Page 66 of People Skills

‘What’s wrong?’ I say.

‘I just stepped on glass, there’s a smashed bottle here.’

‘I’ll go around it,’ I say, peering at the dark ground.

He pauses and then bends his knees slightly. ‘Get on,’ he says.

‘On what?’

‘On my back. I’ll carry you.’

I can just put my boots on. I should just put my boots on. But I don’t. I want to be carried. No one has carried me since I was a child.

‘Okay,’ I say. And I jump onto his back, and he lifts me easily, and hoicks me up.

‘Hold on,’ he says.

‘I am,’ I say, putting both arms around his neck and clutching my boots with one hand.

He walks and I am acutely aware that our bodies are pressed together, my face against the side of his. I can feel his muscles moving beneath me, his hair is touching my cheek. I breathe it in. He smells like the night, the stars, the moon. That’s a terrible, embarrassing thought. Comparing a man to the moon, even in the privacy of your own mind, is pitiful. It’s an alarm bell. The canary in the coalmine of feelings.

‘You should cut your hair,’ I say.

‘You don’t like it?’ he asks.

‘I do like it, it just needs a trim,’ I say. He leans his head back, to get the hair further out of his eyes, and it brings our faces closer. I close my eyes.

‘I was going for the shaggy surfer look,’ he says.

‘Even shaggy surfers need to see.’

He piggybacks me up the path to the house, our house. My house. He’s temporary. I’m permanent.

‘Do you have the keys?’ he asks, still holding me.

‘I do,’ I say. I scrabble in my pocket, and I don’t get down and he doesn’t put me down. I don’t want to let go—give me one more second of human contact, of his smell, of the feel of his body pressing against mine, a memory I can store up.

I find the keys and hand them to him, and he lets go of one of my legs to unlock the door, and then he carries me inside, all the way into my bedroom, turns around and gently drops me onto my bed.

I lie back and look at the ceiling. I’m so comfortable, and suddenly so sleepy, the thought of getting into pyjamas, washing my face, brushing my teeth is all too much. I close my eyes.

‘Thank you for carrying me,’ I say.

‘You’re welcome,’ he says.

‘What did your dad mean, when he said “what happened last time”?’ I say, without thinking.

Xavier hesitates in the doorway, and then steps into my room, sits down on the bed beside me.

‘When I was nineteen, in first year uni, I got depressed. It was pretty bad, for a while.’

I prop myself up on one elbow. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

‘It’s okay. It was a long time ago.’ He lies back, so he’s looking at the ceiling, and I do too.

‘How did you get better?’

‘I took antidepressants, for a little while. But mostly it was just time. It just…lifted. But I’ve spent my life since then worrying it might come back. It was like, this feeling I couldn’t control, this hole I was pushed into that I couldn’t climb out of for months, and it scared me.’