Life After Joe by Harper Fox Read Free Book Online Page A

surreptitious check for marks of drool. “I think so. Fairly.”
    “Good. I want to take you home, and I have to know yes means yes.”
    “Oh.” Breath left my lungs. I shivered. I should at least appear a little bit harder to get, shouldn’t I? But I didn’t have the strength. Not to say no to the sunlight. “Okay,” I said. “Yes. I mean yes.”
    ***
    We sat in the back of the taxi like strangers. This was the awkward part. I’d bailed at traffic lights before now, unable to face the complexities of extricating myself politely from my latest social entanglement. I was tired, and I hadn’t lied back at the club—I was sobering up. I hadn’t done this before. Never gone home with someone in clearheaded knowledge of what I was doing. Some blokes wanted to neck like randy teenagers on the backseat, as if showing off their conquest for the (usually disgusted) cabbie. I was relieved Aaron seemed happy to keep to his own side. His profile, caressed by oncoming headlights, was calm. Distant somehow. Lost in thought.
    I swallowed, suddenly nervous. It made a tiny sound. Aaron looked up. He didn’t shift from his seat, but he put a hand across it and took mine.
    The cab pulled up outside a big, featureless block on the Quayside. Its frontage looked out over the water. Having offered to pay for the cab and been courteously refused, I stood on the kerb, trying to take in the sheer cliff of brick and glass—felt my elbow warmly clasped as the night shifted round me, tipping on its axis.
    “Come on inside. Before you fall down.”
    His flat was on the sixth or seventh floor. I lost count as the digits in the lift flickered by. I’d run out of small talk, and now my energy was going too. Standing so near to him in a confined space was making my head spin. He filled me with a need I was afraid I’d soon be too weak to assuage. I’d been living for the last day or so on artificial toxins and air, and thinking about my life at the moment gave me a vision of circling, snapping wolves. God, I should have grabbed that abandoned half bottle of wine I’d seen on my way out of the club: with that inside me, I could have been entwined around him, not standing mute, staring at the industrial carpet…Finally the doors hissed wide, and he pressed a hand between my shoulders, as if I needed guidance.
    There was a corridor. The place looked like a hotel. Aaron said, “I work on an oil rig. It’s normally four weeks on, two off, though I’m back and forth a bit more than that just now…This is where they put us up on our off duty.” He pulled out a bunch of keys from his pocket, and after drawing me to a halt outside one of the anonymous doors, unlocked it. Pushed it open. This was all fine. Routine, although he was certainly politer than most, gesturing me ahead into the hallway. I smiled at him. Made my casual walk inside, glancing about me with polite interest, except all I could see were flickering sparks. My shoulder hit a door frame, and I crashed to my knees on the carpet.
    “Matthew. Matthew, what is it?”
    He was kneeling in front of me. If I blinked, I could clear enough static to get a fix on his concerned gaze. Not just concerned—almost frightened. “Sorry,” I said, trying for a laugh which died in my throat. “Maybe not as sober as advertised. I…tripped on something.”
    “No, you didn’t. You’re not well, are you?”
    I clutched his arms. The tighter I did so—and he didn’t seem to mind; just increased the pressure on my shoulders in response—the less the building swayed around me. “Okay,” I said, the truth on my lips before I had time to censor or pull up. “I…think I tried to kill myself last night.” It sounded absurd. I couldn’t take it seriously. “It’s all right. Nobody noticed.”
    “ Matthew. ” How did he know my name? Casting back, I recalled he’d used it that first night at the bar, then found myself lost in how much I liked to hear him say it. My mind was backpedalling