He saw Ed, and he forgot them.
This was nothing like working his way down the sales scripts he recited at work.
No, talking to Ed face-to-face without a call-center cheat sheet was so much harder.
Ed’s mum’s footsteps receded as she gave them some privacy. Another door closing behind her left the kitchen in silence.
Pasha interlocked his fingers around the warm, smooth curve of the mug she’d offered, watching as Ed stood as still as one of the statues lining the driveway outside. He didn’t move a single muscle. From his spot at the kitchen table, the only motion Pasha saw was a single drop of water. It fell from a dark blond strand of Ed’s wet hair, rolling down his neck beforemerging with the collar of his T-shirt. It had to tickle on its way down, but Ed acted as if he hadn’t felt it at all.
There was, Pasha decided as he raised the mug to his lips, something to be said for weeks of almost 24-7 enforced closeness. He’d learned that Ed only held his shoulders as rigidly as he did right now when he expected bad news like when the host of the show prolonged their agony before reading out the voting totals. Ed faced the audience as if they were a firing squad instead of people who loved his vocals enough to keep him in the top three.
He shouldn’t be braced for impact in his own home.
Pasha drew in a slow breath and started. “Last night I got put on a northbound train at King’s Cross station. Management read me the riot act, Ed. Told me that I’d signed the contract, so I had to do what it said in the small print. I’d go home, or I could kiss good-bye to keeping my place.” He took a quick sip of his tea. “You know what I did the minute they were gone?”
Ed’s headshake was quick. If Pasha had blinked, he’d have missed it. “I got off before the train even started moving. Do you know why?”
Ed shook his head again, this time making eye contact for a fleeting moment. The whites of his eyes looked sore and reddened. Perhaps he’d gotten about as much sleep as Pasha had managed.
“Well I didn’t get off the train because I thought it might be fun to head south instead with no wallet, no phone, and while wearing this fucking T-shirt.” He put down his mug harder than he’d intended. It clattered against a small round metal coaster. “No. I got off because of what you almost did. And it turns out that enough fans saw you try to—” He tripped over the wordskiss me. “They saw enough to believe it was the real thing.” He absently touched the hashtag across his torso. “They ship us because we’ve convinced them. So some fans on the platformchipped in to buy me a ticket to get here. Then more of them bought me Red Bull at dark o’clock this morning while I waited for a connection. They even organized for a taxi to be waiting for me when I got to the end of the line. This place is off the beaten track, Ed. How’d you think I found it at all?”
“Pash—”
“Shut the fuck up and listen.” Pasha scrubbed at his face before he dropped his hands. “They remembered you saying something during the first show about your mum being a sculptor.During the very first show, Ed. They found her website. That’s how closely they pay attention. So—” He swallowed around a lump in his throat at how quickly complete strangers had rallied to help him. “—so if they pay more attention than I did, and they all swear blind they saw the same thing as me last night—” He raised his fingers to his lips, then grasped his mug again, and stared fiercely at it. “We had an agreement. Don’t you remember?”
“Yeah.”
Pasha didn’t look up. He chased grains of sugar scattered on the surface of the kitchen table with the tip of a finger. “Tell me what you think we agreed.”
“We….” It sounded as if Ed’s throat was bone-dry. “We agreed to act as if we liked each other to get to the final.”
“That’s right,” Pasha agreed. “We’d let fans see us acting like we were into each other, but we wouldn’t outright confirm or deny that it was anything personal until after the final. We shook hands on it.” Pasha pushed his chair out and stood up, “So what exactly were you thinking last night?”
Pasha waited again.
A tap dripped over the sink, droplets hitting water in the washing-up bowl with soft plops, and the fridge hummed gently in the corner. Behind several closed doors, thetap-tap-tapof what might be a hammer against a chisel was faintly audible.
Pasha’s call-center training told him to fill Ed’s silence.
“Because what I saw when you walked across the stage looked a million miles away from acting. So now I’ve got that off my chest, I’m gonna go.” Where, he had no idea. When he stood, though, Ed was right in front of him.
“You stopped me before I did anything.” There was that bone-dry tone again.
“Yeah, I did.” Pasha recreated the scene that replayed nonstop every time his eyes closed. He pressed both hands against Ed’s chest, fingers flexing before settling over the steady thud of his heart. “It felt like you meant it, so I had to.”
“Why? You never stopped me whenever I did this.” Ed’s hands were warm around his wrists. They tightened as they pulled Pasha’s hands down from his chest and then loosened until he clasped their fingers together. “And we’ve done a whole lot of this as well.” He let go of Pasha’s hands and loosely wrapped an arm around his shoulder. This one-armed hug was something they’d done over and over, for weeks of the competition. Living together was like appearing in a nonstop made-for-TV movie, but touching in this real-life Cornish kitchen felt so very different—real, and much more intimate than anything Pasha had experienced.
Ed’s voice was low as he slid a hand into Pasha’s hair, his thumb rubbing lightly under his ear. “I’ve touched you like this loads of times already.” His other hand dropped to Pasha’s hip before slipping around to tuck into the back pocket of his jeans. “You never said anything about ‘meaning it’ if we walked along with my hand right here in public.”
“No.” Pasha really hadn’t. He’d done the same thing whenever they got off the tour bus—rushing to catch up with Ed, wedging himself under his shoulder, and then slipping a hand into his back pocket like it naturally belonged there. Heconvulsed slightly, an unconscious response when Ed returned his hand to Pasha’s hip and then slid it under his shirt.
“You lay on my bed half-naked, Pash, and you didn’t say a fucking word if I touched you.” The pad of Ed’s thumb circling his navel was nothing like all those other casual touches Pasha had become used to. His breathing stuttered, but Ed ignored it and spoke directly into his ear. “But that was all for the cameras, wasn’t it? You didn’t mean anything real all those times you had your hands on me as well, not once, not ever, because we had an agreement?”
Somewhere overhead gulls called as they soared seaward, another reminder that this was real life rather than fiction.
“You were honest with me right from the start,” Ed said. “This was all about getting to the final. You’re right. We did have a deal.” His lips brushed the shell of Pasha’s ear when he said, “What I can’t figure out is when I stopped agreeing.” The distance Ed put between them then, scant inches at most, felt vast. “So you came all the way down here to ask what I was thinking?”
Pasha nodded, silent, his rehearsed script completely wiped clean.