Ru said nothing. He knew the statistics. He knew most applicants had lots of work experience. He might have spent twelve years of his life with horses, but his uncle wasn’t going to give him a reference.
“We just want you to be realistic about your future.”
He was. Unfortunately. “I’m only applying for jobs I have a chance of getting.” None of which he wanted.
“The cost would be crippling and we couldn’t help.”
Oh shut up. Please.“I wouldn’t expect you to.”
Government loans would enable him to go to university, but the thought of emerging with a debt of around a hundred thousand pounds took his breath away. Crippled by self-doubt, his already shaky confidence was at an all-time low. When he couldn’t even get a job washing cars, what was there he could do?
His mother sipped her coffee. “I wish you’d go out in the evenings.”
He sagged under the weight of more criticism. “I’m sorry.”
“No, I didn’t mean it like that.” She reached out to him, and when Ru pulled back, she did too. “I want you to enjoy yourself. We’ll give you the money to take a girl out. You could go to a club… Take up a sport. You spend all your time in your room or out in the fields with Bela.”
“I’m grand,” Ru said carefully. “I don’t need any money.”
But he soon would. His was running out. He had a few hundred pounds left. That was all.
“Did you apply for Universal Credit?”
“Yes.”No.Because he wasn’t staying here much longer.
“Let me buy you some new clothes, at least.” She reached again for his hand and Ru pulled back his fingers.
Her little gasp didn’t even make him feel bad.
“Ruari! When you… You have no idea what we went through. Thinking you were dead.”
The selfishness of that comment astounded him.
“Your father wouldn’t let me see the body. If I had, I’d have known.” She choked back a sob. “Your father blames himself now for what happened.”
He should. But he’d never said that to Ru.
“If he and your uncle hadn’t fallen out so badly over the business and money and the Traveller way of life… Your uncle felt your father had betrayed the family. Your father felt your uncle was too stuck in the old ways. There was a compromise but they couldn’t see it.”
Ru sighed.
“I wish you could forgive us.” She put her hand on the table, palm up.
He pushed to his feet and picked up his coffee. “I’ll go back online and see if anything else has come up.”
Since he’d already looked that morning, he knew the answer was likely to be no, but he was tired of his mother’s disappointment, his father’s dissatisfaction, their overall disapproval, their desperate need to be forgiven. He wasn’t the son they wanted.Too fecking bad.Didn’t they think he was depressed enough without them adding to it? It didn’t seem right that he’d been happier in Ireland with the horses than he was now.
Ru put his drink on a coaster, sat on his bed, and scrolled on his phone. He didn’t want to go out. He didn’t feel safe in town. He only felt happy when he was in the fields with Bela. He could walk forever then. Walk right out of one life and into another. Maybe he should do that. But take his bike rather than walk. He could buy a tent and cooking apparatus. Live off the grid for a while and decide whether he wanted to live at all.
Pressure in his chest increased as that thought sank in. He sat staring at nothing. Did he want to live? Not like he was now, but the answer was yes, he did. There had to be something bright in his future, a way to lift this pain from his heart, he just needed to keep looking.
Something will turn up.
Maybe something had.
Ru found himself clicking onto pictures of Jasim. He’d been in a polo match at Cowdray Park last week. His team, The Eagles, had won. Jasim had scored three goals. Ru had read everything he could about polo. He’d watched a few games on YouTube. Not with Jasim playing, but still. When his parents had been out, he’d looked at other stuff too. Men and women having sex had not been as…good to watch as two men having sex. Not that he’d downloaded anything, just looked at short clips. But a lot of clips.
His cock twitched. He knew he shouldn’t assume having sex was as it looked on the screen. All the participants were acting. They were paid to fuck. He got that. But on the gay sites, at least the men looked as though they were genuinely enjoying themselves. Even the ones who were tied up and getting flogged. The women on the straight sites were all breathy and whiny and seemed to get off on being treated badly. To be fair, some of the gay guys did too and Ru found it kind of hot when they were treated roughly because it felt like they wanted it, but it didn’t seem right with the women.
