Page 66 of Bare
Precise framing. Clinical. Rory had given Neil every exit, every justification.
‘It's not that simple,’ Neil said.
He heard it.
Weak.
‘It is that simple. It's exactly that simple. You invite a colleague. Nobody blinks.’
‘And if someone sees something? If you and I are in the same room and someone reads it?’
‘Reads what? We're colleagues. I'd be standing in a garden eating cake, not eating you in front of everyone.’
‘You know what there is to read. You know what happens when two people who are sleeping together are in the same room.’
‘What happens, Neil? Tell me. Specifically. What happens?’
‘It shows. On the body. In the eyes. You can read it, how someone stands near another person...’
‘What? Look at you? I look at you every day at school. Nobody's noticed.’
‘Sue's noticed.’
‘Sue notices everything. Sue is not the problem.’
‘My parents might be there.’
‘And?’
‘And my parents, Rory. Malcolm and Diane. In the same garden as you. My mother who changes the telly channel when two men are on television. My father who said disgraceful while I was fifteen and eating dinner and the word shaped the next eighteen years of my life. Those parents.’
The food cooled on their plates. From the flat below, the faint sound of someone's television, bass through the floorboards.
‘I understand that,’ Rory said. Quieter now. ‘I understand that they're frightening. But I'm not asking to meet your parents. I'm asking to stand in a garden with twelve children and hand your son a birthday present. That's all.’
‘It's not all. You know it's not all.’
‘Because I'll be looking at you?’
‘Because I'll be looking at you. Because I won't be able to help it. Because...’ He stopped.
‘Because what?’
‘I walked into a bollard, Rory. In the courtyard. Because you smiled. I don't have an off switch for that.’
‘Christ, Neil.’ His voice was tight. ‘Everyone manages it. You manage it.’
‘Adults who've been managing it their entire lives. I've been managing it for five months. Five months against thirty-three years of not. I don't have the muscle for it.’
‘Then build the muscle. You can't call me partner and then...’ He stopped. His hand went to his neck. ‘I just want to feel like I'm part of your life.’
‘My son's birthday party. My parents in the house. Malcolm and Diane Ashworth three feet away reading my body language like a prosecution document.’
Rory stood. Pushed his chair back, the scrape of legs loud. He walked to the window. Stood with his back to Neil, hands on the counter, his shoulders rigid.
‘Five months,’ he said. Without turning around. ‘Five months and I'm...’ He stopped. His hands flat on the counter. ‘A version of me that only exists in my side of the world, between your sheets and my studio floor. Colleague in the corridor and your name on my tongue at night and the...’ He stopped again. Shook his head. ‘The gap, Neil. The gap just keeps getting more painful.’
The words arrived in a rush. Worse than shouted: spoken with tight, strained precision.
