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“These are great.” His voice yanked me back to reality. I hadn’t even noticed him remove the pyjama bottoms from my arm. “Very you, Heli,” he added with a grin. He’d said it, again, like he knew me, which threw my guard back up. He sounded like my Hugo with his familiar, lulling northern drawl…but I just couldn’t bring myself to trust that he was.
He went on to pull the cherries-and-ice-cream-patterned material over his legs under the towel. I averted my eyes. It seemed like the polite thing to do, which felt…strange. Unnatural. Hugo and I were never polite. “I took a shower. I should’ve asked first. I, uh, didn’t think until I was already in it.”
“It’s fine,” I said, smiling at the familiar awkwardness. Such a small thing, but it felt reassuring. Normal. He felt like Hugo.
Downstairs, I made him some coffee, which I kept in stock for visitors, and poured myself an orange juice. We sat sideways, facing each other. Hugo’s hair had dried, his dark waves lying soft and bouncy on top of his head. I couldn’t help remembering when he used to lie across my knee, and I’d comb my fingers through it while we talked about anything and everything.
“Your house is nice. You’ve done well for yourself,” he said before bringing the mug to his lips.
“Are you taking the piss?” I eyed him over the rim of my glass. He looked confused. “It’s a two-bed semi with no carpet in the spare room and mould under the bathroom sink. Where are you heading back to tonight? A gazillion pound mansion?” Every so often, flashes of anger kept creeping up on me. It wasn’t fair, I knew it, but I couldn’t stop it.
“I haven’t forgotten where I came from,” was his answer. “My houses, my life…” he broke off for a moment, shrugged. He almost looked ashamed, and it turned my anger to guilt in an instant. I knew what a hard time Hugo had reading people’s emotions. Autism didn’t go away, it wasn’t an illness, though I supposed he’d had the same amount of time as any of us to develop and grow. Maybe he’d got better at it? Still, I needed to get my shit together, decide how I felt, who I blamed, whether I needed to blame anyone at all. “It’s just luck. You’ve worked for this. I won mine.”
My head shook. I refused to believe that. “I know you, Hugo. There’s no way you haven’t worked your arse off for everything you have.”
“Sure, I work. I give it my all…but the level of payoff I get? It’s fucking fantastic, of course it is, but it’s extreme, and I don’t deserve it over anyone else.”
There he is. My Hugo.
My gaze wandered to his mouth, to the slight smile tugging gently at his lips. “You got your tooth fixed,” I noted. I’d known anyway from the hundreds of photos I’d seen over the years, but it felt good, unbelievable, to be able to say it to his face.
“Yeah.” He laughed, likely at the memory of how his front tooth had broken in the first place. We’d been out exploring as eleven-year-olds do. Tried to climb a tree. Rather, I’d tried to climb a tree and my fat arse had snapped the branch. Hugo ascended in an effort to rescue me before it gave way completely, but he was too late. I’d crashed down right on top of him, my knee colliding with his face. “You know, I really wanted to cry when that happened. Don’t think I’ve ever told you that.”
“Really?” My jaw dropped. “You were such a tough guy!”
“Exactly. I couldn’t let you think I was a wimp. But fucking hell, your knees have some fucking power in ‘em.”
“It’s the risk you take climbing up a tree behind a fat girl,” I said, chuckling.
He didn’t like that. He never had. “You weren’t fat, Helen. Stop it.”
In fairness, he was probably right. I’d have sold my soul to hop on my scales in the morning and see the weight of eleven-year-old Helen flash up on the screen.
For a while, we reminisced about the old days, purposely avoiding the bad parts. We discussed school, people from our old town, music we used to listen to, movies we’d watch. I saw genuine sadness in Hugo’s eyes when I told him my mum had passed away. She’d loved Hugo as much as I had, thought of him like the son she’d never had…until he left. Broke my heart. I never actually told her how much it’d hurt, but she knew anyway, somehow. She didn’t talk about him much after that, which I omitted from my conversation with Hugo.
After a couple of hours, it started to feel like we’d never been apart. My cheeks ached from smiling and my belly hurt from laughing. I’d long forgotten that I looked a mess or that I was sharing my settee with a world-famous musician. It was just me and Hugo. Best friends. Until the bottom fell out of my heart. He’d have to leave soon. He couldn’t stay forever.
