I lay on my back, shivering and staring up at the creamy blankness of the hotel room’s ceiling.
“I’m afraid if one of us goes back to Marbury, we’ll all end up getting sucked into it again, Con. And I…”
Conner rubbed his hands together and shook his head. He sniffled loudly. I could hear all the wet snot that bubbled in his nose.
“What about Ben and Griff?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do anymore, Con.”
And so he just sat there and watched me for several long and silent minutes until I rolled onto my side and pulled the sheets up around my shoulders.
It was so cold.
Conner got up and put the wadded-up lenses back inside my bag. He zipped it shut and placed it on top of his bed.
He turned out the lights, and then Conner lay down beside me.
He was still crying.
I felt so bad.
Conner got under the covers and slid his arm around me. He put his hand flat on the coldness of my naked belly, so his face was pressed tightly against the back of my neck.
He whispered, “I’m not ever going to let you leave, Jack.”
* * *
I could lie and say that sleeping next to Conner wasn’t sexual at all, even though we didn’t actually do anything. But feeling him beside me was good, genuinely safe, and neither of us was ashamed of it.
For the first time in my life, it was like nothing could ever make me afraid again.
And I’m not scared to admit that it felt safer and closer than lying naked in bed with Nickie.
In the morning, we were awakened by an embarrassed housekeeper who walked into our room and quickly offered pleading apologies as she backed into the hallway.
I groaned. “That is totally fucked up.”
Conner still had his arms around me. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’ll be all right. I’m sorry, Con.”
“For what?”
“Nothing.”
Conner pressed closer into me, like he was covering me against something poisonous. “Let’s just stay here for, like, ten more minutes, okay?”
“Okay.”
And more than an hour later, it was nearly noon when we got out of bed and put our clothes on, silent and awkward, nervously avoiding each other’s eyes.
* * *
Outside, the air was so cold and heavy.
Feeling it was an amazing thing to me.
To feel.
I walked in a fog as thick and stubborn as the cover of leaden clouds that pressed down on us from above. I couldn’t stop myself from wondering about everything.
Everything.
And how every day begins the same way.
This is it.
Maybe we were still drunk, I reasoned.
Maybe this was just another not-world.
I kept my eyes down and studied the backs of Conner’s sneakers, the faded upturn of the slight cuff on his Levi’s as he walked in front of me. He led me along the slate-gray sidewalk on Marylebone Road in the direction of the Great Portland Street Underground.
Conner stopped, and it was the first time since we’d gotten out of bed that we looked each other squarely in the face.
He said, “So. You want to get coffee?”
“Oh man, I am dying for some coffee.”
Conner’s mouth turned downward. He shook his head.
I said, “Um. Sorry. Bad choice of words.”
Then he smiled cautiously and pointed me to the door of a coffee bar.
It made for a long stretch of silence, finishing two full cups of hot coffee without saying a word. But nothing else needed to be said. Sometimes Conner and I could sit together for hours and just know, exactly, what we were thinking.
We didn’t avoid each other’s stare, though, because Conner and I could never be embarrassed about anything around each other. In fact, sitting there, having coffee with him, I understood Conner better at that moment than I had in all the years we’d known each other.
He swallowed. I watched the knot in his throat bob down and up.
I reached across the table and bumped his hand with my knuckles.
“You know, you’ve saved my life about a hundred times.”
I watched Conner bite at the inside of his lip. He shifted in his seat.
I turned and looked at the traffic outside the window, and tried to change the subject. But every subject only ended up being about us, anyway.
“I really like it here. I mean, at St. Atticus. I can feel it.”
Conner tipped his empty cup, like he was trying to read a message in the drying foam.
“This is it, right?”
“This is good enough for me, Con.”
“I’m okay staying here if you are, Jack.”
He sounded nervous, choked up.
I knew he was talking about much more than just England and St. Atticus Grammar School for Boys. We both knew it.
“Well, I’m okay staying here, Con. And, well … thanks.”
“No prob.” Then he squinted and smiled. “But don’t ever try that shit again.”
“Try what? The before thing, or … um … you know, after?”
Conner turned red and tried to clear his throat, pretended to look at the cars passing by outside, too.
“Hey,” I said. “In case you’re wondering, I’m not bugged about it at all. I thought it was totally cool. Really nice. Really. Okay?”
He looked at me and nodded.
* * *
“Oh fucking hell!” When I saw the station sign through the window, I shook my head. “We need to get off, Con. We’re going the wrong fucking way.”
We were on the Tube, at Finchley Road, heading in the entirely opposite direction, on the totally wrong line to get to the train station at Charing Cross.
We weren’t paying attention to what was going on around us—outside our little universe—that morning, so in our daze we ended up boarding a wrong-way train at Baker Street. And we barely made it out of the car before the doors whooshed shut.
But after spending a few minutes decoding the colored lines on the Underground map, we switched tracks and headed south on the Jubilee Line, which unfortunately also took us out of our way.
I sighed, and slapped my head when we passed the Baker Street stop.
“Why the fuck didn’t we get off there? What the fuck is wrong with me? I am so messed up today.”
Conner sat beside me, our bags on the floor between our feet.
He laughed. It was a real laugh, and it sounded good.
Like home.
He pressed his foot against mine. “It’s not like we have a plane to catch or something.”
When the train slowed into the Bond Street station, I pulled a small folding map from my back pocket.
Like Henry’s compass.
“We can switch at Westminster or Waterloo,” I said. “Waterloo’s probably better. Then we won’t have to get off again till we’re at Charing Cross.”
I tucked the map away. “I’m sorry about getting us lost, Con.”
Conner leaned forward and turned so he was looking straight into my eyes. He tapped his hand on my knee.
“I’m having a good time. Don’t sweat it.” He grinned. “It’s kind of fun being together in a place where nobody cares about us, and nobody’s trying to kill us.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Welcome home, huh?”
“Yeah. Home.”
The train stopped.
The doors swished open.
We were at Green Park.
And this was it.
thirty-six
There is something about this particular place.
It is a magnet, and Jack cannot break free.
My head snaps around; Conner watches me. He senses something, too, and I am aware of a tightness that clamps down, invades the edges of my vision.
Like being in a vice.
Something is wrong.
Don’t black out, Jack.
Conner’s hand is on my back, between my shoulders, and he says, “Are you feeling all right?”
This is the arrow.
There are so many people waiting to board the train.
They begin pressing into the car, packing everywhere. Suddenly it is as though their collective mouths inhale every molecule of air around me. Suffocating, empty, I shake my head and hang my chin down to my chest.