Back to the kitchen. Rory finished his wine standing at the counter. He did not sit back down. It was after ten and the evening did what it came to do and there was a version of the night that would have had them both in the bedroom with the door shut and the other version, the version they were in, which was Rory putting his glass down and looking at Neil across the kitchen.
‘I’m going to go,’ Rory said.
‘Okay.’
‘Not because I want to.’
‘I know.’
‘Because this wasn’t the night for that. This was the night for the risotto.’
‘The risotto and the painting.’
‘The risotto and the painting and Barry the parrot.’
‘And the D.’
‘And the D.’
He got his boots on in the hall. He put his helmet under his arm. At the door he stopped and leaned in and kissed Neil once, properly, the way he had been kissing him since October, and then stepped back and said, ‘Thank you for the dinner,’ and Neil said, ‘Any time,’ and Rory said, ‘Don’t say things you don’t mean,’ and Neil said, ‘I meant it,’ and Rory nodded once and left.
Neil closed the door. He stood in the hall for a minute with palm flat against the wood. Back in the kitchen, he looked at the two bowls on the draining board, plate on top of bowl in the wrong order, and he left them there and got his phone out.
‘home?’
Three minutes.
‘home. thank you.’
‘thank you for coming.’
‘neil.’
‘yes.’
‘you moved a picture.’
He put the phone down on the counter, face up, so he would see it if it went again. It did not go again. It did not need to.
He washed the two bowls in the wrong order and put them away in the right one.
10
THE BARN
First day of spring term,Neil saw Rory across the staff room and forgot how to swallow.
Again.
On the counter, the usual spot: Rory's travel mug with the peeling koi. And beside it, where the paper cup had been every morning since October, a second travel mug. Smaller. Steel. New. No name in biro. No Post-it. Just the flat white, still hot, inside something that wasn't going in the bin.
Neil picked it up. Drank. Said nothing. The handle was cold and the coffee was right and the mug was his and Rory hadn't mentioned it and wasn't going to.
Two weeks since term ended. Ten days since the flat. Ten days of phone calls in the dark, texts that said nothing and meant everything. And now Rory was standing by the notice board with a coffee, talking to Martin Clarke about something that involved hand gestures, and the sight of him, curls loose, paint already on his wrist at nine in the morning, hit Neil in the chest.
Their eyes met. Four seconds. Sue Dhillon looked up from her mug as though she'd felt static.
Later, between periods, Rory found him outside the art supply cupboard. The corridor was empty. Fluorescent light buzzing overhead.
