Unforgotten by Garrett Leigh

Author:Garrett Leigh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Carina Press
Published: 2020-11-18T17:26:22+00:00

* * *

And nothing did change. Gus danced around me all morning, then gave up and went to the gym. Only then did I venture downstairs in search of food. Living with him made me hungry all the time. Gone were the days where I could survive on a packet of Super Noodles before bed. I needed breakfast, man. Shame I had no one to share it with.

I ate dry cereal from the box and kicked around the living room, trying not to fixate on the floor. The quiet was suffocating. I’d spent plenty of time alone in Gus’s house, and I was used to being on my own, but as time went on, I enjoyed it less and less. The TV did nothing for me without Gus to lean against and doze, so I ignored it and drifted to the vinyl turntable in the corner. I’d studied the photographs beside it enough to last a lifetime, but never the records stacked up beneath.

One hand still shoved in the cereal box, I sat down and pulled one out, turning it over in my hands. It was the 1975 Fleetwood Mac album. My mum had owned the same one and had played it all the time before she’d decided she hated Lindsey Buckingham, and went back to liking music from her own generation. It had been around that time when Mia and Gus had appeared at our school. I pictured Gus as he’d been then, and recalled my instant fascination with him.

A fascination that remained.

I set the album aside, fighting images of Gus naked last night, all muscles, body hair, and man, a world away from the boy I’d first crushed on. The next one I picked up had a French title. I put that to one side too, to google when I next had my phone.

The next three I found were old folk music, Fairport Convention, Fotheringay, and The Strawbs, whoever the fuck they were. It was more my dad’s jam than my mum’s, and I settled on the Fotheringay cos I remembered it better. I put the others back, except the French one, and lay back on the floor with it, studying the colourful album sleeve, and trying to match it with hazy memories of my dad dicking about with his record player before me and Luke had broken it with a stray football kicked inside from the garden.

But the memories wouldn’t come. My dad had been dead a long time. Sometimes it was hard to remember he’d ever been alive.

The front door opened. Gus appeared in the hallway, hair damp from the shower, cheeks flushed from whatever iron he’d pumped at the gym. He’d been gone for ages, but somehow the sight of him still shocked me, as if I’d forgotten he was ever coming back. He hung his bag on the hook and glanced into the living room. Blinked. Apparently my presence surprised him too.

His gaze flickered from the album in my hands to the one I’d left on the floor.

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