Will steps into the shower, leaving the glass door open, an invitation. I remove my clothes. No matter what, no matter how crazy he makes me, no matter how much I might try and hide the truth, I’ve never been more attracted to another human being, male or female, the way I’m drawn to him.
“Hurry up and get in here, jackarse. You’re letting all the cold air in,” he says, running his face under the water. I step into the tiny cubicle and shut the door behind me. There’s barely enough room for one person, so we’re wedged together as closely as we can be.
Will wraps his arms around me, and I sigh and lean my forehead against his. He kisses me. I’m a lot gentler with his bruised lip this time. I run my finger over a small cut on his cheek. He winces. For a long time, we stand in the warmth, breathing one another’s breath. The fear, a blackness that roils constantly in my belly, threatens to overcome me and all I want to do is sink to my knees and sob. Instead, I fall into Will, and I find it’s a pretty soft place to land.
The next night, we both feel pretty shitty, and after Will closes up, he leads me upstairs and we fall into bed. Will turns on the TV and hits Netflix and without any further consultation, we watch some show about these people who live on different sides of the world but share a psychic connection. There’s a Spanish actor who’s in the closet, and some pretty sweet scenes of he and his secret lover going at it, but I’m too fucking tired to even muster a hard-on.
That doesn’t stop Will from undressing me anyway, but by the time he’s done removing his own clothes, he looks as beat as I am. I wedge myself in behind him, avoiding his bruised side. I drape my arm over his hip, take his flaccid cock in my hands, and just hold it.
He gets hard, of course—because at the heart of the man I love is still a horny teenager—but neither of us take it further, and before long his soft snore fills the tiny apartment. I close my eyes and drift in and out, but not once do I wake and think about going back to that house on the hill, because I’m home. Will is my home; he always has been. It just took me a fucking long time to see it.
I jolt awake. The sounds of the Reef’s front door being rattled on its hinges forces my heart into my throat, but I get up and walk to the window. Parked haphazardly across three spaces is a bright red Mazda. The streetlight shows me someone stumbling off the pub’s front porch. There, staring up at my window, drunk with mascara running down her face is Tammy Thompson. The woman’s a fucking mess. She stumbles to her car and sags against it dramatically. For a beat I think she’s just upset that we’re not open, and then she opens her mouth and screams North’s name. My stomach lurches.
I glance accusingly at him. He’s just waking up, but he heard it too, because his eyes widen. He throws back the sheets, and the horrified expression on his face tells me everything I need to know.
“What the fuck is she doing here, North?”
“I don’t know. I’ll get rid of her.”
“You don’t know? She’s crying on my fucking doorstep, screaming out your name, and you don’t know?” A horrible thought occurs to me. “Are you still seeing her?”
His silence is damning. Oh no. No. “Are you still living with her?”
“She needed a place to stay.” He returns my glare as he pulls on his jeans and shirt. He sits heavily on the bed to lace his boots. “Are you fucking her?” He remains silent, staring down at the floor again, and I shake my head. “North, are you fucking her?”
Outside, Tammy screams his name again.
“How long?”
“I’m not—”
“How fucking long have you been sticking it to her while I was sticking it to you?” I barely recognise my voice, it’s so full of torment and rage.
“I’m not sticking anything to her,” he shouts.
“Bullshit.”
“She isn’t who I want, Will.”
“Get the fuck out. Get your stupid Barbie bitch outta here before her banshee wailing wakes my dad, and get the fuck away from me.”
“I never did it to hurt you. It was before—”
“You make me fucking sick. You haven’t changed at all; you’re still a selfish fucking coward.”
“North! I know you’re in there!” Tammy screams from the street. “I know about the two of you!”
When his eyes meet mine they’re both furious and full of fear. That’s all he is: fear. From head to toe, a frightened little boy, so afraid to feel. So afraid to be found out as a faggot.
I shake my head, because what else can I do? I’d gladly give my last breath for this bastard. I’d endure one hundred men spitting at my feet as I walked past, a thousand beatings like the one I took the other night, and a million voices screaming in a clamorous rage as they volleyed their ugly words at me and twisted what we have into something disgusting, or worse, evil. I’d go through all of that for just one day of not having to hide, but it doesn’t matter, because North will never change. Twelve years on and I’m still his dirty little secret. And the thing that tears me apart is the knowledge that this is all I’ll ever be. Furtive glances across the bar. Touches in the dark. Whispered words behind closed doors. That’s all we’ll ever have.
North isn’t brave. He’s weak. He’s afraid. And I’m a fucking fool for thinking it could have been any other way.
“Get out.”
“Will, please just let me explain,” he says.
“You don’t step foot in my bar again. You don’t know me, you don’t talk to me—you don’t so much as look in my direction.”
“Will, don’t do this,” he begs. “It isn’t like that with us.”
“GET OUT!” I roar, and I know I’ve woken my father because he shuffles heavily down the hall. North obviously hears it too, his eyes dart to my door as if at any moment he’s afraid his worst nightmare is going to walk through it, and in a way I suppose that’s true. The fact that my father already knows is irrelevant. North’s never been afraid of anything except the fear of getting caught, the fear of his secrets laid bare, and the entire town finding out he likes to fuck men.
He’s so blinded by that fear that he can’t even see that he’s loved for who he is, regardless of his sexual preferences. He’s so terrified that he can’t see how much pretending has fucked him in the head, because when he looks at me he doesn’t see a man who loves him—he sees a man who has the potential to destroy the façade he so carefully built. Instead of a future, he sees his ruin.
Without another word, he flees, opening the door and hurrying down the stairs before he can encounter my father. He’s not fast enough though. Dad’s confused cry fills the hall. North ignores him and scampers down the stairs. The back door slams and my heart squeezes with the finality of that sound. I have just enough sense about me to wrap the sheet around my waist before my dad shuffles in to my apartment.
“What the hell were you two yelling about?” Dad asks. “And why is North fleeing your room like he just committed a murder?” Dad glances around, his eyes sweep over the unmade bed to my clothes that are strewn all over the floor. I see the moment when they rake over the bottle of lube on the nightstand because he turns about fifty shades of pink and averts his gaze.
On the street below, Tammy’s car engine revs furiously, and North is pleading with her to get out of the driver’s seat. Dad shuffles over to the window, his face crinkling in confusion. “Who is that outside?”
“Tammy Thompson,” I say, sitting down heavily on the bed. “North’s live-in girlfriend.”
Dad’s eyes dart to mine. “Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.”
Dad nervously scuffles farther into the room. His brows are drawn together and his mouth turns down in a frown. His cheeks are ruddy with embarrassment. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look so bloody uncomfortable, but still he says, “Well, Sal and I had a threesome once. Tammy might come around. Two cocks are better than one, right?”
I blink stupidly at my father. I can’t believe he just said that shit. And despite how my already bruised heart is breaking,
and how my stomach twists with the fear of never having North in my arms again—even though the lying bastard doesn’t deserve me—and despite how hopeless everything feels right now, I laugh.
Because the alternative is falling apart.
I didn’t go into work the day before yesterday. Instead, I stayed home to look after Tam. I don’t think she’s ever consumed that much alcohol in one sitting before, and when I found her downstairs she was behind the wheel again and threatening to run me over. She’d already fought the battle with a street sign and lost—or at least her car had—and Tam had a nasty bump on her head as a result. After a little coaxing I’d gotten her out of the car and into my truck, and I drove the hour to Valentine to get her head checked out by the ER.
Two days on, I haven’t heard from Will, and I don’t expect to.
I know I fucked up. It looks like I betrayed him, and maybe I did. I hadn’t told him she still lived with me, and I hadn’t told him that the night he’d turned me down, I’d gone home and fucked her—or at least I’d tried until I screwed it all up by shoving my finger in her arse while thinking about him.
I guess I’d betrayed Tam, too. I hadn’t set her straight about us. I’d given her false hope when there was none. I tried raising the issue with her when we came home from the hospital, but she rolled over in her bed and said she was tired. She shut down every attempt I’d made to talk about it since.
Work drags by. Hell, life drags by. Even though Tam is still in my house, I feel alone. Like the ground my home is built on somehow broke apart and drifted out into the ocean, and now it’s sinking, swallowed up by the waves inch by inch. And I’m tempted just to jump in that icy water and let it fill my lungs, replace the air, and take me under. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve stood on that cliff at the edge of my property and considered stepping off into the abyss below.
At lunch I pick the empty table away from everyone else and pull out the bag that Tam packed for me. Within minutes the room is full to bursting with rowdy steel workers. My head pounds, and I feel like shit. Thanks to our little clubbing expedition the other night, I still look like shit, too. I swear to god, Will’s been back in my life for less than two months, and in that time I’ve gone through more Steri-Strips than I had with eighteen years of living with my drunk, abusive father.
And speaking of the King of Hell …
Dad sits down next to me and eyes my lunch with a raised eyebrow. Tammy packs everything into little containers with labels. She keeps sauces and dressings separate, and there’s usually some kind of instructions that go along with it: add container one to container two and stir, but not too much or you could break up the pasta.
“Tammy make your lunch again?” Dad asks.
“Yep.”
He grins, taking a hefty swig from his can of ginger beer. “She ever make you something normal like a fucking ham sandwich?”
“Nope.”
“You still fucking her?”
I glance at my dad with a pained expression. “Why? You want her to make your lunch?”
He raises his hands defensively. “I’m just asking. Can’t a father be interested in his son’s life?”
I throw my fork against the table and sneer at him. “The last time a father showed interest in his son’s life, it was to threaten his son’s best friend, so no. You can’t.”
“You know Tommo saw you leaving the pub late the other night,” Dad says, taking a bite of his sandwich and chewing with his mouth open. “Real late.”
I freeze, because I don’t like the implications of what he’s saying. If Tommo saw me leave, it was alone. But the bar closes at midnight, earlier on Sundays. Say something. Fuck, North, say something so he doesn’t know you’re fucking guilty. “I was helping Trevor. Since his stroke, he can’t do fuck all in the way of labour anymore.”
“Fucking pussy,” Dad says. I glance up at him and meet the coldest eyes I’ve ever seen. Not for the first time, I wonder how my mum survived seven long years with this man. I don’t blame her for not making it to eight. “Maybe if he’d spent a little less time running that pub and a little more time raising his son he wouldn’t have turned out a fucking pansy.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” I say through my teeth.
“Of course it does. Look at you. Once upon a time you were hanging around that little fairy fuck and started turning into a pussy too.” He lowers his voice to a whisper and clasps me on the shoulder, his thumb digging into the muscle. “But I put a stop to that, and look at you now. Straightest damn stud in the paddock. You’re like one of those Venus fucking flytraps—the sheilas just flock to you.”
“That’s because aside from Rooster and Tommo I’m the only unmarried man in town. Everyone else is taken, illegal or—”
“A fucking poofter.”
Anger wells within the pit of my stomach. I wanna put that old bastard on his arse, but I can’t, because I know he’s baiting me. Everything he’s said from the second he sat down has been to provoke me, and I can do nothing but shovel food in my mouth so I won’t grind my teeth into dust.
“Lucky me, huh?” I say, when I finish chewing a bit of cold pasta.
“Just make sure it stays that way,” he says. “You fuck as much pussy as is on offer. Don’t get roped into settling down; bitches will only take all your time and money, and then after the wedding they want a house, and then they start moaning on about a family.” Through all this he raises his voice, because the misogynistic bastard never had a problem telling the world where he thinks a woman’s place should be, and unsurprisingly the lunchroom is filled with a chorus of gruff voices agreeing with the dipshit.
“You know, if it weren’t for your mother beggin’ me all the fucking time we never would have had you,” he says, polishing off the remainder of his ginger beer and crushing the can on the table. He didn’t even meet my eyes as he said it.
Anyone else would be reeling from that revelation, but for me this isn’t news. He made sure to tell me every day from the time I was old enough to understand what that meant, and when he’d had too much drink in his guts and couldn’t say it verbally, he showed me how much he cared with his fists.
My greatest fear from the time I was old enough to understand the attraction between me and Will was that one day he’d show Will too, and I’d lose the first person I ever loved because of it. It’s still my fear.
“Yeah, I know,” I say, standing, because if I don’t get out of here I’ll likely punch the fucker’s head in, and I can’t afford to lose my job. “You’ve told me every day since my mother killed herself. You ever stop and wonder why she did that?”
“You on the fucking rag or somethin’, boy?” he asks. I just shake my head and pack up the remainder of my lunch. I lost my appetite the second he sat down beside me.
“No, Dad.” I emphasise that last word, because this man has never been a father to me. The only good thing he ever did was teach me how to throw a punch, and sadly, how to deflect one from an opponent three times your size. “I’m just sick of the bullshit. We’re both adults now; let’s save ourselves a shitload of time and not pretend anymore.”
“Pretend what, Son?”
“Don’t ‘son’ me. You’ve never been a father to me. You know who my father was? Trevor Tanner. That’s right, the fucking fairy’s dad,” I spit. Dad stands now too, his cold, dead eyes dilated, but they don’t show rage or passion or fear. They’re just a void of emptiness, soullessness. “You know who took me in and fed me when you were so busy planting your fat, lazy arse on a bar stool instead of coming home and making sure I had food and had done my homework? Trev, that’s who. He was more a father to me than anyone, and you took that away from me.”
My father opens his mouth, but Smithy wedges himself between the two of us and says, “Alright, fellas, time out.”
I’m pretty sure this is the only place in Smithy’s life where he gets to assert himself, and he takes that responsibility very seriously. At the mill, Smithy’s word
is law, even if he is a giant pussy outside of the steelworks.
With one last glower in my dad’s direction, I stalk over to my locker and deposit my stuff in it before slamming it closed.
“You just remember what’s important to you, Son,” Dad calls out as I leave the break room. “You remember what could all be taken away if you’re not fucking careful.”
I turn back, about to beat his fucking head in, but I run smack-bang into Smithy. “Keep walking, kid,” he says, placing his hand on the centre of my chest and pushing me back several paces out into the hall. He closes the door firmly behind him, shutting out the hollers from my co-workers. “Listen, I know Tam’s accident has you a little on edge this week, so maybe you oughta take the rest of the day off. Get down to the beach—clear your head. Fucking go get laid, brother, just sort your shit out, ’cause I don’t need anyone losing their heads, and this company can’t afford you losing a finger to the welding machine. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay.” I nod, trying not to appear as rattled as I feel.
“Alright then, we’ll see you back here early tomorrow.”
On the drive home, I can’t get Dad’s words outta my head. I can’t get Will outta my head. I drive past the Reef and keep going, because what the hell else am I supposed to do?
When I get home, Tammy isn’t there. I’m relieved. She’d mentioned something this morning about visiting her friend Layla after work, and her shift at the restaurant isn’t over yet, so I know I have a few more hours before her little Mazda three pulls in the drive.
I change out of my uniform and into a pair of boardies and contemplate a swim in the ocean while chugging back a beer, but I’m too tired to swim. It feels like I’ve been fighting the current for a lifetime, and I don’t want to risk going out into the water because I’m not sure I give enough of a shit to keep my head above it anymore. Instead, I sit out on the deck and watch the sea below. This house cost me a fucking fortune, but I don’t care if I have to work for it until the day I keel over—it’s home, it’s my sanctuary. Or at least it was, before Will.
Finding North Page 11
