What Remains

by Garrett Leigh

  Rupert tried again. “Everywhere, right? Okay, let me grab a pillow.”

  Rupert snagged a sofa cushion and placed it behind Jodi, trying to ignore the clean, familiar scent of Jodi’s sweat. He’s not that Jodi, remember? “Gives you a little less work to do like this. Will hurt less if you drop too.”

  “Got all the answers, haven’t you?”

  “I wish, boyo. I wish. Straighten your spine a little.”

  Jodi obeyed and fixed Rupert with an odd stare. “Are you okay?”

  “Me? I’m fine. Why do you ask?”

  “You don’t seem yourself.”

  “How would you know what that is?” The words were out before Rupert could stop them, spilling from him with a flat despondency. An emotion he couldn’t name flashed in Jodi’s dark gaze. Hurt? Sadness? Guilt? Or was it the dull rage that had become their constant companion?

  Either way, it was gone before Rupert could decipher it. Jodi lowered himself to the pillow and took a deep breath, effectively ending a conversation Rupert didn’t really want to pursue anyway. What was the point? Jodi didn’t remember him. Didn’t want to remember him. And this was their reality.

  “Ready?” Rupert asked.

  Jodi nodded and pulled himself up. He did it with more purpose this time, faster and bolder, yet seemed surprised when he found himself upright. “That wasn’t so bad.”

  “Try it again,” Rupert said. “The sheet says to do ten, but it’s just a guideline.”

  “Guideline, my arse,” Jodi muttered, but he followed Rupert’s instructions and completed the exercise again and again until he reached number ten.

  “One more,” Rupert said. “You’re winning, come on.”

  Jodi’s glare was murderous, but as he hauled himself up a final time, Rupert was amazed to see laughter in his eyes. “Bloody hell. I don’t think I’ve ever finished one of these sheets.”

  “You must be having a good day.”

  Jodi shook his head. “I feel different, have done all week. It’s like I’ve dropped something somewhere and I don’t have to pick it up again.”

  His analogy was so honest and simple that Rupert had to smile. “That’s really great. Hold on to it until the next breakthrough comes.”

  “Do you think there’ll be another one?”

  Rupert got up and held his arm out for Jodi to use as leverage. “What do you mean?”

  “Just feels like everything’s been shit for ages. I’d pretty much resigned myself to it staying that way.” Jodi stood, his eyes glazing over briefly.

  Rupert waited for his equilibrium to catch up, then released his arm. “Nothing ever stays the same. Even if your recovery doesn’t work out the way you want, you’ll get better at living with your injuries.”

  “S’pose it helps that I can’t remember what I was like before.”

  “Only you know that, boyo.”

  Rupert watched Jodi until he was safely on the sofa, then picked up the exercise paraphernalia Jodi had left on the floor.

  “Why do you call me ‘boyo’?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Boyo. You say it all the time, and I don’t know what it means.”

  “Erm, I guess it’s the same as ‘mate’ or ‘lad’ if you’re Irish. My dad used to say it to me and my cousins.”

  “Used to?”

  Rupert turned away and snagged some stray socks that had been under the coffee table for more than a week. “We haven’t talked in a while.”

  “Why not?”

  “Long story.”

  “You don’t want to tell me?”

  Rupert said nothing. It was probably high time he told Jodi he was gay and dealt with the consequences, but he wasn’t in the mood today, especially without Sophie for backup.

  “I used to know, didn’t I?” Jodi said when Rupert didn’t answer. “And now you know everything about me, and I know nothing about you.”

  The sadness in Jodi’s tone made Rupert look up. “What do you want to know?”

  Jodi shrugged. “Dunno. I like talking to you, though. Did we used to talk a lot before?”

  Rupert smiled in spite of the weight dragging his heart through the mud. “Yeah, we talked. You were the best friend I ever had.”

  If that meant anything to Jodi, it didn’t show. His only response was another absent shrug before he rose from the couch and left the room.

  “Where are you going?”

  Rupert glanced over his shoulder as he stamped into his scruffy trainers. “Sainsbury’s. Why? Do you need me for something?”

  “No.”

  Jodi leaned on the living room doorframe, hands in his pockets, looking for all the world like he didn’t give a shit, but his dark, brooding gaze compelled Rupert to close the distance between them. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Sure? I can stay if you want? Wait until Sophie gets here tomorrow? We’ll have to order Domino’s for breakfast, but—”

  “I want to come with you.”

  It was the last thing Rupert had expected Jodi to say. Aside from his many medical appointments, Jodi rarely left the flat at all. “You want to come to the supermarket?”

  “I want to go with you.”

  “With me?”

  Jodi started to roll his eyes, but seemed to change his mind. “I think I feel better when I’m with you. I know that doesn’t make sense, but everything is more . . . logical, maybe.”

  Rupert had been lost for words many times since the moment he’d met Jodi, but this felt like the first time all over again. Like it had been that long since Jodi had truly wanted to be in his presence. “I guess you’d better write us a list, then.”

  Half an hour later found them in the frozen section of the closest supermarket, trying to decipher Jodi’s scrawled list.

  “It could be sausages,” Jodi remarked sagely. “Or maybe salami?”

  “It definitely isn’t salami.” Rupert squinted at the list. “And you don’t like frozen sausages. You never let me buy them before. Said they were full of trotters and ball sacs.”

  “They probably are. What was my handwriting like before the accident? Was it legible?”

  “Just. To be honest, it wasn’t much better than this.”

  “That’s what Sophie said.”

  Jodi seemed relieved, though it left them no clearer as to what they were looking for. Rupert was beginning to regret challenging him to open the fridge-freezer and write down what he thought was missing.

  “Maybe it’s a B not an S?” Jodi’s frown deepened.

  “Fuck it.” Rupert crumpled the list into a ball and tossed it into the empty trolley. “Just get whatever you fancy.”

  Jodi coughed and turned away, grabbing a package from the nearest fridge.

  “Potato waffles?” Rupert raised an eyebrow.

  Defiance flashed in Jodi’s eyes. “Yeah.”

  Fair enough. The waffles went in the trolley, along with fish fingers and Findus Crispy Pancakes. Rupert grabbed a bag of peas in a feeble attempt to be healthy, then steered them out of the frozen crap aisle. He couldn’t cook for shit, but he couldn’t bring himself to let Jodi subsist on junk either.

  They made their way to the meat aisle. Rupert forced himself to bypass the bacon and picked up a whole chicken. “We could do a roast?”

  “Really?” Jodi frowned. “Do you know how to do that? ’Cause I haven’t got a fucking scooby.”

  Rupert studied the label on the chicken. “You used to. Said you learned how to cook when your ma moved down under, because her cooking was the only thing you missed about her.”

  “I don’t remember missing her at all.”

  “You don’t.” Rupert chose his words with caution. “Or you didn’t before the accident. You told me she worked so much when you were young that you grew used to her not being around, so when she moved to Australia, and then, um, died, it didn’t mean a lot to you.”

  Jodi looked thoughtful. “It’s true. My childminder raised me until I went to school, and
then I kinda raised myself.”

  It was nothing Rupert hadn’t heard before. An old man jostled him from behind. He started to get out of the way, but Jodi’s hand on his arm stilled him. “So I wasn’t upset when she died?”

  “I only know what you told me. You’d have to ask Sophie to be certain. It happened before we met.”

  “Of course it did.” Jodi frowned, though he seemed more bemused than upset.

  “You okay?” Rupert nudged him gently.

  “What? Oh, yeah. I just feel like I’ve forgotten loads outside of the last few years sometimes, you know? There’s stuff I should know that just isn’t there until someone puts it back for me.”

  “No one can put anything back for you. You just have to trust it’s still in there somewhere.” If only it were that simple. If Jodi had any memory of the men he’d been with before Rupert, men that had been and gone even before Sophie, perhaps the prospect of prompting Jodi to remember Rupert and all they’d meant to each other wouldn’t be so impossible.

  It was Jodi’s turn to nudge Rupert. “What are you going to do with that chicken?”

  “I have no idea,” Rupert said absently, his mind still on the illogical gaps in Jodi’s brain. “Shall we get it anyway and wing it?”

  Jodi pulled a face. “Sophie cooked chicken the other day. It was bloody minging.”

  Back to sausages then. Rupert put the chicken on the shelf, retreated, and grabbed a pack. “How about toad-in-the-hole?”

  “If you say so.”

  It was as close to a “yes” as Rupert was likely to get from Jodi. He threw the sausages in the trolley. “Sold. Come on. We need some other bits if we’re going to smash this shit.”

  Rupert had never been an optimist, but “smashing” a toad-in-the-hole turned out to be even more complicated than he’d feared. He eyed the kitchen counter, cluttered with every pan they owned and dusty with flour, and wondered if he was the one who’d had a bang on the head. What on earth had he been thinking?

  “Can’t you just google it?”

  Rupert tossed a halfhearted glare over his shoulder. The fact that Jodi had chosen to stay in the kitchen with him, settled at the breakfast bar with his laptop rather than skulking away to the couch, meant the world to him. “I tried, but the Wi-Fi isn’t working.”

  “So? You have a data allowance on your phone, don’t you?”

  “Nope. I have a pay-as-you-go sim card. I only have an iPhone because you forced your old one on me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was as skint as a boozer’s widow when I met you. Could barely afford to pay attention.”

  Jodi snorted. Rupert tore his focus from the lumpy batter he’d concocted in a jug that was far too small for it. “What’s funny about that?”

  “I’m not laughing.”

  The gleam in Jodi’s eyes gave him away. Rupert rolled his eyes. “Anyway, I’ve never bothered to upgrade it because there’s Wi-Fi here and the fire station picks up the signal from the Costa across the road. You made me take your old phone because you were fed up of my old one dying when I was on shift.”

  “On shift?”

  “Yeah.” Rupert busied himself pouring fat into what he hoped was a nonstick baking dish. “It freaked you out when I was late home and you couldn’t get hold of me.”

  Jodi’s gaze turned reflective again. “So that’s the answer, eh?”

  “The answer to what?”

  “Never mind.”

  Jodi slipped abruptly from his stool and left the room. Rupert assumed that meant their day together—which had been slightly bizarre by its normality—was over. So he was mildly surprised when Jodi reappeared five minutes later, clutching his phone.

  “I called Sophie’s mum. We can google it if we get stuck,” he said. “But I think I can remember what she told me. Can we try?”

  Rupert was at the point with his lumpy batter where he’d accept help from just about anyone. He slid the jug across the counter and stepped back. “Have at it, boyo.”

  The next day was the second consecutive morning Jodi had come awake feeling halfway human. It was also the second morning he’d woken up with his hand stuck to his dick and his mind freeze-framed on Rupert’s hard chest, leanly muscled biceps, and strong, perfectly veined forearms.

  And the umpteenth time he’d wanked over them.

  Damn it. Jodi sat up and wrenched his hand from his groin. Vague flashbacks of Rupert helping him to bed after he’d fallen asleep in the armchair filtered into his consciousness, bringing with them an all-too-clear memory of the long hours he’d lain awake after, wrestling with the heat that Rupert’s platonic, caring touch had stirred in him. Heat that hadn’t abated as he’d slept.

  Jodi placed his palm on his chest, feeling his heartbeat quicken as he drifted back to the only thing that made his long, lonely nights in the bedroom bearable, but he caught himself as his fingers brushed his cock, and shoved his hand in his pocket. Stop it. You’re not gay. He didn’t feel gay. He wasn’t gay. Couldn’t be. He liked girls, right?

  He closed his eyes and chased down the memories he had of sleeping with Sophie . . . her soft skin and rounded body. Her breasts. He thought of other women he’d slept with too: women of all shapes and sizes, beautiful inside and out. Arousal and desire rippled through him, and he took a deep breath, letting his hand drift back to his cock. His mind swam and his body responded, heating his blood and driving sweat from his skin. He lay flat, recalling every touch and sensation, letting them expand and evolve until he had new fantasies, illusions that intensified with each pull and twist until he came with a low cry.

  Gasping, he opened his eyes as he spilled onto his stomach, toes curled, heart pounding. Did one straight wank cancel out a week of gay ones? Was that how it worked? Jodi had no idea. Besides, obsessive wanking be damned, none of it explained the primal compulsion he felt to be as close to Rupert as possible. He’d spent weeks avoiding him, hiding in bed or skulking in the bathroom, hoping the yearning would reveal itself as another figment of his battered imagination, and trying to convince himself that his obsession with Rupert would fade, but Rupert had proved him horribly wrong yesterday morning when he’d come home from work early, sheened with sweat, his cheeks flushed from whatever he’d been doing to leave him out of breath. Jesus Christ. The next thing Jodi knew he’d been watching Rupert sleep like some kind of creep, counting his breaths and wondering what it would feel like to trace his strong arms with his fingertips, squeeze his hand, and bury his face in his neck. After that, sausage shopping in Sainsbury’s had seemed like the easy option.

  Rupert was nowhere to be seen when Jodi ventured out of his room later that morning. He searched the flat and came up blank. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he was truly alone.

  Jodi stood in the kitchen and absorbed the quiet. He’d pretended to be asleep when Rupert had checked on him just after eight, but the lingering scent of fried onions made him regret it. Closing his eyes, he pictured Rupert fumbling his way through creating Jodi’s patchy recollection of Sophie’s mum’s toad-in-the-hole. Shivering, he found himself missing that curious gaze and gentle smile. He’d been craving solitude for months, but now that he had it, it felt all wrong.

  The front door opened. Jodi jumped, but the light footsteps told him it was Sophie, not Rupert. His stomach sank, and he shuddered again. When had Rupert’s absence begun feeling like a hole in his damn heart?

  Sophie appeared at his shoulder. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. What’s the matter with you?”

  “Hope you haven’t been growling at Rupert like that.” Sophie rolled her eyes, clearly unfazed by Jodi’s scowl.

  “What if I have? What the fuck does it matter? He’s no different to you, is he?”

  “Not really. There’s no reason for you to talk to me like I’m something you stepped in either.”

  Her sharp tone caught Jodi off guard, catching his runaway temper in a snare of contrition. “Sorry.”
<
br />   “You’re forgiven. What’s up? Did you have a bad night?”

  “No, not at all. I had a fun night.”

  “Fun?” Sophie raised an eyebrow. “That’s not a word I’ve heard you use in a while.”

  “Yeah, well.” Jodi pushed past her, lacking the words to explain the Rupert-shaped bubble he’d spent the previous evening in. He left her to whatever it was she did in the kitchen and retreated to the living room to take his pills and go through his daily exercise routines.

  He was puffing his way through leg curls when Sophie appeared above him, clutching a plate overflowing with toad-in-the-hole leftovers.

  “Who made this?”

  “Me and Rupert did.”

  “You did?”

  “Yup. I asked your mum how to make it, and I even ate some too.”

  “That’s amazing.”

  “Is it?” Jodi finally unstrapped the weights from his legs and gave Sophie his full attention. “What the fuck are you crying for?”

  “Why do you think? Jesus, Jodi. You’re such an arsehole sometimes!”

  Sophie turned and fled back to the kitchen, slamming the door. Jodi stared after her, perplexed. What the hell had he missed this time?

  It became no clearer as the sudden silence enveloped him like a thick, choking smog. He wished Rupert was there to explain it to him, then killed the thought before it could take root. This was about Sophie, not Rupert, and he didn’t have the energy to figure out why they felt like one and the same.

  He got up and took a deep breath, then approached the kitchen door, tapping lightly on the frame before venturing inside. “Soph? Are you okay?”

  Sophie didn’t look up from the pile of carrots she was obliterating into tiny pieces. “I’m fine.”

  “Why are you crying, then?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are.” Jodi came up behind her and stilled the knife in her hand. He drew her into a tight hug, then cupped her face in his palms. “What’s wrong? Tell me?”

  Sophie pushed Jodi’s hands away and wiped her eyes. “I can’t tell you, because it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “So? Nothing makes sense to me these days. Doesn’t mean I can’t listen.”