Chapter 14-2
1321 Words
Charley was waiting on the wall early on Saturday evening, looking roughly two hundred and thirty dollars in her frayed jeans and hot pink padded vest. She never looked a million dollars, though she tried, but her enthusiastic hug and the croon of approval at his new jeans made Jayden feel like maybe he was a million dollars.
“So, what’s this secret?” she asked, looking around as if he was actually hiding the secret behind a lamppost somewhere. “You said secret, now I get to hear it!”
“I invited Darren.”
She squeaked and beamed. “As in, boyfriend Darren? As in, cute gay guy who’s macking with you on Friday nights and I don’t get to hear about it? As in, the Darren who took you on that perfect date you never went into detail about?”
“Yes, yes, and yes. In that order,” Jayden added as she tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and bumped their shoulders amiably.
“Good,” she said decidedly. “I want to meet him. I mean, I should! I’m your best friend, he’s your boyfriend, it’s sinful we haven’t met yet.”
Jayden pinked. “Well, you know. I just kind of…I wanted to get that all figured out before I introduced you.”
“And is it all figured out?”
No. They hadn’t really talked about the depression. Jayden hadn’t seen it, not really. And it was still early, it was still all so new, but…but the b-word was boyfriend now, not ‘the b-word’, and Jayden knew about Darren’s glasses and he’d felt that little scar on his collarbone where he’d broken it last Christmas in Austria, so…
“Yes,” he said.
“I sense a story,” she sing-songed, but for once didn’t ask, tucking her head against his shoulder briefly at the traffic lights. “I stalked his pictures, just so you know, and he’s cute.”
She had no idea, Jayden thought privately. He’d stalked them too, and those glasses and that hat never made an appearance. There was a black beanie hat that showed up in some really old photos with Scott, but Darren must have been twelve, and his face had been too round and young to have the same gorgeous effect. So, really, Charley had no idea.
“You’ll see,” he said confidently. He’d bribed Darren with a Mars bar and kisses on Thursday. He’d promised to wear the hat, though he’d groaned and wriggled out of a direct promise on the glasses.
“Is he meeting us there?”
“Yeah. He lives on the Beauchamp estate so it’s a bit thick of him to walk round to mine first only to double back.” The bowling alley was just off the town centre, and therefore closer to Darren’s house than Jayden’s was.
“I don’t know; you could have had steamy snogging sessions over your English coursework,” Charley said, faux-innocently.
“My parents are home. It’s Saturday.” He’d only been able to avoid Mum’s suspicious glances because she knew about the post-New-Year tradition with Charley and the others.
“You haven’t told him about him yet?”
“Charley, I haven’t told them about me yet,” Jayden said.
“You should,” she opined as they paused at the last set of lights. “I’m serious, Jay. Your Mum’s lovely, she wouldn’t mind. She’ll want to meet him! They won’t care.”
“Dad might.”
“Of course he won’t,” Charley said equally firmly. But there, Jayden suspected she might be wrong. Dads never took this sort of thing well. What kind of father would be okay with a gay son?
“Let’s just not talk about this,” he said as they turned the corner onto Station Road, which, naturally, contained no station. “Let’s just enjoy the evening and laugh at Darren’s bowling skills. He says he hasn’t got any.”
“He can partner with me, then,” Charley said, then promptly squealed and released Jayden to dash ahead and throw herself on Mike with a secondary shriek of delight.
Heather and Mike had been the other half of the unit that had been the four of them in primary school—but unlike Charley and Jayden, they came from wealthier families that didn’t want their darling children in the state school system, and had been sent to private school, Mike to St. John’s and Heather to Woodville. This was why the post-New-Year meet-up was so traditional: it helped hold the four of them together, even if their lives were already spiralling off in different directions.
“So where’s this boyfriend of yours?” Heather, a tiny little blonde pixie of a girl, demanded of Jayden, latching on to his arm in a very similar manner to Charley. “Charley said you were bringing your boyfriend!”
“Yeah, he’s coming, and can you not all just scare him off again?” Jayden asked.
Heather scoffed and preened. “Me? Never. I just want to meet him. Is he cute? What’s his name?”
“Darren Peace.”
Mike—a lanky six-foot tower of scrawny ginger teenager in the middle of an awkward growth spurt—blinked. “Seriously?”
“Um…yes?” Jayden frowned.
“You know Darren?” Heather prodded.
“Peacemaker, sure. Didn’t know he was gay, though,” Mike said and whistled lowly. “Damn. Who knew?”
“I’m sorry, you actually know this guy?” Charley interrupted.
“Yeah, he’s in my German class,” Mike said. “He’s really gay? You sure, mate?”
Jayden reddened. “Pretty sure,” he admitted, and Heather giggled. But Charley narrowed her eyes.
“I mean,” Mike held up his hands. “To be honest, I always thought he was kind of…asexual or something. He’s not into girls, anyway. So I guess…I’m just saying you wouldn’t guess. Charles, don’t get pissy.”
“Is he closeted?” she demanded of Jayden, and Jayden shrugged.
“Kind of,” he admitted. “Not, you know, really, but he’s not really told people.”
“What’s he like?” Heather punched Mike in the arm; he winced.
“I dunno, jeez,” he said. “I never talked to him much. He hangs around with Summerskill and Smith usually, and if he’s not in class, he’s practising in the music room. Cello or something.”
“Violin,” Jayden supplied, and Heather giggled.
“A hot violinist,” she said and hummed, twirling a strand of her brilliantly blonde hair around a finger. “I could go for that. You’re sure he plays for your team exclusively, Jayden?”
“He does now,” Jayden said warningly. “Look, it’s cold and I told him ten past, so can we just go inside and get some drinks and fries or something?”
Inside was warmer, but sitting at one of the plastic tables just allowed both girls to mob him for details. This was what he got, Jayden thought sourly, for having his first relationship long after they all did. And being gay, perhaps, as they’d never mobbed Mike so badly about Tina. Now, they took turns poking his arms and demanding all sorts of weird details, everything from Darren’s middle name (which Jayden didn’t actually know) to his choice in underwear.
“I haven’t seen his underwear, Charley, Jesus!” he exclaimed when that question came, and she scowled at him.
“You will.”
Jayden went red.
“You will what?”
It was a violinist thing. Or a musician thing, or a Darren thing in general, but that magical appearing-out-of-nowhere thing he did? It wasn’t limited to the theatre or Milzani’s. One moment he wasn’t there, and the next he was, standing by the table in his battered leather jacket with his hands in the pockets of his ragged jeans, that amazing hat trapping his curls into a little flattened halo around his ears and the top of his jaw, and the most spectacular black eye Jayden had ever seen.
“Oh, my God,” he said.
“What happened to you?” Mike asked.
Darren blinked at him. “Huh.”
“We went to primary school together,” Mike nodded at Jayden. “So, what happened to your face?”
“A t**t happened to my face,” Darren said sourly, and Jayden pulled him into the spare chair by his sleeve. The leather was chilly. “Some pikey tried to nick my phone off me in the park Thursday night.”
“Did he get it?” Charley asked. Heather, faced with someone new, had gone into her suddenly shy mode and said nothing, fiddling with her hair, and staring from under her eyelashes.
“Nope,” Darren said. “Hence, y’know, the face.”
“Looks kind of hot actually,” Charley said, leaning both elbows on the plastic. “You’re definitely gay?”
Darren shrugged, a small smile playing at the edges of his mouth. Jayden locked his hands over Darren’s elbow and squeezed lightly. “Sorry.”
“No, you’re not,” she said, and grinned. “Sooooo, you’re dating Jayden?”
“Apparently.”
“Do you love him?”
Darren’s left eyebrow arched upwards. “It’s a bit soon for that, isn’t it?”
“Well, why are you dating him then?”
“He’s fit,” Darren said flatly, and Jayden snorted with laughter. Far from taking offence, it was probably the most Darren had bared his heart regarding them, and in any case…well, it was a bit soon. Darren hadn’t had a spotlight moment with him, as far as Jayden knew, and to push it would just scare him away.
Charley, however, wasn’t happy with that reply, and made a sharp motion. When Darren winced, Jayden surmised he’d been kicked. “Charley,” he admonished. “Leave him alone. We going to bowl or not?”
“I’m not done interrogating yet!” Charley insisted, but Mike was already standing and rummaging in his pockets for money.
“Come on, Peace, let’s see you bowl like a man,” he challenged.
“Oh, bugger,” Darren offered, but obligingly followed.
* * * *
- Writer
