Vivaldi in the Dark Box Set

Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Things changed in the first week of December.

Darren texted on Saturday morning, effectively rescuing Jayden from helping Dad with the car, and invited him to hang out in town. It had been the usual, poorly spelled, horrifically unreadable sort of invitation, and Jayden hadn’t thought anything of it, really. He had hoped, vaguely, to invite him over later in the day and hide up in his room while Mum and Dad were at the shops. He had vague designs, after seeing Darren’s sinful range of clingy T-shirts, of getting him out of the clingy T-shirts.

They met at Milzani’s. Jayden had never been in the daytime, and its evening energy was muted. It was fairly quiet, still too early for the Christmas shoppers to have given up in exhaustion, and Darren had beaten him there, leaning against the wall by the door in the icy wind, looking gorgeous in that jacket.

“Thank you,” Jayden said, sliding his hand into the crook of Darren’s elbow. “You rescued me from another lecture on the workings of a car engine.”

“You’re welcome, I guess.” Darren shrugged, holding the door open for him. “I take it you’re not into cars?”

“No. And Dad loves his car,” Jayden huffed and fumbled for his wallet. “No, I’ll get this one,” he insisted. He squinted at Darren’s face. “You all right?”

Darren looked…not unhappy, exactly, but serious. In a way. Well, he always looked a bit serious, he wasn’t the smiley type, really, but…he looked…heavier, maybe? A weight to his face? Whatever it was, Jayden began to get the first impressions that something wasn’t quite right.

But Darren said, “Yeah,” and summoned the barista with one glance. It was the eyes, Jayden thought privately. The colour. Or maybe the fact that Darren could look perfectly innocent and ridiculously attractive with exactly the same expression. When she blushed and started playing with her hair, Jayden knew he was right.

“You’re zoning out,” Darren said as they waited.

“Your fault.”

“How?”

Jayden shrugged and tried not to smile. “Just is. She fancies you.”

“Eh.” Darren shrugged and tipped a hand in that ‘so-so’ gesture. “Too much makeup. And hair. And the s*x would be boring at best.”

Jayden flushed and hid it behind the coffee that she supplied right at that moment. The side of Darren’s cardboard cup had a phone number scrawled on it. “Does that always happen?” he asked as they found a corner table, crushed in by the plate-glass window. The wintry sunlight was barely warm through the glass.

“Nah, not really,” Darren said and leaned his elbows on the table. “We need to talk.”

It was like getting a bucket of icy water dropped over his head. “You don’t want to do this anymore,” Jayden breathed.

Darren raised both hands, ducking his head and sighing heavily. “Just hear me out,” he said. Oh God, he wanted to break up. “I need to be honest with you.” What? “It’s really, really not fair to drag you into this mess without fair warning, and when you hear that fair warning, trust me—it’ll be you who doesn’t want to do this anymore.”

Jayden fidgeted with his cup, staring. Darren was looking anywhere but at him: at his cup, out the window, at his sleeves. He was uneasy, shifting in his seat and picking at the sticker on the ridged edges of the cup. If furtive had a look, it was sitting opposite Jayden Phillips in that coffee shop. “What?” he pushed eventually. “I mean…what? Seriously, do you…I mean…I thought you wanted to…go out. You asked me!”

Darren sighed again. It sounded like a breeze through a copse: shivery and wary. “In a really raw way, yeah, I do,” he said. “Come on, I was attracted to you the minute you interrupted practice. So yeah, I do. I think it’s pretty obvious that I like you. But it’s not that easy, not…not right now. Maybe not ever. And it’s not fair to not tell you.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?” Jayden asked.

It had happened to his mother. She’d been eighteen years old and had fallen for a gorgeous college student. A photographer. After eight months, she told him she was pregnant. He promptly told her he was seeing someone else, and that was that. And okay, Jayden couldn’t exactly do the whole pregnant-and-alone thing, but…

Darren actually laughed. Not much, but he did: a low snort of laughter that had him ducking his head and hiding behind his hand until the broad grin eased. Something about it released a little of the tension in Jayden’s chest. “Yes,” Darren said, “because I have lines of boys outside my door just waiting for me to give them the time of day.”

“You should.”

“Get real. No, I don’t have a boyfriend. I’m not that crass.” Darren started outright shredding the label. “I’m not…I don’t…”

Jayden wanted to take his hands. Wary of the public atmosphere, he instead slid a foot across the slightly sticky floor to tap Darren’s ankle with his shoe. “Just tell me,” he said. It couldn’t be that bad, right? He’d said not now. So maybe Jayden could change it, or wait it out, whatever it was, and then things would be fine. Maybe it was like Darren had some other worries or something.

“I’m not normal, all right?”

Jayden blinked. “What’s that meant to mean?”

“Sometimes…” Darren paused and huffed that laugh again. Suddenly, it didn’t sound so good. “I get these…spells. Bad days, when I don’t…function properly. When everything just kind of disappears and I just…I’m numb. I don’t feel anything. I don’t want to do anything. Like I’m disappearing. I feel paralysed, some days, and those days, I’d do any amount of stupid s**t to make it stop.”

Jayden could feel his heartbeat speeding up. Darren was staring out the window, blank and empty. There was something painful about the void—the nothing—in his expression. Something missing in those pale green eyes. Anything? What was anything?

“Sometimes, I’m fine. And other times, I can’t cross the railway bridge without wanting to jump off it,” Darren said flatly. Jayden drew in a sharp breath. “I withdraw, I cut people off, I don’t want to do anything, see anyone, nothing.”

“Have you…are you…” Jayden stumbled over the question and finally blurted out, “Are you suicidal?” in a rush.

Darren’s face twitched at the question, and he dropped his gaze to the shredded cup label, sifting through the remains with his fingers. “Sometimes,” he muttered. He took a breath, and his voice strengthened. “At night, usually. And it’s not…I can’t explain it. It’s like…I don’t want to die. I mean…I don’t want to want to die. You get me? I want the feeling to stop. And I know it’s stupid because it’s not like I’m living in a crack house on a council estate with a pit bull and an alcoholic single mum, but I can’t make it go away. I can’t make myself go away.”

Jayden felt his lungs shivering every time he breathed. He couldn’t stop staring, and he knew the look on his face couldn’t be helping with how Darren much feel just saying all of that, but…

Really? Darren was…depressed? Darren? Of the sarcastic violin and the fear of hairdressers and the complete, blind ignorance of just how hot he looked in his hand-me-down leather jacket? What did Darren have to be depressed about? He had parents and a crazy brother and he was attractive and smart and could play the violin like a maestro, and probably the piano too, if he sat down and did it seriously…

And yet he was sitting opposite Jayden in this coffee shop saying he was suicidal and that he lay awake at night wanting to die. How was that even possible?

“I don’t…I don’t get it,” Jayden breathed. “How can you…?”

“I don’t know,” Darren snapped, throwing up his hands. “Don’t you think I know how stupid it is?”

Jayden scrambled for some sense to it. Darren had nothing to be depressed about. Darren didn’t know why he was depressed. What the hell was going on, then? “Do you…I mean…pills? A counsellor?”

“No.” Darren’s mouth twisted again, but not in the half-smile that Jayden liked. “My parents don’t know. Not really. We don’t talk about this kind of stuff. Father doesn’t exactly buy into depression as a real thing.”

Jayden winced. “So, um…I’m sorry,” he fumbled out, “but I just…why? I can’t…why?”

Darren pushed the pieces of shredded cup label into a tiny pile. “I don’t know,” he admitted. He looked wounded, somehow. He looked suddenly shy, in a way that was deeply unsettling. “I’m f****d up in the head and I don’t know why, and…I know it’s stupid, Jayden, believe me, I f*****g know. And I’ve tried to get over it, I’m still trying, but it’s not working.”

“So…”

“Look, I’m just saying…This,” Darren waved a hand between them, “isn’t going to be fun. I’m not going to be fun. Maybe every now and then I’ll be in the right place in my head to have silly dates out and go to parties with you, but there’s going to be days when I don’t want to know either of us exist, and there’s going to be days when I’m too tired to play because I’ve been up all night destroying my room, and…and I can’t promise…I can’t promise that I won’t. You know. Stop.”

Jayden’s breath caught. “Stop, as in…”

“As in, chapel, Friday morning, flowers to Granelli and Sons.”

The flippancy was out of place. They were out of place. Sitting in this sunlit coffee shop talking about this. They should have met, had coffee, checked on the cinema listings on Darren’s phone, picked a stupid film, and gone on a proper date. Right now, Jayden should be working up the nerve to hold Darren’s hand in the dark, and then getting blindsided when Darren read his mind and did it for him. They shouldn’t be here, talking about this.

He swallowed and dropped his gaze to the table.

“I…” he said.

He didn’t know if he could handle this.

“I get it.” Darren shrugged, but his face was loose as if all the strings holding him up had been cut. “If this is too heavy. I do get it, you shouldn’t have to deal with this kind of s**t. Not a month in with your first boyfriend. I’m not going to throw this coffee in your face if you want out.”

“I…” Jayden bit his lip. He couldn’t just dump him because he had problems. What kind of person did that?

But then, he wasn’t sure he could handle…that. Depression. Suicide. What if Darren killed himself? Jayden could barely handle being shoved into walls and locked into the bathrooms at school. How was he supposed to handle Darren having…being like that? What was he meant to do? What could he do?

“I need to think about it,” he found himself saying, and Darren nodded. Jayden felt like an absolute bastard.

“Okay. I’ll leave you to it,” he said, sweeping the dearly departed label onto the floor and standing, one hand already back in his jacket pocket. “Let me know, whatever. And I really do understand if you decide you can’t deal with this shit.”

“Don’t be so nice about it,” Jayden said numbly and Darren shrugged. It hurt worse if Darren was nice about it.

“Why not?” he asked. “I get it. It’s not like I can handle it either.”

And then he was gone—and Jayden didn’t know what to do.

* * * *