Page 25 of Electric Boy

“Julian?” The sleep fell away from him like a lifted veil. He sat up and flicked on the lamp, casting the stark colours of his bedroom into a dreamy gold.

“Sorry, yeah, you were probably asleep. I’m an idiot. I’ll just call you back, shall I?”

“No, no, I wasn’t asleep,” Michael lied. Julian’s voice sounded particularly small and a little wet around the edges. He almost sounded as if he were… crying? But that couldn’t be. Could it? “Is everything all right?”

“I --” Julian’s voice caught like a jumper sleeve on a branch. He breathed raggedly into the phone for several seconds before speaking again. “Am I selfish? Am I a bad person?”

From what Michael knew of Julian, in the short period in which he’d gotten to know him on a more, shall we say, “normal” basis, Julian was a little selfish. But that didn’t make him a bad person. Still, he wouldn’t admit that to Julian’s face -- or ear, as it were. Especially not when he was this obviously upset. “No, of course not.”

“Am I going to die alone?”

There was a clear sniffle at the end that gave him away and Michael’s heart constricted. He cooed into the phone, as soft and sweet as he could manage given he wasn’t a man prone to softness or sweetness. “Of course not, love. What’s brought all this on?”

Another child-like little sniffle. “Nothing. Only my ex has been round to see me and… she said some things. Got me thinking. Maybe I really am awful. I think every now and again I might be a bit awful, but then I forget about it and go about my business. But things she said… Am I really awful, Michael?”

His voice was so small and unsure that Michael longed to scoop him up into his arms and press kisses to his face until he melted against him, soft and pliant and happy like he was meant to be. In the background, Michael could hear rain pelting and wind howling. He lifted his head and saw that rain was coming down hard against the double-paned windows. “Where are you?”

“I’m outside the club. Phone box.” Another sniffle, a shift of fabric. What might have been the blowing of a nose.

“Can you come over?”

“No, I… I’m all right. Really. You were sleeping.”

“It’s really no bother. I’d rather have you here than out there in the cold.”

A soft huff of a laugh. “No, really. I’m all right. I’m just being silly. But, um… I wouldn’t mind seeing you again. Soon. Maybe even going out. You know, properly. Like, uh, like a date and everything.”

Michael smiled despite himself. Julian asking him out. Fancy that. Life really did have a way of surprising you. And the touch of nerves, as if even now, after having snogged like a pair of teens, he was still unsure as to the nature of their relationship. It was all just too endearing. “I’d like that very much. In fact, I know the perfect place. Leave it all to me. I’ll arrange everything.”

“You sure? Sounds like a lot of work for just me --”

“It’s not. But even if it were, you’d be worth it. Now go home and get some sleep. Forget everything that woman told you and have sweet and pleasant dreams.”

There was another little breathy chuckle. “All right. I’ll try. Thanks. You get back to sleep, too. Sorry again for waking you.”

“I don’t mind being woken by you. And, Julian?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re not awful.”

Michael could see in his mind as clearly as if he were there. Julian ducking his head and biting his lip against a pleased little smile, all huddled up in the phone box with his puffy parka. His voice, when it came, was as soft as that ridiculous coat of his. “Thanks.”

The line cut off with a gentle click and Michael was met with staticky silence.

Chapter Fifteen: Time

1979

Julian’s room was a cramped little space, with every horizontal surface crowded with tat and every vertical surface papered with posters and magazine clippings. Rahul raised a sceptical eyebrow at a particularly suggestive David Bowie poster pinned to the battered old wardrobe. Behind him, Julian was lying down crosswise on his single-sized bed, just like he used to do as a boy. Only now he was several feet taller and his knees crooked at the mattress edge, feet nearly touching the laundry-cluttered floor. Pink Floyd was playing through Julian’s hand radio on the desk.

“But aren’t the acting schools in London better?” Julian was saying, his voice just shy of a childish whine. He might be taller, but he was just as spoiled as when he was thirteen. How someone so working class could be so spoiled was beyond Rahul.

Not that Rahul was any less working class than Julian was. But things had started looking up for his family once his mother had married Ron. While Rahul and Ron never quite got on like a house on fire, the house was at least warmly lit, maybe even with a cosy little fire going in the fireplace. Which was much more than Rahul could say for many boys and their stepfathers. They had something of a mutual respect for one another and the man certainly never lifted a hand to him in anger. If Ron ever got angry, Rahul had yet to see it.

Julian and Rahul had first bonded over being raised by single, working mothers. The pre-packaged lunches, the empty homes when they got back from school, the judgmental looks of their classmates. But they soon drifted apart on the subject when it became clear that their situations were wholly different. While Rahul still visited his father quite regularly, spending alternating Christmases and summer holidays with him, Julian’s father had taken off when Mel had been just a baby and never returned. Julian had seen neither hide nor hair of his father since he was seven years old, when he’d awoken in the middle of the night to find his father packing a single bag. “Go back to bed,” Julian had told Rahul his father had said. His father had then kissed Julian on the crown of his head and exited stage right pursued by bear.

Julian’s mother had never remarried. While Rahul’s mum had become a secretary and then eventually gone on to marry her boss, Julian’s mum had taken part-time shifts at the local off licence and eventually succumbed to what was very clearly alcoholism but which Julian still blatantly denied. “She just likes a drink every now and again,” he’d say defensively. “Who doesn’t? And she’s only just tired from working all bleeding day. You’d be, too.” It was one of the few times he’d become truly serious, and he would attempt to divert the subject as quickly as possible.