Make Me Soar (37 page)

“So I’m writing about these two teenagers, yeah? Sometimes when I’m writing, the characters start talking to me, and the plot goes off in a direction I hadn’t anticipated.” Alan took a deep breath. “Well, that happened this morning.” He couldn’t hold back the shiver that coursed through him.

“Okay.” Dorian placed his hand on Alan’s thigh and slid it under the robe, stroking the thigh muscle, the motion slow and gentle.

Alan smiled at him. “That feels nice.” He kept his fingers in Dorian’s hair, loving the feel of the silky strands. “So there I was, suddenly writing a situation where one of my main characters is diagnosed with depression.” He swallowed. “For the first time in many years, I found myself thinking about someone.” When Dorian didn’t respond but simply waited, he continued. “Luke and I grew up together. We were at infant school, then junior school, and then the same high school. It was Luke who first convinced me I was gay.”

Dorian opened his eyes wider. “He convinced you?”

Alan made an impatient noise at the back of his throat. “I’m expressing myself badly here. I should have said, it was being around Luke, spending time with him at school and at the weekends, which gave me my first indication that I was gay.” He smiled. “I was crazy about him. I know it sounds like such a cliché, but I was in love with my best friend.”

“Oh.” The noise was soft, Dorian’s smile warm. “And how did Luke feel about you? Did he know you were gay?”

Alan nodded. “I came out to him when we were both sixteen. We were sitting in my bedroom one Saturday afternoon. I’d wanted to say something before, but I’d always been too nervous. Anyway, there we were. Luke was laughing about something, looking so…
beautiful
, and all of a sudden the words were
right there
. I was shaking while I said them, hardly daring to look at him. He went quiet for a minute, so quiet that my heart was hammering, and then….” The memory rose up in his mind, the feel of Luke’s lips against his. Their first kiss, so innocent, so tender. Alan closed his eyes, swallowing past the lump in his throat.

“You okay?”

He could hear the concern in Dorian’s tone.

Alan inhaled deeply before opening his eyes. He pushed out a long, shaky breath. “Yeah, I’m fine.” Well, maybe not
fine
, but he was in control of himself, which was more than he had been earlier. “Luke was my first,” he said quietly.

“Oh wow.” Dorian grinned. “You started early.”

The note of humor eased the tightness in Alan’s chest, and he returned Dorian’s grin with an eye roll. “Oh God, we were so horny.” He laughed. “You’d think we’d invented sex, the way we went at it.” He shook his head. “It makes me laugh when the people who write the guidelines for YA books demand that there be little sex. Teenagers are the horniest little beasts on the planet. All those hormones, rampaging through their bodies?” Alan chuckled. “In this day and age, whoever thinks kids under eighteen aren’t thinking about sex—or
having
sex, for that matter—is deluded.”

Dorian laughed. “I’d have to agree with you.” He fell silent, staring up at Alan with rapt attention. “What happened?”

And just like that the humor vanished, the tender, sweet memories swept away. The recollection of that dreadful day was so sharp, it took Alan’s breath away.

Twenty years ago….
It might have been a long time since he’d thought about Luke, but apparently time hadn’t diminished the sting of that day.

He stroked Dorian’s hair, focused on keeping his breathing even. “Luke’s parents caught us.” Dorian’s hand stilled on his thigh, and he heard the low gasp. “It was awful. They’d gone visiting Luke’s grandparents, and we didn’t expect them back so soon. They found us in bed together, and Luke’s dad hit the roof. He yelled at us to get dressed, and then he told me to get into the car. I wondered where on earth he was taking me, but I was too scared to ask. I was shaking like a leaf, and Luke was ashen. His mother just kept shaking her head and telling Luke how disappointed they were in him.” He could still picture Luke’s strained white face and quivering lips, though not a sound escaped them.

Dorian said nothing but resumed his slow stroking of Alan’s thigh, face upturned.

“I can remember twisting around in the front seat to see out of the back window, watching Luke, standing at the lounge window before his mother dragged him away. And then his dad drove me home.” Alan could still feel the cold fury that had emanated from Mr. Hemmingway, the silence that cut into his flesh during the short journey.

Shit, how could I have forgotten this… pain?
God, it was acute, fresh and raw, like it was yesterday. He concentrated on the feel of Dorian’s gentle hand, those gorgeous eyes focused on him.

“My parents didn’t react the way he’d expected. I thought they were brilliant, considering this…
gorilla
turned up on their doorstep, outing their son at the top of his voice and demanding that they keep me away from Luke.”

“Oh, my God.” Dorian’s mouth fell open, his calm fleeing him. “What did your parents do?”

Alan sighed. “They told Mr. Hemmingway to calm down and then sent him on his way. When they got me inside, my mum hugged me so tightly, I thought my ribs would crack. Any fears I’d had about their reaction melted into nothingness when they both reassured me they didn’t have a problem with me being gay and that Luke’s father would calm down, given time.”

“And did he?”

Alan stared into the fire. “No. The next day Luke didn’t come to school. I tried ringing his house, but no one answered. I wanted to go round there, but Mum made me swear not to, in case I made things worse. So I promised her and did nothing. Well,
almost
nothing—I wrote letters, one a day for about a month. All I wanted was to hear from him, to make sure he was okay, but there wasn’t a single word from him. Then one day it was announced in school that Luke had transferred to another high school.”

“Oh no.” Dorian moved closer.

Alan nodded. “As soon as school was out, I dashed round to Luke’s house. They weren’t there.” He lowered his gaze to meet Dorian’s. “And by that I mean they no longer lived there. The house was up for sale.” He could picture the for sale sign, could remember peering through the windows at the empty rooms. He’d stood there in the cold December rain, soaked to the skin, unable to process it all.

“Sir, I’m so sorry.” Dorian’s quiet voice broke the silence. “Did you ever hear from Luke after that?”

Alan shook his head. “I was devastated. I couldn’t believe his parents would go so far as to move, just to split us up. Talk about an overreaction. My parents told me I’d get over him, that there’d be other boyfriends to come along at some point. They said it would get better. And yeah, after a while, the pain of losing my best friend—
and
my first boyfriend—lessened, and I got used to him not being around. After all, I had my studies, exams….” He heaved a sigh. “Time really is a great healer. I got on with my life, went to university, met other guys…. It wasn’t until two or three years after he’d left that I finally got news of him.”

Dorian’s hand crept around his. “It wasn’t good, was it?”

Alan clung on to that hand. “When I was at uni, I met someone on the Psychology course, Trish, who’d known the family.”

Dorian opened his eyes wide. “Whoa, it’s a small world. How did you end up talking about Luke?”

“The topic of the lecture that particular day was depression, and Trish was sharing some personal stuff with the class about her neighbor, this lad who’d transferred to her school. When she said his name was Luke, I never thought for one minute that it was
my
Luke. I mean, why would I? I was studying in London, far from Manchester. It was only afterward that we got talking and both of us realized we’d grown up not far from each other. I mentioned Luke and asked for the family name, which led to the discovery that we had a mutual friend. In fact, Luke had been her best friend for a while.”

Dorian arched his eyebrows. “That’s amazing.”

Alan nodded. “Turns out the family had moved to Tyldesley, in the northwest of the region. Luke had transferred to Trish’s school. He and Trish clicked almost immediately, but not long after they met she sensed a change in him, she said. It seems he’d been diagnosed with depression, about six months after the move. His parents became overly protective of him, to the point where he’d apparently felt smothered by them. They started homeschooling him, for one thing. Trish and Luke had gotten close, but once
this
happened, they only got an hour each day to chat, usually over the garden fence that separated their houses.”

“Did she know he was gay? Did he tell her?”

Alan nodded. “I was relieved that he had someone he could confide in, but then something changed. Trish felt Luke was afraid to be himself, sick of his parents forever telling him how he should be—in other words, demanding that he wasn’t to be gay. It sounds like things got really bad. They denigrated him constantly, so much so that Luke became an emotional wreck.” He tightened his grip on Dorian’s hand, his throat seizing as he spoke. “Trish used to hear the arguments, the way Luke’s dad would yell at him all the time. She said she often saw Luke in the garden, crying, and it tore her heart out. After that, she saw him less and less.” Alan’s voice cracked. “Luke committed suicide.”

Dorian was on his knees in an instant, tugging Alan into his arms, holding him close, his lips pressed against Alan’s cheek. Alan could feel Dorian’s hot tears on his face. He kept a tight rein on his own tears that threatened to burst out of him and focused on the arms of Dorian, solid against him, warming him through the soft fabric of their robes. They remained like that, Dorian on his knees, arms wrapped around Alan, the sound of their breathing loud in the quiet of the lounge. Alan closed his eyes and drank him in, the scent of warm skin, clean cotton robe, the faintest whiff of Dorian’s shampoo still lingering from the night before.

He had no idea how long they held each other, but finally they parted as Dorian drew back.

“I’m sorry, Sir,” he croaked, his voice thick with emotion. “I tried to stay objective, but you looked so unhappy, and there was such sadness in your voice, that I….” He hiccupped. “Some counselor
I’d
make.”

Alan ignored his last words and clung to Dorian, still breathing in the comforting scent that reminded him of warm mornings in bed, his sub sleeping in his arms, everything at peace with the world.

“Shhh. It’s okay.” Dorian’s distress pierced the haze of grief that enveloped him, reminding him sharply of their roles. He was touched by Dorian’s desire to comfort him. Alan caught Dorian under the chin and lifted his face to kiss him softly. “Thank you, Dorian.” He kissed away the moisture at the corners of his eyes, the taste salty as he licked his lips. Dorian gave a heavy sigh and buried his face at Alan’s neck, his breathing growing more regular.

When Dorian had composed himself, he sat back at Alan’s feet, studying him. “So thinking about your character brought it all back?” He sniffed and wiped his eyes with his hand.

Alan nodded, glad they were moving things back onto the path of normality. “I found myself going over and over my memories of Luke, wondering if there were signs of his oncoming depression that I’d missed, something that might have helped him.” He gave a small huff. “I know that’s illogical—I was
sixteen
, for God’s sake, what could
I
have done?—but my mind just veered off down that path.” He stroked Dorian’s cheek. “I suppose what struck me most was my sense of guilt.”

Dorian stared at him. “Like you said, Sir, you were sixteen! What could you have done?”

Alan snorted. “I could have stood up for us. That’s one thing. Maybe
not
made that promise to my mum and gone round to see him. Maybe made more of an effort to track him down, instead of just giving up the way I did. Maybe—”

Dorian shook his head vehemently. “Maybe
nothing
. You were
kids
. And by the sound of things, this Mr. Hemmingway was an asshole. How come you never got to hear about the suicide? Stuff like teenage suicide usually hits the local news at least.”

“I’m not surprised we heard nothing,” Alan said with a sigh. “The Hemmingways were Catholic. I can’t imagine they’d want news like that spread around, yeah? Trish didn’t think it was common knowledge, put it that way.”

“Possibly,” Dorian conceded. “It sounds like they couldn’t handle Luke’s depression, if you ask me. And ask yourself this. What kicked it off in the first place, hmm?
Their
actions,” he stressed.

“See, that all makes perfect sense, but….” Alan hung his head. “How could I just
forget
Luke? Okay, so this all happened twenty years ago, and yes, at the time I was a mess. But to simply push my memories aside and get on with my life….” He raised his chin to meet Dorian’s solemn expression. “It’s like he was never there. Oh, now and again something would remind me of him, of us, but most of the time?” He shook his head.

Dorian laid his hand on Alan’s knee, a knowing look on his face. “This was a really traumatic experience for you. I don’t think you ever forgot Luke
completely
. I just think your subconscious tried to deal with the pain by blotting it out. You never got to say good-bye to him, did you? So you never confronted your feelings, you never had closure. It was easier to just
bury
everything, all the emotion, the trauma, the memories.” He cocked his head to one side. “But Luke found his way into your life in other ways.”

Alan knitted his brows together. “What do you mean?”

Dorian smiled. “I think your desire to be a Dom stems from that whole situation. You had no control, Sir. Your respective parents made all the decisions. I think, subconsciously, you decided that
you
were going to be in control from then on.”

Alan fell silent, his mind turning over Dorian’s suggestion. He couldn’t deny it made sense.