‘The rules to Love Jockey Hockey?’ he replied, managing a weak smile.
‘Ha ha,’ I said, nudging him with my elbow. ‘I’m serious.’
‘No. I don’t know.’
‘That it’s okay to need people.’
I took a deep Jenifer breath. He was the one having a crisis. I wasn’t going to let myself cry and end up with him comforting me.
‘When I was growing up,’ I said, ‘all I did was need people, and all they were was not there. So I taught myself not to. Shutthat part of myself up. Turned it off. Told myself that I was just being a baby and that I needed to grow up.’
His fingers started tapping, thumb against middle finger, over and over again.
‘It’s still something I’m trying to unlearn,’ I said. ‘You’re a therapy boy. You know. Patterns are hard to break. The work is never done.’
‘I know,’ he said, managing a weak laugh. ‘God, do I know.’
‘I’ve told you about my friend Flick, right?’
He nodded. ‘You live with her. And Ayo.’
‘Flick has this on-again off-again boyfriend,’ I said. ‘Adam. When it’s on between them, it’s on. Real hot. Real heavy. Annoying to live with, because they keep Ayo and I up at night with the headboard smashing into the wall.’
That drew a flicker of a smile.
‘But as soon as Flick actually needs something, he’s gone,’ I said. ‘About eighteen months ago, Flick’s mum got cancer. She needed him. But he wasn’t there.’
‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s all right now. Flick’s mum is in remission. It looks like she’s going to make a full recovery. But now she and Flick are back on their feet, suddenly Adam’s back, sniffing around again.’
I exhaled. ‘It makes me so mad whenever I see him,’ I said, ‘because I saw how badly she needed his support when her mum was sick. Her life was already so difficult, and he made it so much harder by not being there. He’ll do it again too, next time something goes wrong in her life. It would be so much easier for her if she never needed him at all.’
‘It sounds like Flick has some patterns of her own she needs to work through.’
‘She one hundred per cent does, don’t get me wrong,’ I said. ‘But needing people isn’t one of them. It was okay that she needed her boyfriend when her life was hard. He was the problem, not the fact that she needed him. Because she needed Ayo and me too, and there was nothing wrong with that.’
I reached out and put my hand on top of his, stilling his tapping fingers.
‘That’s the lesson I’m going to spend my whole life learning,’ I said. ‘People need things. Food. Shelter. Money. Definitely money, in my case.’
He made a noise that might have been a laugh.
My hand was still on his. He wasn’t pulling away.
‘And we need other people,’ I said. ‘That means you, Dylan. You’re in this huge, intense, scary new environment, in this role where you have a totally unreasonable and unfair amount of pressure on you. You’re allowed to need a friend.’
He turned his hand under mine. He didn’t lace his fingers through mine, but he clasped his palm to my palm, like I’d fallen and he was pulling me back to my feet. His calluses rasped against my skin as his thumb feathered back and forth over the back of my hand.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I know you’re right. That’s what the pandemic’s shown us, hasn’t it? That we all need other people. That we all need human connection.’
The pandemic. The fact that I hadn’t been able to touch a man in months. That was it. That was what was making me feel the brush of his thumb in every single cell in my body.
‘I need you so much, though,’ he said quietly. ‘Too much, I think.’
His eyes met mine. They were dark in the low light. The air was getting hot, thick, like caramel.
His thumb stroked the back of my hand. His fingers were tight around mine. If he pulled – if he gave even the slightest tug – I would fly right into his lap.
