Without a Compass

by Helen Juliet

  For a while, they simply filled up the half a dozen bottles together in comfortable silence. But then when the task was done, Riley turned off the tap and looked over at his family again. Kai chuckled, getting his attention.

  “It’s kind of couple valley over there right now, huh?” His eyes sparkled and Riley marvelled at how dark they were; so brown they were almost black.

  It was Riley’s turn to shrug. “You, me and Jake can take them,” he said, feeling bold and playful. Whether he had meant to or not, Kai had provided him with another chance to have a little chat together. It meant he could add to his store of moments to take home with him. “Singles unite.”

  Kai chuckled some more and dropped on the grass by the filled water bottles, leaning back on his hands. Bia saw this and evidently decided she’d drunk enough from her bowl. Dripping from her muzzle, she padded over, then threw herself on her back by Kai’s side, wriggling in an invitation to get her belly rubbed.

  “Bee, you absolute tart!” Riley admonished as her paws twitched in the air. Secretly though, it gave him a thrill to see Kai laughing at his girl, giving in and patting her tummy affectionately.

  “Does she do this to all the boys?” he asked, grinning.

  Only the pretty ones, Riley thought to himself. He couldn’t think of anything to say out loud though, so instead he sat himself down as well and waggled her back leg with his fingers.

  Having a dog between them as a distraction meant Riley didn’t have to think of much conversation. The two of them could simply coo over how adorable she was.

  “I thought her name was Bia,” Kai said after a few moments. He’d known her for most of her life too, having been around the house so often. But he and Brendon were always off doing activities and she preferred to stay with Riley, so he’d not necessarily got that many cuddles.

  Riley smiled bashfully. “It is. Sometimes I call her Bee for short. Bia was a Greek deity – we were studying Ancient Greece at school when I got her. She’s the goddess of ‘mighty force’.” He used air quotations and grinned, hoping Kai wouldn’t think he was too much of a loser. “That made little me think of Power Rangers.”

  Kai raised his eyebrows and looked down at the squirming dog. “Is that you, Bee? Mighty?”

  She pawed at his hand, indicating she wanted the belly rubs to continue.

  Riley laughed. “She’s certainly something,” he suggested.

  “Didn’t you want to take her when you moved out?” Kai asked. “She’s so lovely.”

  Riley beamed at the praise, then sighed. “I’d kill to have her with me,” he admitted. “But I’ve got a matchbox room in a flat share on the fourth floor of a converted town house. Not the best environment to keep a doggy when Mum and Dad have a garden and can walk her twice a day, every day.”

  Kai seemed to think on that for a moment. “Is it really worth it?” His tone wasn’t hostile, more curious. “Living in such a small space?”

  “To be in London?” Riley clarified. “Yeah, definitely. You have to be in the thick of it, otherwise what’s the point?”

  “I guess you get to see your friends a lot,” Kai said. He smiled warmly, making Riley’s insides flip.

  “Um, yeah.”

  What was he supposed to do? Admit that he didn’t really have friends exactly. He’d not kept in touch with anyone from school, because there hadn’t been anyone worth keeping in touch with. So he’d got close with some people at work; however, there was always a degree of professionalism to be maintained. They may get shit-faced regularly, but it wasn’t like Riley could have a heart to heart with any of them when they all had to face each other in the office nine o’clock the next morning.

  He entertained himself with regular enough Grindr hookups too. But the way Kai had said friends…it was like he was talking about how he got together with Brendon and their other mates from growing up. They had a crew, a gaggle. They belonged.

  London gave Riley the illusion of belonging. When he was drunk, dancing recklessly in one of the big clubs like Heaven, he didn’t feel so alone.

  13

  Riley

  Riley realised he’d gone all quiet again. He was probably so awkward to be around. He cleared his throat. “Whereabouts are you living these days?” There, that was better. Asking questions made people feel welcome and wanted. He’d read that in an Attitude article a few months ago.

  “Ah,” said Kai ruefully and tickled Bia some more. She flipped onto her legs again, gave a good shake, then shoved her wet nose against his solid torso. Tart. “I’m still at home,” Kai admitted, stroking her back. “It’s close enough to work, so makes sense while I’m saving for a house deposit, but it’d be nice to have my own space. It’s a bit crowded there.”

  It sort of sounded like Kai was envious of his flat-share, which was unlikely. But for a second, Riley did allow himself a moment to be proud of spreading his wings and living independently.

  It felt so nice, just sitting there with Kai, not feeling the pressure to talk thanks to Bia’s continuous demands for affection. This, he thought absently. This might be what it would be like to have a boyfriend.

  If only Kai weren’t so damned unattainable.

  Riley tried to remember how big his family was. He thought he had a younger sister, but he couldn’t recall more than that at present. It felt rude asking questions, but he wasn’t sure how else to keep the conversation going, and he wasn’t ready for it to end yet.

  For whatever reason, Kai had sought him out more than once today. Maybe he just felt sorry for poor little Riley, who hadn’t exactly kept his dislike of camping quiet. Even if it was just out of pity, Riley thought if he tried to rally his spirits a bit more and be cheerful, perhaps Kai would want to keep hanging out with him.

  A boy could dream.

  “So, are there loads of you at home?” he asked, hoping Kai wouldn’t feel like he was being interrogated.

  He shook his head, running one of his large hands over the dry, yellowing grass. “Just me, my mum and my sister. Abigail is younger, just turned eighteen.” He gave Riley a conspiratorial smile that made his insides flutter. “I think they got used to me being away at uni so long. Having a big, stinky guy invade the bungalow again was a bit of a shock.”

  Riley laughed along with him. “I share with three other guys,” he confessed. “All gay, just one bathroom. We have a rota, but sometimes you have to battle your way in there and it gets ugly.”

  Kai laughed some more and rubbed his fingers through his dark hair. Where it was damp it looked a bit like liquorice. “Is that normal?” he asked. “Living with other queer people.”

  Riley bristled immediately at the use of the ‘Q’ word. Kai had obviously used it in a non-derogatory manner, but it still sent a jolt of panic down Riley’s spine upon hearing it. He was able to relax after a second or two and it didn’t look like Kai had noticed anything odd about his reaction. It was probably best to just let it go.

  “Um, I guess so,” he said. “You never know how people are going to react, so it felt safer going with other guys like me.” He realised he was pulling at the grass and he stopped.

  “I’d never have thought of that,” Kai admitted. “So are they friends you knew before?”

  Riley shook his head. “All strangers. I sort of know them now though.”

  He pulled his lower lip between his teeth. He could probably make more of an effort with his flatmates, he knew. But when he saw them making dinner together or drinking wine in front of the TV, he was always scared if he joined them they’d be annoyed. They always invited him of course, but they had to live together, so Riley was generally wary of irritating them and then them all being stuck together until their leases ran out.

  He looked up to see Kai staring at his mouth. He should probably stop chewing his lip like a weirdo.

  “What did you study at uni,” he asked. He’d rather steer the conversation away from his lack of friends. Besides, he was sincerely interested. “You’re a personal train
er, aren’t you?”

  Kai barked out a laugh that made Bia jump. They both looked down as she ruffled her fur, then settled against Kai’s solid thigh to doze. He was still absently stroking her.

  “What gave you that idea?”

  Riley felt the heat of embarrassment creeping across his skin. “Um, well,” he stuttered. He waved his hand to encompass Kai’s impressive physique. “I thought…maybe I just assumed.”

  Luckily, Kai chuckled. “Nah, that stuff’s just for fun. I’ve always been active.” I’ve noticed, Riley thought wistfully. “I’m an OT – occupational therapist.”

  “Oh.” Riley was stunned. “Is that like…a physical therapist?”

  “And mental health too,” said Kai proudly. “We kind of say the whole thing is literally ‘mind over matter’. So, like, I specialise working with elderly patients, not only helping them to improve mobility after something like a hip op, but also helping them understand they canrecover. And then it’s all about how they go on living their day to day lives. I like to think of it as giving them tool boxes to live independently and to the fullest.”

  He was practically shining with enthusiasm and Riley couldn’t help but melt a little more. There he was, thinking he was, unfortunately, swooning over some dumb jock, when all along he was caring as well as clever.

  “Wow,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s…I’m seriously impressed.”

  Kai blew a raspberry. “It pays fuck all,” he said with a laugh. “But I go home feeling good about myself. What about you, what do you do?”

  Riley felt a bit reluctant to say after that. “Well, I’m not saving lives or anything.”

  Kai was looking at him though with an eager expression. Like he really cared what Riley did. Bia was looking at him too, which made it kind of comical and eased some of his tension.

  “Okay,” he began slowly. “So, I’m an assistant project coordinator with a home automation company. You know, when you have those systems in your house where you can control the lights and music and temperature all from the same panel?”

  Kai scoffed. “I think the Grinters have that in their motor home,” he said scornfully with a jerk of his thumb in their direction. “But yeah, at your house I could see that would be really cool to have.”

  Riley knew it was childish, but he wanted to wriggle in happiness at Kai’s obvious disapproval towards the other family.

  “Um, yeah, so I work with the actual project coordinators who liaise with architects and interior designers to put our systems in their buildings. It means I get to do presentations and a bit of auto-cad work. Like, designing the plans. Some purchasing too.” He gave Kai a small smile. “It’s pretty interesting. I like it.”

  “I bet,” said Kai.

  For a moment, they just sort of looked at each other, smiling. Riley began to feel his skin pricking.

  A cry made them both look around. From over near the tents, Riley’s dad waved in their direction and Jake held one of the disposable barbeques over his head.

  “That looks like it might be time to start dinner,” said Riley. He was torn between relief at breaking the silence and disappointment that they were being called away.

  Kai let out a whistle. “Thank God, I’m starving.” He hopped to his feet, then offered his hand for Riley to take. Warmth flared through his insides, but hopefully it didn’t show on his face how pleased he was at the skin on skin contact.

  As they scooped up the bottles they’d filled, Riley felt his pocket vibrate. “Oh!” he cried, freezing in place. Kai raised an eyebrow in amusement at him, which wasn’t unsurprising considering he probably looked like a twat with his feet apart and his hands in the air like a bank robber who’d been caught mid-heist. “I think I just got signal.”

  Kai looked around where they were standing. “Oh cool! I got a bit of signal over there a while ago, but then it was gone.” He used his head to indicate some point back over by the campsite. “Hey, do you want to stop a minute and check your messages? I can take the water back.”

  “Oh, no,” Riley protested weakly. But Kai was already easing the heavy bottles from Riley’s hands, cuddling them all to his broad chest. They were standing so close Riley could finally attest that, yes, his eyes really were that dark a brown. They also had flecks of gold in the irises around the pupils too. Huh.

  “You might lose connectivity if you hop about,” Kai insisted.

  Riley snapped his attention back to the rest of his face. “Oh, okay,” he said sheepishly. “If you insist? You’re doing a lot of heavy lifting.”

  Kai gave him a sly look that went straight to his balls, making them contract. “I told you, that’s my job.”

  If Kai was gay, Riley would have sworn it was flirting. As it was, he just had to make do with watching him walk away, his shorts hugging that rock-hard arse.

  Bia was torn, looking comically between them both with her whole body. But in the end, she plonked her bum down next to Riley’s left foot and began to scratch her ear.

  Riley let himself gaze longingly for a second or two more. Then carefully, like he was handling a live explosive, he pinched his phone between his finger and his thumb and slipped it from his shorts. He did indeed have one bar – two if he shifted a few inches to the right, so he earmarked this particular spot as a golden zone.

  It was pure vanity and he knew it. But he wanted to see how many likes his selfie from the drive had got. He may not feel like he had many friends in real life, but like London, his online platforms made him feel connected in a warm and fuzzy way.

  His phone assaulted him with notifications from several apps at once, but there was one from Facebook that caught his eye immediately. He blinked, double checking he was seeing it right.

  Kai Brandt likes your photo.

  It had been so worth taking almost twenty minutes to get that blasted thing right. Riley let loose a closed-lipped squeal, then clicked on the link to see the proof for himself. Kai hadn’t said anything about seeing his photo, but then, why would he? Riley didn’t tell everyone every time he gave them the thumbs-up.

  Except, when the image finally loaded, Riley was confused for a moment. It wasn’t him in front of the Cumbrian vista.

  It was from his friend Nenna’s birthday, not long after he’d joined the company. It had been an unseasonably sunny February afternoon spent down the pub, and he had that old pink shirt on he’d worn to death. He’d been caught mid-reaction to a particularly scandalous story, laughing in shock. There was something very un-staged about the photo he’d always liked, which is most likely why he’d used it as his profile picture.

  Eighteen months ago.

  He stared at the screen for another thirty seconds, but the new little icon from Kai wasn’t going away. Why had he liked an old photo? It must have been an accident. He probably hadn’t even realised he’d done it. But surely, that meant…

  That meant that when Kai had said he’d found some signal, he’d used it to browse through old photos. Riley’s old photos? Or had he just seen the photo by accident via someone else and liked it not realising it was almost two years old?

  Riley couldn’t get his head around it, even as he skimmed through all his other notifications and replied to a few comments. Before he moved from his magic spot he checked the old photo again.

  It was still showing that Kai liked it.

  Whatever that meant, Riley wasn’t sure. But he smiled surreptitiously to himself as he made the short walk back to the camp. Kai liked his photo.

  Maybe that meant he liked him too. Just a little bit.

  14

  Riley

  Riley kept his eye on Kai the whole way through making dinner, but he never once showed any sign that he’d been caught snooping around Riley’s old photos. He couldn’t get the thought out of his head though, tantalising him, that maybe, just maybe, Kai had been curious.

  Curious was good. Riley only stalked the profiles of people he was attracted too, even if it was only a little bit. Could it
be that Kai was interested on just the tiniest level?

  He was probably grasping at straws, but Riley couldn’t stop himself. Even as he helped tend to the barbeques and dish up store-bought salads, his mind refused to move on from the way that Kai’s eyes had lingered on his lips, or the way he’d paid so much attention to Riley throughout the day.

  There was a small voice in the back of his head that kept reminding him that Kai was straight. But, Riley could nurture a hope that maybe he just hadn’t realised he was bisexual yet?

  Yeah, right, he snorted to himself as he sliced up hot dog buns. The chances of that were extremely slim. But it was a hundred per cent improvement on the odds of anything happening between them that he would have bet only a few hours ago.

  Kai liked him. Maybe just as a friend. Maybe he was intrigued by the whole gay thing. But he was looking at old photos of Riley and you only did that when you were genuinely interested in a person.

  Maybe he just wants to experiment, a nasty little voice whispered at the back of his mind.

  “Oh, careful,” urged Brendon by his side. He reached his hand out to where Riley had almost serrated his skin with the bread knife that had jumped from his grip. “Just because you’re surrounded by first-aiders doesn’t mean you need to test them.”

  “Especially when they’re on their second beer!” chimed in Slady, raising her bottle to him.

  Riley let go of the breath he didn’t realise he’d been holding. “Sorry,” he said in a whoosh. “Just slipped. No harm.” He showed them all his palm and they carried on with what they were doing.

  Kai was helping his dad and Jake stoke the small, disposable tinfoil barbeques, making sure they were the right temperature before adding the burgers and kebabs. He raised his eyebrows questioningly at Riley, so he made a point of showing his hand again and giving an apologetic shrug with his shoulders. Kai smiled back, gave him a thumbs-up, then went back to prodding the coals.