For Real (Spires) by Alexis Hall

Author:Alexis Hall [Hall, Alexis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781728251295
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2024-06-10T18:30:00+00:00

9

Laurie

Toby didn’t come back.

At first I thought he was just late, then I thought I’d confused the day, and then I realised he wasn’t coming at all. I told myself that it was entirely his right, that it was inevitable, that it was probably for the best. But I was frantic.

Was my dancing really that bad?

But he’d told me he loved me. You didn’t say that to someone, and then—Oh God. Not again. Not again.

It had only been a couple of hours, but suddenly my house was full of empty rooms, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I couldn’t bear to be in it, but I didn’t dare leave in case Toby turned up. I kept half hearing the doorbell. He would tumble over the threshold and into my arms, just like always, and there’d be some story, some mistake, some misunderstanding, and we’d laugh, and I’d feel angry and foolish at the same time, but I’d forgive him. I’d forgive him because I was desperate to feel angry and foolish.

Instead of alone. And bereft.

And still foolish, for having let this happen. For having known all along that this would happen, or something like it, and made myself naked for him anyway. It wasn’t even masochism. It was a basic failure to learn.

Toby would have called it hope.

I kept thinking about last weekend, searching compulsively for the hint, the hint that surely had to be there, of what was to come. The moment it had gone wrong, and I hadn’t noticed. But I couldn’t find anything. We’d been happy. Hadn’t we? Wandering hand in hand through golden streets. If people had been inclined to look askance at us, I hadn’t been inclined to care. Perhaps Toby had?

On Sunday, I called Grace. I didn’t ask her to, but she came over anyway and kept my futile vigil with me. It helped. It meant I couldn’t cry. She wouldn’t have judged me for it, but I’d never liked doing that in front of other people. Without the excuse of sexualised suffering, anyway.

I tried to explain what had happened, but I couldn’t because I didn’t know. There was only Toby’s absence.

She could have confronted me with all the nonsense I’d told them over pancakes, but she didn’t. She just put a hand on my arm and asked if he wasn’t answering his phone and what messages I’d left him.

Which was when I had to admit I’d never asked for his number.

Grace blinked. “Okay. Well, there’s no need to panic. Toby’s a young person. He probably lives on the internet. Google him.”

“Isn’t that basically stalking?”

“Public domain, and you wouldn’t be reduced to stalking him if you’d communicated with him properly in the first place.”

The truth was, it simply hadn’t occurred to me. I’d been so resigned to the notion that something like this was going to happen anyway that I’d practically engineered it. And now it had and I was devastated and I had only myself to blame.

“Even if he is

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