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A pause this time. And finally,What friend?
You don’t know him.
I stabbed the words into the keypad, ending the exchange. All too aware that, once again, I’d been hurtful when I didn’t have to be.
“So if I stay”—I waved the phone to indicate I was done with it—“do you fancy getting fucked?”16
Our fingers snagged on the Nokia. I remembered the rough velvet of Leo’s palm on the back of my neck. “You shouldn’t put weight on your foot.”
“I’ll improvise.”
Leo was blushing in little flurries: his ears, his throat, the tops of his cheeks. “I don’t even know your name.”
“Marius,” I told him.
Because why the hell not? I’d been making bad decisions for a while now. What was one more?
3
As bad decisions went, it was a good one. It made me feel bold, and slightly defiant, instead of all the things I was liable to feel given half a chance. Unfortunately, it didn’t last.
“You know you’re bleeding?” Leo said.
“What?”
He vanished again, returning a moment later with a damp cloth and a first aid kit. “And you need to keep your leg elevated.”
I swallowed a noise of frustration. If a man was going to kneel in front of me, my preference was that he not do it out of concern. Edwin had a lot of concerned faces, especially towards the end. Not that either of us were doing a lot of kneeling by then.
“How did you even do this?” Leo dabbed at the graze on my cheek.
“Ow,” I said petulantly. “Branch caught me.”
“On the towpath?”
“I was trying to avoid falling in the river.”
“Marius”—now he was cleaning the scratches on my hands—“it’s not that dark.”
“I’d had a few drinks,” I lied.
He didn’t press me further. Just stuck a plaster over the worst cut and went to put the first aid kit away. It was strange how conscious of other people’s movements you became when you couldn’t move yourself. The way the muscles of Leo’s back shifted like nascent wings beneath his faded T-shirt. How at ease he seemed in his body, confident in its strength and resilience. I had never possessed that kind of assurance, so I’d faked it with designer underwear and flashy shoes and hoped to be hot enough no one would notice. So far it had worked for me.
There were moments when I thought it might be working for Leo too. And other moments—like this one as he shoved a mound of pillows under my leg—when it seemed more likely I was delusional. I was probably about as sexy as a cheese sandwich or a DIY project to him. Some leftover pieces of a man he’d scraped out of an icy puddle.
“Aren’t you a little old for a boy scout?” I asked.17
He glanced up, gently bewildered. “What?”
“All this.” I gestured vaguely. “Working towards your Good Samaritan badge or something?”
“I should have just left you out there?”
“Nobody else came running like Lassie to the well.”
“Not all these boats are liveaboards. Also you were right outside and screamingfuckquite loudly.”
Shame gave me a solid donkey kick to the stomach. “You should know I’m usually the epitome of stoic masculinity.”
