Handle With Care (8 page)

“Ben, isn’t it?”

I nodded once. Not more tests. I didn’t think I could face them. On the other hand, maybe it was more drugs. I wouldn’t mind some more of that stuff they’d knocked me out with this morning. It would be good to get the bed lowered again too. This enforced sitting was tiring me out.

“I’ve got a young man demanding to be let in to see you. Says his name is Brian Jones. He’s not on the list your sister left with us.”

I tried to remember if I’d ever known a Brian well enough to have him visit but drew up a blank. I didn’t care enough to make any more of a response than a shrug. Then I wished I hadn’t, as the motion pulled the stitches in my belly and reminded me of what was in there. Pieces of Ollie, cut out of him and pasted into me like a macabre collage. I wanted to be sick again.

Maybe if I drank the water, I could throw that up.

“He
says
he’s your boyfriend,” the nurse said, frowning at me. “Bright red hair?”

I definitely would remember having a redheaded boyfriend named Brian, wouldn’t I? God, unless I was suffering from some bizarre amnesia and I’d made up all that stuff about me getting it on with the delivery guy. Did I have a normal life waiting for me somewhere? I stared at the nurse, willing her to tell me that I didn’t need to feel this anguish, that it was all a bittersweet dream and I’d soon forget all about Ollie and the way he made me feel.

But I didn’t want to forget him. Not when he’d made me feel something I’d never dared hope for. Maybe the pain was worth it, somehow.

The nurse was heading out of the room. “I’ll tell him to leave, then.” She turned back when halfway out of the door and frowned again. “Wait, he said to tell you he’d come to deliver more comics. Said you’d know what he meant.”

I gaped. Hope sparked inside me, so bright it was painful. I felt like I was teetering on the edge of a precipice, that thread of hope holding me up above the darkness.

“Let him in.”

Boyfriend…comics…Brian…red hair… It didn’t add up, so I told my brain to take a hike and stared at the door as it slowly swung shut behind the nurse.

Then I heard a voice outside that made my heart leap. “I told you, he knows me as Ollie.”

“If he really is your
boyfriend
, then I don’t see why he wouldn’t recognise your real name,” the nurse replied haughtily.

66

The door crashed open as a vision in red and black barrelled through it.

“Ben! You would not believe the time I’ve had trying to find you!”

I barely had time to focus on the rapidly moving body before he was on me and my lips were ambushed. His exuberance startled me, but I opened my mouth to the messy kiss. He bathed my parched mouth in saliva, and it tasted amazing—all coffee and chocolate like the previous day. Was it really only a day? I felt like I’d lived a lifetime since our tryst in the kitchen.

His hands grasped the sides of my head, and he pulled back, flashing me a brilliant grin. I was too dazed to smile back but kept running my gaze over his face, trying to convince myself that this was real. That Ollie was here. That he was my…boyfriend?

I felt the smile start deep inside me, blotting out the pain as it rose up towards my face.

“Are you all right?” he asked me. “What happened? I was so worried, I couldn’t sleep last night.”

“
You
were worried?” I wanted to say, but my voice cracked. Then Ollie was holding that tiny little plastic cup up to my lips, and I gulped down my water ration. It was sweet, but not as sweet as Ollie’s mouth.

I started laughing. God, that hurt. Tears ran out of my eyes, but it was almost impossible to stop. Eventually I wheezed to a halt, and the tearing on my stitches eased. I clicked my morphine button in the hope of some more being sent down the drip feed.

Ollie looked at me like I was certifiable. My gaze drifted up to his hair.

“She said you were a redhead called Brian. I thought I must have had amnesia.” It was the most words I’d said in one go since the surgery. That water must have really helped. Or maybe it was just the joy of having Ollie here, alive and whole.

“Oh yeah. Uh, about that…” Ollie flushed, his face almost matching the vibrant crimson of his new dye-job. “My mates all call me Ollie after the skateboarding trick. I was never that keen on my real name, so I use it all the time now. Only my mum ever calls me Brian.”

“You must be good.” Ollie gave me a puzzled look. “At skating.”

He dropped his eyes and shook his head. When he looked back up, there was a softness in his expression that made me want to kiss him all over again.

Shame I was in too much pain to sit up that far.

“Nah, I’ve got the energy but not the precision. Took me a whole summer holiday to get the hang of an ollie, and I still bollocks it up half the time. That’s why they called me it, you know? Just taking the piss, like mates do.”

I was going to have to admit my ignorance. “What’s an ollie?”

Ollie enthused. “It’s like, the foundation of most other tricks, but it’s bloody hard to learn. You basically start on the ground and make the board jump. That bit’s tricky enough, but then you’ve gotta land without falling off. I’ll show you sometime, when you’re out of here.”

I had to mentally readjust my vision of Ollie as a skateboarding pro.

Something about the idea of him getting back onto the board after all those falls really appealed to me, though. His persistence was endearing. I could definitely learn something from him.

“I thought you were dead,” I told him.

“Why on earth would you think that? I thought you’d been abducted by aliens or something, just taking off like that and not even leaving a note.”

“I did! With Mrs. F. You know, the gnome lady.”

“I didn’t see her.” Ollie frowned, and I wanted to wipe the furrow from his brow, but my hand was still too sodding weak to attempt it.

68

“So, go on, then. What’s the story? They wouldn’t tell me when I phoned up, but this is the transplant ward, right?”

“Yeah. I had a new kidney and pancreas put in.” I frowned at him, remembering. “That bitch! I can’t believe she didn’t give you the note.”

“She’d probably just had to pop out or something. I’m sure if she’d been in, she’d have heard me pounding on the door and seen me peering in through all your windows.”

“She’d probably have phoned the police if she had. Bloody busybody.”

Ollie frowned at me. “I’m sure she means well enough.”

I decided I didn’t want to tell him about Mrs. Felpersham’s homophobia right now. Let him think the best of everyone if it made him happy. He’d learn soon enough.

“How did you find me in the end?” I asked, changing the subject.

“I didn’t think you’d have stood me up, so I was pretty worried. Thought maybe you’d had another attack. Phoned round all the A&E departments I could think of. It wasn’t till this morning I had the idea of trying the kidney wards.”

“Not just a pretty face, are you?”

Ollie grinned. “Nah, the rest of me’s pretty too. You’ll find out soon enough.”

“I hope you’re not expecting any action right now. I’ll be out of order for a while.”

“Bummer.” Ollie’s face fell, but then changed again as a new idea flitted through his brain. It was making me tired just watching him. I wondered what it must be like to experience life as a constant flicker of new emotions and ideas.

He pulled a packet of Malteasers out of his pocket. “Sorry, d’you mind if I have something to eat? Couldn’t manage any breakfast, I was so worried.”

I fought back the paternal urge to lecture him on how chocolates weren’t a proper breakfast and settled instead for watching him pop the Malteasers into his mouth one by one. If I was lucky, I’d get a few spoonfuls of mashed potato and apple sauce later. I wondered if I’d enjoy them the way Ollie was relishing his chocolate.

“Nice room you’ve got here,” he said around a mouthful of chocolate.

“It’s okay.” To be honest, I hadn’t noticed anything about it, being too wrapped up in my own head, but I looked around to try and work out whether Ollie was simply making polite conversation. It had all the usual hospital equipment attached to the walls, but at least they were a restful mauve, and the tall window let out onto a courtyard with a large bronze sculpture in the centre. I wondered how long it would be before I was turfed out of here and onto a ward.

When Ollie had finished, he screwed up the wrapper, shoved it back in his pocket and gave me a long stare.

“You said you thought I was dead.”

“Oh, uh, yeah.” It seemed so silly now, to have leapt to that assumption. “I thought you must have had an accident, when you didn’t phone.”

“Jesus, I thought I was the drama queen.”

“Hey, I was on some pretty strong medication.” I wasn’t about to tell him that the last time I’d had a blowjob, the guy had died shortly afterwards. He didn’t need to know all my dark secrets.

“Yeah, I guess that could screw with your thinking.” Ollie glanced around the room. “Where’s your sister? Thought she’d be here with you.”

“She was. She’s getting some rest.” I thought back to Zoe’s objections to Ollie. “How old are you, anyway?”

Ollie gave a sheepish grin. “I’ll be twenty-one next month, but I still get ID-d all the time.”

70

“So you’re twenty?” It was better than it could have been, I suppose. I mentally calculated the difference in our ages, wondering if it was enough to be accused of cradle-snatching.

“You’re thinking you’re too old for me now, aren’t you?” He said it with a teasing smile, but I flushed with guilt.

“I’m thirty-three,” I protested. Not quite old enough to be his dad, perhaps, but close to it. I’d been as good as a dad to Zoe, after all, and she was a year older than him.

Ollie didn’t seem remotely bothered, though. He gave me a sunny grin that made my heart want to somersault, although it decided not to in deference to my battered insides and settled for a celebratory wiggle.

“I like that about you,” he said. “You’re so much more mature than my last boyfriend was. You treat me with respect. Take things slow. All he ever wanted me to do was bend over for him.” He pursed his lips in a moue. “And do the dishes.”

Could it be true? Could it be that the very thing I’d been cursing these last few years—my physical decline and loss of libido—had been part of what drew Ollie to me? What led him to seduce me? I looked down at my abdomen with a mix of nostalgia and regret. There wouldn’t be any seducing going on for a while, that was for sure. I had some serious healing to do first. I’d just better hope he was still into me when I was all healthy and catheter-free again.

Ollie’s smile broke out again. “I was a bit late yesterday, anyway,” he said.

“Wanted to redo the hair as a surprise. And then I drew something for you.” He lifted up a bag and undid the buckles. It was one of those canvas bags the weird kids at school always used to carry, and like theirs, it was covered in hand-painted graffiti. Alien warriors seemed to be doing battle with a plethora of band names I’d never heard of. Ollie pulled out a plastic file, and his cheeks flushed a little as he handed it over.

“I’m gonna write the whole adventure, but so far I’ve only had time for the last scene. It’s Cyber-Ben and Sidekick-Ollie, celebrating Cyber-Ben’s escape from certain death with some life-affirming action.”

He helped me to open the elastic fastenings on the file as my arms were still pretty weak. I thought I caught a glimmer of something in his eyes when he got a good look at the cannula in the back of my hand, but he just stroked the skin next to it and didn’t say anything.

Then my attention was hijacked by the drawing, and everything else was shoved out of the way. I stared in disbelief, running my gaze over the inked picture. The stunningly explicit, inked picture. I raised my eyes to Ollie, not sure what to say.

“Shit, I’m sorry. I just thought, as you liked porn and comics, you might—”

He chewed on his lips and reached out for the paper.

I moved it away from him. “Uh-uh. Just give me a minute. This is…amazing.”

And it was. I was no expert on art, but the quality of the illustration was apparent even to me. One of the characters was lying back on a chair of some sort—from the background details it appeared they were in a spaceship—with a lascivious grin on his face. He was naked, except for a thick pelt of chest hair and a few pipes and cables that sprang out of his abdomen before disappearing inside again. He held his enormous cock at the base with one hand while the other guy lowered himself down onto it.

He was skinnier, the bottom—skinny and tattooed with spiky hair, a ring through his left nipple, and one of those weird ear-piercings like Ollie’s. There was an expression of pure ecstasy on his face as his huge dick dribbled precome 72

onto the other guy’s belly. I looked up at Ollie, then back down at the picture. I could see him there. I could remember that blissed-out look on his face as he shot over my jeans the previous day.

I had problems seeing me as the top, though. “I’m not that big,” I protested, then wanted to kick myself as I’d meant to say what a fantastic drawing it was.

Ollie didn’t seem bothered, though. “You felt like it when you were in my mouth,” he said and winked at me. “I bet you’ll feel that big when we get to do this too.”

There was no justice in this world. I’d just been given the hottest picture ever, drawn especially for me by my new boyfriend, and I was in no fit state to get hard. I couldn’t even laugh about it without agonising pain. In the end, I just smiled.

“Kiss me,” I whispered.

“I thought you’d never ask.” Ollie obliged, kissing me with a slow but deliberate sensuality, unlike his previous tonsil attacks. The taste of him stimulated my appetite. I wanted to get better. I wanted to eat, I wanted to drink, I wanted to chase him around and tackle him to the ground and fuck him senseless. I wanted to spend my evenings getting to know him better. I wanted to spend long nights in his arms.

I heard someone clearing her throat at the door. Ollie gave my lower lip a little suck as he pulled away, then moved out of my line of sight so I could see the pinched-face nurse at the door.