Dark Words

Ifelt surprisingly comfortable in this place, like there was nothing wrong with the mismatched furniture or the nice chicken dinner that was plated up on the table with not a vegetable in sight. No macrobiotic grain salad topped with something that would inevitably get stuck between my teeth. This felt like home. Like my mother’s Sunday dinners. All we needed was her overcooked broccoli and I would be swished straight back to my childhood kitchen table.

So, here I was, managing small talk with a guy who carried cases for a living and his wayward son.

I laughed in the right places and put comments in where needed, but mostly I was quiet. Calm. Relaxed. I hadn’t felt like that for a long time. I’d sought solitude for a couple of days so I could get my head back on straight; now I was shoving chicken in my gob and discussing the latest football player who’d transferred to some team in Saudi Arabia and whether his game would suffer for the heat.

It was something I had no clue about—the football part, at least. I’d played stadiums in Far-Eastern heat that would have made both of them pass out from hypovolemic shock within minutes. I’d fulfilled contracts, even if it meant that I’d spent the hours afterwards on a drip. Cork had ended up in hospital twice with heat exhaustion. We’d not even complained. Just waved and smiled and then done it again the following night.

I was starting to wonder if I was making it all up in my head, or if I really was insane for going along with it. I was an adult, a professional, and I needed to get someone to talk me through the legalities before the whole Blitz circus kicked off again.

“New album then?” Reuben’s dad asked, grabbing himself another roast potato off the tray then smothering it in gravy. His name was Stewart, and he’d asked me to call him that. I couldn’t make myself call him anything, so I laughed and followed his lead, stuffing a roast potato in my mouth. If I’d been working…well, I wouldn’t have been allowed roast potatoes, that was for sure. Prisons probably served better food than we were fed on tour. Better food than I fed myself. Management ordered whatever they decided we should eat, which was usually inedible, but at least they weren’t hounding me about my weight gain, unlike poor Musa, who was on a constant calorie-controlled diet. He always looked grey. Thin. Exhausted.

“You know,” I said. I had no idea why. “Blitz is on its death bed, and everyone knows it. There are so many new bands. New acts. Better singers and dancers. Younger kids. We should do the decent thing and pack it in with dignity. Release the obligatory greatest hits album and bow out. I think we’ve all had enough, but unfortunately…”

“Your management is still trying to squeeze that one last penny out of you.” I knew I liked Reuben’s dad. Stewart. Whatever.

“Would you, though? Quit?” Reuben asked with a smile. He was always smiling, and it made me smile too.

I nodded. “In a heartbeat. It’s not great, not anymore. We’re all tired, and yeah.” I dragged my finger through the gravy left on my plate and licked the tip. I knew it was disgusting. If I’d been at home, my mum would’ve told me off, while my dad would have laughed. Just like Reuben’s dad did.

“Grab another potato, son. Mop up all that goodness.”

I was tempted, but…

“What would you do instead?” Reuben asked as he picked up a potato and dropped it into the puddle of gravy on my plate.

Fuck. I wanted to be like this. To be able to have a simple meal with easy conversation and nobody paid to sit here and watch my every move. And there it was again. My old friend, Guilt, along with his mate Anxiety jumping around in my chest, soon to be followed by Disaster and Impostor Syndrome and all those other feelings I carried around like a set of fucked-up designer baggage.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Probably go up north and see my parents and buy some remote farm and go totally insane in peace and quiet. And every so often, there would be one of those Whatever happened to The Dieter from Blitz? articles where some locals would recount quirky anecdotes from meeting me running naked in the fields or something.”

“Sounds idyllic, actually.” Stewart nodded. “I wouldn’t mind some remote farmhouse up north. Wind and sea and…we could keep sheep.”

“Dad, you couldn’t even keep my goldfish alive. And all our houseplants are dead.”

“Yeah, I suppose.” Stewart laughed. “But I kept you alive, didn’t I, son?”

“You did.”

There was a bond there. A sparkling line of connection. Something I’d always wanted. My parents were great, but there was a whole bunch of years between us. They lived in a different era. I lived a life that they couldn’t even comprehend.

“I’ll do the dishes,” Reuben said, getting up.

“I’ll get the telly on then.”

I wanted to cry with the familiarity of a normal life.

I had nothing like this.

I must have sat there for ages, prick that I was, because it wasn’t until Reuben lifted my elbows off the table to wipe down the surface that I re-joined the land of the living, coughing in embarrassment.

“You’re shattered, aren’t you?”

I liked that he cared. I really did.

We watched some rubbish on TV. Ate something sweet and chocolatey out of plastic pots. Then Reuben went for a shower while I sat next to his dad.

“You’re always welcome here,” his dad said, flipping through the channels.

I managed to get out a weak thanks. My stomach was full and my chest was calm. If I’d had a choice, I’d have chosen to spend the rest of my life on this very sofa.

But that was when I got shoved towards the shower with a towel in my arms. Nothing unusual there. It was always like this. Like I’d completely forgotten how to look after myself. To be fair, I probably stank, having not even gone near the bathroom in the hotel apart from to pee.

Clean and smelling of something fruity, thanks to one of the bottles in their bathroom, I stumbled into Reuben’s room. He offered me one of his T-shirts and a pair of shorts from my bag. I still had clean stuff in there. Another win.

“This is the weirdest sleepover ever,” he said, smiling from under the covers where he was resting his head against Mr Snuggles, reading something on his phone. All that hair spread out like a halo. He had a nice face. Strong features. Eyebrows that any self-respecting make-up artist would have plucked to death, but I loved that he hadn’t. And he smelt lovely, of shampoo and soap and the scent of this house. It was probably riddled with damp as most of these old houses were. But to me, it smelt homey and safe. If only I could stay here forever.

I shuddered, knowing I couldn’t.

Then I pulled the covers back and crawled in next to him, lay my head on the pillow right next to his shoulder. “Is this…okay?”

“We’re friends, aren’t we? I mean, we’ve established the boundaries, haven’t we? Shoes off in bed. Don’t steal the covers, and Mr Snuggles is mine.”

“And I’m gay and you’re not, so no funny business.”

His laughter was nice. Letting mine rip was freeing.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“No worries,” he said softly, handing me the charging lead for my phone. I didn’t even need to ask.

“I think someone is picking me up…tomorrow,” I said, reading the stream of notifs on my screen. God I hated this phone. Would quite happily throw it away and never get another.

“You okay with that?” He turned so we were almost nose to nose, Mr Snuggles awkwardly between us. I shuffled closer, far too close, really, so I could get my head in a more comfortable position.

“I have no choice. I know I sound like a broken record, but it’s my job. I need to get out of this slump and just get on with it. Have my photo taken. Answer questions from a script. Write some stupid lyrics. Put music to them.”

“Do you actually play an instrument?”

“No.” I had people for that. I could hum out what I wanted, but play it? No. Josh was good at stuff like that, getting the software on his laptop to magically churn out the melodies. I could barely tap a tambourine along to the beat. But I could sing. As long as I had earphones in and knew what I was doing. “I’m actually pretty useless with most things. I get told what to do, and then I just do it.”

“Don’t be stupid. I’ve seen you, remember? You have that…what do they call it? That…stage presence. You make eighty thousand people feel like you’re their best mate. You’re a right flirt on stage. You wiggle your fingers and people scream.”

“Stupid, isn’t it? Not quite a degree in astrophysics.”

“I have no degrees. I don’t even have my school leaving papers. Wasn’t a priority when I was supposed to get my shit together. Doesn’t matter. Not now. I have a job and get to go to work and hang out with some nice people. Sort stuff out, you know? People get into all kinds of pickles at that hotel, and I get to sort it out for them. Problem solving. I’m good at that.”

He made me smile.

“Can you solve my problems for me?” I really meant it too.

“Mate…” He tapped my nose with his finger. “You’re fine, you know that, don’t you? You’re a nice guy. You just need to figure out how to balance the pop star with the real guy who— Stop it! Mr Snuggles is mine!”

No longer, since I’d snagged him with a swift flick of my hand, and now he was nicely tucked against my chest, my chin on his head.

“Just borrowing him. You’re right. He’s really…comfortable.”

“You should always have something to hug when you sleep. A pillow. Mr Snuggles. Whatever. My dad rolls up his spare duvet and holds it like it’s an actual person. He needs a girlfriend. Refuses to even date, though. Thinks he’s totally past it.”

“Nobody is past it,” I blurted out without meaning to. I’d spent the last however long telling myself I was done with dating, but even I wasn’t past it.

“What happened to the guy you were going to stay at the hotel with?”

“Bah.” I really didn’t want to go there. “Some idiot I hooked up with. I thought he was a friend. Turns out he wasn’t really interested apart from to say he’d done me. I broke up with him. He didn’t take the hint. It got…weird. It’s just the way things are.”

“Was he the guy?” He looked at me. Really looked at me.

“Yeah. As I said, it got weird. Kind of scary. You don’t expect to wake up and find your ex sat next to you in bed in the middle of the night.”

“Scary.”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t put yourself down. You’re only one person. Doing the best you can.”

“I know. But sometimes your best isn’t good enough, is it? There are just things I’m no good at. I try, but it messes with your head when you realise you’ve totally fucked up.”

“True.” Reuben smiled. I wasn’t sure he’d quite grasped what I was saying. “I was really shit at school. Disruptive. Up to no good most of the time. Smoking weed in the toilets. Setting off smoke alarms. Kicking bins. Now I look back and wonder what I was thinking. I used to shoplift for thrills—I even stole a car once and went joyriding. I was out of control.”

“And now you’re not. But that’s what I mean. You grew out of it, became an adult, and here I am, still doing stupid things. All the time. I run away and hide in hotels, refuse to answer my phone. Agree to projects that terrify me.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s fucked up. Don’t go hide in hotels. Costs a fortune for a start, but you could really end up in shitty situations, being you on your own. And we all get scared sometimes.”

“You get scared?” I couldn’t imagine that, somehow.

“I was terrified when Dad got me this job. And I fucked it up on the first day. Scraped a guest’s car, lost a bag. Got someone’s car keys stolen and then some mates turned up and…” He cringed.

“Oh.” Now I could kind of picture the scene.

“I like that we talk,” he said.

“I like that too.”

He reached out, stroked a finger down my cheek, then swiftly snatched Mr Snuggles from my grip.

“Gotcha.”

“Fuck!” I laughed as he turned around, his bum nudging my groin.

“You can spoon me instead tonight,” he said, like this was normal.

“You cool with that?” This was not…normal. Or maybe it was.

“Boundaries, dude.” He was still moving around, shuffling under the covers, getting comfortable with his back against my stomach. I leant on my elbow so I could stuff a pillow under my neck.

“Sleep,” he grunted. “Shattered.”

“Yeah,” I said. I wrapped my arm around him and rested my forehead into his shoulder.

“Promise me something,” he said quietly. “I know I won’t see you again, but…if I can have something out of having spent today with you? I mean, you’re a total stranger, but we kind of bonded. And it’s been nice. So promise me, next time you need a mate, remember that I’m here. It would be good, you know, to catch up. Just text me sometime. Okay?”

“Arsehole,” I mumbled sleepily. “We are mates. You said so.”

I felt his laughter rumble against my arm and settle like a passing storm.

“Night, mate,” he said. I squeezed his chest, tapped my fingers against his arm.

I hadn’t taken my meds. But…

I slept. Fuck. I actually did.