Twenty

Bast and Emmy had tickets for some adult comedy show across the river, so as they got ready to leave I called Ken with the location and asked him to send a car for us.

I wasn’t sober, but I wasn’t even close to the sort of drunk I’d get on a usual night out with Bast at Oxford. I could tell Caspien didn’t like Bast. He barely cracked a smile at his stupid jokes, let alone laugh at them, and he’d answer his questions with as few words as possible. I put it down to a personality clash; Bast was loud and rambunctious where Cas was reserved and cool.

The more he drank, the more his mood darkened, turning morose and a little detached, compared to how he’d been the last few days when it had just been the two of us anyway. But since I’d never really spent a lot of time with Cas around other people – Gideon and Luke aside – or ever seen him drunk, I put it down to the social situation.

“You want to wait outside for it?” I asked.

The sun hadn’t set, and there was a shaft of bright sunlight on us, so he still wore his sunglasses. If I’d been able to see his eyes, I’d probably have noticed just how drunk he was, but because I couldn’t, it was only when he stood that it became obvious. He reeled backwards into me so that I had to steady him with my body and arms. He sat back down.

“I think I might be drunk,” he said, sounding as sober as a judge.

“Oh, thank fuck for that,” I said. “If you’d drunk that much gin and were still sober, I’d have doubted your physiology.”

“Help me, will you?” he said and stood again.

I slid an arm around him and guided him through the maze of bodies, holding him a little tighter as we descended the short flight of steps. His body was loose-limbed and warm and I tried not to focus on the feel of him this close again, of the weight of him, or how he needed me in this moment, even if it was only to hold him up.

Outside, the streets were busy, and so I led him to the wall of the bar and sort of propped him against it before moving to stand next to him. When I felt his head loll onto my shoulder, I tried to pretend it was the most normal thing in the world.

“Your friend is a bit of a wanker,” he remarked.

“Is he? Most people like him.”

“Most people are idiots.”

I chuckled. “He’s a good guy, just a little excitable around new people. Like a Labrador puppy.”

“He’s a chauvinist.”

“Christ, okay,” I frowned at him. “Gin makes you cranky. Noted.”

“He spoke over his girlfriend at every opportunity, used sexist language at least twice, and thinks far too much of himself.”

“No one’s perfect.”

“You are.”

I looked down to check the sarcastic smirk on his face, but it wasn’t there. His mouth was a straight line, but since his eyes were still hidden behind his sunglasses, I assumed he was smirking with them.

I laughed and said something like, “Ha, okay, no more alcohol for you.”

He muttered something I couldn’t make out, and then I was certain I heard him snore.

So Cas was a sleepy drunk. I’m not sure it’s what I expected; I’d always imagined him turning more deadly and poisonous than usual.

The car arrived a short while later, and I had to guide him over to it with my hand around his lower back before helping him up into the back of the black Range Rover. He slid across the seat and slumped against the window. I reached over to snap his seatbelt into place before sitting down and doing my own.

When we arrived at Gideon’s, I had to shake him gently awake, which caused him to startle so violently it was as though I’d given him an electric shock.

“Hey, it’s okay,” I soothed. “We’re home.”

He snapped off his glasses and for the first time I saw the red, glassiness of his eyes. There was something like wariness in his eye as he looked at me.

“Okay,” he said and nodded once before letting me help him out of the car. He seemed to momentarily sober as we climbed the steps, but as soon as we were through the door, he fell into the side table.

“Let’s get you to bed,” I said, taking hold of him again to lead him down the corridor toward his room. It was larger than the one I was using, and at the front of the house overlooking the leafy street, navy and golds and greens, which felt like him.

After sitting him down on the bed, I closed the curtains, casting the room into half-darkness. I turned on the bedside lamp on the far side of the bed and then moved to switch on the one next to where he was sitting.

Cas sat very still, with his hand resting on his thigh as he stared at a point on the wall. When I moved in front of him, he looked up at me, blue eyes oddly focused despite the clear intoxication in them.

“Here, I’ll help you with these.” I knelt and began to unlace his trainers – I’d tied them for him earlier, too – slipping them off his feet. His ankles were slight and hairless, I knew, knobby pointed joints leading down to smallish feet. “Why don’t you undress and get into bed?”

I’d help him if he needed me to, but stripping Cas out of his clothes felt like something I needed to prepare myself for, and I wouldn’t put myself through it unless it was necessary.

Suddenly, he leaned forward, and I thought, terrified, that he was going to kiss me. Instead, he leaned his forehead against mine and breathed me in. His breath was gin-sweet and hot, and I tried to steady my own.

“I miss you,” he whispered, so softly it felt like an exhale.

I froze, unable to breathe or move, pinned there by the hint of desperation in his voice. If I hadn’t watched his mouth move, I’d have assumed I imagined it.

“Cas,” I said, closing my eyes. It was too much, too overwhelming, too impossible.

“Jude, please,” he said and tilted his head to bring his mouth closer to mine.

I’d not known that kind of power existed within me to refuse him, but clearly, over the years, some layer of self-preservation had grown over me, over my mind and my heart, so that I was able to gently push him back. I stood.

“I’ll get you some water and aspirin for when you wake up.” I went to his bathroom and, refusing to look in the mirror, let the tap run while I searched in his toiletry bag.

Along with his creams and lotions, I found three pill bottles. One, a very well-known pain medication I knew he shouldn’t have taken while drinking. The other two, I wasn’t sure of until I read the label. They were for depression and anxiety.

My whole world tilted on its centre in that moment, re-ordering, things falling out that I didn’t understand. I shoved them back into his bag and zipped it up, feeling uneasy, guilty, and like I’d invaded his privacy. Would he want me to know?

I thought no, he wouldn’t, and I’m sure if he were sober, he’d have come running in here by now, furious that I’d gone through his things.

I knew there were all sorts of things for headaches in the main bathroom, so I went there to find something for his head instead.

When I returned, he was lying down on the bed on his back with his eyes closed. I set the water and pills down next to him and moved to go.

“Will you stay?” he asked, opening his eyes. “Just lie next to me. Don’t worry, I won’t try and kiss you again.” There was a bitter twist to his mouth as he said this that changed the meaning to: Don’t worry, I won’t lower myself to trying to kiss you again.

Nodding, I rounded the bed, and got on the other side, and lay down next to him. He sat up, took a few loud gulps of water, and lay down again so that he faced me. I shifted onto my side to face him.

His eyes were closed.

We weren’t touching, weren’t even particularly close – it was a very large bed – but it still felt intimate. It would have been the perfect moment to ask him about the pills, about what was going on with him and why he needed them, how he was really doing. But I didn’t dare. I was afraid, not only of him, but of what it meant. Was he sad? Was he in pain? Because if he was, then it changed everything, and I didn’t know what to do with the new reality it left me with.

I needed him to be happy. Because part of my grieving Cas, instrumental, in fact, to my grieving him, was knowing that he was happy with the choice he’d made. Was knowing that he’d chosen that perfectly comfortable life with Blackwell on the other side of the fucking world and regretted nothing. I didn’t want to hear that it had been a mistake, because then it would mean we’d both been miserable for no fucking reason.

“I think about it,” Caspien said. “The night in Oxford. Probably more than I should.”

A deep tremor rolled through me. There was guilt and a deep aching sadness, but it warred with white-hot shameful lust.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He opened his eyes. “I’m not.”

I stopped breathing, caught in the blistering intensity of his gaze. He was drunk. I couldn’t trust anything he said or did while he was like this, but it didn’t stop me from wanting to.

“It wasn’t...” I began.

How on earth did I begin to explain my feelings about that night to him of all people? “It’s not how I ever imagined it would be between us. I’m ashamed of it, of who I was that night. I just...” wanted you so much. Hated you so much. Loved you so much. I suspected he knew all of this, and since I swore I’d never offer these things to him as easily as I once did, I shut up.

“How did you imagine it?” he asked.

Perfect. Tender. Life-changing.

I tried a smile. “You don’t want to know.”

He looked like he might ask me to tell him anyway. But he said, “You don’t look at me the way you used to.”

Because I’m afraid to, I wanted to say.

“Well, thank god for that,” I said instead.

A strange, lost look flitted over his face before he shut his eyes and began to breathe evenly and slowly, slipping into a drunken sleep.

I lay there watching him for a long time, thinking over his words and his behaviour and what it all meant. He was here last minute without Blackwell; he was telling me he missed me, he had tried to kiss me. He’d said everything was fine, but all the evidence suggested the opposite. Was he thinking about leaving him? What did it mean if he was? I wouldn’t even dare to hope.

I decided that the following day, I’d ask him outright what was going on with him. I wouldn’t mention the pills I’d seen in his bag, but I’d make it clear I was here for him, that I was a safe pair of hands if he needed them, if he wanted to talk about anything.

I woke in the very early hours of the morning to find the bed next to me empty. As I made my way to my own bed, I heard noise downstairs. He was at the counter, stirring something steaming in a mug.

“Hungover?” I asked.

He looked up and shook his head. “I don’t get them.”

“Never?”

“No.”

“God really does have favourites, huh?” I poured myself a glass of water and stood next to him to peer into the cup he was still stirring. It smelled citrusy.

“Lemon and ginger tea,” he said before lifting the cup and wandering back towards the stairs. Without looking back, he said, “Goodnight, Jude.”