Nowhere to Hide

Chapter 2

We first got together last winter. The season had played its usual trick on me, and I’d been in a bad car accident a few weeks before Christmas. Not my fault in any way, but it took me a long time to get mobility back in both legs. In the meantime, I’d lost my job at a local bar and I had no ideas on getting a new one, with my ankle in plaster and pretty shaky confidence. The guys tried to get me out and about to parties and socials, but there must have been plenty of things more rewarding for them. I was bad company. Very bad. Christmas just felt like that final straw.

But Aaron didn’t give up on me. Took me to the hospital, joked me through the appointments, saw me through the physical and the emotional medication. He cajoled me when he wanted to, and yelled at me when he needed to. I was in need of help, obviously, and he made sure I both asked for it—and got it.

He came around every day whether I invited him or not. I hid from life but I couldn’t hide from him. He brought me out of my sad old bedsit and back into real life, and incidentally into his too. I’d known him as a friend of Cass's for a few years, but we’d never got together as a couple until then. We started dating—well, we decided that’s what we’d been doing already!—and I was startled how easy and pleasant it was. In the new year, I got myself a new job at the bar where Bailey worked, keeping up the books. It came with a fairly modest salary and an even more modest expectation of me. But that was good, and I treasured it. Still do. Aaron also persuaded me to move out of my flat when one came up for rent in his own block. Now we’re only a floor away from each other, though we spend a lot of our free time together in one or the other’s place. The dating is still going strong. That’s very good, and something to be treasured even more, of course.

Yeah, I’m a changed man since the accident, or so Bailey often says. He calls me up and invites me and Aaron around all the time. I think we’re the equivalent of poor cousins, though I’m sure he doesn’t see us that way deliberately. He and Cass have been sharing a small house since last Christmas and they’re sickeningly devoted. Hey, I’m only joking, you know? I enjoy being around them, of course I do. They deserve their happiness.

Saul agrees I look much better too, but there’s a shadow in his expression when he says it. Sometimes I’ve caught him talking to Aaron in a low tone, at a time when he thinks I’m somewhere else. When I appear, Saul greets me cheerfully enough, but he doesn’t stay much longer. Then Aaron is particularly attentive to me for some time after.

And now it’s Christmas time, and I realise it’s starting all over again. That thing where they look at me out of the corners of their eyes, where they’re reluctant to leave me alone for any length of time. I ignore it because I don’t really know what else to do. Because they’re right to be suspicious of my recovery. You see, there are times I want to slip back into my flat, bolt the door behind me, and huddle down into the farthermost corner. I see myself curled into the smallest shape that I can, arms hugged around me to keep anything from spilling out, wishing for the sights and sounds from outside to be silenced for good, like heavy snow falling on top of my footprints, covering them until they’re too deep to remember.

It’s only the thought—and the feel—of Aaron that keeps me out of that corner and shivering in the real world.