Minutes pass. I watch his eyes still tracing the words on the page, and think he must be reading the whole thing three or four times at least, because he’s definitely reading, not just staring in shock.
My heart thumps so hard I can feel it everywhere, even in my fingers and toes. I keep repeating silently that I’m not really telling him anything surprising. He’s probably worked out my brain is wired a little differently.
“Can I borrow your pen?” Micky asks, his gaze quickly flicking up to my face.
I pass it to him and he writes
I understand
with a big flowery flourish. A smile plays on his lips and he adds
I really do
.
He looks up again, and I hold his gaze for a few seconds, but I get the sense he’s looking beyond me, that he’s thinking. When he starts writing again, I lean farther over the table so I don’t miss any of the words.
Never say you’re stupid just because you find some things hard. I never want you to use that word. Everyone finds some things hard. You’re clever in so many ways other people aren’t—in ways that matter the most. Your heart is so fucking big.
He pushes the pad across the table but tightens his grip on the pen. I glance at his face and see that he’s biting his lip as if he’s steeling himself to do something.
Suddenly he stands up, and I only just have time to wonder what he’s doing before his hand fastens firmly on the back of my skull and he leans down and kisses me, all openmouthed and everything. I get a hard-on almost instantly, desire rushing through me, making me want to grab Micky and pull him onto my lap.
The woman behind the counter puts down her magazine—I hear it crash down on the counter. I know she’s watching us, but I don’t care. She’s probably going to chuck us out, but all I can think of is how great we must look to anyone walking through the dark, our kissing figures framed by the bright café window.
We rest our foreheads together for a moment, breathing one another’s air, before Micky lets go of my head and sits back down.
A gentle clap from the vicinity of the counter makes us turn and look. The old woman smiles at us.
“Not every day I see that sort of thing. Glad to see not everyone is scared into hiding. Here.” She hobbles over to us with a steel teapot and refills our cups.
“Thank you,” I say, keeping my eyes mostly on the checkered tablecloth. Micky is grinning giddily at me.
“I’ve never done that in public, I mean with anyone watching,” he whispers when she’s gone. His eyes are still wild and wide open, the way he looks when he’s really turned on. It makes me wish we were back in my shell, getting lost in each other.
I reach for his hand. “I want to kiss you again.”
“My place is nearby. We could go there,” he says. I watch his throat as he swallows, wondering what my lips would feel if they pressed there. “But I want to… there’s some other stuff I want to write down first.”
This makes me curious because it’s not as if Micky needs to write
anything
down.
I want to tell you something I’m not good at saying out loud either
, he writes.
He looks up and holds my gaze for a few seconds as though he’s building himself up to do something and I’m somehow giving him the courage.
I’m anorexic.
He writes the words in neat block letters, and even though they’re upside down, “anorexic” stands out so clearly I don’t have to wait for my brain to turn the letters around to read it.
Do you know what that means?
I nod. I know it’s more than just not wanting to eat. I know it’s bigger than that. I know it’s complicated and scary and that people die from it.
Micky goes back to writing
.
I don’t want to be like this. I want to stop, and I’m trying, but it’s like this thing that consumes me. Which is really ironic when you think about it. So I understand about being obsessed with something. Except this probably controls me a bit more than your obsessions control you. Being with you helps because I think more about you than about food, and I think about food a
lot
.
Danny, I want to read your letter again and again. Thank you for telling me all that.
I love the way he writes my name. It makes me feel like I’m made of soft jelly and I want to melt all over him. I smile, thinking about the way Micky seems to like my weirdness and what he’d make of that one.
But my smile slides away for a moment as I take the pad and the pen. I’m worried for him, and I can’t stop replaying what Diana said to me in the restaurant—how did she know?
If you don’t eat
,
you’ll die
, I write in really small letters.
“I know. I promise I’m going to try, okay.” He grips my hand so hard that I think the pen still caught between my fingers is going to snap. “I’m going to eat. When I’m with you, it’s the only thing I wish was different. When I’m with you, I don’t want to disappear.”
His voice has gone all husky, and I know he’s getting upset.
You’re beautiful
, I write, while he’s still holding on to my hand. The words come out all spidery and crooked.
You glitter like no one else. Like stars are inside you.
I want him to believe it. I want him to know what I see when I look at him. With my hand tight in his, I tug him outside, barely hearing the old lady calling after us, saying good-bye.
We lie outside the café on the icy pavement away from the road. I know he likes looking up at the sky like this. We make a T shape—Micky lying with his head resting on my chest, over my heart. I put my arm around him, holding him close, in case he should somehow float away from me.
We’re taking up the entire pavement, but there’s no one around. Only stars above. All the stars. All the bright and dying lights burning through the dark. There is no lid on the sky tonight. It’s endless. Forever.
I know space is supposed to make me feel small and insignificant, but somehow it doesn’t. What it makes me feel is special: I’m here, despite a million odds, in this moment, in this single point in time, with a boy I’m so completely in love with. Maybe Micky’s right and there is no limit. Maybe this feeling is what he means.
“I’m so happy,” he whispers, and I hold him close.
IT’S TOO
cold to stay still for long, so we get up and carry on along the park toward Micky’s place. A lonely figure stalks down the other side of the road, but I’m so focused on Micky that it takes me a moment to realize it looks a little like Dollman. The closer I watch, though, the more I realize it’s not. I haven’t seen Dollman since he dragged me into his room at the hospital, which is strange because I used to see him most nights. But I’m so full of anticipation of going back to Micky’s flat and doing sex stuff with him, thinking about Dollman is a secondary thing.
Guilt is the only thing that has me hanging back.
Micky squeezes my hand. “You okay?”
“It looked like Dollman,” I whisper. “Over there.”
“The tall guy?”
“Yeah. But it’s not.”
“I’ve seen that guy before.”
“Did you speak to him?”
“No. I’ve just seen him hanging around sometimes.”
The man keeps walking, and I watch until he’s swallowed by the dark.
“Let’s….” Micky stops and runs his hand through his hair almost sleepily.
It’s strange the way he suddenly slowed. He turns to take a step, but his legs give way beneath him and he starts to fall.
It happens so fast, but quick as lightning my arms are there around him as he collapses—my shoulder screaming in agony.
He’s told me there are signs when he’s about to faint, but as far as I could tell, he just displayed none of them. He went a little weird, but that was all.
Taking care not to bump his head, which lolls back on his neck, I lay him gently down on the pavement.
My hands shake, but I don’t start to panic until I put my hand over his mouth to check he’s still breathing—and I feel nothing.
My heart stops.
Why isn’t he breathing? Why isn’t he fucking breathing? He was talking to me a second ago!
“Micky?” I shake him gently, my fingers probably digging a little deep as they press into his arms. “Micky!” I almost shout.
Phone. Ambulance.
My brain is down to dealing in single words. I pat him all over, search his pockets. His phone is there, thank God. I swear I see his eyelids flicker. I put my hand over his mouth again. Nothing. Keep it together. I will keep it together. I will not fall apart.
Your hands are cold. If he’s breathing shallowly, you won’t feel it. Put your face against his. Your lips have the most nerve endings. They’re one of the most sensitive parts of your body.
Dashiel’s voice. Except it doesn’t bring me the comfort it once did. I know it’s just me, pretending. But Micky lying on the pavement in front of me isn’t pretending. It’s the truth, in all its cold, stark, and lifeless glory.
I lean down, my face hovering over Micky’s. Soft, shallow breaths meet my lips. He’s breathing. My relief is almost painful, like that first breath of air when I resurfaced after I fell in the Thames. I put my hand over his heart, but there are so many layers of clothes I can’t feel anything.
“Micky?” I say again. He remains unresponsive.
I press the keypad on the phone, but the screen stays blank. It won’t turn on. The battery is dead. I choke back a sob and slip my hand beneath his top. His heartbeat is slow under my palm, but it’s there.
If I can’t call an ambulance from his phone, I need to move him somewhere I can call an ambulance from. Like a payphone… or Donna’s. Her flat is close.
Micky stirs as I gather him up in my arms, ready to carry him.
“What happened?” he asks me. “Did I faint again?”
I nod.
“I can’t feel my hand,” he murmurs. “My arm feels funny.”
“We’ll go to Donna’s. It’s near here.” I slip my arm underneath his shoulder to help him to his feet. If he still feels strange, we’ll call an ambulance from there.
IT MUST
be about 3:00 a.m. I’ve been sitting on Donna’s couch stroking Micky’s hair for so long that my body has switched to autopilot. It’s the movement he finds soothing, I think, not me. His head is in my lap, the rest of him curled up close. He’s groggy, but I know he’s not quite sleeping—his breathing isn’t deep enough, his heartbeat too fast.
Before she went back to bed, Donna made us both a hot drink. I think it was Ribena, but I burned my tongue sipping it and now I can’t taste anything. Micky’s untouched cup sits on the brown-tiled mantelpiece, growing cold.
Somewhere inside the flat, a door opens. Closes. Footsteps advance unevenly down the hall.
A moment later Jack, with his dark hair and shadows, peers into the room and frowns in a somewhat exaggerated fashion at me. Maybe it’s the brightness of the light in here. He has a half-empty bottle of orangish liquid dangling from one hand. I think it must be alcohol. The smell of it is really strong on him, and he’s not even inside the room.
“Vinny told me you were here. What’s going on?” he slurs, looking only at Micky.
But Micky is kind of out of service, and although his breathing quickens, he doesn’t respond.
“Micky fainted. This place was close,” I say. I want him to leave Micky alone so Micky can rest.
“Why was he with you?”
Jack stumbles across the room to the couch. His unsteady steps remind me of a toddler learning to walk.
I shrug, not sure what to say.
“Because we’re together,” Micky murmurs.
Jack grips the edge of the sofa with one hand and sort of winces down at us.
“Together? Like how? Like he gave you a tenner for the night together?”
I worry I’m not good at picking up on a lot of stuff, but the tension radiating off Micky feels as solid as a brick wall.
“Like I want to be with him
together
.” Micky shifts as though he’s suddenly uncomfortable, and his bony elbow digs into my thigh.
“What the fuck?” Jack drops the bottle, and from the smell of it, the liquid spills all over the carpet. He sinks down to retrieve it, then stays there on his knees. “What the fuck, Micky?” he repeats.
“I’m not doing this to hurt you, Jack.” Micky sounds angry.
“Is there something wrong with you? Because there’s definitely something wrong with him. Are you blind?”
All Micky’s muscles tense. He lifts his head. “What?”
“Fuck, Micky. Are you pretending to ignore the way he looks? Didn’t you hear the things Dieter said about him? He can’t have a conversation. He doesn’t meet your eyes when you’re talking to him. He’s so good at fixing all that electronic crap because he’s like a fucking robot.”
Jack’s words make me sad, but they’re nothing I wouldn’t expect or that I haven’t heard before. Doesn’t mean I want to hear any more, though. I want to tune him out.
And I can meet your eyes
, I think.
I just don’t always want to. I don’t like it. It’s really uncomfortable most of the time. Does fixing things make me into a robot? If it does, I’d rather be a robot than anything else.
Stiffly, Micky sits up. His hands tremble. I watch as he balls them into fists. He doesn’t look at me. Jerkily he turns his head to look at Jack.
“Don’t you
ever
speak about anyone I care about like that again! I couldn’t give a fuck what Dieter says.”
“You sure he isn’t paying you? You are a whore, after all. He probably wouldn’t know the difference.”
“Stop it,” I say loudly. I hold my hands up like they’re some sort of barrier, even though I know they’re not. I hate arguments, and Micky is upset. “Can you go, please?” I glance at Jack. I even try to hold his gaze, but he looks back at Micky.
“I can’t believe you chose him over me.” Jack takes a long swig from the bottle. There’s not much liquid left now.
“I never chose you, you were just there.”