Page 69 of Into the Dark
After we say our goodbyes and I promise to give Mum and Dad his number, I move immediately through the house to find him. He’s slouched on the sofa, legs wide apart and looking utterly relaxed as he scrolls lazily through his phone. From where I stand he seems to be checking football scores.
He was our neighbor from France. He’s trying to resurrect his vineyard. I like wine. No—too much detail. He’s our neighbor. I had dinner with him. He kissed me. Nothing happened beyond that. He’s just a friend. Not even a friend—a neighbor.
I open my mouth to speak as he turns his head to look at me.
“Ready to go?” he asks, standing up from the sofa. “I really don’t want to be late, and I don’t know what the traffic’s gonna be like at this time.” There isn’t a trace of anything dark on his face now at all, his eyes warm and bright. But when he moves toward me and wraps his arms around me, he holds me a little too tight. When he kisses me on the top of my head, the kiss feels a little too heavy.
“I love you,” I say.
He says nothing right away, breathing deep and slow with his mouth still pressed against my head. When he speaks it feels like hours later. “I love you too, baby,” he says, and then he steps out of my hold. “So, am I driving or you?”
“Um, I’ll drive.” I smile. “Still detoxing. It means you can have a beer.”
He turns his mouth up in agreement. “Sounds good to me. Let’s go.”
When he moves away from me I stare after him for a few seconds feeling like I’ve just dodged a bullet. Perhaps he decided it’s not worth it. God knows we have enough weighty things to navigate without adding something as unimportant as this to the pile.
The drive to Mum’s is mainly quiet. Jake spends the first ten minutes staring out the window deep in thought before focusing his attention on the radio. He flicks between channels we decide hold no interest for us before settling on some of the low house music he seems to enjoy. As we pass it, I point out the high school I went to. Part of it has been knocked down to make way for a severe and modern-looking glass-fronted structure. He asks if I was popular and how many guys fought over me, to which I reply: against my will, and two. I was popular because Nick was popular. Things only calmed down after he left for uni. He fought with Scott Chiltern for drawing a naked picture of me in the boys’ changing room. According to Nick, the drawing was actually pretty good, which only made it worse. When I tell this story to Jake, he smiles and nods in approval at my brother’s heroics. Unfortunately, Mum and Dad weren’t as impressed. He was grounded for a month.
As soon as I turn into my parents’ driveway he sits up straight in the seat and runs a hand through his hair, shoulders tensing. I pull in next to Mum and Dad’s car and turn off the engine before turning to look at him. He’s staring hard at my parents’ house, another one of those distant looks on his face.
“So this is where you grew up,” he says, looking out the windscreen at the house.
I follow his eyes. “Yep. This is it.”
“Nice house to grow up in.”
“It was.”
For some reason Jake lingers inside the car for a moment after I leave it. His eyes move from the house to me, and I see a flicker of something, a shadow, pass over his face before he pops open the door and climbs out. He smooths down his shirt and switches his casual blue blazer from his left to his right hand before coming toward me. His fingers are warm and thick as he reaches out to take my hand, and they fit snugly through my own. As I pull him toward the front steps I feel his hand tighten on mine ever so slightly.
I turn to him as I place my hand on the large brass doorknob. “Ready?” I ask, widening my eyes playfully.
He nods. “Yeah, I’m ready.”
He looks miles away again as I push open the door.
Jake
Alex’s mum and dad’s house is exactly as I pictured it.
Actually, whenever I imagine Alex’s perfect life before me, this is what I see. A house where people grew up happy and well-looked-after and didn’t starve. Pretty much the opposite of the depressing gray stack of concrete boxes piled on top of one another I lived in until I was thirteen.
It’s a huge, two-story detached house with a wide gated driveway that could fit four or five cars comfortably side by side. I’ve been inside houses like this before. Freddy’s place in Stratford is about the same size, but this house was earned through hard work and legitimate means, and that means I don’t belong here.
Alex squeezes my hand tight as she leads me up a few steps and in through the front door, which isn’t even locked. “Guys, it’s us,” she shouts toward the back of the house. As she turns to take my jacket, which she hangs on a hook next to the door, she gives me a smile. It’s warm and reassuring. She doesn’t look worried. It helps me forget about some things but think harder about others.
Park it. It’s not the time or the place. Definitely not the place.
I smile back and wonder instead if this is the most terrified I’ve ever been in my fucking life. Being sent down when I was fifteen was terrifying. So is the way I sometimes catch Fred looking at me these days. A white-hot kind of fear that makes my body feel numb. If they hate me, what then? Does she leave me again?
I don’t normally give a fuck about what people think of me or if they like me. Fred taught me it’s actually better if people don’t like you. Taught me it’s far better if people are scared of you. Fear gets respect, and respect gets shit done. But Alex’s opinion matters. And Alex’s parents’ opinions matter because they matter to her.
Alex doesn’t look at me the way other people look at me. She never has. What I’ve done or who I am or what I could do has never meant anything to her.
I wonder what advice Fred would give me now. How would he tell me to approach this one? Fuck ’em, Jay, son. Can’t win ’em all. Long as you keep the missus happy—wink wink—she’ll ’ang about. Not like you’ve ever had any problem with girls before, ’ave you? I hear his cackle echo inside my head.
Great advice, Fred. Cheers, mate.