Fuck, I really don’t.
With shaking hands, he pulled the cash Dante had given from his pocket and dumped it in a nearby bin, but even without it burning a hole in his pocket, it still followed him as he walked away. The fresh air of the outside world became a suffocating cloud of invisible smoke. Acrid and thick, it filled his throat, closing it off like he was breathing through a straw of an orange Capri-Sun, the only thing him and Dante had ever drunk until they’d figured out how to break into Ma’s gin cabinet.
Luis’s lungs heaved. He was a mile away from the bedsit, and his legs weren’t working.
The cafe was around the next corner. The temptation to stumble back into Paolo’s life was so strong Luis could taste it, but the memory of Dante’s leer won out. Staying away from Paolo was the only way. Perhaps one day, after—
No. Don’t you get it? You never fit with his life in the first place. He deserves better than you. Luis thought of Nonna pottering around her room at the nursing home with no clue half the time who Paolo was. Of Toni scowling at any soul who dared to come near him, saving his good humour for Paolo and Luis. Fuck, they all do.
Somehow, Luis made it home. The exterior door had been busted down a few nights before—a police raid on the ganja dude upstairs—and was still wide open. Luis ducked into the house and hurried to his own front door. The bedsit was the same spartan piece of shit it had been since he’d moved in, but without Paolo keeping him warm, the barren walls had become his only sanctuary.
He shut the door behind him and leant against it, closing his eyes. The battered wood was warm to his numb skin. Paolo’s storage-heater sorcery had worked, and the bedsit was no longer as cold as it was outside.
Neither was Luis’s heart. Or his nerves as they jangled and buzzed, alive with a fear that had nothing to do with the imminent drugs run.
He pushed off the door and drifted to the kitchen. His legs still felt weak, and his hands still shook. You need to eat. He opened the cupboard and stared, unseeing, at the handful of provisions leftover from the last time he’d shopped. When was that? Damn, he had no idea. And he wasn’t hungry. Hadn’t been since the last meal he’d shared with Paolo.
But he had to eat. Tomorrow he’d need his wits about him, not to be on his knees with low blood sugar.
He opened a can of spaghetti hoops and emptied it into his only saucepan. The hob was slow to heat. Lights off, Luis gripped the counter and let his eyes fall closed again, wondering if it was possible to fall asleep standing up. If, perhaps, after days of tossing and turning in his lumpy bed, this was the answer, a slow, hypnotic sway over a tin of Heinz.
The metallic snap of the letterbox roused him. Startled, he opened his eyes to find the carby orange gloop in the saucepan was boiling. He turned it off and ventured into the hallway. An envelope was on the floor by the front door.
He picked it up and turned it over. His name was scrawled on one side, and it was sealed shut with thick brown parcel tape. Jesus fucking Christ, please tell me that bellend hasn’t dropped the package off here . . .
But the thought tailed off as Luis looked closer at his scribbled name. At the exaggerated capital letters and barely legible lowercase. He knew that handwriting. He’d spent the last two months staring at it, deciphering it, and producing plates of food in the hope that he’d got it right. “Should’ve been a doctor, right? Shame I’m all beauty and no brains.”
Paolo’s face, alive with his sardonic grin, flashed into Luis’s brain, filling every sense and facet. Heart pounding, he tore the envelope open. Bank notes, twenties and tens, fluttered to the floor, along with Luis’s rent card and a scrap of paper torn from the cafe’s order pad. Luis ignored the card and the money and scrambled for the note.
Luis,
Here’s your wages from the last however long. I don’t even know, but your tax records are up to date, so there’s that. I hope you’re okay and enjoying whatever you’re doing now. Let me know if you need a reference and I’ll post it to you.
P
The note slipped from Luis’s fingers. He slid slowly to the floor, surrounded by money he’d earned with honest graft, early mornings and long days spent side by side with a man who’d claimed a long-dead piece of his heart. A new ache tore a hole in Luis’s chest.
With a guttural moan, he put his head in his hands and cried.
18
Paolo strode away from Luis’s bedsit, rain driving into his face, disguising the angry tears enough that he could pretend they weren’t there. On the way over, he’d pictured reaching for the letterbox and the door opening at just the right moment. Luis meeting his gaze, and everything that had torn them apart disappearing as if it had never been there at all.
His imagination hadn’t counted on Luis not being home, but as he left the dark bedsit behind without bothering to knock, the cynic in him reasoned that it was just as well. Their last encounter had turned violent, and Luis had walked away. Worse, Paolo had let him and had done nothing to fix it in six long days. How did they come back from that?
We don’t. He doesn’t want your life, and you don’t want his. It sounded so simple on those terms, but the words scraped Paolo’s soul. It was true; he didn’t want to be part of the world Luis had come from, but he didn’t believe Luis did either. He couldn’t believe that the growing, innocent pride he’d seen in Luis every day he’d worked at the cafe hadn’t been real. It wasn’t Paolo’s place to proclaim a bacon sandwich worth more than whatever bullshit Dante Pope was peddling, but fuck, to Luis it was. It had to be, or Paolo really had shared his bed with a stranger.
Lost, Paolo caught the bus home. With all the stops, it was a five-minute journey, but the rush hour traffic was backed up to the cash-and-carry. Paolo found a window seat and settled in, tipping his head against the steamed-up glass and watching his tiny slice of the city go by without seeing a single thing. Luis was like a vice around his heart, clenching tighter and tighter the further Paolo got from the bedsit. What is it about this dude? Paolo could admit to himself that he loved Luis, but he’d loved others before. Wanted them. Needed them. But he’d never loved anyone like he loved Luis. Never with so much of himself and so little left behind now Luis was gone.
He’s not gone, though, is he? It’s not like he’s died.
Felt like it, though.
Paolo’s gaze fell on the cafe as the high street came into view. The council paint on the pavement was still there, clumsily plastered over the message Dante’s crew had left on the concrete. He still had no clue what it meant. Just that it had frightened Luis enough to push him over the edge and drive him away from Paolo for good. Had that been Dante’s intention? Or had it been a warning to Luis about something else? Something deeper and more sinister than Paolo could imagine. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know, but he couldn’t seem to let it go. Couldn’t let Luis go. This couldn’t be it. There had to be something else he could do.
But what? He’d paid Luis up to date. Filed his taxes. Tapped out a dozen messages he’d never sent. Spent hours at a time with his thumb hovering over Luis’s number. Call him. Worse-case scenario, he doesn’t answer. And Paolo could’ve handled a tangible reason to give up and walk away. This silence? Nah. It was killing him.