Innocence (20 page)

It’s as though this is some sort of test I have to overcome to reach my goal.

Dad stands up as I walk down the ward towards Jay’s bed.

I imagine him sitting here as the hours turn into days, the days turn into weeks. It certainly looks like he has, his clothes all crushed and creased, his dark hair unkempt, his face unshaven. He has become folded in on himself, and for the first time I see him as he will be one day—an old man.

“I don’t want to argue with you,” I say, my eyes on the flowers on Jay’s bedside cabinet, so much better and brighter than mine. “I’ve just come to see Jay.”

“Christopher….”

He holds out his hand, the gesture like a peace offering, but I just can’t take the chance right now.

“Please. Just give me a few minutes,” I say.

I let my gaze drift to the still shape beneath the bedclothes.

Inwardly I plead he’ll just go. I’ve not got the strength to fight with him.

“Son—” he starts.

But I shake my head, my hand on the bedclothes steadying me. Whatever conversation he wants to have, I can’t have it now. It’s more than I can take.

I think he realizes. He grasps his coat slung over the back of the chair and steps away.

When he’s gone, I make my way round to the other side of the bed. Even the flowers beautifully arranged in a tall vase next to Jay’s bed smell artificial and unreal. Then it occurs to me, perhaps they have to spray them to rid them of any bugs, anything harmful, the world here held at arm’s length. But I’m not here for the flowers. It’s just so hard for me to look at first, so hard to see Jay’s face and know that his warm smile may never return to it.

A nurse comes over to check the machines monitoring him. I watch as she notes down the figures on the display and checks the tubes he’s hooked up to. She smiles at me kindly.

“Are the machines keeping him alive?” I ask quietly.

She shakes her head. “Not directly. He’s come a long way. He’s breathing above the ventilator…. That means he may not need it much longer.”

And I wasn’t here.

“Can I touch him?”

“He’s your brother, isn’t he?”

I nod.

“I can see the resemblance,” she says, looking between us with a motherly familiarity. She looks like she would be a good mother, and I find myself hoping she has children of her own. “Of course you can touch him.”

She moves on to the next bed, and I close my eyes, blindly searching for Jay’s hand as it lies on top of the blankets.
Where are you, Jay? Where are you?
I think desperately.

His hand is warm. I don’t know what I expected. The light’s artificial, the smell’s artificial, his warmth is the only scrap of proof I have that he’s alive. I slump down in the chair, resting my forehead against the bony shape of his shoulder. I want to take him in my arms, but I’m too scared I’m going to hurt him, sever the fragile link his body still has to the world.

“Please wake up,” I whisper. “Come back to me. I’ll do anything. I’m sorry I haven’t been here. I was just so, so scared. You mean everything to me. We’ll go find Mum, I promise. We’ll do anything you want. Anything.”

I think about what that means, and I know I would. If it meant Jay would come back to me, I would do anything, and I would never regret it, because I would choose that pain a million times over this.

I stay until afternoon visiting hours end, my voice hoarse from promises, a thousand stupid dreams.

I’m empty but strangely calm when I leave and ask at reception for Pixie. I think I see Dad hovering round the exit, smoking, but it might just be my imagination. Pixie is up on a pediatric ward, and when she sees me hanging around, she takes her break early to make me a cup of tea.

The staff room is empty. Exhausted, I sit on a bench and lean back against the row of blue lockers behind me. I close my eyes, only opening them when Pixie hands me a mug of strong sweet tea. I curl my fingers round the handle, thinking about Finn and his arm that doesn’t work.

“How have you been?” she asks.

“Drunk, stupid, irresponsible, take your pick. Jay is the one who’s not woken up.” I don’t mean to sound so self-pitying, but exhaustion is fraying my nerves.

“It’s early days.”

Is it? Aren’t they just days now? Can’t a coma last for weeks, months, years? The chances of patients waking up receding with time? But I bite my tongue. I didn’t come to see Pixie to lash out at her.

“I saw your dad the other day. He said you moved out. I think he’s taking it hard not seeing you.”

“How’s Finn?” I ask, not looking at her. I don’t want to talk about Dad.

She studies me, long fingernails tapping against her mug, eyes bright with curious concern.

“Despite what I said, I can’t stop you seeing him.”

“I’m not interested in being any more than his friend.”

“Yeah, I think I figured that out. You’re in love with Malachi.”

My eyes widen, but I’m too shocked to deny it.

She smiles knowingly, as though my reaction has just confirmed her suspicion and revealed my secret.

“I’m sorry I was such a bitch to you in the corridor that time. I was all over the place after what happened to Finn. It was such a shock. Have you spoken to Malachi about how you feel?”

All sorts of feelings jumble up inside me. It’s painful how much I want to talk about him, even now, even with Jay lying downstairs. I feel crushed under the weight of my guilt.

“For all the good it would do,” I mutter, staring at my tea and making my stomach protest by not drinking it. Really, I need to eat something.

Her brows crease as she stares at me and frowns, making her look older, wiser, and me feel like a stupid kid. She must know how pointless my feelings are.

“He’s straight,” I say by way of explanation.

“Is he?”

I stare at her.

“Malachi’s good at hiding his feelings. Really good. But in all the years I’ve known him, he’s never let his guard down and cared for another soul like he cares for you.”

A
FTER
P
IXIE
has gone back to work, I wait round a little to see Finn. The visiting hours are longer on the general wards, but only a certain amount of visitors are allowed in at a time. When I get in there, he’s sleeping, long limbs sprawled across the bed, his arms and face still bandaged. I sit with him for a while, staring out the window behind his bed at the back roads and alleyways of the hospital, but I don’t want to wake him with my presence, and he needs the rest, so, quietly, I leave. Pixie warned me he might be out of it, the drugs for his pain knock him for six.

But he does come out of it. Every day he wakes up and comes out of it.

I
T
’
S
HALF
six when there is a knock on the hotel room door. I’m curled in bed, watching some game show on the television mounted high on the wall, with the volume off, and I don’t get up until the knock comes again. I’m trying to appear nonchalant because I would never admit in a million years I was waiting for him.

Wrapping the duvet around me, I lumber tiredly to the door to peer through the spyglass to make sure it really is Malachi.

It is, loaded up with a takeaway and two guitars slung on straps round his shoulders. Despite everything I feel myself wanting to smile.

“You just need some cymbals on your knees now and you’d be a regular one-man band,” I say as I open the door.

A wry smile flickers across his lips, though it’s quickly replaced by a much more serious expression as he puts the carrier bag of food down on the floor in the corridor and carefully takes one of the guitars from around his neck. He holds it out to me.

“It’s for you. It’s a six string. They’re easier to play than a twelve, at first.”

The warm nut-colored wood catches the light, making the smooth lacquered surface glow. Intricate blue and green Celtic swirls form a circle on the body beneath the strings. It’s beautiful.

I’ve always loved guitars, ever since I was small, but….

“But… I can’t play,” I say haltingly, feeling the strings flatten against my palm as I take it from him.

“I’ll teach you,” he says quietly, his eyes searching mine.

Leaning down, he picks up the takeaway and stands hesitantly on the doorstep until I finally realize he’s waiting for me to invite him in.

Awkwardly I step aside. The food smells wonderful. I’d forgotten how hungry I was.

I close the door and flop back down on the bed, watching with ravenous impatience as he lays out the takeaway on the dresser, telling me what’s in each container—noodles, rice, chicken chow mein. Truth is I don’t care which box is which, I could eat anything right now, but I’m feeling self-consciously polite, and so I wait until he hands me a plate before devouring the food on it.

Picking at his own food, Malachi looks on, amused. I scowl back at him between mouthfuls.

“Hungry?”

“I don’t need a lecture on blood sugar and hangovers,” I respond grumpily.

I feel like crap, and I know it’s my own fault.

“I wasn’t going to give you one.”

I wonder belatedly if the alcohol thing is a touchy subject with him, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

“Have you eaten at all today?” he asks.

I shake my head. I didn’t feel like it. Nothing could have filled the void inside me earlier today.

The guitar lies on the bed behind me. Every so often I run my fingers across its surface, still unsure whether it’s a gift for me to keep or something for me to borrow. No one has ever given me anything like this before.

After we’ve eaten every single scrap of food out of the boxes, Malachi shows me how to hold the guitar on my lap. Endlessly patient, he teaches me how to strum and pluck and make the shape of a few simple chords with my fingers.

I like the minor chords best. Malachi tries to hide a smirk and tells me with a roll of his eyes that that was predictable.

We play together, just a simple song, an old song—a “standard,” he says, a song lots of people play. I remember it from when I was small, when I used to sit out with Mum, watching him play in the smoky dark. He played it a lot back then. Sudden, overwhelming sadness grips me, and my fingers still against the strings, pressure building in my throat. I’m not going to cry, but I can’t hide how close I am.

Malachi stops playing. I know he’s looking at me.

Gently he puts his guitar down on the floor and leans it against the bed.

I close my eyes, because I am not going to fall apart in front of him again. But as soon as his hand circles my shoulder and his warmth presses against me, there is nothing I can do to stop it.

I bury my face in his soft shirt and grip him tight like I wanted to do this morning.

When his hand strokes down the back of my neck, making me shiver through my tears, I won’t let myself imagine there is anything more to his touch than comfort. And it is comforting. Everything about this comforts me: the feel of him, so solid and unwavering, and the scent of him, faintly engine oil and wood smoke mixed in with a scent that is uniquely his. It’s a scent I can’t replicate in my dreams, but that I recognize almost as if it’s part of me nonetheless, and a fire burns deep in my gut because of it.

His heart thumps steady and strong against my shoulder, and I try and deepen my breathing in time to the rise and fall of his chest, knowing that in a minute he is going to realize I’m okay and will let go of me.

But for a long time, he doesn’t, and I begin to wonder if we can get in a more comfortable position or if getting close to him really is so far out of reach.

“Lie down with me,” I murmur, fully expecting him to ignore me and pull away.

I keep my eyes on his shirt, where the dark fabric meets his neck, and lower down around his collarbone, at the dark hairs there. For the past two weeks I’ve not even woken up with a hard-on, but I’m beginning to feel a familiar heat below my navel, and though my cock doesn’t swell or stiffen, being close to him like this makes it come alive to the possibility.

Without saying a word, we clamber up the bed until we’re lying side by side, his arm still slung round me, my head on his shoulder. Cautiously I place my hand on his hip, wishing I had the guts to shift closer.

With the hand that’s not round my back, he strokes my hair again. It makes me want to purr and push against him like a cat.

“I went to see Jay this afternoon.” My words sound muffled against his top. If I turn my lips until they press against the soft material, it’s as though I’m kissing him.

“How is he?”

His voice vibrates through me, and I find myself wishing I could stay like this.

“He’s still not woken up,” I whisper.

Talking about Jay with Malachi is hard, but it hurts less than with anyone else somehow. Maybe it’s because I know he cares—or at least I think he does—about both of us.

“No change?”

Reluctantly I pull away slightly to look up at him.

“He’s nearly breathing on his own. But he doesn’t even smell the same anymore.” I’m mortified by the way my voice breaks over those last words.

Malachi draws me closer, his expression lost in its own well of pain, and I let my face drop against his shoulder.

“What about your dad? Did you see him?”

“Yes.” I sigh heavily. “He was at the hospital, but I didn’t want to talk to him.” Without meaning to I bunch the fabric of Malachi’s shirt in my fist, grazing his bare stomach with my fingertips, feeling his skin shiver against my touch. “He chucked me out. I can’t talk to him.”

Malachi shrugs, the movement liquid. “He’s your dad.”

I move my head to look at him, to try and figure him out, and instead find myself lost in his gaze. Flecks of amber are scattered across the brown of his irises—a constellation of tiny stars. The blackness of his pupils grows large enough to swallow me.

And there, almost instantaneously, like the flick of some metaphoric switch, the atmosphere between us changes, becomes electrically charged like last night in the club. Except I’m not angry at everything this time, instead I’m just helplessly turned-on. We’re so close, his lips inches from mine, his breath on my skin, and my heart beating loud as a fucking bell. The pressure in my balls as my cock hardens is sweet and achy, and imperceptibly I move my hips so that my erection is trapped tightly between Malachi’s hip and my stomach. He must
know
.