Rhapsody on a Theme (7 page)

“Just thinking,” Darren said and let go with one final, perfunctory kiss. “Thinking that I’m lucky to have someone sitting in there with me. C’mon.” He took Jayden’s hand and turned back towards the car. “I’ll drop you at the office afterwards.”

Jayden smiled, squeezed the gloved hand in his, and enjoyed the warm flutter in his stomach.

Jayden worked for the local paper.

He’d gotten an internship at the end of his degree, and it had turned into a permanent job working on the arts and culture sections and a fair chunk of the website. It had been a relief to have it offered, the way the economy had been when he’d graduated (and kind of still now, honestly) even if the pay was a bit tight. It was lucky he had Darren, really. Between them, they could make ends meet and live a fairly comfortable lifestyle together, but on his own…

Maybe this coffee ban would help with the budget.

Darren dropped him off at the office after lunch at Southsea; Jayden had opted for a half-day so that he could go to the doctor with him, and his boss Stephanie smiled at him as he hurried out of the lift.

“Everything okay, honey?”

Stephanie was in her fifties, a fat woman with a motherly sort of air, and whose idea of management was to make sure everyone was at their assigned desks for vaguely the right times. She clearly thought Jayden was sweet and kept asking about ‘that
boyfriend
of yours’ in the same tone Charley used to when they’d first got together. Jayden suspected—and office rumour certainly thought—that Stephanie wrote erotic romance novels. Jayden privately thought they were probably gay novels, with how much interest Stephanie showed in his relationship.

“Yeah,” he said, dropping down at his desk. She followed him with a large mug of her favourite sweet tea. “I have to stop him drinking coffee, apparently, which is never going to happen because he’s like addicted. I might try and get him on crack cocaine instead.” One of his colleagues sniggered, and Stephanie beamed.

“Ooh, I know the feeling.” She chuckled. “Is he back at work, then?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Good. Never does to let them mope!” she said, with the air of someone experienced—though Jayden had never asked—and wobbled away across the office floor towards her own desk.

Jayden liked his job and his colleagues, really. They were nice enough people—a bit quick to assume things about him because he was gay (that was how he’d ended up with the arts and culture section,
and
the arts blog on the website) but well-meaning. He didn’t feel like he had to hide here, and Darren had once kissed him in the car park and they’d been seen by half the floor on their fag break, but nobody had said anything except for Melinda, a pretty girl with pink hair who worked in advertising, who’d said, “He’s a bit of a looker, your boyfriend,” and nothing else on the subject. Without ever having announced it, he was out. And unlike school and university, nobody cared that he was gay, and nobody took not knowing his boyfriend as a reason to dislike him.

He’d never thought he’d have been happy here: a local paper, a blog with less than a hundred hits a day, and a little unpaid directing and scriptwriting role in the local am-drams. He kept a notebook in his desk for script ideas and scenes, when work was too slow, and his phone on his desk to text Darren during the day—or rather, receive a semi-steady stream of offensive, public-insulting, police-hating rants
from
Darren in varying degrees of seriousness and irritation, and…he was happy. Jayden was
happy
here, so far away from his teenage dreams, and it was taking a little getting used to.

He settled in—mostly his mornings consisted of filtering through the hundreds of mis-addressed emails that
should
be going to the editor or the advertising manager instead of him, but were sent to him anyway as the blog owner for the arts—and re-emptied his in-tray onto his desk in his chaotic way of working that Darren called ‘spastic’ because, when you got right down to it, Jayden actually dated a bit of a prick, really.

“How was your Christmas?” Gina asked over the top of her laptop screen. Gina was the only person in the office close to Jayden’s age (and she was closer to thirty than twenty) and they talked mostly out of a need to discuss TV shows the others didn’t watch or decried as part of that whole ‘young people these days’ thing.

“Pretty good,” Jayden said. “Yours?”

She grimaced, as he’d expected. Gina and her fiancé were in the process of trying to adopt. Jayden didn’t know why they didn’t just have their own baby, and he didn’t want to ask in case it was some big horrible reason, but he had decided from Gina’s horror stories of how awful the social workers were and how one at Southampton City Council had basically accused her boyfriend of being racist that he and Darren were never adopting. (Jayden didn’t know how the racism thing even worked, given Gina’s boyfriend was from Bangladesh and Gina’s parents were both from Barbados, but…)

“Could have been better,” she said, “
but
we did get approved to foster, so progress!”

She held up her crossed fingers; Jayden crossed his own and smiled.

“So we should be able to get Beth by February,” she said, referring to the baby they were trying to adopt. She was just a year old, and Gina’s desk was littered with pictures of her. “I’m terrified.”

“Don’t be,” Jayden said. “You’ll be a great mum.”

“Yeah, but it’s so much harder with adopted kids.”

“Doesn’t have to be,” Jayden said, shrugging and binning a half-dozen emails at once. “My Dad adopted me.”

“But that’s in-family, that’s…”

“Yeah, but he’s not my
dad-dad
, if you know what I mean,” Jayden pushed. “I mean, it’s like dead obvious, I look nothing like him at
all
and my little sister does and even my boyfriend commented on it when we first got together.”

“When
did
you guys get together?” Gina interrupted. “Stephanie was saying you’ve been together forever and I was like, are you kidding, Jay’s only like twenty!”

“Twenty-three.”

“No
way
.”

“Ye-eah.” Jayden pulled a face at her. “I was twenty-three in September. And it’s been, like…seven years.” He went red.

“Oh my God, seven
years
?” Gina yelped. “You were—wait—sixteen? Oh my God, you were
sixteen
, and you’re still together?”

“Yep.”

“Wow,” Gina said and wheeled her chair around the desk entirely to stare at him. She was exactly the kind of woman Jayden liked to keep Darren away from: clever, funny, sensible, nice, and very, very pretty. “
My
boyfriend when I was sixteen didn’t last seven
months
, and was a total prick, and…how? I mean, you know, people change and grow up and all that shit and how?”

Jayden shrugged, biting his lip. “I don’t know,” he said eventually. “Darren’s…Darren’s never really changed. I think he was old before he was ten, you know? And I guess…I didn’t change enough that I wanted to let him go, or he wanted out. So we’re still here.”

“That’s adorable,” Gina said very seriously and beamed. “Are you going to get married?”

Jayden flushed scarlet and planted his face firmly into his hand. “
No
,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because we don’t want to get married!” he exclaimed. “I’m twenty-three, I shouldn’t be
married
at twenty-three!”

“I was twenty-five when Cal proposed to me,” Gina pointed out. “We’re only not married yet because we’re saving up for Beth.” The other reason, that Gina was the kind of girl who could and would blow twenty grand on a wedding
easy
, went unsaid. Mostly because it was wholly unnecessary to say it.

“Yeah, well, we don’t want to get married,” Jayden said and grinned. “But Darren’s best friend from school—well, one of them—is getting married to some girl he met last
summer
, and I can’t wait to watch this car crash of a wedding.” Maybe it was uncharitable but…but who cared? It
would
be, because Ethan was the
last
person who should be marrying
anyone
, and Jayden couldn’t wait to see what the fabled ugly Lillian was like.

“That’s brilliant,” Gina said, snapping her fingers and retreating to her desk again. “Are you going to have kids, once you get married in like one year?”

“No, and we won’t!” Jayden said, not sure which part applied to which implication.

“You will!” she sang. “I’ve seen you snogging in the car park! You don’t want to let a man like that get away, Jayden; get him married!”

“He’s not going anywhere,” Jayden said loftily.

“Mm,” Gina said and winked. “Just saying. If you don’t want him, I’ll have him for when mine’s got his business trips to London.”

“Hands off,” Jayden said tartly, throwing a crumpled-up Post-It note at her, and she dodged it, giggling. “And anyway, I don’t want kids, with Darren or anybody else. I don’t even like kids.” Neither did Darren, albeit he was at least
comfortable
with them. Jayden was barely used to his own sister. He just felt awkward and nervous around kids; Darren was just generally bored by them.

“Missing out,” Gina said. “I want a
football
team of kids. Beth is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Jayden’s phone buzzed. “I don’t even like spending a week at my mum’s anymore in case my little sister decides she likes me again,” he said, flipping it open.

“Boyfriend?”

“You’re scary,” he said, opening Darren’s text.

“It’s the way your face softens when he texts you,” she said, then added harshly: “Plus, he’s like the only person who does.” That was a lie—Jayden was still in contact with Leah and Tim, they were just both abroad at the minute, and there were a couple of people from Bristol he still talked to. Rachel just didn’t text much. And Paul and Ethan tended to bother Darren, not him.

…Okay, so maybe she had a point.

“What’s he say?”

Jayden shrugged. “Not much.”
Meet me @ gym @ 9.30? my round @ chippie :) x
. A fairly average invite on Darren’s boxing days. “Anyway, he’s not the
only
person who texts me.”

“No, but…”

He opened the blog site and reviewed the comments from the last post, letting the debate wash around his work. It was such low-level, unimportant, never-going-to-change-the-world-or-make-him-famous stuff, but…

But he kind of liked it here.

* * * *

Jayden was sitting on the wall when Darren left the gym.

Grangefields Boxing Gym was in a converted warehouse in the industrial estate maybe a mile west of where they lived. Unless he got out of work especially late, Darren tended to drive home, change, and jog to the classes. Sometimes Jayden met him after class and they went home via their favourite chippie, and sometimes Darren jogged home too, or caught a lift off Mike, one of the other regulars. Sometimes he did none of that, and drove.

It was a chilly night, and Jayden was banging the heels of his trainers off the wall. He didn’t climb down when Darren came out, instead giving him a dirty look and prodding him in the chest with a toe, probably silently protesting the cold. Not Darren’s fault. So Darren grinned, catching the ankle and squeezing it.

“Fish and chips?” he offered.

“It had better be a damn big portion,” Jayden threatened.

“I promised, didn’t I?” Darren said, and Jayden jumped down. The absence of anyone else in the little yard used as a car park let Jayden press a cold kiss to his mouth briefly before stepping away and offering a gloved hand to hold.

“Why, though?”

Darren rolled his eyes. “You’re so suspicious.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Well,” Darren fumbled his phone out of the pocket of his jeans and handed it over, “the IM with Ethan.” It had been conducted while he’d been writing up a scene report at work, and outed him as a (rusty) pianist to Archie, his immediate boss, who’d just about laughed himself sick at the idea of Darren ‘poncing about in one o’ them concerts, like!’ The whole team seemed to find it either funny, or outright ridiculous. Darren supposed it didn’t quite fit with his image anymore.

Jayden quieted while he scrolled through it, and Darren fought the urge to hunch in on himself.
Don’t get defensive
, he told himself.
It’s not a bad thing, and you can always say no. There’s no shame in saying no
.

“Oh,” Jayden said. “He wants you to play at the wedding?”

“Ceremony and reception,” Darren agreed.

“Oh,” Jayden repeated. “Um. Can you?”

“You don’t lose music, Jayden, it just gets a bit crappier,” Darren said, and Jayden laughed a little. When Darren glanced aside, there was an anxious pinch around the corners of Jayden’s eyes.

“I suppose what I meant is,
should
you?”

Darren exhaled. A mist formed briefly, and he frowned at the blips of orange the streetlights made against the late December sky. “It’s piano,” he said, which was first and foremost the biggest consideration. Piano had never…never fucked him up the way the violin could. But then, he hadn’t played—
properly
played—either instrument since the stabbing. He’d never returned to classical music, or performing. And the depression had not been at its worst when he’d been a teenager, when he’d last tried piano.

But then, the worst had been three, four years ago now too.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly.

Jayden squeezed his hand.

After a pause, Darren decided upon, “Piano didn’t
used
to trigger me, but then the violin didn’t
always
trigger me either. But now…”

“Now you can’t even listen to a string orchestra on the car radio,” Jayden murmured softly, and his face was soft and worried in the gloom.

“Yeah,” Darren said and ruthlessly crushed the swell of bitterness at how pathetic it had all become.

“Stop it,” Jayden whispered gently, pulling them to a halt under one of the streetlamps on the approach to the main road and the run of shops that included the chippie. “Stop it.”