“I know it,” Gus said. “Paracetamol doesn’t touch it, but couldn’t you have got a prescription from the hospital?”
“You need an appointment for that, with the surgeon, and I didn’t have a fixed address, so...anyway, I had some dodgy morphine pills for a while. They helped, but I promised Luke I wouldn’t score street drugs anymore, so when they ran out, I found a way to cope that I didn’t need anyone else for.”
I didn’t add that my first attempt had seen me slamming my good shoulder against a brick wall. That my second had involved hot candle wax and whisky. The horror in Gus’s stricken expression was enough, and I’d bared my soul enough for one day.
A doctor emerged from a room and called my name. I got up and left Gus alone with whatever he was thinking.
Whatever he was thinking turned out to be him being even more obsessed with what I ate than normal. “We need to cook something.”
I glanced up from reading the leaflet from my physiotherapy referral. “Cook? I thought we’d already established that was a health hazard.”
“No, we admitted we both can’t be bothered, not that it was permanent.”
The irony. I did need to eat, though. Or my fancy new chronic pain meds would give me an ulcer. “There’s loads of Super Noodles in the cupboard. I’ll make them.”
“You’re not eating that junk.”
If anyone else had said that to me, I might’ve decked them, but Gus spoke so absently, and with such worry in his earnest gaze that I took no offence. “It’s not junk, and for fifty pence a pack, who the fuck cares?”
Gus said nothing and went back to opening and shutting the fridge. I ignored him for a while, but eventually, the squeak and thunk of the fridge door was enough to drive me to my feet.
I came behind him and shut the fridge. “Are you so hungry that you’ve gone past the point of reasonable thought?”
“Whoever said I was reasonable?”
Everyone who’s ever met you.But that was beside the point, and I suddenly felt like the world’s biggest arsehole. Escorting me to the doctor had taken three hours of his day, then he’d skipped lunch to patch up an old lady’s roof for free while I’d huddled in the van counting the hours until the slow-acting drugs the GP had prescribed took effect.
I still couldn’t feel any marked difference, and my shoulder throbbed with every breath I took, but Gus being tired and hungry hurt more.
Especially as it was all my fault.
I reached around him and opened the fridge again. It hadn’t changed since I’d looked in it last night, and perhaps that was my fault too. If I hadn’t spent all my money on cigarettes and crappy noodles that wouldn’t sustain Gus longer than ten minutes, I might’ve had something to offer him. “Say we did try and cook something...like, uh, what? I wasn’t joking when I said was shit at it. Like, I can literally burn water.”
“Not true. You can make omelettes.”
“So can you, but we don’t have eggs.”
Gus grunted and shut the fridge. “I guess we can order pizza, but my creeper brain wants you to eat something real.”
He really was trying to kill me with kindness, a kindness I didn’t deserve. And I couldn’t let him spend any more money on me. There had to be another way.
I rarely thought about my dad. I’d loved him so much it was easier to pretend he’d never existed than face the fact that I’d never see him again. But sometimes my heart caught me off guard. Sights and sounds. Scents. I couldn’t walk past an Indian restaurant without remembering the lentil soup he used to make when him and my mum were searching the couch for spare change. I had no idea how to recreate it, but Gus had Wi-Fi so I could google that shit. “Hang on.”
Phone in hand, I traipsed upstairs and upended my bag on the bed. Grey watched me from the windowsill, but he’d seen me do stranger things, so he made no comment.
All kinds of crap fell out of my bag: dust, dead grass, screws, bolts. A handful of coppers. And then I struck gold—a two pound coin, and a handful of silver shrapnel. I didn’t know if it would be enough for the lentils and spices the internet said I needed, but I’d die trying.
Gus was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs.
“I’m going to the shop,” I said. “Are you coming?”
I had no desire to have him witness me counting out coppers to pay for lentils and a loaf of bread, but the prospect of being away from him right now made me want to puke, and I wasn’t in the mood to unpick that bullshit. Or anything else that came with being in close proximity to Gus. We’d kissed a million years ago, and now we’d spent the night together, snuggled up like old lovers, and I couldn’t make sense of how I felt. The cynic in me had the loudest voice, and told me he was just being nice because he loved my brother, but there was a tiny devil starting a rave in my gut, my heart, and every other organ in my body. A devil crying out for Gus to touch me again, to invite me into his bed and wrap his arms around me, despite knowing full well I had nothing to offer him in return.
Gus got his kicks on Grindr with men who’d given more than two blow jobs in their entire life. Men who knew how to give him the pleasure he deserved. Not—
“Billy?”
I jumped, startled to find Gus in my personal space, waving his hand in front of my face. “What?”
Gus stared me down for a moment, then shook his head. “Never mind. Come on, I’ll drive you to Tesco.”