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She was laughing as she closed the hatch. And laughing as she and Dad made their way back up the towpath. She’d probably still be laughing when they got home.
And I found I was hugging Mr. Froderick a little more tightly. Leo, meanwhile, had his back to me and was putting things away with slightly too much intensity for the task. I pulled myself upright and hobble-shuffled to the dinette with Mr. F under my arm.
“Um,” I said.
Leo was still folding his beanie. An item totally unneeding of folding. “Yeah?”
I stared at his back. Tried not to remember the moonlit slope of it as I’d fucked him. “Sorry—sorry about my parents.”
“Your parents are amazing, Marius.”
“Yes.” The surface of the table was smooth wood, no visual hooks to distract me. “Yes, I know.”
In a medium-sized narrowboat, silence had a way of filling the space until it felt like you could drown in it.
I scraped a nail over nothing.
“Um,” I said. And then, in a humiliating, helpless rush, “Mr. Froderick feels he might have been completely…completely unforgiveable.”
Some of the tension faded from Leo’s shoulders. He closed the cupboard and came to sit down opposite me. It felt far too close. Of course, we’d been physically closer—much closer—but this was just him and me, no escape from his eyes, or his smile, or the fact that treating Leo badly hadn’t been the protection I’d thought it would be.
After a moment or two, he reached out and stroked Mr. F’s arm. “You know this is adorable, right? Unexpected. But adorable.”
“It’s embarrassing.”
“You’re wrong about that. When I was growing up, I had no reason to value anything I had. It was all endlessly replaceable. I love that you have so much in your life that couldn’t be.”
The thought of Mr. Froderick being replaced made me slightly nauseous. “I’m a bit concerned he’s going to fall out the boat somehow.”
“He won’t,” said Leo, with what I hoped was fully deservedconfidence. “He probably shouldn’t sit on the roof or try his hand at the tiller. But we’ll take good care of him.”
Theweshould have made me nauseous too. But perhaps I was all out of stomach-stirring emotions for now. Which might have gone some way to explain why my mouth suddenly vomited out, “I…I really am sorry, Leo.”
He looked at me for a long, unpleasant moment. I had no idea what he was seeing at this point. Nothing I would have curated for him at any rate. “I guess,” he said at last, “it’s okay.”
“Is it?”
“Your parents were really understanding. That helped.”
“Do you want to hug Mr. F?”
That earned me another long look.
“He gives better hugs than I do,” I explained.
“I think that’s open to debate.”
“No,” I said, “it isn’t.”
“Well…” Leo held out his hands. “All right then.”
I passed him Mr. Froderick, and Leo gave him the tenderest of squeezes. Turning slightly towards the window, I watched the patterns of brightness the sun cast across the ice, like shadows in reverse.
Then I managed, “I don’t know why I said it—any of it.” The sky was that rare, crystalline winter-day blue. Vivid enough to streak even the grey-brown waters of the Thames with silver. “I think I felt exposed. So I lashed out. But I shouldn’t have lashed out at you.”36
“You hated it that much?” he asked. “Me getting to know you a little?”
“I’m a lot more attractive when I’m not known.”
