‘I watched you watch him. Yesterday, the bloke I bumped into on the stairs said you left at two in the afternoon with your hood up and a face on you, and nobody knew where you’d gone, and this morning you’re sitting here looking like you’ve been running from something that can catch you. So I’m asking. Once. Have you been with him?’
He pauses. Adjusts. Quieter.
‘The squeeze theorem thing, Ewan. I’ve known you ten years. We’ve been classmates for eight. You don’t put your hand up. You don’t saysir. You don’t sit there watching the back of a man’s neck for forty-five minutes without taking a single note. I clocked you. I watched you pick each word out like you were laying them on the floor for him to walk across. I’m not stupid.’
I make my face do the thing: the flat, amused look, one eyebrow slightly higher than the other, the mouth in a shape that reads as patient, above it all, belonging to someone who’s heard this song before.
‘Femi. No.He’s like a million years old, mate. He’s a lecturer. It’s Manchester, not a porn film. I’m going out and getting shagged by blokes around our age, because I’m eighteen and I like being shagged and I’ve been doing this for two years without strings attached, and I’m not about to start now.’
‘You’re lying.’
‘I’m not lying.’
‘You’re lying. I’ve watched you lie and that’s the face. That’s the exact face.’
‘Femi.’
‘I’m not going to tell anyone. Christ, Ewan, do you think I’d?’
‘I’mnot lying.’
It comes out harder than I meant it. Loud enough that the girl from room 4, who apparentlyhassurfaced after all, pauses outside the kitchen door for half a second before deciding she wants a different kitchen and walking on.
Femi and I sit in what she’s left behind.
He’s looking at me with a soft and unhappy expression. Insulted, maybe. For both of us. The hand not holding the mug is flat on the table, fingers spread. His thumb moves once, a small involuntary tick, and stops.
‘Okay,’ he says. Gentle. ‘Okay. Forget I asked.’
‘Femi.’
‘No, I mean it. Forget I asked. You’ve said no. I heard you say no. We’re not having this conversation again until you want to have it.’ He stands up. Takes his mug to the sink. Rinses it. His back to me, shoulders set. ‘But Ewan.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m here. Yeah? Whenever. Whatever it is, I’m here.’
He leaves the kitchen. Gently. Closes the door with the softness you’d use on a sleeping child.
I sit at the table with the too-hot mug of tea and a chicken-bone lie sitting in my chest and the wordCarrickin a lecturetheatre and a sun emoji in a phone across the corridor and the private sensation of having just, for once in my life, lied to Femi deliberately.
The kettle clicks off. The normal machinery of the hall continues while I sit here, unmoved.
The tea’s gone cold before I move, but when I do, it’s towards the door, towards the corridor, towards the library where I can work alone and not have to explain the shape of this secret.
I hadn’t planned to stay.
That’s always been the rule since the first one at sixteen. Leave before it settles into anything that requires acknowledgement. Names optional. Conversation minimal. Exit clean.
This time I stay.
Beto’s flat is warm. Not the Fallowfield variety, where the heating pipes rattle and the air tastes of someone else’s microwaved pasta.
Warm in the way that means someone has been living here, properly, for longer than a term. Books on the floor beside the bed, spines cracked open—a mug on the nightstand with something dried into the bottom. A Lady Gaga poster tacked to the wall with Blu Tack, slightly crooked. Evidence of continuity.
I’m on my back. One arm behind my head. He’s in the kitchen. I can hear water running. A cupboard opening. Closing.
Normal sounds. Domestic sounds.
