Dead air whistled in Mickey’s ears. He scrambled to catch the threads of Benito’s words. Two things stood out. One, that Benito was all but admitting he did more for his money than drive an Uber. Second, that he’d seen a glimpse of Mickey’s present and somehow found his past. “I’m not a fed. You know what I am. I’m a housing officer. You’veseenme at work.”
“So?” Benito drained his juice bottle and dropped it on the table, a tic in his jaw muscles the only outward sign of stress. “That could be a front for moving product around the estates. I’ve seen coppers do worse.”
“I’m not a fuckingfed.”
“You know the fact that it offends you so much gives you away, right?”
“Gives me away as what?” Mickey pushed his plate away a second time and leaned closer to Benito. “What do you think I am that I haven’t shown you in plain sight?”
Benito started to speak. Then stopped and shook his head, uncertainty clouding his face, sudden and dark. “I don’t know. I just—feel something with you that I recognise. It’s weird.”
“Maybe you’re the weird one.”
“Or maybe you’ve lived the same life.”
“Lived isn’t living.” Mickey spoke without thinking.
Benito’s gaze sparked again. He sucked in a breath that seemed to go nowhere, then released it in a shaky whoosh. “Why do I feel like I just busted open the trapdoor to hell?”
Mickey let out a strangled laugh. “That’s the realest fucking thing you’ve said all day.”
“It’s eight in the morning.”
“So? Feels like a write off to me.”
“Pessimist?”
“Does it matter?”
“No. None of it does.”
Mickey felt like he was living someone else’s life. Who he’d been three days ago was a different man to the one so lost in Benito now. “Why did you say it then?”
“You asked.”
“I didn’t ask for that.”
“What did you want then?”
“I—” The caff closed in on Mickey. Then retreated, like hot and cold water being poured over his head. It flayed him open, then left him bereft, icy wind blasting the cavernous space hisrealself had once been. “I wanted you to know I understood. That I wasn’t standing in your mum’s flat judging you.”
“So you asked me to judgeyou. Dude, that makes no sense.”
“Doesn’t it?”
Benito shook his head. “I never felt judged by you. Or ashamed that my mum can’t get herself together enough to take care of business. I wish you never saw it, but not because of that.”
“Why then?”
“Because I liked what we were doing. I liked how you made me feel when we hooked up. It—I don’t know—made me feel human.”
“How do you feel now?”
“Like I’ve been on a bender for three days straight. When I saw you across the gym, it went away. Then I looked in your eyes and it was like a mirror. You feel what I feel, and I thought I needed to know why.”
Mickey’s head spun a bewilderment he’d never felt before. “You don’t anymore?”
“No, man. I just need to know you’re okay before I say goodbye to you.”