Passing Time Page 6

  “So soon?” Where had all their time gone?

  “Yeah.” Jake squirmed again, bearing down on Louis’s arousal. “We’ve had our time, Louis.”

  Louis had settled into a routine these past weeks. He still spent each day at the hospital, but only for two or three hours rather than the five or six he’d spent in the beginning. His mother remained unresponsive. The longer she lay wasting away, the more she came to resemble Carter in his final hours. Fragile and transparent and living past her own death.

  More often than not, he’d end up in Harvey’s of an afternoon, but only on Jake’s shifts. He watched Jake work and flirt openly with him between customers. There were times he hardly believed the man was all his, if only for a few weeks. They spent time together at the apartment, in bed, or curled together on the couch in front of the TV. Louis still didn’t quite understand what Jake saw him in, but he’d given up trying to figure it out. Enough that Jake made him feel something close to alive. No point in casting dark shadows. Jake’s sunny disposition warmed him in ways he never thought he’d experience again. He’d bask in that heat until the very last moment, a moment that grew closer all the time.

  “Time passes quicker on this side of the Atlantic.” Louis grinned.

  Jake’s eyes widened. “Really? I didn’t know that.”

  “No. Not really.” Louis reached up and gave a lock of Jake’s hair a tug. “At least we can’t say we haven’t made the most of our time together.”

  “We could make more time.” Jake’s voice grew animated. “We could carry on—”

  “No,” Louis said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because”—he ran a dry tongue around his lips—“because you won’t be here for much longer, and even if you were, I’ve only got this apartment until the end of the month.”

  “Flights to New York are dirt cheap now,” Jake said, “and I can stay at your place, can’t I? Or you can fly over here. Or if your mum needs taking care of when she wakes up, you’ll be here awhile anyway, in which case I can come see you at weekends, and we—”

  “Jake.” Louis sighed.

  “We get along great, don’t we? The sex is mind-blowing.” He bore down again with his backside, and Louis’s cock jerked in response.

  Mind-blowing was too strong an adjective, but the sex was good. He’d concede that. Not out loud. Better not to encourage Jake. “We know nothing about one another outside of the bedroom.”

  “That’s easily fixed,” Jake said far too enthusiastically. “I know you don’t like to talk about yourself, but I’m always willing to talk about me. Ask me which uni I go to.” He paused, waiting for the question that would never come.

  They’d never shared an intimate conversation, nothing deeper than what kind of condoms they preferred. In three weeks they seemed to have depleted the stock from the local pharmacy. Jake mentioned that the girl behind the counter had jokingly asked if he might want to open an account with the manufacturer. Still, at least while they were screwing, it limited their line of conversation. Such as the one Jake was now trying to tempt him into.

  “I’m not interested in your uni, Jake,” Louis said softly.

  “The answer’s Kent. Now ask me about my family.”

  “I don’t want to know about your family either. Stop now. Before you make a fool of yourself.”

  “Fuck you, then.” Jake threw himself back on the bed and scowled at the ceiling.

  Louis sat up, his erection dying as he quietly reached for his robe on the end of the bed.

  “I hate cats,” Jake said in a small voice. “Always have. I hate the way they stare at me as if they know exactly what I’m thinking.”

  Louis stood. Keeping his back turned to the bed, he shrugged into his robe.

  “I lost my virginity at sixteen,” Jake continued as Louis moved toward the bedroom door. “To my PE teacher. I had his arse every Tuesday afternoon after football practice in his own private shower room for two whole terms. No one, not a single soul, ever found out.”

  Louis glanced back and Jake gave a sly smile. He was obviously immensely proud of the experience. The prospect of this pervert teacher still lurking around the British educational system didn’t appear to bother him at all.

  “How did you lose yours?” Jake asked.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I want to know everything about you.”

  “There’s not much to know. Believe me.” Louis pulled the robe tighter around his body and opened the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I need a drink.”

  “At four in the morning?”

  “Why not? It’s as good a time as any.” He shut the door firmly behind him, crossed the lounge to the kitchen and reached for the bourbon in the cupboard. He took the bottle, along with a glass and his cigarettes, out onto the balcony. The early-morning air nipped at his cheeks and shins as he sat at the little wrought-iron circular table and poured himself a large shot.

  Leaning back in his chair, he took a deep breath of crisp predawn air and listened to the vague rumble of traffic and the occasional boat passing below. Whatever else this town was, he’d always consider it home. When he was young he and his parents often spent Sunday afternoons walking alongside this river, albeit farther downstream where the buildings thinned to countryside and the swans spent their summers preening on the bank. He’d fed the birds scraps of bread while his parent sat on the grass, his mother dangling her legs in the cool water. Good memories. The kind that were few and far between. He’d take more of them back with him. These past three weeks, Jake had become the equivalent of a coal fire in December. It wasn’t love or anything close but something almost as pleasant. Or rather, had been pleasant until Jake threw his tantrum. There could be no final week for them now.

  Despite the fact that he sat shivering in the cold, he had little desire to return to the warmth of the apartment. Instead, he lit up a cigarette, exhaled a thin wisp of smoke, and passed it along to the seated figure across the table.

  “Have I stopped thinking of you?” he asked as Carter accepted the cigarette. “Is that why you’ve stayed away so long?”

  “I was giving you time.”

  “To miss you?”

  Carter tilted his head back and puffed a perfect smoke ring into the night air. “I was giving you space to fall in love with our delectable Mr. Harvey.”

  Louis snorted. “I fucked up with your Mr. Harvey. Big time.”

  Carter waved a dismissive hand. “Nothing that can’t be fixed.”

  “Who says I want it fixed?”

  “Why else would you be out here, brooding?”

  “I’m not brooding.”

  “We were together a long time, my love. I know a good brood when I see one.”

  Louis took a sip of bourbon.

  “If it makes a difference,” Carter said, tossing the cigarette over the balcony, “I don’t think he planned on falling for you either.”

  “I haven’t fal—” He could deny his feelings all day, and Cart still wouldn’t listen. “What do you think I should do?”

  “Go back in and apologize for being an arse. Then take his arse. In the morning, while he’s keeping your bed warm, get into town and buy him something. Something memorable. Something sickeningly expensive.”

  “What do you suggest? A platinum-and-diamond cock ring?” Louis reached for another cigarette. “Whatever we had is over, Cart. The only thing I’m going to be buying anytime soon is a plane ticket home.”

  Carter fixed him with a steady gaze. “You could always make right here your home.”

  Louis shook his head. “My life is in New York.”

  “What life is this? Selling envelopes over the phone? Shooting the breeze with a dead man? You can do that here. You’re doing it now.”

  “I’d be happier doing it in New York.” Louis sighed. “We do okay, don’t we? You’ll probably get me locked up in a padded cell one day, but apart from us not having sex, nothing m
uch has changed.”

  “Celibacy depresses me.” Carter scowled. “God knows what it does for you.”

  “You do me fine.” Louis copied Carter’s example and flicked his cigarette over the balcony into the water below. “In the meantime, I’ll go and apologize to Jake.” He downed the rest of his bourbon and stood. “I’ll try to let him down gently. He’s a nice guy. He deserves better.”

  “You need him.” Carter stared out over the river as he lit a fresh cigarette.

  “I need you,” Louis said. “No one else.” He took up the bottle and glass, stepped back inside, and left his dead lover alone with the approaching dawn.

  Back in the bedroom, Jake was in the process of getting dressed. He sat on the end of the bed in his black uniform trousers and blue shirt, pulling on his socks.

  “I thought you were staying over?” Louis said from the open doorway.

  “You thought wrong. I’ve got work later.”

  What kind of lousy excuse was that? The prospect of work in the morning hadn’t bothered him for the past three weeks. He’d spent every night in this bed.

  “We should talk, shouldn’t we?” Louis ventured into the room and took a seat next to him on the bed.

  Jake stood and stepped to one side. He looked down at Louis. Usually when Louis gazed into Jake’s eyes, he was reminded of the summer warmth beyond the window. Now when he looked, he almost shivered beneath their icy chill. “You and me?”

  “Well, yeah. Who else?”

  Jake gestured with his chin toward the door. “I thought you preferred to be out on the balcony, charming the seagulls.”

  “What?”

  “I assume that’s what you were talking to. Either the birds or the fish. You weren’t on your mobile.” He gestured to Louis’s cell phone on the bedside table.

  “I…” Louis kept his gaze on his phone. Words stuck in his throat.

  “Go ahead. Talk to yourself,” Jake said, stalking around to the other side of the bed. “Fuck yourself too for all I care. I’m out of here.”

  Louis opened his mouth to start again as his phone gave an enthusiastic trill, cutting off his jumble of excuses. He grabbed it and hovered his thumb over the call-reject button. He glanced at the screen. The hospital. He needed to take this. More than he needed to dump, or be dumped by, Jake Harvey.

  “Don’t go anywhere,” Louis said, heading for the lounge. He needed privacy. “We’re not done quite yet.”

  “Yeah, we’re done.” Jake’s gaze swept the floor. “Soon as I can find my shoes.”

  * * *

  When Louis returned from the lounge, Jake stood in the center of the bedroom with a shoe in each hand.

  “That was the hospital. My mother’s condition has worsened. They want me there as soon as possible.”

  Jake’s scowl smoothed away. “I’ll drive,” he said, already heading for the door, shoes still in hand.

  “What do you mean you’ll drive?” Louis called after him. “Since when did you own a car?”

  Jake paused halfway across the lounge and spun round. “Since my parents bought me one for my eighteenth, four years ago. The one parked in your allotted space. How’d you think I get between the bar and here so quickly?”

  Louis assumed Jake had walked. He wasn’t even aware the place came with an allotted parking space.

  “What else are you going to do?” Jake bent to shove his feet into his shoes. “Walk? Call a cab? Or waste even more time thinking it over?” He straightened and gazed at Louis, waiting for an answer.

  “Okay. You drive.” Louis turned away and threw open his closet door. As he dressed, he tried to reject the nagging possibility that his mother would die before he arrived at her bedside.

  Chapter Six

  The weather stayed fine for the funeral, at least. Louis gazed up at the clear expanse of sky and breathed in the sweet mix of fragrances from the colorful flowers bordering the small garden to either side of the crematorium doors.

  Next to him, Jake fidgeted on his feet and gave a loud sigh, his fifth in as many minutes.

  “If you don’t want to be here,” Louis said with a trace of irritability, “no one’s forcing you to stay.”

  “I said I’d come, didn’t I?” Jake scowled, pulling at the tie he said he’d borrowed from his father. This was how things were between them now. Jake still kept his bed warm at night, but a space had opened up down the center of the mattress neither of them dared breach.

  “I’m sorry,” Jake said after an awkward silence. “I do want to be here. I want to support you.” He smiled a tight, unnatural smile. They’d barely spoken about what had happened between them the night his mother had died. Louis wasn’t ready to crush the remnants of their relationship. He was pretty sure Jake wasn’t either, despite the sourness of his recent mood, confirmed a moment later when a hand brushed against his. The gesture alone eased the atmosphere between them, and their silence grew marginally more bearable.

  A few minutes later a taxi rolled up at the crematorium doors, and an elderly woman clambered out of the front seat, aided substantially by a harassed cabbie and a three-legged metal stick.

  “You needn’t think you’re getting a tip,” she called after the driver, who ducked quickly back behind the wheel. “Would’ve got here quicker in the bloody hearse.”

  The man lowered the window, stuck his head out, and yelled something vaguely eastern European before taking off at a speed more suited to a Grand Prix circuit.

  The old woman probed the ground with her stick as if checking the tarmac was safe before stopping just shy of Louis’s feet. “You. You’re Vivian’s son,” she said, her eyes like marbles behind thick bifocals.

  “Uh, yes.” He experienced the nagging suspicion he knew her from somewhere. “I’m Louis. This is Jake.”

  “Martha Banks. I babysat you as a nipper.”

  Mrs. Banks? The crazy cat lady from next door?

  “You got your father’s eyes,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Wasn’t a compliment. Saw the notice in the paper.” Her gazed settled over his shoulder, and he turned as the doors fanned open. Mourners from the previous service poured out. “Didn’t you think of coming to me directly? Would’ve liked to be told.”

  Louis hadn’t set foot in Albert Terrace since the day he’d left and had no real desire to see the street again. How was he to know Mrs. Banks still lived in the same house? How was he to know she was still alive? A notice in the obits was the best way of inform people about his mother. Was this ancient woman the only person who cared enough to turn up?

  “Vi said you’d turned into one of them what’s-a-names. Fairies.”

  “My mother told you I was gay?” His raised voice caused a few of the mourners to glance in his direction.

  “Yep. Can’t say as you look like one.” She gave a mucus-rattling sniff and turned her squint on Jake. “He does.”

  Jake’s mouth dropped open. Louis quickly took his arm. “Uh, we’re just friends,” he said.

  Jake gave Louis a harsh glare and pulled his arm back. “Thanks, Louis. Thanks a bunch.” He pushed through the doors, leaving Louis to smile politely at his mother’s curious neighbor.

  The service itself was a grim affair made worse by the fact that only the three mourners were present, and one of those under sufferance. Not much of a turnout for a sixty-year-old woman who’d once coveted the title of life and soul of every drinking establishment in town. No hymns or readings or flowers. Louis had made a sizable credit-card donation to the stroke unit at the hospital.

  Once the coffin had passed through the curtains, Louis couldn’t wait to get out. He felt nothing for the woman who used to be his mother. He’d felt nothing all week, except cheated out of forgiving her and having her forgive him.

  “I’ll tag along with you girls.” Mrs. Banks took Louis’s arm as he and Jake stood to leave.

  “We’re not girls,” Jake muttered.

  “That hair of yours says girl to me, la
ddo.” She forged forward with her stick. “Now what about this wake?”

  “I decided against one,” Louis said as they emerged into the warm afternoon air.

  She stopped in her tracks. “What do you mean, no wake? What kind of funeral is this?”

  “The kind where the guy making the arrangements barely knew the deceased.”

  Mrs. Banks eyed him for a while. Her voice softened. “You can take me for a port and lemon. Large one mind. This one yours?” She indicated with her stick toward a sleek gray Jag.