Foxes (27 page)

I’m not sure if this is supposed to be taken as a threat or a promise, and by the looks of it, neither is the clipboard woman, but she sighs as if this is more trouble than she wants to deal with right now, and waves us through. Micky grins at me all conspiratorially and takes my hand as we try to find two empty seats in the dark.

THE CONCERT
leaves me dazed. Even when it’s over and the lights are up and everyone makes their way to the exits, I stare at the stage, feeling space expanding all huge and empty around me. Everything is too quiet after all that
sound
.

“Did you like it?” Micky asks, leaning over and resting his head on my shoulder.

I nod and squeeze his hand, too close to overwhelmed to say anything.

Most people have left by the time we make our way to the door. The corridor is still packed, though. I don’t like the crush. Without a word, Micky leads the way back through the auditorium to the backstage exit we came in through. It’s pretty noisy and busy this way too, but it’s calmer, with mainly people picking up their instruments and talking instead of rushing for the exit.

I want to hug him, stroke his back, touch him, for all the little ways he knows me. Maybe I will when we get out of here. Maybe I will pretend I’m someone special, someone he’d be really attracted to, and get the courage to do those things.

“Dominic!” someone yells suddenly.

Everyone sort of shuts up and looks around, because whoever is yelling sounds really desperate.

Micky’s hand tightens around mine, and he starts to walk faster.

“Dominic!”

I stop to look, trying to work out who’s shouting. People don’t shout like that unless something’s wrong. Micky keeps walking, pulling me. I shake my hand out of his grasp and instead try to grab his arm to stop him for a second, but I’m transfixed by someone surging through the crowd behind us. When I look back for Micky, he’s not there—he’s running, weaving in and out of the crowd as if his life depends on it. He doesn’t even glance over his shoulder once before he disappears around a curve in the corridor.

Confused, I take off after him, but I only manage two steps before someone grabs my bad shoulder hard. I cry out in pain, trying to curl away from the touch but only managing to trip over my feet and land in an awkward tangle on the floor. I struggle up, and someone grabs my arm again, trying to help me, I think, but really they’re only hurting.

“Please don’t touch my arm,” I gasp, wishing I had a curtain of hair to hide behind. “Hurts.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Hey.”

I blink at the person in front of me, wondering if I just hit my head and my eyes have fucked up. Micky—with neater hair, a slightly bigger build, a rounder face, and somehow a more masculine vibe, looking all concerned and upset. Not angry upset. Upset like his heart has been pulverized.

Everyone is looking at us. Micky Who’s Not Micky wipes his eyes with his sleeve and says with a really heavy American accent, “You were with Dominic, weren’t you? Please, don’t lie, I just need to know.”

I’m still too shocked to react.
Dominic?

He looks around at all the people watching us. “There are too many people here. We should go somewhere a bit more private.”

And this is how I find myself in a bathroom of the Albert Hall with Benjamin da Silva, a renowned clarinetist and son of a Texas oil baron, whose older brother Dominic is missing, suspected to be in London.

I stare at him as he spills his heart, and I say nothing.

At first it’s mostly because I’m completely stunned. As if he’s shot me right between the eyes with his superpowerful stun ray of words.

“I saw you with him,” he whispers.

He looks like he might cry again, and I feel really bad for him. I hate seeing people cry. I don’t want him to cry—he’s so much like Micky. But it’s funny because however much he looks like Micky, my heart doesn’t speed up like it’s injected with adrenaline when I catch his eye. He doesn’t glitter in the same way. No one does, maybe.

I want to like him (I think I probably do like him), but I know I have to keep my distance. I pretend I’m Iceman, and he’s not getting through my berg, not even a little.

I may be a bit stupid about a lot of stuff, but I know some things aren’t black-and-white. If someone runs away, there’s always a reason.

“Okay. I get it. You think you’re protecting him. I would too,” Benjamin says finally, looking superresigned and actually in a lot of pain. He reaches into his pocket and hands me a card with his name and address and other contact details on it. “I won’t tell anyone back home, but I’m so worried about him. Tell him I love him. I’ll always love him, whatever.”

Then Benjamin da Silva gets up and leaves me alone in the bathroom with just about all the questions I could ever think of crowding my brain.

I FIND
Micky pacing agitatedly up and down the pavement outside South Kensington the nearest Tube Station, arms wrapped around his chest like he’s in a straitjacket. For a second I don’t know what to do and think,
What do I say? Where the hell do I start?
But then I get the courage from somewhere to just go and hug him, and we stand, leaning against the wall, and I stroke up and down his back until his breathing slows and he relaxes a little.

We don’t talk all the way back on the Tube. By the time we reach Tooting Bec, our stop, Micky is curled in my lap and I consider just staying on the train until the end of the line. But we don’t. We get off, and Micky presses close to me as we walk by the side of the common to the swimming pool.

When the words come, it’s me who starts them. I close the door to my shell behind us and whisper, “Dominic?” And Micky tenses again and then sinks to his knees on the tiles.

“You spoke to Benjamin, didn’t you?
Fuck
. You were gone so long I… what did he tell you?”

“That he loves you.”

Micky makes a pained sound and curls up on his side.

I sink to the floor and curl up with him, expecting to stay like that, but suddenly Micky rolls awkwardly on top of me and we are a mess of limbs, and Micky’s tears are on my cheek and in my mouth, but that’s not the only thing that’s wet against my mouth, there’s something soft, soft, soft, against my lips. I gasp, and the softness of a tongue dips in my mouth and touches mine. I don’t quite believe he’s kissing me until he stops and pushes himself away to lean over and look at me.

“Don’t,” I whisper. My whole body hurts like I’ve been cracked right down the center. “Please. I don’t want to pretend.”

“I’m not pretending.” Micky frowns unhappily, his fingers threading gently through my hair.

This is either the best avoidance technique ever or… or….

Dislodging him, I scrabble backward so I can get up. I walk over to the window and place my hands flat on the cold wall tiles. This isn’t fair. I decide right then that hope is the evilest of all emotions.

“Danny?”

My brain goes crazy trying to stop replaying the feel of his lips on mine, trying to stop making a taste out of the nanosecond touch of his tongue. “Please don’t do this,” I whisper.

“Danny, if you don’t want this because you don’t want me, I’ll understand…. I mean, I’ll be fucking crushed but… this isn’t how I fucking say thank you!” Micky’s voice has gone all thin and high and wavery, as though it’s battling through a hurricane to reach me. “If you think I’m doing this out of anything but completely selfish desire and a hell of a lot of want, you are so fucking wrong.”

“What?” I can’t get my head around what he just said. He’s stunning. “How could I not want you?”

He wraps a trembling arm around my waist, and he turns me around to face him.

“If you don’t, this is the point right now where you tell me you want to be my friend, and that’s it, you’re sorry, but you’ll never feel the same way about me that I feel about you.”

I stare at him. At his uncertain smile and shaking hands. He reaches for my arm and places my palm over his heart. It hammers against my hand, even through all his layers of clothes.

“Feel that?” he whispers. “Scared shitless and kind of turned on, but mostly scared.”

I keep my hand there, letting my thumb make these little circles against the fabric of his suit. I don’t really know what the fuck we’re doing, but feeling Micky’s heart going like the clappers somehow makes me feel tons better.

Micky puts a hand over my heart, and I smile as I look at the floor. “How about you,” he whispers. “Are you scared too?”

I nod.

“Turned on?” His voice wobbles.

Again I nod.

“Can we do something about the shit-scared bit first…? I’m scared of fucking this up, and fucking it up so badly I somehow end up losing you, because I don’t think you have a clue how much you mean to me and I don’t know how to make you see. What are you scared of?”

“That you only want me right now because this isn’t how I normally look,” I say quickly, still thinking about what Micky is scared of, and trying to work out how he could fuck
anything
up.

I hear him gulp back what sounds like a sob, and when I look up, he won’t meet my eyes. Locking our fingers together, he picks up his makeup case and my lantern, and leads me out of my shell to the bathroom at the other end of the swimming pool again.

We stand in front of the mirror. I know we’re in front of the mirror, but I’m not looking in it. I was someone else for a night. Who wants to feel that sort of magic die?

Micky moves to stand in front of me. It’s so he can look me in the eye, I think. I put my hand over his heart again, just to feel it.

In the low glow of the lantern on the chair behind us, I can see my outline reflected in his eyes. I don’t mind looking at myself like that, surrounded by a lake of blue.

“I’ve not been through the shit you’ve been through, Danny. No one I love has died. But I do know that having smooth, unscarred skin does not make you beautiful. Shining like the brightest light in the dark does, though. And you light up everything. You light
me
up. I’m falling in love with you,” he says simply.

A few tears spill down his cheeks when he blinks. I wipe them away with my thumb. His heart thumps heavily against my other hand, just as his words echo over and over again in my head. I’m overwhelmed. By what he’s just said, by Dominic, the son of an oil baron, who plays the clarinet so fucking amazingly well and has a brother whose heart is broken by his absence. By everything.

“Look.” He steps out of the way of the mirror and I do, I look because it’s easier than thinking.

The boy I see in the mirror is no more and no less than myself. The makeup doesn’t cover my scars, only mutes them a little. No mask. It’s the hair more than anything that makes me look a little different. Micky’s given me a floppy, boyband haircut—my dark fringe almost dips into my eyes, but not quite. I like it. I cock my head, smiling. In the background I can see Micky watching me. He hands me a wad of cotton wool and some sort of lotion.

“Take it off,” he whispers.

Slowly I wipe the makeup off. I know I’m taking a long time. I know what he’s said to me is huge.

“Don’t want to get it on the suit,” I whisper. Really, I’m still overwhelmed.

“It’s okay.” Micky doesn’t sound upset. He can probably read my mind by now. “How I feel is not going to change even if you take four hours to take that makeup off.”

I still can’t believe how easily he talks about his feelings. I know they’re only words, but I believe him, I realize.

I’m falling in love with you.
His words echo louder and louder. They have so much power right now, they’re atomic. They’re inside me.

Micky is falling in love with me?
Me?
Everything he’s said suddenly sinks home and I sway. I drop the cotton wool and the lotion. I hear the bottle skitter away across the floor.

“Micky,” I gasp, and he’s there in my arms. I don’t care how much my shoulder hurts. “How?” I murmur against his neck over and over.

“How? How what? How do you fall in love?” He laughs like he can’t believe I’ve asked that, and steps back. “Because you think the other person is fucking amazing.” I look away, feeling too raw to joke. He touches my hair and says softly, “I mean it. You are. Every time I think of you, I just want to be with you. I haven’t smiled or laughed this much in years. You make me feel so happy. And you see me like no one else, make me feel like I matter, like I make a difference to you, like I’m important.

“Like you think I’m beautiful.”

“You are,” I whisper and he blushes.
So, so beautiful.

“And when I’m with you, I feel so safe, you know. Safe to be myself, not just safe in the world. You’ve always been exactly what I need—who I need. And you keep on doing it. I want to be who you need too, you know? Love happens—there is no
how
. It feels like it’s always been you, Danny. Always.”

Everything slows.

Gently, oh so gently, Micky fists the fabric of my suit. He’s trembling again, his heartbeat crazy fast beneath my palm. I love feeling his heartbeat.

“And I know you’re sad about Dashiel. I know you loved him. I’m not trying to take that away. I don’t expect you to feel the same. I could never—”

“I miss him.”

Micky nods, blinks tears, and for a completely awful second as I look at him, I sense I have the power to break his heart. I could snap it in two right now.

“He was my friend. I loved him, I always will. But not like this, like you…,” I whisper. I want to say it so badly, tell him that it’s been him from the beginning, but words are making me dizzy. “You have my heart,” I whisper instead.

Instantly I’m crushed against him, chest, mouth, everything tight and heavy and hurting and not hurting. I want to let go, ride the wave of everything I’m feeling, but I’m scared and I don’t want to do it here, in this broken little room. I want to feel safe and wrapped up in him, covered in blankets.

Tangled together like we’re a skinny, two-headed octopus, we stumble noisily back to my room. There is no light on in Milo’s room, so he’s either out or sleeping soundly.