Oscar - 30. Part 30

I should have told him the truth.

That I loved him.

Explained to Tim, the first man to make my heart soar inside my chest like a lone bird in the dead of night, that there was no wonder he didn’t “get me”.

I should have told him that the kind of person who does the kind of things I’d done isn’t reasonable. Or understandable. Or normal. I should have told him that I was fucked-up, poisoned and lost.

I should have explained, begged him to forgive me, that since my mum had left and my dad had rotted away with loneliness, I didn’t know how to be good or kind or honest. I didn’t know how to love. How to express it or feel it.

And worst of all, I didn’t know how to recognise it. Love wasn’t on my radar.

Now I know love. I see it and feel it. And, most importantly, understand why I hadn’t. Why at eighteen I was unwilling to accept how afraid and alone I was because I’d been abandoned. Tossed aside and forgotten by the people who had supposed to have loved me the most.

They had, for a while. I’d tasted a good life. A normal life. But then they’d left and my world hadn’t just flipped, it had flipped, fissured and imploded until only miniscule chunks of ripped apart memories were left, spinning and spiralling in the gaping, icy void left inside my head and heart.

My mother gone without a goodbye. My father distorted beyond recognition. My parents snuffing out the embers of happiness in cruel, cold, selfish instants.

Everybody leaves.

But that’s the so-called beauty of hindsight, isn’t it? Only knowing which path to walk thanks to the clarity of the future. It all seems so clear looking to the past. So easy and obvious away from the storm of confusion raging and thrashing around the present.

I should have told him. Told him everything. But I didn’t. Because I didn’t know any better.

Want to know a sad secret? Truth is, I learned the importance and power of honesty four years and many miles away from that fateful afternoon at Mr. Price’s, dumbstruck and destroyed and unable to convince him to keep me.

Tim was just the beginning. The beginning of my descent into depravity.

‘I’m waiting for your answer,’ he said, still standing over me; still staring me down; still furious.

I wanted to speak. Say something. Anything. But I was still lost for words. Still stuck between gutted and horrified. Powerless to make an excuse or lie quick enough. Unable to find a solution to make everything go back to how it was.

Back to the two of us.

Just him and me, in his car and out of town. Far away from his ex-wife and my nightmares. Far away from my stupid lies. Far away from everything.

‘All I can say is I’m sorry,’ I said, accepting the truth that there was no way out.

No dishonesty big enough or clever enough.

‘That’s all you’ve got?’ he said.

‘Please, Tim. It won’t happen again. I promise.’

‘It won’t happen again?’

‘Never.’

‘You don’t get it, do you?’ he said.

‘I do!’

‘No, you don’t! You’re like a child in the classroom. Apologising for the sake of it. Saying you won’t do it again because that’s what you think you’re meant to say. But you don’t even know what you did or why it hurts, do you?’

‘I do, I do. I lied to you.’

‘And?’

And? And what?

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘You see, Oscar. This is what I’m talking about. You knew my story. You knew my wife left me because of Adam. You must have known, or at least realised how confusing and fucked up a situation that was for me. But you used it.’

‘No I didn’t.’

‘Yes, you did.’

‘How?’

Shaking his head, he took another swig of beer. But this time he slammed the bottle down on the dining table. Glass collided against wood and made me jump. Amber liquid fizzed white and foamed down the bottle neck and over his knuckles.

He didn’t even move. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t look down. Just let the beer run over him and onto the table as his empty eyes punctured through me.

Seeing me for exactly what and who I am.

‘You think I wanted to tell you that story?’ he said, barely able to control the fury in his voice. ‘You think I wanted to remember? Dredge up the past? Parade my skeletons for your amusement?’

‘No,’ I muttered.

‘So what do you think I would have wanted?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said again, looking at my hands, locked tight together in my lap.

For a moment, there was silence. I looked up into his eyes and he looked away. Then, letting out a deep breath through his mouth, his thick lips pursing, he hung his shaved head and rubbed his crown.

Fingernails gently scratched against stubble. Once, twice, three times. Then wooden chair legs screeched against floorboards as he took a seat.

‘I would have liked to have the chance to be me, without being the guy who cheated on his wife with a schoolboy. I would have liked to meet a cute guy and start a future together, or at least something real. The last thing I wanted was to bring up my sordid past.’

I said nothing, even though I still wanted to speak. Tell him we could have a future together; that I could be that guy.

But I’m not that guy.

‘You used me,’ he said.

I still said nothing. Just shuffled in my chair as the painful realisation hit. My cheeks burning red as my options became black and white. My palms damp. My future barren.

‘And then, you lied about it. Over and over. Even when I gave you a chance to come clean … I’m sorry but no. No more. No more you or Adam or any of this. Please, Oscar, just get out.’

His anger was gone and in its place was sadness. I knew it well. It was the sadness of loneliness; the grief of having no one.

But I couldn’t empathise. Not properly. Empathy needs love, like a car needs fuel, and there had been just enough left inside of me to spark my reaction. But that was it, a spark. Running on fumes.

I had no choice but to do what I did best. Take his pain and my mistakes, his anger and my lies, everything that had gone so wrong and swallow it. Force it down deep to where the love should have been and lock it away.

Tim and I were over and whatever hope he’d had for me was dead. There would be nothing more. Nothing more than memories.

The crunch of his trainers against gravel. His inquisitive eyes. His rough but gentle hands massaging my thigh. The sound of his tread through the dark forest. The snap of twigs and the crunch of leaves. The rich smell of wet earth.

His lips against mine. His huge hands running through my hair. His trainer laces digging into my wrists. His cock stretching my jaw and slamming into the back of my throat. His deep grunts and manly groans. His hot, salty load streaming into my stomach.

Following him home. Walking into his house. The refreshing tingle of cold beer against my friction-burnt throat. His fingers playing with my tongue and mouth. Feeling them slide between my other cheeks and inside my hole.

The sting, the burn and the rush. The rush of dreams becoming vivid reality.

The soft fibres of his carpet under my bare feet. Then stomach. His tongue against my hole. The heat. The wetness.

His bedroom. The cloudlike plushness of his bedsheets. The power of his body on mine. The eye-rolling intensity of him forcing his way inside me. Joining us together for what seemed like an eternity and no time at all.

A spark in the darkness.

Then I extinguished him. I stood and turned and left his dining room without looking back. I didn’t want to remember him like this. I didn’t want to mourn.

Everything after that was a blur.

All I remembered was getting home and raiding Dad’s alcohol stash. Drinking myself stupid and smoking joint after joint in my bedroom as he snored in the room next door. Then waking hungover and tired but repeating until I passed out again.

The weekend over, school rolled around. I thought about ditching but they would call the house. So I forced myself to go in. Forced myself to focus on the lessons and keep my mind busy.

I was in my last year. The same year as Adam. A-levels and university on the horizon. And university meant escape.

Three days of endless school later, gossip started circulating about Adam. That him and that “little ginger gay boy” were dating. Gossip confirmed an hour later via two texts. One from each.

That afternoon I skipped my lessons to walk the route I’d been avoiding. Down Overslade Lane and through the mundane part of town. To Tim’s.

His house was empty. A sold sign out front.

No.

I came close to breaking that day. Closer than ever to letting the pain I’d been holding out. Surrendering to the agony in my heart and the darkness in my mind. Doing something irreversible. Something I wouldn’t be able to regret.

Do it.

But I didn’t.

Later at home, I changed my mind. Something happened. Something amazing. Something I would never have seen coming in a million years.

I got an email while I was writing a note. It was from the gay supplies store in the city I’d bought lubricant from. An advert. Spam advertising that had popped up on my computer screen about a new app for the iPhone.

A dating app that would show me how far away the nearest guy was. Tell me how to get to them through its GPS system. A faceless orange mask with empty eyes and untold promises. And it was free.

If I have an iPhone.

The next day I didn’t go to school. I took my dad’s credit card from his wallet and took a trip into town instead. A few hours later, sat in my room and watching my new phone load into life, I realised I had more to live for.

Gone were the days wasting hours pretending to care about the boys on MSN. No more would I care about the men on Gaydar taking hours or days or even weeks to reply. Even the pain of Adam and James and Mr. Price was suddenly dulled by the growing excitement inside my stomach and groin, and the game-changing realisation in my head.

A multitude of thumbnails, tiny squares of skin and muscles and smiles, shone from the screen in my hands. Radiating possibilities.

As far as I was concerned, life was just beginning.