Page 27 of Boy Friends
‘Good intentions?’ I snort, and jump up, desperate to end our chat. She grabs my wrist before I make it any further.
‘Simo, darling boy, a word of advice. If you truly want to know how someone feels about you, take a petal from the bloom of an apple tree and hide it beneath their pillow. If they smell of it the next day, they reciprocate your desire.’
‘Right,’ I reply, because that’s all I can come up with in the face of such bollocks.
She pats my cheek and finally lets go. ‘Cherry blossom works too.’
‘Have a wonderful Saturday, Miss M,’ I say, and escape as quickly as my legs allow.
At the bottom of the stairs, I run into Luca, who’s got a kitchen towel over one shoulder and a smudge of something on his cheek. I fight the urge to brush it off.
‘You look spooked,’ he says.
‘I’m not.’
‘Did you get stuck in the supplies closet again?’
‘I’m not spooked.’
‘You can admit it, you know.’
‘Just drop it, OK?’ It comes out harsher than intended.
He takes a step back. ‘Fine,’ he says, but I can tell he’s hurt. I should apologise, but that would require an explanation, and I barely understand the source of my irritation.
‘I’m gonna go for a run,’ I say. I’m almost at the back door when I turn around, unable to leave him like this. ‘Are we going to the harvest festival tomorrow? Betsy will be selling her pumpkin-pie ice cream.’
In the dark of the hallway, Luca’s features blur into shadow. ‘I don’t think I can. I’ve got that lunch with, well, you know.’
‘Ah, the grandparents,’ I say. Luca squirms at the word, like it’s a stiff shirt he’s not used to wearing. I feel for him – I’m still getting used to being a cousin, nephew, grandson. Then again, my father never tried to hide his family; they were just too far to reach.
‘If you go, could you save me some?’ Luca asks, sounding hopeful.
‘Pumpkin-pie ice cream?’
‘Please, I’ll hate myself for missing out.’
‘I’ll try,’ I say, and by that I mean I will, because it’s Luca.
On the walk home, I study the lawns and gardens I pass, unsure what it is I’m looking for. Only when I reach the apple tree that stands guard on the corner of my street, I realise that Miss M successfully snuck her way into my head. Rotting fruit is scattered across the grass verge, but it’s early autumn, so heck knows where I’d get hold of blossoms. Not that I have a need for them.
I quicken my step and seconds later I cross our front yard, hundreds of daisies nodding their hellos. After a quick change, I head back out in my running gear. I pick up speed and allow the soles of my shoes to slap the concrete. It’s the outlet I need, a steady rhythm I can follow while sorting the mess in my head, the knots in my chest. I take the back route, a gravel path that circles Lombard, often used by hikers making their way across the hills from the nearest city to our shore. Tall beeches rustle in the breeze, and the berries of the rowan trees glow like rubies whenever the sun pierces the clouds.
They remind me of the pomegranate trees of Granada, the fruit hanging heavy and low, daring passers-by to pluck them. Which we did, plenty of times, because Luca loves eating the seeds, his lips and fingers stained red from the juice. There’s a pull in my chest, a sweet pain that hasn’t left me since I said goodbye to my tío at the airport. If I give in to it, follow the pain to its source, I’ll find myself backthere, that much I know. What do you call homesickness for a place that’s not your home?
Even if I returned, I wouldn’t recognise the place, not without Luca. Imagining myself in Granada without him makes me feel unbalanced. It’s the last place where he and I were just boys, just friends. Now I don’t know what we are. And I don’t know if I want us to be just that – just friends.
I reach the end of the gravel path and skirt the town’s back streets, the little cottages and parks, until I cross the main street and find myself on the promenade. I’ve drawn a semicircle around Lombard, never straying far from its heart – the cafe, with Luca in it. Knowing he’s there should fill me with calm, but lately doubt gnaws at me.
Since the day we met over ten years ago, he’s been my centre of gravity. I never considered this to be a bad thing, because that’s how it was with Hamza. I have always been wary of my parents; they’re solitary creatures, unable to let others in. Hamza, though, was everything they were not – open and affectionate – so I naturally gravitated towards him. He was the best big brother a boy could have. When he was gone, I only found my feet again with Luca. I wrapped my life around him. Frankly, it’s the only way I knew how to survive.
I can’t lose Luca. And I’m slowly waking up to the reality that this might be a problem. Hamza’s death, sudden and brutal, ripped a hole in my side that Luca stitched up. I needed him to save me, and save me he did, even if he didn’t know it at the time. Ten years later, I live and breathe, but I can’t be ripped apart twice over.
All my life I have existed as part of someone else, somuch so that I can’t imagine being on my own, and neither can anyone else, it appears. For a long time, my parents couldn’t look at me without being reminded of the son they’d lost. There was no Simo without Hamza, a unit so tight it couldn’t exist without its other half. They got better at hiding it, but occasionally when Mum stares at me, deep in thought, I see a glimpse of the old pain. Even now, running past the familiar faces of this town, their eyes scan the air around me, searching for someone that isn’t there, searching for Luca.
Paul’s kiosk comes into view, signalling the end of my route, but my head is still brimming, thoughts running wilder than my pounding heart. I know how to drown them out. Without stopping, I make a break for the beach. Sand flies, fills my shoes, so I throw them off and run on, run until my feet hit water, until the waves beat my thighs, swallow my hips. I dive and fill my ears with the ever-roaring sea.
The first blow is a shock, but a welcome one. The drop in temperature means I’m surrounded by cold. It brings clarity, and what follows is a soft lifting by the waves. The salt holds my body and soothes my joints. I’m on my back, staring into blinding clouds. When all I see is sky, and all I feel is ocean, my mind finally relents. It takes but a few minutes before the cold seeps into me, driving me out of the water. I feel lighter, as if the sea caught some of my heavier thoughts and bore them away. My feet carry me back towards where I dropped my shoes, leaving a wet trail as the saltwater pours off my body and soaks into the sand. I peel the wet T-shirt off and wring it out, then shake thesea out of my hair. Instead of my shoes, I find a figure sitting cross-legged in the spot where I left them. A book rests open on her bare legs, and she looks up at me with a smile caught somewhere between amusement and disbelief.
