The Devil's Trill Sonata (25 page)

“I’m sure I can’t carry on like this,” Jayden muttered miserably, chasing cake around the little plate.

“Like what?”

“Like…” Jayden huffed and shrugged. “Like him loving
me
comes with these conditions. Like I’m not allowed to hang out with who I want to, or do the degree I want, like I have to do things
he
wants even though, you know, he’s there and I’m here, and…”

“Nobody should try and control you,” Jonathon said instantly.

“Well, he does.”

“Jayden, you never said he was controlling.”

“No, that’s too heavy, but he…he takes shots at what I do.”

Jonathon made a little face. “No offence, but you and Ella take shots at what he does. Isn’t he a copper?”

“A crime scene examiner.”

“Well, that doesn’t make him stupid.”

“Of course it doesn’t.”

“The way you let Ella rant on, you’d think…”

“Forget Ella,” Jayden snapped. “She doesn’t know him, or us, and…and we’re…I think we’re in trouble, Jonathon.”

“Can I be honest?” Jonathon asked, folding himself into a lotus position, feet tucked into the crooks of his knees. “I think you’ve been questioning your relationship with Darren since you got here. I mean, you said you weren’t sure school couples make it. Is that just what’s happening?”

“…Maybe.”

“So…maybe now’s the time?”

“Maybe.”

Jonathon hummed sympathetically. “Well…you know. Good luck. Breaking it gently and all.”

Jayden grimaced. “I
can’t
.”

“Why?”

“He’s…he’s got depression and when I was down there this week, he seemed…off. I think he’s having a bit of a bad time of it.”

“Maybe that’s the distance, then.”

“It
shouldn’t
be!” Jayden exclaimed. “He always came to me when he felt bad, he always let me in,
always
. If anything, you know, we were
closer
when he was having a bad day because he’d come to me, and…”

“And now he can’t or won’t?”

“Yes.”

Jonathon winced. “That’s…not a good sign.”

“No,” Jayden agreed miserably, hugging his knees. “I don’t know what to do, Jonathon. I can’t break up with him the way he is now, and I don’t
want
to break up with him because I still love him, I really do, and I hate that it’s all unravelling, but I just…I can’t carry on with a boyfriend who’s about as emotionally close to me as a rock. An Irish rock. The Blarney fucking Stone.”

Jonathon suddenly sniggered, covering his mouth with his hand and reddening for a brief moment. “Sorry,” he said. “Totally inappropriate, God, but…that was kind of funny.”

Jayden huffed and smiled a little. It still felt strange, like he’d somehow forgotten how, or he hadn’t done it in a long time.

“Honestly?” Jonathon said softly. “I think it’s time you did things for
you
. Never mind Darren and Ella and the rest. You’ve been stressed out, and it’s been shitty to watch, and you should smile more.”

“I don’t really feel I have a lot to smile
about
.”

“You should,” Jonathon countered. “Look, Monday afternoon, let’s just get out of here for a little bit. Go down the river, go find a nice wander, away from everything, yeah? It’ll get your mind off things. I’ll tell you how much Ella hated my sister instead and we can laugh at them.”

Jayden picked at the bedcover and offered a half-smile. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “Just…escape.”

“Yeah,” Jonathon said and raised his mostly-empty cake plate. “To escaping.”

Jayden clanked their plates together and wondered when everything got so fucking
complicated
.

* * * *

Jayden had barely been gone all of an hour before Darren’s mobile went off, and Paul dropped back into his existence with a loud and rude, “Oi, fuckwit!” down the line.

In spite of himself, Darren smiled. He’d only just gotten back to the flat (an accident had snarled up the traffic something awful) and Rachel was out at some asexuality meet-up thing, so he flopped back onto his bed without the risk of being disturbed and returned the greeting with, “What do you want, retard?”

“Dead original.”

“Like you can talk.”

“I
want
,” Paul said loftily, “to know what the fuck is happening with you, man?”

“Like what?”

“Like your job, and your interests, and the boxing thing you started doing, and, oh yeah, how you’re
still
not back to normal, re Facebook statuses, even
after
your
its-complicated
boyfriend visited. How are you not back to normal?!”

Darren shrugged awkwardly. “We’re just not.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Things just aren’t the same.”

“Look, I get it, you’re pissed about him missing your birthday, except he
didn’t
, he was
there
for your birthday, so…”

“He might as well have not been,” Darren countered. “He was constantly texting Ella and didn’t want to do anything but give me the anxious face and ask if I was all right.”

“Because I don’t know if you’ve noticed, genius, but you’ve been plenty weird lately.”

Darren sighed. “Yeah, well.”

“Look, man, Jayden’s a girl. Well, he’s a queen, and that’s close enough. Just make some big overture, I don’t know, send flowers to his room or something, and he’ll forgive you whatever you did to make him weird, and it’ll all go back to normal, and then
you’ll
stop being weird.”

Darren grimaced. Trust Paul to have such a basic outlook on things. Mind you, it was
Paul
. He had always been basic: life was black-and-white (pun wholly intended) to him. It was simple. He knew about Darren’s stupidity, but the whole reason Darren had never let him in on it was that, when it came down to it, Paul was just like Scott. He didn’t
understand
. He didn’t
know
, he didn’t get how badly that complicated things. Jayden wouldn’t be stopped worrying by some gesture—Darren had tried plenty in the past—and he wouldn’t stop being some carbon copy of a Cambridge drone just because Darren ‘snapped out of it’ or whatever he was supposed to do. There wasn’t an easy answer to this.

Maybe there wasn’t
any
answer to this.

“Honestly, Paul?” he said. “I think Jayden’s about a step to the left of dumping me.”

And there they were. The words were out. The
truth
was out: Jayden was fed up with him, and the end was nigh. What Darren had predicted all those years ago had come true, and his faith had been misplaced. He had
known
, when they got together, that his fucked-up mind would drive them apart again. He’d
known
that. And he’d just
forgotten
it when he’d believed (
believed
, so different to
knew
) that they loved each other enough to survive university.

Maybe they could have done…but love couldn’t survive
this
. It couldn’t survive the numbness in his fingertips or the shadow around his vision or the crippling, exhausting
lethargy
that was sitting on his chest like a heavy, hated pet every morning when he woke up. Love didn’t
survive
that. It
choked
.

“Come on, mate, aren’t you exag-”

“No,” Darren said. “I’m not.”

“…Shit, Darren, what you going to-”

“Do?” Darren finished. “Nothing.”

“
What
?!”

“If Jayden wants shot of me, then…then he can have shot of me,” Darren said finally. “I hung on after school, Paul. That was me, that’s the reason we’re still together. He wanted out then, and if he
still
wants out, then…then I’ll let him out. I can’t hang on to him forever, not if he’s done.”

“Yeah, but…fucking hell, Darren, you don’t
know
that-”

“Yeah, Paul, I do,” he said and sucked in a deep, shaking breath. “Look, I have to go.”

“Darren…”

“I really have to go, Rach is calling.” She was still out. “Talk to you later, idiot.”

“Darren!”

Then Darren did whatever he had never done before and likely would never have the guts to do again. He hung up on Paul Smith, switched off his phone, and logged out of Facebook.

He dropped off the face of the reachable world.

There was no reply by Monday.

Jayden’s encouraging text went ignored by phone. In fact, there was no update from Darren at all: his phone was silent, his Facebook was abandoned, and his email lifeless. Rachel said she’d seen him, but barely, and he’d stopped coming over. Darren had seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth, and at any other time, Jayden could have supposed he’d had a long shift and was asleep or had been awake at antisocial hours or something, but…but no. He was being ignored, and he knew it.

Frankly, he felt too tired to deal with it. In the middle of the deadline season, it was the last thing he needed, a moody boyfriend and a fracturing relationship. The ugly
it’s complicated
was still darkening Darren’s relationship status on Facebook. Jayden hated it, but the only solution was to cancel his end of the relationship status at all, and then they’d both show as single, and then…

And then they’d
be
single, and Jayden didn’t want to let go. He didn’t want it like this either, but he didn’t want to let go, whatever he’d told Jonathon. Maybe it
would
be for the best, but…he still, at the very very core of it all, loved Darren. Too much to let him go, either, or at least not without a better shot at hanging on than this
limbo
. They could sort it out later. In the summer. He had a whole summer in which he could go and camp outside Darren’s door until he stopped being so bloody obstructionist and they could
work it out
.

Leah wasn’t talking to him either. She had been furious with him about Paris, had had a right go at him on Facebook, and Jayden was hard-pushed to believe she’d never met Darren (even though she
couldn’t
, really, but still!) because she was so firmly on his side. He saw her at breakfast on Sunday, and she’d almost completely turned her back to avoid him, even as Tim had waved and shouted, “How were the frogs?!” across the dining hall. Jayden couldn’t
win
. If he stayed the same, he’d be hanging on to home and not taking advantage of what Cambridge had to offer; if he changed…if he changed, then he’d upset Darren even more than he already had, and…

Jayden just wanted this year to be
over
.

He had an essay due and a tutor meeting that morning, so he left his phone in his room (just in case Darren
was
on shift and
did
mean to text him back, because
maybe
, right?) and sleep-talked his way through the meeting, answering all of Dr. Byrnes’ worried questions with Darren-esque replies: it’s fine, it’s okay, it’s all right. He was beyond the point of caring; the stress and the anxiety and the fear that
this is it, it’s over, this is the end
was overwhelming him, and he just couldn’t focus. He’d get some negative report on his student record, he was sure, but he just couldn’t bring himself to
care
.

Tim caught up with him outside the office once he was done, snatching at his shoulder and saying, “Hey, wait up, man.”

“I have to study, I can’t…” Jayden started.

“No, listen up, look,” Tim said and stopped him with a fist in his shirt sleeve. “Listen, right. You got to pick.”

“What?”

“You got to pick, right. Who you are. You got to be who you are, but you hafta pick who that dude is, ‘cause right now, you can be whichever,” Tim said. “You can be this high-achiever but you’re on your own, ‘cause we both know Ella and Jonathon and that lot, they ain’t sticking, they’re not
real
mates, you know, once uni’s over, they’re over, you get me? Or you can be this middle-achiever, right, but you get to keep your boyfriend and some proper mates. You gotta pick what’s important to you.”

“Honestly, Tim?” Jayden rubbed his knuckles over his forehead, pressing on the stress-headache and gritting his teeth briefly. “Honestly, right now, I just want to pass my modules and forget this year ever happened. I don’t have the
energy
for your self-discovery stuff. I mean, no offence, but I
don’t
.”

“Yeah, but that’s what you gotta do,” Tim insisted cryptically, then let go and wandered off, his newly-shaved pate almost glowing in the watery spring sunshine. Like some kind of demented prophet.

Jayden shrugged it off, shouldering his bag and trudging back up to his room. Ella’s door was thankfully closed—he vaguely remembered something about her own meeting this morning—and he slipped into his room as quietly as possible, shutting the door with a gentle click behind him. His phone was still text-free; Darren still hadn’t done anything on Facebook. Jayden opened a new message, typed maybe a half-dozen variations on
call me, we need to talk, I still love you, you’re being a prick
before giving up the attempt entirely and shutting down his computer. When did this all get so
hard
?

“Hey. Coming down the river?”

Jayden sighed, checked his phone one last time, and nodded. It was a nice day outside. Maybe Jonathon had the right idea; maybe going for a walk before Ella got back would be nice. Maybe…maybe Jonathon could help him decide what to
do
.

“Did your meeting go badly?” Jonathon attempted.

Jayden shrugged, struggling into his coat and wondering vaguely if this tired apathy was close to what Darren felt sometimes. He fished his phone out of his back and texted a quick,
call me? love you x
in the hopes of generating a reply—
any
reply—but shoved it into his jeans pocket quickly enough to reveal the likelihood of that hope.