. His words were still rattling around in my head. My eyes were different. He couldn’t tell what I was thinking as easily as he used to. Initially, these had seemed like good things, so I didn’t understand why it was now causing a stir of panic and worry in my chest.

But then, I did.

There’d been comfort in knowing how well he could read me, how well he knew me, because it was provenance of what existed between us. He knew me the way he’d know a book he liked or a piece of music he knew by heart.

He knew me well because I was his, and now that he didn’t...

Cas sat with his back to the window and his broken hand resting on top of the table. His sunglasses were tucked into the neck of his shirt, white again today, and the exposure of the sun from the open theatre had pinked his cheeks and nose. Cas was always distractingly lovely to look at, but especially so in the summer. It was how he’d been when I’d first seen him, first loved him, and in my memories, he was always this way: sun-kissed and glowing with the heat of the warmest season.

In Jersey, he’d looked like a delicate and fragile summer bloom. In London, he took on a different aura: expensive and cosmopolitan. The insouciant way he held his water, the glint of his Cartier watch, the gleam even of his fingernails. He was grace and extravagance, oozing good breeding in a way that made me feel self-conscious. Would people assume we were a couple? If so, that he was roughing it with me?

Did I want them to think that? My head was a noisy clatter of anxiety and doubt.

He seemed not to notice my internal turmoil – perhaps since my eyes no longer gave everything away – while he talked about the play, other performances of it he’d seen and where, all while using his chopsticks to feed himself green sesame tossed salad and sashimi.

Soon, I fell into that familiar trance of watching and listening to him move and speak. That commanding way he’d always had of holding my attention, of being the only thing I could see, of being the sun to my Icarus.

The next day, we went to the British Library. A vast, jaw-dropping space that felt like a portal to another world opening up in front of me. I remember the entrance hall unfolding into a labyrinth of walkways, escalators, and stairwells all framing the huge six-story King’s Library tower: a stretch of glass-fronted bookshelves ran the height of the building and stood as a centrepoint.

I’ve spent a lot of time here since, writing and reading, but this first visit with Cas was like walking into some modern temple of worship where the book and the word was a deity. Even the smell to me, that great Library smell I’d always loved, was more potent that day in the cool rows of the British Library.

He took me to the treasures gallery first, which he said we wouldn’t be able to do properly in a day but was the best place to start. He pointed me to the original set of Shakespeare’s folio of plays and the Magna Carta, before moving off to wander by himself. I took this to mean I should too.

I gravitated towards a section showing manuscripts dating back to the ninth century; including a gold engraved Qu’ran from North Africa published in 876. I’d teared up at the original handwritten copy of Wilfred Owen’s war poem, with Sassoon’s tender annotations on the margins. Owen had been a child – when I was swimming in the sea and sunbathing with my friends, when I’d been falling in love with Cas, he’d been in a hospital bed in France writing about the pointless horror of war.

I lost a few hours wandering the collection before finding Cas pondering an original sketchbook of Da Vinci’s drawings.

“This place is amazing,” I said. “Did you see the Wilfred Owen section?”

He nodded, still looking at the sketches behind the glass. “Devastating.”

I looked down at the sketches he seemed to be completely absorbed in. They weren’t overly impressive to me, but I knew that wasn’t the point.

“Do you still paint?” I asked him.

“Not really.” Then, he seemed to remember something. “What did you do with the portrait I painted of you?” He asked it in a way that presumed I’d done something destructive with it. For an instant, I thought about lying.

“It’s still on the shelf above my bed at home.”

There was a flicker of surprise in his eyes. Then, like he too was recalling what else happened that day, his mouth parted, and the faintest blush spread across his cheeks. He turned away.

“We should go now if we want to make it to the bookshop,” he said and walked toward the gallery exit.