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“Must you really go?” Darcy swiped Bron’s hair away from his neck, caressed him there with his fingers. He worried—no, that wasn’t the right word—he was quite certain that if he let this go on any longer, Darcy would kiss him again. He could feel his breath on his neck already. He could give into it. He could.
He stepped away quickly, putting some distance between their bodies by walking the length of the breakfast table. He made some slight reply, spinning on his heel. Because though Darcy looked blameless in the way he now pouted his lip or the way he gripped the chair to stop himself from reaching out, hecouldn’t bear the uncertainty that existed between them, never sure which version of Darcy he might get at any time.
“Well, alright, if you so wish.”
Bron nodded and made a dash for the door. Darcy made a point of brushing his hand against him as he passed. Bron unbolted the door, giving a simple, yet effective “Goodbye.” In the hall, he stopped at the staircase, wrapped his arms around the marble pillar, and waited for Darcy to follow after him. When he didn’t, he climbed the stairs two at a time, and it was to the safety of his own room that he fled.
11
ALL WAS SERENE FORa time, and merry too. The streets were silenced by a coating of frost, and the manor was made alive by carols playing on a loop through Classic FM and the smell of citrus, oranges having been placed in baskets throughout the rooms, and eaten for breakfast and lunch every morning and afternoon. Mr. Edwards, a connoisseur of the spicy mulled wine, drank copious amounts of the drink, which Darcy mixed in batches in the kitchen; and Ada, who sipped it at Mr. Edwards’s allowance, declared it to be the sweetest thing in all of the world.
Stockings hung from the fireplace’s mantel, a trio ofADA, DARCY, and BRONscrawled on each in Ada’s handcrafted glitter. Wreaths and garlands draped the walls, knotted with ribbons of gold, scarlet, and green. Ada would creep up to them and pluck the red and pink berries with fumbling fingers and later, Bron would sit with her and weave them along string, fashion them into a necklace she wouldn’t take off until the skins broke and the juices stained either her mouth, clothes, or more often both. All worries surrounding the fire in the library had all but dissipated by this time, though the air felt considerably altered, colder. Any attempt at getting his hands on the photo album was foiled by the house’s many eyes, the joyous weeks of welcoming guests into parties and gatherings.
At Ada’s insistence, they’d all agreed upon a little potted fern, instead of a Christmas tree, from which hung a couple of baubles and a rhinestone ornament of a hot air balloon. Of course, it was still all about the presents, and though it wasn’t quite Christmas Day yet, Ada’s begging for something to open started from as early as mid-December. Mr. Edwards insisted on her waiting till at least Christmas Eve, but after they’d all parted for bed, and Bron remained in the living room with his book, it was only to find Ada sneaking up to the potted fern, where she’d sit and sulk, her white nightdress spreading around her legs like a snowflake. Ada had never seen him watching her, and he had never made his presence known, for it was never longer than a minute that she’d linger, by which point she must have grown cold, and with a huff of revival took herself to bed. How strange it was to watch her return night after night to that same spot, a sleepwalker stuck on the same loop and always meeting the same disappointing end. She was a specter, her pale legs and bare feet standing in the middle of the dark hall, her hair blacker than it was in the daylight, and dripping from her nighttime bath. And as she crept back up the staircase, he saw her, and then sometimes himself—a younger version of himself—haunting the stairs, running up and down them, as he’d so done through the winter holidays at St. Mary’s.
For the majority of the boys would always return home for the holiday, and for the unfortunate few who’d been left behind, a group to which he had always been part, there was nothing to do but wait for the others to return, a different kind of loop in which to exist. There was one year, he remembered it clearly, when a distraught Harry had been left to stay behind too. It was no news to him that Harry hated St. Mary’s—they all hated St. Mary’s—but for Bron, it was the most perfect gift he could have received. More time with his friend, more time with Harry. They played snake on his old Nokia phone, told ghost stories at night, and more often than not, they roamed the school halls with the lightest of footsteps, hiking up the legs of their striped pajama bottoms and tiptoeing barefoot despite the bitter chill. Their shinsexposed to the damp air, they’d hunch through the hall like hags, past the teachers’ quarters, past the dorms of Our Lady of Sorrows and Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and into whichever rooms they fancied. Always in search of adventure.
Harry at the sash window, pushing his weight against the frame. Bron standing there motionless until it came unstuck.
“Hold it there, just like that,”Harry had said until he’d got one leg through and then his waist; and then, after ducking like a swan, he helped Bron through the window too, outside into the cold.
“Remember, if you hear anyone coming, we say we were sleepwalking. Understood?”
They’d waddled along the ledge, hands tracing the wall. One foot forward, then another. Hands gripping the pipes, then pushing at another window, into another room, through another door. Up they climbed, round and round the spiral staircase, hands swiping away at the cobwebs, the dust tickling their noses, itching their eyes. Hands stretched outward in the dark, feeling for the scratch of the hatch, fumbling for the handle. Out they’d come onto the school’s secluded roof tower, the cold wind enveloping them and the long stretch of black above. That was what they came to see the menagerie of glittering stars, the freedom of the world above, just within their reach.
“See, look over there,”Harry had explained.“That’s Jupiter and Saturn. They’re always hanging out together, even though they’re like a gazillion miles apart—and do you see that line that curves slightly upward? That’s Andromeda, who was said to be more beautiful than all the Nereids—that means sea nymphs, the fifty daughters of Poseidon—and look. See there! Do you see that square?”
Harry had pointed and traced the stars with his hands until Bron nodded and said“Yes, yes, I can see it now.”He couldn’t really.
“That’s Pegasus, the winged horse. He’s my favorite because it looks like he’s fallen over in the sky and can’t get up, so maybe he’s just floating there forever and ever, which I think would be really cool, don’t you?”
“Yes,”he’d agreed. But today he would give a different answer. He’d say that floating forever and ever in a sea of black with no one to ask for help would be frightening. Lonely.
Harry had taken his hand, then.“You’re my best friend in the whole world. You know that, right?”
Out there in the impressive cold, it was an unspoken promise: that they would never leave each other.
“I know.”And in that moment, he believed it to be true. Truer than anything else he knew.
I know. I know. I know.
When he looked out the window now in Greenwood, and up at the moon and stars, he saw in the windowpane’s reflection his own waning face, and then beside it, Harry’s, murky like a puddle and enticing Bron to roam the halls with him yet again. He touched his hand to the window. The question remained: Had Harry ever made it to Cambridge? What if he opened the latch—would Harry be there, outside and roaming the city, cruising down a punt or drinking himself silly in a bar? When he pulled his hand away from the window, he looked at the smudge of condensation left by his palm, and then suddenly, a face. Not Harry’s face, but a different one entirely.
“Are you alright there?” It was Darcy, from the other end of the room. Standing with a mug steaming in his hands, mingling with the moonlight, appearing to evaporate.
“Yes,” he said, shutting his book and rising to stand. “I was just finishing up, going to bed.”
“Oh were you?” Darcy said, looking at him for a moment. “I was hoping we could talk. You know, about … well, everything, really. But are you sure you’re alright? You look a little depressed.”
“I’m not depressed. I was just …” He sat back down. “Thinking.”
“Ah, thinking. That awful process. It troubles me too.” Darcy wandered over to the sofa, sat on the edge of armchair opposite him. “May I ask what you were thinking about?” He took a sip from his mug and placed it on the coaster, waiting patiently for a response whenever Bron was ready.
“It’s just, you know, I was thinking about somebody I used to know, somebody I lost touch with and haven’t heard from for years.”
“Friends drifting apart?” he said. “It happens to the best of us.”
They locked eyes with each other then. “Yes, I suppose it was bound to happen at some point or another.”
