Foxes (17 page)

“I liked feeling you getting hard,” he whispers.

My heart feels like it’s fallen out of my chest and been dropped to the bottom of the sea, where it’s being squeezed by a dozen pincers to stop it beating. I close my eyes, blushing hard and wishing I could disappear.

“Is it strange if I find it comforting?” he carries on, his voice so low I can barely hear him. His fingers are in my hair. I open my eyes. “I don’t think I would find it comforting with anyone else. Just you.” He cups my face, his cold fingers so near to my scars. I can feel the way he’s trying to stroke my cheek, but he can’t quite control the movement and ends up prodding me lightly instead.

We hold eye contact until I start to feel dizzy from lack of oxygen. It’s so terrifyingly tender that my chest hurts. For the first time in my life, it’s as if someone sees me fully, seeing me and accepting everything that I am, inside and out. And I see him too—this scared, sweet boy, so vulnerable and emotionally wide open, who finds the world mostly terrifying but occasionally wonderful.

He spreads his pale thighs to straddle my lap, and I’m not sure if he’s doing it to be closer or so he can gently rock his hips against my groin.

I’m not sure what he wants at all. Especially not from me. The confusion must show on my face as Micky smiles, then bites his lower lip and sucks it into his mouth.

The only time I’ve seen anyone do that is on TV when one actor might use it to show how much he or she wants someone—a staged expression.

Suddenly it occurs to me what he’s doing. How could it be anything else? He thinks he owes me. He thinks he has to pay me back. He knows I want him, so he’s giving himself to me.
It’s not as if it’s the first time he’s offered
, I think, remembering his oblique offer to repay me for giving him my phone.

“Don’t. I’m not a punter,” I gasp. The words come out strangled. I want to cry.

As soon as I say it, Micky’s eyes fly wide and he falls back, scrambling clumsily away from me.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, holding his hand over his mouth and shaking his head. “I’m sorry.
Fuck.
I didn’t… you’re not….” Both hands come up to cover his face—his shoulders tremble as he sobs.

My erection dies.

“Don’t, don’t,” I murmur, crawling forward and reaching for him. “It’s okay. You don’t owe me anything.” I never want him to think that. I’m determined to make this okay.

He lets my arm enfold him and melts against me much like before, except this time I sense there is a barrier between us. That startling openness when we looked at each other a few moments ago couldn’t have been real, and even if it was, I doubt it’s ever going to happen again.

“WE SHOULD
go soon,” I say.

Micky nods and looks around the room.

We’ve tidied the nest away, folded the towels, found a bag on the back of the door with a pair of black jogging bottoms and a pink kids T-shirt with a white horse printed on the front, both of which Micky is now wearing.

Surprisingly I’m pretty indifferent about taking the clothes. I’ve always hated the idea of stealing before, but maybe necessity makes me care less. Or maybe I just care for Micky more than I care about what’s right and wrong.

He’s still shoeless, though. I love the shape of his feet, how big and knobbly they are, how his toes are long and he can move them like fingers.

We washed the dried blood off them in the sink—they’re only a little scraped. Micky leaned over and quickly kissed my cheek when I tried to apologize, and all I could do was hold on to the sink as the world swayed.

“Think I’m going to miss this place. It’s warmer than the bedsit I’m in,” he says, rubbing his hands together.

I wonder if he shares it with Jack, but I don’t want to bring Jack up right now. Absently I touch my shoulder. I should strap it back up before we leave.

Without thinking too much about it, I pull my T-shirt off. Despite our searching, we didn’t find another jumper, and I insisted Micky keep wearing mine because he got so cold.

Micky’s seen the scars on my face, so I’m guessing the ones on my body are not going to be much of a surprise. Still, I don’t look to see his reaction. I’m uncertain, and shy.

When Micky’s fingers join mine in peeling off the tape, I try not to jerk away in shock.

“What happened?” he asks, kneeling in front of me and gesturing to my shoulder.

“Do your hands feel better?” I ask. He seems in much better control of his fingers now. I keep my eyes on them rather than on his face.

“Yep.”

He pokes my knee with one of his bony fingers, and when I look up, he’s grinning.

“You’re like one big secret. It’s your hidden superpower: keeping everyone guessing. A man of mystery.”

I can’t help but smile back. I don’t want to be such a mystery to Micky anymore. “I was trying to stop someone falling in the river, but my shoulder gave way and we both fell.”

“So that’s why you’re out on the streets every night—you’re looking for people to save.”

Though it sounds like he’s making a joke, he’s not smiling—his eyes are full of an emotion I can’t identify. My stupid brain tells me it’s almost as if there’s no one else he’d rather be looking at right now.

“You’re really fucking good at it,” Micky carries on. “I missed you, you know, when you didn’t come around the other day. I was kinda certain you would.”

He looks away as he says those last words, his ears turning pink. I can’t imagine why he’d be blushing.

I hold my arm in position against my chest as Micky smooths the thick sticky tape against my skin. The tape reaches over my shoulder and across my chest, so my arm is almost completely immobilized.

All I have to do is think about how he was going to let me use him and any building desire fizzles out like fire without any oxygen. And that’s exactly what I want, yet, at the same time, this awful ache inside me tells me it’s not what I want at all.

“I was on my way to see you when I saw Dieter on the bridge. He wasn’t going to jump I don’t think, not really, but he slipped. And I couldn’t hold us.” I pause to gather my words. “When we fell, I thought we were going to drown, but a boat picked us up and took us into hospital. I think Dieter’s still there.”

“I heard about that. I didn’t know it was you. Everyone is calling you a hero.”

I shake my head. “I couldn’t stop us falling.”

“You tried, though, that’s what matters. And you saved his life in the water, didn’t you?”

“Maybe if I hadn’t been there, he wouldn’t have fallen in the first place.”

“And maybe he would have…. What’s that quote?” Micky tips his head back, thinking. “You should do the best you can with the time you have,” he says after a moment.

And sometimes the best you can do isn’t good enough.
Thinking like this is pointless, but the guilt that I haven’t been out searching for sharks, that I haven’t been doing what I promised for Dashiel, is like a restless beast in my stomach.

“Hey, you okay?” Micky says gently, dipping his head. “You winced. Did I hurt you?”

“You didn’t hurt me,” I say gently, my gaze flicking over his.

“How did you find me last night?” Micky whispers, pressing down the last bit of tape against my chest—except it won’t quite stick, even though he smooths it over and over.

I think maybe he’s trying to take my mind off whatever he thinks is wrong. It scares me how well it’s working.

“My friends were looking for Jack,” I say. “They were worried…. He left this message on my friend’s phone. He was upset.”

Micky nods. I can see the tension building in his face, but it’s as if he’s trying not to show any emotion.

“I was looking for you more than anyone. I tried to call you. When this one girl said someone had been spotted walking around naked near the river, we split up. I came back this way because I thought I’d be more likely to find you working or something…. I didn’t expect to find you like I did.

“I’m glad I did find you, though.”

“You’re like my guardian angel.” He smiles, but it’s more sad than happy. “I’m sorry you had to deal with me like that.”

I pull my T-shirt back over my head as I get up. “We should probably leave now.”

“Five more minutes?” Micky pats the floor beside him, his expression too hopeful for me to ignore.

When I sit down, he leans against me and drops his head onto my good shoulder. With a will of their own my fingers find his golden hair. As I brush through the tangles, all the tension seems to leave Micky’s body and he closes his eyes.

We sit in silence for more than five minutes, but I could stay here, like this, forever. My heart beats steadily. I concentrate on keeping it that way. Right now I feel a hundred times more relaxed than I usually do in anyone’s presence.

“Were you drunk last night?” I whisper. I feel like I can ask him anything.

For a long time Micky doesn’t say anything, but I know he heard me because as soon as I spoke he opened his eyes and started to make what looks like animal shapes in his lap with his hands—birds, mostly.

It’s okay if he doesn’t want to answer, though. It doesn’t change anything.

“Yeah,” he breathes finally. “So drunk I really did think you were an angel at first.”

He turns his head and glances up at me quickly. He has such beautiful eyes; they make my breath catch.

“Sometimes I think I’m okay, and then something will happen and… I just fall apart and I want everything to stop. I’m so fucked up, sometimes I want to disappear.” He shakes his head and looks away as if he can’t believe how stupid it sounds. “When Jack got really sad, I didn’t know what to do. I got really sad too. I’m not like you. I’m selfish. I can’t help people.”

I don’t think that’s true, but I’m not going to argue with him. The stuff you feel deeply about yourself isn’t stuff other people can change your mind about just by disagreeing with you. I should know.

“Do you think he would do something stupid?”

“I don’t know. I hope not.” Micky bites his lip. “Sometimes he’ll do stuff, like threaten to hurt himself because he needs help or attention. But it’s hard to see why he’s doing it when you’re in the middle of it. I’m not good with people when they get really emotional. I can’t deal with it. It’s too much. It makes me want to feel nothing… like I need to be empty.”

“Is that why you don’t eat much?” I’m not sure why I say it—it just seems like a logical conclusion. It’s kind of obvious he doesn’t eat much, but as Micky shifts away from me and hugs his knees to his chest, I know it was the wrong thing to say.

His toes tap out some crazy rhythm on the tiled floor. “This is a weird conversation.”

Every conversation is pretty weird to me.

“If I really did have superpowers,” I say, “all I’d want to do is make people happy. Not for the attention or anything,” I add.
Anything but.
“I’d want to do it secretly, so I’d be Mr. Happynonymous.” When I look at him, I can see Micky has pressed his lips together to try to stop smiling, but his eyes are shining. It makes me feel so good when he smiles. “And if I could only make one person happy, it’d be you.”

As soon as I say it, his eyes grow wide and he takes a deep breath. I can’t look at him. My heart is banging so hard in my chest, all I can hear is my blood rushing. I’ve let him in on a secret I was never going to tell, and I’m scared he’s sad or shocked by what I’ve said.

“How did you find me?” he whispers in this choked-up voice.

I don’t think he’s talking about last night. He reaches out and squeezes my fingers, and this crazy spark of warmth swirls around my chest like an errant firework racing through the sky.

“BORROW MY
shoes,” I say as we walk out the door to the building to be greeted by the snowy whiteness that covers everything. Walking barefoot through this is going to hurt.

I look down at my feet. The only shoes I have now are these dirty falling-apart trainers, but they’re better than nothing. Leaving my boots at the hospital was one of the worst things about the whole “falling in the river” situation.

“We could have one shoe each,” Micky says, smiling. “That was a joke,” he adds quickly when I reach down to undo my laces. “I’ll be okay. Honestly.”

I want to carry him, give him a piggyback, anything. I wish my shoulder was better.

The slushy sound of cars driving through the melting snow is all I can hear, and even they sound so far away. The world is still playing at being small.

I tilt my head back and look up at the bleak gray sky. Little flakes of snow are still falling, and I open my mouth to catch a few on my tongue. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Micky copying me.

Judging by the light, I’d say it’s somewhere between seven and eight o’clock. But I could be wrong. The darkness of the storm clouds and the brightness of the snow make it hard to tell.

“We’re by the park, right?” Micky turns his head and catches my eye. I guess he must remember something from last night. “It’s not far to my place from here…. Would you like to come back with me? I mean, you don’t have to, I can manage the walk, and I understand if you want to get home and catch up on some sleep—” Micky’s words tumble and he flushes pink all the way from his hairline to his neck this time. I look on, fascinated. “—but I’d quite like it if you did.”

“Okay.” If Jack’s there, maybe it’s better that I come along.

MICKY’S BEDSIT
is in a narrow block with an ugly converted church on one side and a cheap breeze block hotel, which probably lets its rooms as bedsits too, on the other.

We’re out of breath—we walked quickly. Micky rocks on his heels and flexes his near-blue toes as he presses in the key code to unlock the front door.

He glances at me before we step inside. “It’s not much,” he says with a self-conscious shrug.

Thing is, I couldn’t care less if he lived in one of Milo’s Persian palaces or a foxhole in the ground. You lay your head in the safest place you can find. I’m just glad he’s not on the streets like Dytryk was.