This is Not a Love Story (29 page)

Scowling, I put the phone away and glance sidelong at her. Money? I’ve got no money. I didn’t even think that far ahead.

I thrust the phone back in my trousers and ball my frozen hands into fists and shove them in Crash’s coat pocket. The back of my fingers brushes against something. A leaden weight settles on my chest as I realize I have Crash’s wallet.

He got cash out this morning to top up my phone. He knew it was in here when he gave it to me. He must have. This hurts so fucking much when I think of how I left him. How I gave him no consideration at all. I close my eyes against the rain. Sometimes it’s so much easier not to care for anyone.

I stare down the road at the never-ending stream of cars, trying to suppress the hopeless panic I suddenly feel—it’s the same way I used to feel as Julian disappeared with some stranger, and I waited for him, imagining I might never see him again. Fuck… where is he? Even if he doesn’t want me anymore, I’ve got to find him and help him see there is more than this, so much more than this dirty, gray, oppressive, fucking city.

I get up and, as an afterthought, blindly root around in the wallet and pull out a note. It’s a ten. I hold it out to the girl. I know Crash would want me to give it to her.

She stuffs it into her top and nods in thanks, and I walk back out into the rain. I hear a car pull up behind me, a door slam. I don’t know what makes me turn around and look. Maybe I have acquired a sixth sense for trouble, living out here for so long, but when I do, I see the girl pinned up against the back of the shelter by a man in a black hooded top I assume to be her pimp. Her eyes are trained on me, her arm pointing, and when he turns, I know he’s going to come after me, and I know I have to run.

Everything happens so quickly. I don’t know if it’s some sort of scam, if she just waits there to find out if someone is worth mugging, and he dives in hoping the victim is too embarrassed to go to the police to report being robbed by a prostitute, or whether she’s just so desperate to get out of the cold right now she told her pimp I hadn’t paid her.

It doesn’t matter; it doesn’t change anything. I’m still going to get robbed if I don’t get out of there.

He is only a few meters away. I have no advantage on him at all. And he’s fast. I can hear his breathing, his feet splashing against the ground right behind me. Any second I expect his hand to close around Crash’s coat and my feet to be jerked from under me, but it doesn’t happen.

I feel like an animal caught out in the wilderness, my heart hammering so hard my ribs are going to crack. I spot an alleyway I recognize across the street, and without really looking, I fly out into the road, dodging traffic and praying nothing hits me. A car swerves, and I stumble, but I right myself and carry on. I sprint down the narrow alley, my shoes slipping on the waterlogged cobblestones, the noises echoing all around me. I remember sleeping here once in one of the run-down garages filled with old rubbish and broken pieces of machinery. It wasn’t long after I was beaten up, but I remember not caring because Julian always made me feel so safe we could have been anywhere on earth. It’s all so familiar, and yet it seems as though I’m remembering scenes from another life.

My legs are burning, but I’m fast. I know I’m fast. I know I can outrun him if I just keep going. Sometimes Julian and I would just run and run, just for the exhilarating hell of it, just to feel free, untethered. It was the only real feeling of freedom we ever got.

I can’t tell how close behind me he is anymore. I don’t want to look. I take a tiny turning—not even wide enough to stretch my arms out—which leads behind a dilapidated Chinese restaurant. My mouth waters even though I’m in flight. I used to love the smell of this place, but all I see now is how pitiful and dirty it is.

I keep making odd turns and double back until I can no longer hear him behind me, and I’m almost certain I’ve lost him. I’m running on autopilot, relying on my knowledge of these streets to find me somewhere to lay low for an hour or two before I can go back out there, when it hits me where I am, where I’ve run to. I stop and hold my aching sides, bending down to get my breath back. Ahead of me is a familiar six-foot security fence. I’m not really surprised; rather I’m filled with a deep sense of resignation. I ran here like we always did, because it was the one place that was safe. Cassey’s cafe. I guess even burned out and destroyed, it might still be safe for a short while. Messily, and with none of Crash’s strength or grace, I leap and manage to scramble up and over the panel. I drop to the floor on the other side and sink back against the inner fence.

The ruin is pretty unrecognizable as a building now. I suppose that’s a good thing. I can pretend I’m somewhere else, at least.

I pick my way carefully across the debris toward an opening. But however cautious I am, shards of broken glass and sharp pieces of metal still pierce the thin soles of my shoes to cut my feet.

I don’t intend to go all the way in. I just want a bit of shelter, but the black beams drip relentlessly and the only shelter seems to be much farther inside.

Julian thought people would use this place as a squat, but it’s completely uninhabitable even for the desperate. Everything still smells charred and dead. The burnt wood is turning to mush beneath my feet, and I’m afraid to touch anything in case I knock something crucial out of place and the whole thing collapses. I’m considering crouching under the sagging counter for a while—it’s not raining under there at least—when I see the only intact door still left in the place is shut. It leads to the room we stayed in while we lived here, the room we lay with one another and fell to pieces in after we found the place like this.

It’ll just be full of ghosts, full of fractured and painful echoes of all we were, and I shouldn’t want to go in there after everything, but they’re my ghosts, mine and Julian’s. And maybe they’re all I’ll ever have.

I stand before it, the rain surrounding me like a shroud.

At first I think it’s locked, but it’s just stiff, and the wood has swelled up in the frame. I push it hard with my shoulder, putting all my weight into it, and it swings wide so fast I’m sent sprawling across the relatively dry floor, but in such stale darkness, I can’t see. I gather myself up onto my knees and wait until my eyes adjust to the quiet gloom. Slowly, I can pick out a few shapes, a cupboard we balanced the old TV set Cassey lent us on, the sink we used to wash the dishes in, the two tiny sunken chairs. The window is boarded up with the warped top of a table from the cafe nailed to the frame, beneath it a lumpy mattress piled with blankets. I stand up, curious. Someone has stayed here in this wretched place. I inch closer and freeze.

Two eyes stare up at me, unblinking.

My heart stops.

There are no blankets on the mattress, just a body layered with too many clothes.

And they are so very, very still.

It can’t be. I don’t want to, but I know without a doubt.

Julian.

My heart is obliterated, everything.

I can’t move. I imagine this is what it is to be shot. The agony utter and inescapable.

Time stops.

My knees give way, and the pain shocks me into moving, into dragging myself toward him. I can’t breathe. I’m suffocating. My ears are ringing.
This
is the explosion. The aftermath will never come. Everything has gone. Nothing is left. I am too late. I should have known he would come here. All the time I wasted searching stupid swimming pools. Why didn’t I work it out? This was our
home
. My fingers reach out, my arm shaking so violently something will break. I’m going to be sick, but I need to touch him. Oh God, I need to touch him.

He is so cold.

But corpses don’t cry, and he blinks, just once, his breath hitching the same time mine does. The world blurs. I still can’t fill my lungs, but I don’t care. My face is pressed so tightly against him, all I need to feel are his tears soaking into my hair.

J
ULIAN
IS
in a bad way. Even through the breathless relief I feel to have my arms around him, pushing the both of us against the stinking mattress, I know he’s not right.

I’m just trying to ignore it for a few selfish, bright seconds.

I’m just so fucking elated to have found him, I pretend the darkness can’t touch me. I am alight and glowing from within. And I desperately want this reprieve to last.

But it doesn’t. It can’t.

Because apart from blinking and the occasional whisper of breath I feel against my neck, Julian hasn’t moved. He doesn’t hug me or touch me or even shiver with cold—and he is so,
so
cold—he just lies deathly still, his tears a dark patch on the mattress beneath his head.

My thumb rubs gently across the unshaven coarseness of his cheek as I search his face, trying to hold his gaze and communicate something,
anything
in this gloom, but he seems to have retreated and won’t even look at me anymore. And it’s this complete desolation that distresses me more than anything, an apathy so crushing I can feel it heavy in the air around me. But how can he feel any other way while he’s rotting away in this dingy room?

I can’t let my fear or panic take hold. I’ve got to help him.

Wiping my eyes with the back of my shaking hand, I turn my head in the gloom, looking for something to use as a lever to pry the tabletop away from the window frame. We need some light in here instead of this grimy darkness, though I am terrified of how much worse Julian’s condition might be once I can actually see him properly.

I feel around on the debris-strewn floor next to me, searching for something suitable, but there are just bits of glass and nails and—my heart plummets as my fingers trace their cold plastic bodies—needles.

It’s not as if I didn’t know he was using, I tell myself. So the evidence should come as no great surprise. But it still hurts that this artificial escape is what he chose over me. It still scares me that I don’t know how to deal with it.

But I can’t focus on that right now. Whether he wants me or not, I’m going to help him. I’m not going to abandon him. Ever. He can push me away all he wants, but I’m going to be there for him.

I move to stand up, but I find that the hem of Crash’s coat is caught somewhere. I tug, but it doesn’t give. I slide my hand down to feel Julian’s fingers griping the soft material. My heart soars at this tiny contact, and I lock my warm hand around his icy one and curl forward, letting my forehead rest against his side, feeling so strong and yet so weak at the same time.

Never let me go,
I think desperately, my throat tight as I squeeze his fingers.
Please, never.

“Remee?” His voice is so fragile and unsure, it’s like ice fracturing apart under too much pressure. “Is this real?”

I look up, still not certain if he’s seeing me or not, and bring his hand up to the side of my head and nod so he can feel it, tears filling my eyes again.

“I’m so tired,” he whispers, and he sounds so far away I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to reach him.

I know,
I sign brokenly, but it’s too dark for him to see me.

T
HE
TABLETOP
splinters and splits as I rip it away from the frame. For a second I think the whole thing is going to come away in one huge heavy piece, and I drag the mattress into the center of the room out of the way. It takes all my strength to lever the nails out and eventually lift it away in two warped sections.

Rainy gray light spills into the room, making everything look ten times worse than before, when the fire-damaged mess was hidden in the darkness. The melted furniture and bowing black walls are the stuff of nightmares. I kick the glass and needles out of the way and crouch down in front of Julian, intent on slipping my arm under his shoulders to help him up. I couldn’t carry him like I carried Pasha. I’m not strong enough, though I would try if I had to.

Come on,
I sign.
We’re getting out of here.

His eyes are black and bruised right down to his cheekbones, and he flinches away as my hand reaches out to touch him again.

I recoil as though I’ve been slapped.

But fuck, I can’t act like some hurt kid anymore. I can’t fall to pieces every fucking time my heart cracks apart a little more, because if I did, I wouldn’t be here. I would be lost out there like Roxy and Cricket and all the others are. I would be as broken as Julian is.

I’ve got to carry on and keep carrying on, even when it feels too much, the world too heavy.

I hate the way he won’t meet my eyes. I don’t know if it’s the effects of some drug he’s still on, or if he’s just disappeared so far inside his own head nothing can reach him. Either way, he’s not himself. Everything about him is pale and faded.

But despite all that, when I look at him, I know I’m exactly where I should be. All my hopes, all my dreams, all my fucking fantasies lead to him. Still. Even like this. I am his.

Heavy footsteps crunch across the courtyard outside, then stop. Alarmed, I glance at Julian, but he doesn’t react as though he’s heard anything at all. Tiptoeing over to the end of the room, I peer out of the window, but no one is there. I strain my ears, but only the hushy sounds of the rain hitting the ground fill the silence. Then out in the cafe something is knocked, a voice curses softly, and I hurriedly scan the room for a weapon, something I can use to protect us. I see the bent metal bar that once held the tabletop I’ve just broken off the window, and I hold it aloft, my heart beating too fast, my breath held, as the door to the room is shoved open.

I exhale shakily. It’s not the man who chased me from the bus stop. This guy is maybe twenty and dressed as poorly as we are. He glances behind himself as if checking to see whether this is a trap, then looks from Julian to me. His bleached white hair makes him look like a badly drawn caricature, like he wants to be someone else. I wholly distrust him. I don’t know what he wants, but I can see him weighing me up. I shift the bar so I can swing it if I have to and step in front of Julian.