I sipped my coffee. “So what now? Are you going back to Manchester?”
Gary chuckled. “Trying to get rid of me so soon? Really feeling the love here, bro.” Before I could say another word, he pulled his phone from his pocket. “Actually, I was planning on sticking around a day or two. You see, there’s this exhibition opening on Friday, and I hear there’s this up-and-coming artist who’s done this amazing painting. So I’d like to go and see it.” He scrolled, then held it up so I could see my portrait. His gaze found mine. “Besides, I want to see this up close.” His lips twitched. “Capturing his dick alone had to take a ton of paint.”I widened my eyes and he grinned. “Kiddo, I’m allowed to say that. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen it up close and personal.” Then he coughed. “Except I think you might end up seeing it a lot more than I ever did.” His face flushed.
I let out a wry chuckle. “You just thought about me having sex, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, and I don’t want to do that again. Ever. Okay?” He shuddered.
I held my hands up. “I’ll keep my sex life to myself, I promise.”
Gary was doing what he’d done my whole life—trying to mend life’s little tears with humour.
It was starting to work.
Theo
Cameron and Gary had been gone about twenty minutes, and I was still sitting on the couch, not frozen, not braced for impact the moment they came through that door, but thinking.
The flat felt different without Cameron’s presence in it, filled with an expectant air like a pause in music that isn’t silence so much as a breath being taken.
Gary apologised.
That alone still felt unreal.
I pressed my palms to my thighs, feeling the solidity of flesh, the here-and-now of my body instead of the old instinct to float somewhere above it all. For years, moments like this wouldhave sent me spiralling into contingency planning and self-recrimination. I knew the shape of those thoughts:
What if I mess this up? What if I hurt him? What if I’m not built for this?
But they didn’t come. Instead, something quieter settled in.
Cameron didn’t push. He didn’t try to rescue me. He didn’t ask me to be better overnight.
Cameron stayed.
I exhaled, and what dawned was the slow realisation that the knot in my chest wasn’t fear anymore—it was anticipation. Possibility. For the first time, the idea of a future didn’t feel like something I had to earn through perfection. It felt mutual, like something we would build together, missteps and all.
I thought about Cameron’s hand on my wrist earlier—not taking, not leading, butthere. Waiting.
My pulse quickened, but not with panic.
With want.
I don’t want to control this moment.I want to give it to him.
There was something I needed to ask Cameron, and I had to trust him enough to accept his answer.
The front door opened, and I knew exactly what I was going to say.
Cameron took off his jacket, and I peered past him, frowning.
“What have you done with Gary?”
He chuckled. “I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re asking. Right now, he’s on his way back to the Premier Inn where he stayed last night, to book a few more nights. He’s coming to the exhibition Friday.”
Relief flooded me. “Then you’re okay?”
He smiled. “We’re not where we were, but that’s no bad thing. Things have changed, for the better.”
I took a breath. “I thought I’d ruined everything. With him. With you.”