The Somnambulist
Most nights he found it difficult to sleep. The ceiling was as intimate to him as a friend: he knew its damp patches and cracks off by heart from countless nights of tracing over them with his mind until the sun came up. Sometimes he got up and went into his kitchen, blinking sharply as he turned on the naked lightbulb, and sat in his pyjamas at the dining table, smoking and listening to records on his old vinyl player until the repetitiveness soothed him into sleep.
Familiarity was something he had become used to. On weekdays he opened up the shop at nine and closed it again at six; picked up a sandwich from the deli and retreated back up into his flat to play music and read until he went to bed. At the weekends he wandered down to his allotment early in the morning and stayed there until midday, tending to the carrots and the lettuces, and afterwards he stood on the bank of the Lea Valley River, watching the rowers trail lazily through the murky water. Then in the evenings he ate a ready meal from Tesco’s and watched subtitled crime thrillers on BBC4. If the mood took him he would nip into the Rose and Crown for a quiet drink, but that didn’t happen often. Nothing much happened often.
Once, a customer - a young blonde woman in a floral dress - told him, kindly, that he looked tired as she handed him a Kate Bush LP. He, smiling, said, “Think I’m coming down with something,” but sometimes it felt like he’d been coming down with something for the last thirteen years.
He didn’t ever think about it, not really. He told himself he was happy enough; that he liked his own company, and besides people didn’t tend to have many friends when they turned forty-five. Only, sometimes he got cramps which weren’t a symptom of any physical pain but rested inside his bones, and every so often he was flooded with a feeling that he couldn’t describe but was so tangible and sharp that he struggled to stay upright.
***He didn’t even recognise Pete at first, not until he was suddenly assaulted by the full force of that grin and the words, “How much for this?” It took him a moment to collect himself, and he blinked like he had been dragged squirming into bright sunlight. Pete was different, of course, and the same. He had grown up reluctantly: his face still shone with efficient youth, his darkening hair cut in a feathered style that was ten years too young for him but still suited him nonetheless.
Pete frowned. “Stitch?”
The universe stopped.
Stitch spluttered. “Pete.” It was all he could think to say, but Pete smiled anyway. It was one of his old smiles, one that implied that everything was a miracle, and for a split second it was almost as if the last thirteen years hadn’t even happened.
“How are you?” Pete beamed. “God, I mean…s’been ages! How are you?”
“I’m…fine,” said Stitch. “It’s good to see you.”
“Is this your shop?” Pete looked around, wide-eyed. “It’s brilliant! You’ve gone up in the world.”
“Yeah…” Stitch laughed tightly. “So, I mean, how are things with you?”
“Not too bad. Not too bad.” Pete was fiddling with the cuff of his jacket.
“Good.” Stitch felt his insides begin to twist together. “So are you…back in the area?”
Pete ruffled his hair in a burningly familiar way. “Got a flat in Dalston, yeah, moved in a few weeks ago. Look at you, though: you posh git - Stoke Newington! Imagine that.”
“Yeah.”
He looked awkwardly down at his hands with the slightly protruding veins, but Pete remained oblivious; smiled sunnily and said, “This is mental. Didn’t think I’d see you, of all people.” He paused. “Fuckin’ awful timing, though, I’m supposed to be at some bloody garden party in half an hour. Thought I’d get a present for the hostess.” He held up the LP again. “How much did you say this was?”
“Erm…” Stitch shook his head. “Nothing. It’s yours. On the house.”
Pete’s smile faltered a little at that. “You sure?”
“Yeah, positive.”
“Well…thanks, Stitch. Hey, listen, we should get together some time and catch up.”
“Yeah, that’d be great.”
But Pete made no move to write down a phone number. Instead he mumbled, “Great to see you, I’ll see you around,” and almost tripped over in his haste to get out of the shop. Stitch watched him through the window as he unchained a red Brompton bike from the railing and rode off down the high street.
That night Stitch closed the shop an hour early. He sat at the kitchen table and drank half a bottle of red wine and wondered at what point Pete reached an age where he went to garden parties instead of to clubs, at what point he started riding a bicycle instead of that infernal scooter, at what point he had stopped being the eternal make-believe kid Stitch had always envisioned him as and had grown up instead. He felt the weight of thirteen years crushing down on his shoulders.
Stitch didn’t sleep at all that night.
***
He remembered everything about Pete. He remembered the smell of Pete’s shoulder blades at five o clock in the morning. He remembered how sometimes, when they kissed, he could still taste a faint tang of toothpaste in between Pete’s teeth. He remembered the sound of Pete humming along to a tune only he could hear as he got dressed, shimmying into his trousers to an invisible beat.
The split had been sudden. One day Pete had seemed more distant than usual, the next he was just gone, and it didn’t matter how many times Stitch texted or tried to phone or email him, he didn’t respond. Nobody knew where he was. Eventually, Stitch had given up trying.
And so it was a surprise to him when his mobile suddenly went off in his pocket, vibrating furiously as if startled at being woken after sleeping for so long. Stitch fumbled with it for a moment, and stuttered his greeting when he finally turned took the call.
“Alright, Stitch!”
His throat constricted.
“Stitch? You there. S’me, Pete. Pete Sweet?”
As if he could have forgotten. “Yes! Hi! Pete! Yes…” He tried to force a grin into his voice.
“I realised I forgot to get your number last week so I got Dave to give it to me. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, of course not. So, um…what can I do for you?”
Pete wanted someone to walk his dogs with him in Clissold Park. Stitch knew he should have refused. There was too much between them that couldn’t be confronted: there was thirteen years of silence, and the clamouring echo of heartbreak, and yet he still found himself saying, “Yes,” when his feeble attempts at protestation were rebuked. Afterwards he sat at his kitchen table and quickly smoked a cigarette and wondered why Pete bestowed the gift of invitation on him rather than one of his other friends. He contemplated not going. But after a while he felt a pull and, like a child of Hamelin, he grabbed his jacket and scurried outside.
London was bathed in a cool light; the skies were colourless. He met Pete on the bridge, where his old friend was leaning against the side and clinging onto the leads of two ancient dogs. Now, without the shock of seeing him, Stitch was able to look at Pete more closely. He was still as tiny as he used to be, wearing a short-sleeved lilac shirt and slightly ill-fitting jeans - an outfit that flooded him. The differences were subtle. A few lines patterned his skin, he had fleshed out more around the face, and his hair was darker than it used to be. But when he looked up and smiled the years dripped clumsily away.
“Alright?”
“Hi.” Stitch stuck his hands in his trouser pockets, feeling more like a teenager than a forty-five-year-old man.
“You remember the girls, don’t you?” Pete knelt down and kneaded at a dog’s neck. Stitch hummed an affirmative, although he couldn’t remember their names to save his life.
Pete let the dogs off their leads and the two men sat on a bench, watching the animals scampering around, and Pete talked. He talked about everything, and at the same time he talked about nothing at all. He talked about his job as an Entertainments Manager for a record company, and his mature MA in Events Management from Greenwich University. He talked about his friends Derek and Lizzie who were married and had a small child who he sometimes babysat. He talked about the view from his flat and how he could see the whole city from his bedroom window. He talked and talked and with every word Stitch felt his carefully-preserved image of Pete falling soggily to pieces. He remembered the kid who didn’t aspire to anything, who was happy to work in a kiosk forever as long as he enjoyed it; Pete who could barely take responsibility for himself, let along for a small child. He might as well have been talking to a stranger. Stitch suddenly felt as if he had been encased in shrink-wrap.
When they left Pete found an old receipt in his pocket, scrawled his phone number on it, and shoved it into Stitch’s reluctant hand. “Call me,” he said, with a hopeful grin. Stitch smiled back and nodded.
When he got home, he threw the phone number in the bin. Then he walked down to the Lea Valley River and stood on the concrete bank, staring into the bottomless water as the sky darkened and the cold evening bit at his hands.
That night he didn’t even bother going to bed; just smoked cigarette after cigarette and listened to Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Are You Experienced’ on repeat and wondered at what point Pete grew up and left him behind.
***
For the next week Pete bombarded him with calls and texts that he didn’t respond to. He deleted the texts without reading them; let the calls go through to voicemail while his phone buzzed angrily. It was childish and he knew it, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. When Pete finally gave up on his Kamikaze mission, Stitch expected to feel a weight off his shoulders. Instead, he just felt numb.
And then, on a lethargic Wednesday evening, almost three weeks since he had last seen him, Pete was standing at the door to his flat, staring at him.
“Pete…” Stitch muttered, stunned.
Pete’s eyes were urgent and furious, blazingly so, and his skinny chest pulsed with the movement of his heavy breathing. Stitch was intensely reminded of the day Pete had beaten him up in the pub. He’d looked like this then.
“You utter bastard!” Pete growled, shoving past Stitch into the flat and then turning impetuously on his heel, his arms folded. Stitch almost wanted to laugh.
“I’m sorry?” he asked, closing the door behind him.
“I lost count of how many times I called you!” Pete said. His accent had sharpened to a point. “Why didn’t you reply to anything?”
“I’ve…been busy…” Stitch mumbled.
“Bullshit you’ve been busy! I spoke to Dave; he said no one’s heard anything from you in years! I ain’t thick! Why’ve you been avoiding me?”
“I haven’t.”
“D’you actually think I’m stupid?”
“No, Pete,” he sighed jarringly. “I’ve just had stuff to do.”
“What stuff?” Pete exploded. “What stuff do you do?”
“Well…I’ve got the shop and…” He looked down at his shoes.
“Wow. Sounds like you’re swamped.” Pete shook his head. “Fuck you, Stitch.”
“Well, what about you?” The words were out of his mouth before he even knew he was thinking them. “I suppose you’d know all about missed phone calls, wouldn’t you?”
There was a long, suffocating pause. Stitch dug his fingernails into the palm of his hand and stared at the floor so intensely he was surprised it didn’t buckle underneath him. He wanted to put a hand out to steady himself but there was nothing that would support his weight.
“I’m sorry.” He managed to force the words out through his resisting mouth. “I shouldn’t have…I’ll just…”
“No. I’m sorry.”
Stitch looked up. “What?”
Pete was leaning against the wall, his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I shouldn’t have just rocked up like this; it was really unfair on you and…it’s just when I saw you in the shop I suddenly realised how long it had been, y’know? And I started thinking about that time with Poppy and Daisy and the kiosk and…I just really, really missed you.”
It was strange, hearing Pete being so responsible. Stitch remembered the young man who was so entirely wrapped up in his own little world of his flat and his hair and his job and his dance that he didn’t even seem to realise that his girlfriend was constructed of dust and air molecules.
“I want my best mate back, Stitch. That’s all.”
It was surprisingly easy how well Stitch remembered all the old routines. When Pete held out a hand to brush against his arm it was so natural to say, “Don’t touch me. Don’t ever touch me,” as if the skin he had put on wasn’t tattered and worn with age. Pete’s eyes lit up again and he glowed and Stitch forgave him right away, for everything, because how could he not? He gave Pete a beer and they sat at the kitchen table and talked about the old times with rehearsed ease, and when Pete offered to pop round in the morning for a cup of tea Stitch found himself saying, “Yes,” without even thinking about it.
That night he lay in bed and traced over the damp patches and cracks on his ceiling until the sun dragged itself, heaving, over the London sky.
***
Pete had said, “That time with Poppy and Daisy and the kiosk,” without any hint that he thought about the outcome of that whole event. It was as if he didn’t even remember that, once upon a time, he had been the first to call them ‘lovers.’
There had been other men after Pete, of course, but Stitch only half-remembered them, and when he did so it was always in stock epithets. There had been Jackson the Charming; Ellis the Thatcherite; Toby the Downright-Pain-In-The-Arse. None of them had lasted any longer than a few months, scared away by the crippling insecurities that had slowly eroded Stitch from being a handsome and pleasant young man and turned him instead into a quivering somnambulist. He had tried very hard to turn these men into something more than they were, and had spent a lot of time trying to pretend that Pete was on their level.
He saw Pete regularly, and on the days that he didn’t he was showered with friendly texts: silly things like there’s this pigeon on my windowsill keeps looking at me all shifty. On Sundays Pete accompanied him to the allotment and sat by the fence swatting greenflies as Stitch dug up the celeriac, and then they sat together in the evening on the sofa drinking sherry and watching panel shows on iPlayer, Pete’s toes digging into his hip. They went back to The Elephant, once, but it was much cleaner than either of them remembered and the 20-year-old bartender tried to charge them £4.50 for a Scotch egg, so they quickly left.
One night, when he felt too drunk to cycle home, Pete slept on Stitch’s sofa. After that, Pete-related objects began turning up in Stitch’s flat - a pair of socks in his bathroom, a bike lock in the hallway, a battered copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas underneath a cushion. Every time he found one of these misplaced treasures he felt his stomach cramp.
Then he was invited to Pete’s flat for dinner, on a cool evening. When he arrived there were two people already sitting on the sofa holding glasses of Pinot Grigio: a thin woman with a tangled mass of crimson hair, and a well-shaved man.
“Alright?” Pete was wearing a frayed striped jumper that looked disconcertingly familiar, and an apron. “This is my mate Stitch, and this is Derek and Lizzie.”
Lizzie leant forward on a sharp elbow. “Stitch is an interesting name.”
“Um…” Stitch scratched his elbow. “It’s a nickname.”
“Oh. So your real name…?”
“Don’t ask that,” said Pete, pressing a glass of wine into Stitch’s hand. “You’ll break the spell.”
They all laughed.
“What do you do, Stitch?” Derek smiled.
“I, um, own a record shop.”
“Gosh!” Lizzie raised her eyebrows. “Well, I’m a psychoanalyst and Rick’s a PR Consultant. Where do you get us from, Pete?”
“God only knows!”
Stitch cast an eye around Pete’s flat. The white, modern room sharply contrasted with the battered furniture that he vaguely recognised. The plastic swinging chair was stowed away in a corner, hanging over the two dogs, which were sleeping draped over each other. Stitch sipped his wine, feeling suddenly very large and clumsy.
Pete had made spinach quiche, and they ate off plates on their laps. Stitch sat and listened to Lizzie talking about her son’s nursery progress and Derek complaining about his dickhead of a manager and watched Pete listening with interest and it all seemed so terribly ordinary. When Pete vanished into the kitchen to fill up the dishwasher he slowly crept after him, and touched his shoulder.
“I think I’m going to…take off,” he mumbled. “Not feeling too great.”
Pete gave him a painfully concerned look. “Oh no! You alright?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, don’t worry. I’ll see you soon, ok?”
“Yeah, I’ll pop round tomorrow.”
“Ok.”
Stitch walked home as the sky fell around him, feeling breathless, and already knowing that he wouldn’t be able to sleep that night.
***
He had Pete back, but at the same time had never felt further from him, and so when Pete kissed him up against his kitchen counter he couldn’t work out whether to pull him close or push him away. Instead, he held onto the counter edge until his knuckles went white.
It had been six months since that first, polite encounter in the shop below, but standing there with Pete’s cool hand pressed against his cheek and his chapped lips motionless on Stitch’s own, he felt as slack and idiotic as he had done back then. Pete’s eyes were closed and he was close enough for Stitch to count his eyelashes; to follow the shape of the kink in his nose. Outside, a siren wailed.
When Pete pulled away Stitch wondered if his outline would remain on his skin, like a burn.
“You ok?” Pete murmured.
Stitch blinked slowly.
“Why?” he said.
Pete took a step backwards, the heavy heels of his Doc Martens thudding softly on the floor. “Stitch?”
“Why did you do that?”
Pete smiled awkwardly, but it quickly faded when he couldn’t catch Stitch’s eye. “Because I wanted to.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the problem, isn’t it?” Stitch could barely hear his own mumbled words over the pounding in his ears. “Because…because you wanted to. Never mind whether I wanted to or not, no, that’s Stitch for you, good old dependable Stitch, never kicks up a fuss about anything, isn’t that right?”
“I don’t-”
“You were the one who left, Pete. Not me. You. And then, what? You just come back after thirteen fucking years and pretend that nothing’s happened? That’s not how this works.” He tried to laugh but his tongue was too thick in his mouth. “And I don’t say anything, course not. That’s just what I do. So yes, you can come back and act like we’re still the best of friends and I’ll go along with that, sure. I can forget everything else; that I was…so completely in love with you, yeah, I can do that too. But you can’t make me love you again, Pete, not after last time. I can’t let you…I can’t do that to myself again.”
He couldn’t move his gaze from the floor.
“I was fine until you came back,” he said. “I wasn’t happy, but I was fine. And now you’ve…” He swallowed down the clot in his oesophagus. “I loved you, Pete, and you can’t even acknowledge…” He took a deep breath. “So…forgive me if I’m a little ‘off’ about this whole situation because frankly, I don’t know what you want from me, but whatever it is I think you should go and find someone else because it’s too late. I’m done.”
The silence screamed at him. He ran a hand over his face and let it stay there.
“I’m sorry,” Pete said.
Stitch shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, Pete.”
“Yeah, it does matter. I’m sorry.” Pete’s voice was blurred. “I was scared, back then. There was that whole thing with Poppy and Daisy and it was all so weird and then suddenly there you were and…I dunno, and it suddenly felt real and it scared me. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I didn’t know what was gonna happen and I didn’t know what I wanted or what you wanted and I just panicked. That’s why I run off. I missed you like fuck, right away, but I thought if I tried to come back you wouldn’t want me to.”
His voice broke on the last word. Stitch couldn’t bring himself to even lift his head. Then he felt a pair of arms loop slowly around his waist, and he unconsciously shifted his weight to pull Pete closer towards him; Pete’s head against his shoulder. Pete felt tiny in his arms.
“What’re we like, eh?” Pete sniffled, with a small laugh. “We’re too old for this shit, Stitch.” He paused. “Are you really done, Stitch? Coz I’ll go if you want me to. Do you want me to go?”
“No.”
Pete sighed against his collarbone. “Well thank God for that, coz I don’t want to either.”
When they kissed again Stitch made sure to reciprocate. It was careful, tentative, and he felt sure he was going to implode in on himself, but Pete was propping him up, so he put all of his weight - all thirteen years of it - onto his lips, and felt the time and the years and the sheer loneliness being dragged away from him piece by piece. He closed his eyes and held onto Pete tightly, as if Pete was pulling him from drowning.
***
That old word they used to use, ‘fucking,’ seemed redundant now. This wasn’t fucking. This was something new, more tender and gentle and loving. Fucking was for their youth; whatever this is seems to have been reserved for a calmer time.
Stitch took care to touch every inch of Pete, in order to re-remember the things he had never forgotten; to learn the things he had not been around to witness. The scar on Pete’s hip from falling off his bike a few years ago was hesitantly kissed, as was the mole on the back of his neck that had been there since birth. He was aware, after all, of the choking possibility that this wouldn’t last long at all: that Pete would come to his senses and realise he shouldn’t be spending his time with a man who flinched at his own shadow.
But when Pete pressed his mouth to Stitch’s ear and murmured, “You think too much,” he boxed those thoughts in the back of his mind. They could be dealt with another day.
There would be time to worry about the future. There would be days for joint bank accounts; days for trying to read the Sunday papers as excited dogs tripped over his feet. There would be days to talk and argue and reach conclusions and make decisions. There would be days and days and days. But right now the future didn’t matter, and neither did the past, and the only thing that did was Pete.
When Pete handed him the bottle of lube Stitch stopped thinking completely, and as he eased himself inside - Pete gasping and whispering and humming in his ear all the while - he forgot all about Poppy and Daisy and the kiosk and everything that had happened and held onto Pete. He ran his hands up the column of Pete’s spine and Pete dug his fingers into Stitch’s back and they breathed together, kissing and touching and remembering and forgetting, and then Pete looked him in the eye and smiled one of his old smiles and Stitch felt himself unravelling, coming apart at the seams, and he came.
That night Pete lay next to him and Stitch lovingly watched the familiar, monotonous rise and fall of his chest until he, too, was soothed into sleep.
Familiarity was something he had become used to. On weekdays he opened up the shop at nine and closed it again at six; picked up a sandwich from the deli and retreated back up into his flat to play music and read until he went to bed. At the weekends he wandered down to his allotment early in the morning and stayed there until midday, tending to the carrots and the lettuces, and afterwards he stood on the bank of the Lea Valley River, watching the rowers trail lazily through the murky water. Then in the evenings he ate a ready meal from Tesco’s and watched subtitled crime thrillers on BBC4. If the mood took him he would nip into the Rose and Crown for a quiet drink, but that didn’t happen often. Nothing much happened often.
Once, a customer - a young blonde woman in a floral dress - told him, kindly, that he looked tired as she handed him a Kate Bush LP. He, smiling, said, “Think I’m coming down with something,” but sometimes it felt like he’d been coming down with something for the last thirteen years.
He didn’t ever think about it, not really. He told himself he was happy enough; that he liked his own company, and besides people didn’t tend to have many friends when they turned forty-five. Only, sometimes he got cramps which weren’t a symptom of any physical pain but rested inside his bones, and every so often he was flooded with a feeling that he couldn’t describe but was so tangible and sharp that he struggled to stay upright.
***He didn’t even recognise Pete at first, not until he was suddenly assaulted by the full force of that grin and the words, “How much for this?” It took him a moment to collect himself, and he blinked like he had been dragged squirming into bright sunlight. Pete was different, of course, and the same. He had grown up reluctantly: his face still shone with efficient youth, his darkening hair cut in a feathered style that was ten years too young for him but still suited him nonetheless.
Pete frowned. “Stitch?”
The universe stopped.
Stitch spluttered. “Pete.” It was all he could think to say, but Pete smiled anyway. It was one of his old smiles, one that implied that everything was a miracle, and for a split second it was almost as if the last thirteen years hadn’t even happened.
“How are you?” Pete beamed. “God, I mean…s’been ages! How are you?”
“I’m…fine,” said Stitch. “It’s good to see you.”
“Is this your shop?” Pete looked around, wide-eyed. “It’s brilliant! You’ve gone up in the world.”
“Yeah…” Stitch laughed tightly. “So, I mean, how are things with you?”
“Not too bad. Not too bad.” Pete was fiddling with the cuff of his jacket.
“Good.” Stitch felt his insides begin to twist together. “So are you…back in the area?”
Pete ruffled his hair in a burningly familiar way. “Got a flat in Dalston, yeah, moved in a few weeks ago. Look at you, though: you posh git - Stoke Newington! Imagine that.”
“Yeah.”
He looked awkwardly down at his hands with the slightly protruding veins, but Pete remained oblivious; smiled sunnily and said, “This is mental. Didn’t think I’d see you, of all people.” He paused. “Fuckin’ awful timing, though, I’m supposed to be at some bloody garden party in half an hour. Thought I’d get a present for the hostess.” He held up the LP again. “How much did you say this was?”
“Erm…” Stitch shook his head. “Nothing. It’s yours. On the house.”
Pete’s smile faltered a little at that. “You sure?”
“Yeah, positive.”
“Well…thanks, Stitch. Hey, listen, we should get together some time and catch up.”
“Yeah, that’d be great.”
But Pete made no move to write down a phone number. Instead he mumbled, “Great to see you, I’ll see you around,” and almost tripped over in his haste to get out of the shop. Stitch watched him through the window as he unchained a red Brompton bike from the railing and rode off down the high street.
That night Stitch closed the shop an hour early. He sat at the kitchen table and drank half a bottle of red wine and wondered at what point Pete reached an age where he went to garden parties instead of to clubs, at what point he started riding a bicycle instead of that infernal scooter, at what point he had stopped being the eternal make-believe kid Stitch had always envisioned him as and had grown up instead. He felt the weight of thirteen years crushing down on his shoulders.
Stitch didn’t sleep at all that night.
***
He remembered everything about Pete. He remembered the smell of Pete’s shoulder blades at five o clock in the morning. He remembered how sometimes, when they kissed, he could still taste a faint tang of toothpaste in between Pete’s teeth. He remembered the sound of Pete humming along to a tune only he could hear as he got dressed, shimmying into his trousers to an invisible beat.
The split had been sudden. One day Pete had seemed more distant than usual, the next he was just gone, and it didn’t matter how many times Stitch texted or tried to phone or email him, he didn’t respond. Nobody knew where he was. Eventually, Stitch had given up trying.
And so it was a surprise to him when his mobile suddenly went off in his pocket, vibrating furiously as if startled at being woken after sleeping for so long. Stitch fumbled with it for a moment, and stuttered his greeting when he finally turned took the call.
“Alright, Stitch!”
His throat constricted.
“Stitch? You there. S’me, Pete. Pete Sweet?”
As if he could have forgotten. “Yes! Hi! Pete! Yes…” He tried to force a grin into his voice.
“I realised I forgot to get your number last week so I got Dave to give it to me. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, of course not. So, um…what can I do for you?”
Pete wanted someone to walk his dogs with him in Clissold Park. Stitch knew he should have refused. There was too much between them that couldn’t be confronted: there was thirteen years of silence, and the clamouring echo of heartbreak, and yet he still found himself saying, “Yes,” when his feeble attempts at protestation were rebuked. Afterwards he sat at his kitchen table and quickly smoked a cigarette and wondered why Pete bestowed the gift of invitation on him rather than one of his other friends. He contemplated not going. But after a while he felt a pull and, like a child of Hamelin, he grabbed his jacket and scurried outside.
London was bathed in a cool light; the skies were colourless. He met Pete on the bridge, where his old friend was leaning against the side and clinging onto the leads of two ancient dogs. Now, without the shock of seeing him, Stitch was able to look at Pete more closely. He was still as tiny as he used to be, wearing a short-sleeved lilac shirt and slightly ill-fitting jeans - an outfit that flooded him. The differences were subtle. A few lines patterned his skin, he had fleshed out more around the face, and his hair was darker than it used to be. But when he looked up and smiled the years dripped clumsily away.
“Alright?”
“Hi.” Stitch stuck his hands in his trouser pockets, feeling more like a teenager than a forty-five-year-old man.
“You remember the girls, don’t you?” Pete knelt down and kneaded at a dog’s neck. Stitch hummed an affirmative, although he couldn’t remember their names to save his life.
Pete let the dogs off their leads and the two men sat on a bench, watching the animals scampering around, and Pete talked. He talked about everything, and at the same time he talked about nothing at all. He talked about his job as an Entertainments Manager for a record company, and his mature MA in Events Management from Greenwich University. He talked about his friends Derek and Lizzie who were married and had a small child who he sometimes babysat. He talked about the view from his flat and how he could see the whole city from his bedroom window. He talked and talked and with every word Stitch felt his carefully-preserved image of Pete falling soggily to pieces. He remembered the kid who didn’t aspire to anything, who was happy to work in a kiosk forever as long as he enjoyed it; Pete who could barely take responsibility for himself, let along for a small child. He might as well have been talking to a stranger. Stitch suddenly felt as if he had been encased in shrink-wrap.
When they left Pete found an old receipt in his pocket, scrawled his phone number on it, and shoved it into Stitch’s reluctant hand. “Call me,” he said, with a hopeful grin. Stitch smiled back and nodded.
When he got home, he threw the phone number in the bin. Then he walked down to the Lea Valley River and stood on the concrete bank, staring into the bottomless water as the sky darkened and the cold evening bit at his hands.
That night he didn’t even bother going to bed; just smoked cigarette after cigarette and listened to Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Are You Experienced’ on repeat and wondered at what point Pete grew up and left him behind.
***
For the next week Pete bombarded him with calls and texts that he didn’t respond to. He deleted the texts without reading them; let the calls go through to voicemail while his phone buzzed angrily. It was childish and he knew it, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. When Pete finally gave up on his Kamikaze mission, Stitch expected to feel a weight off his shoulders. Instead, he just felt numb.
And then, on a lethargic Wednesday evening, almost three weeks since he had last seen him, Pete was standing at the door to his flat, staring at him.
“Pete…” Stitch muttered, stunned.
Pete’s eyes were urgent and furious, blazingly so, and his skinny chest pulsed with the movement of his heavy breathing. Stitch was intensely reminded of the day Pete had beaten him up in the pub. He’d looked like this then.
“You utter bastard!” Pete growled, shoving past Stitch into the flat and then turning impetuously on his heel, his arms folded. Stitch almost wanted to laugh.
“I’m sorry?” he asked, closing the door behind him.
“I lost count of how many times I called you!” Pete said. His accent had sharpened to a point. “Why didn’t you reply to anything?”
“I’ve…been busy…” Stitch mumbled.
“Bullshit you’ve been busy! I spoke to Dave; he said no one’s heard anything from you in years! I ain’t thick! Why’ve you been avoiding me?”
“I haven’t.”
“D’you actually think I’m stupid?”
“No, Pete,” he sighed jarringly. “I’ve just had stuff to do.”
“What stuff?” Pete exploded. “What stuff do you do?”
“Well…I’ve got the shop and…” He looked down at his shoes.
“Wow. Sounds like you’re swamped.” Pete shook his head. “Fuck you, Stitch.”
“Well, what about you?” The words were out of his mouth before he even knew he was thinking them. “I suppose you’d know all about missed phone calls, wouldn’t you?”
There was a long, suffocating pause. Stitch dug his fingernails into the palm of his hand and stared at the floor so intensely he was surprised it didn’t buckle underneath him. He wanted to put a hand out to steady himself but there was nothing that would support his weight.
“I’m sorry.” He managed to force the words out through his resisting mouth. “I shouldn’t have…I’ll just…”
“No. I’m sorry.”
Stitch looked up. “What?”
Pete was leaning against the wall, his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I shouldn’t have just rocked up like this; it was really unfair on you and…it’s just when I saw you in the shop I suddenly realised how long it had been, y’know? And I started thinking about that time with Poppy and Daisy and the kiosk and…I just really, really missed you.”
It was strange, hearing Pete being so responsible. Stitch remembered the young man who was so entirely wrapped up in his own little world of his flat and his hair and his job and his dance that he didn’t even seem to realise that his girlfriend was constructed of dust and air molecules.
“I want my best mate back, Stitch. That’s all.”
It was surprisingly easy how well Stitch remembered all the old routines. When Pete held out a hand to brush against his arm it was so natural to say, “Don’t touch me. Don’t ever touch me,” as if the skin he had put on wasn’t tattered and worn with age. Pete’s eyes lit up again and he glowed and Stitch forgave him right away, for everything, because how could he not? He gave Pete a beer and they sat at the kitchen table and talked about the old times with rehearsed ease, and when Pete offered to pop round in the morning for a cup of tea Stitch found himself saying, “Yes,” without even thinking about it.
That night he lay in bed and traced over the damp patches and cracks on his ceiling until the sun dragged itself, heaving, over the London sky.
***
Pete had said, “That time with Poppy and Daisy and the kiosk,” without any hint that he thought about the outcome of that whole event. It was as if he didn’t even remember that, once upon a time, he had been the first to call them ‘lovers.’
There had been other men after Pete, of course, but Stitch only half-remembered them, and when he did so it was always in stock epithets. There had been Jackson the Charming; Ellis the Thatcherite; Toby the Downright-Pain-In-The-Arse. None of them had lasted any longer than a few months, scared away by the crippling insecurities that had slowly eroded Stitch from being a handsome and pleasant young man and turned him instead into a quivering somnambulist. He had tried very hard to turn these men into something more than they were, and had spent a lot of time trying to pretend that Pete was on their level.
He saw Pete regularly, and on the days that he didn’t he was showered with friendly texts: silly things like there’s this pigeon on my windowsill keeps looking at me all shifty. On Sundays Pete accompanied him to the allotment and sat by the fence swatting greenflies as Stitch dug up the celeriac, and then they sat together in the evening on the sofa drinking sherry and watching panel shows on iPlayer, Pete’s toes digging into his hip. They went back to The Elephant, once, but it was much cleaner than either of them remembered and the 20-year-old bartender tried to charge them £4.50 for a Scotch egg, so they quickly left.
One night, when he felt too drunk to cycle home, Pete slept on Stitch’s sofa. After that, Pete-related objects began turning up in Stitch’s flat - a pair of socks in his bathroom, a bike lock in the hallway, a battered copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas underneath a cushion. Every time he found one of these misplaced treasures he felt his stomach cramp.
Then he was invited to Pete’s flat for dinner, on a cool evening. When he arrived there were two people already sitting on the sofa holding glasses of Pinot Grigio: a thin woman with a tangled mass of crimson hair, and a well-shaved man.
“Alright?” Pete was wearing a frayed striped jumper that looked disconcertingly familiar, and an apron. “This is my mate Stitch, and this is Derek and Lizzie.”
Lizzie leant forward on a sharp elbow. “Stitch is an interesting name.”
“Um…” Stitch scratched his elbow. “It’s a nickname.”
“Oh. So your real name…?”
“Don’t ask that,” said Pete, pressing a glass of wine into Stitch’s hand. “You’ll break the spell.”
They all laughed.
“What do you do, Stitch?” Derek smiled.
“I, um, own a record shop.”
“Gosh!” Lizzie raised her eyebrows. “Well, I’m a psychoanalyst and Rick’s a PR Consultant. Where do you get us from, Pete?”
“God only knows!”
Stitch cast an eye around Pete’s flat. The white, modern room sharply contrasted with the battered furniture that he vaguely recognised. The plastic swinging chair was stowed away in a corner, hanging over the two dogs, which were sleeping draped over each other. Stitch sipped his wine, feeling suddenly very large and clumsy.
Pete had made spinach quiche, and they ate off plates on their laps. Stitch sat and listened to Lizzie talking about her son’s nursery progress and Derek complaining about his dickhead of a manager and watched Pete listening with interest and it all seemed so terribly ordinary. When Pete vanished into the kitchen to fill up the dishwasher he slowly crept after him, and touched his shoulder.
“I think I’m going to…take off,” he mumbled. “Not feeling too great.”
Pete gave him a painfully concerned look. “Oh no! You alright?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, don’t worry. I’ll see you soon, ok?”
“Yeah, I’ll pop round tomorrow.”
“Ok.”
Stitch walked home as the sky fell around him, feeling breathless, and already knowing that he wouldn’t be able to sleep that night.
***
He had Pete back, but at the same time had never felt further from him, and so when Pete kissed him up against his kitchen counter he couldn’t work out whether to pull him close or push him away. Instead, he held onto the counter edge until his knuckles went white.
It had been six months since that first, polite encounter in the shop below, but standing there with Pete’s cool hand pressed against his cheek and his chapped lips motionless on Stitch’s own, he felt as slack and idiotic as he had done back then. Pete’s eyes were closed and he was close enough for Stitch to count his eyelashes; to follow the shape of the kink in his nose. Outside, a siren wailed.
When Pete pulled away Stitch wondered if his outline would remain on his skin, like a burn.
“You ok?” Pete murmured.
Stitch blinked slowly.
“Why?” he said.
Pete took a step backwards, the heavy heels of his Doc Martens thudding softly on the floor. “Stitch?”
“Why did you do that?”
Pete smiled awkwardly, but it quickly faded when he couldn’t catch Stitch’s eye. “Because I wanted to.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the problem, isn’t it?” Stitch could barely hear his own mumbled words over the pounding in his ears. “Because…because you wanted to. Never mind whether I wanted to or not, no, that’s Stitch for you, good old dependable Stitch, never kicks up a fuss about anything, isn’t that right?”
“I don’t-”
“You were the one who left, Pete. Not me. You. And then, what? You just come back after thirteen fucking years and pretend that nothing’s happened? That’s not how this works.” He tried to laugh but his tongue was too thick in his mouth. “And I don’t say anything, course not. That’s just what I do. So yes, you can come back and act like we’re still the best of friends and I’ll go along with that, sure. I can forget everything else; that I was…so completely in love with you, yeah, I can do that too. But you can’t make me love you again, Pete, not after last time. I can’t let you…I can’t do that to myself again.”
He couldn’t move his gaze from the floor.
“I was fine until you came back,” he said. “I wasn’t happy, but I was fine. And now you’ve…” He swallowed down the clot in his oesophagus. “I loved you, Pete, and you can’t even acknowledge…” He took a deep breath. “So…forgive me if I’m a little ‘off’ about this whole situation because frankly, I don’t know what you want from me, but whatever it is I think you should go and find someone else because it’s too late. I’m done.”
The silence screamed at him. He ran a hand over his face and let it stay there.
“I’m sorry,” Pete said.
Stitch shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, Pete.”
“Yeah, it does matter. I’m sorry.” Pete’s voice was blurred. “I was scared, back then. There was that whole thing with Poppy and Daisy and it was all so weird and then suddenly there you were and…I dunno, and it suddenly felt real and it scared me. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I didn’t know what was gonna happen and I didn’t know what I wanted or what you wanted and I just panicked. That’s why I run off. I missed you like fuck, right away, but I thought if I tried to come back you wouldn’t want me to.”
His voice broke on the last word. Stitch couldn’t bring himself to even lift his head. Then he felt a pair of arms loop slowly around his waist, and he unconsciously shifted his weight to pull Pete closer towards him; Pete’s head against his shoulder. Pete felt tiny in his arms.
“What’re we like, eh?” Pete sniffled, with a small laugh. “We’re too old for this shit, Stitch.” He paused. “Are you really done, Stitch? Coz I’ll go if you want me to. Do you want me to go?”
“No.”
Pete sighed against his collarbone. “Well thank God for that, coz I don’t want to either.”
When they kissed again Stitch made sure to reciprocate. It was careful, tentative, and he felt sure he was going to implode in on himself, but Pete was propping him up, so he put all of his weight - all thirteen years of it - onto his lips, and felt the time and the years and the sheer loneliness being dragged away from him piece by piece. He closed his eyes and held onto Pete tightly, as if Pete was pulling him from drowning.
***
That old word they used to use, ‘fucking,’ seemed redundant now. This wasn’t fucking. This was something new, more tender and gentle and loving. Fucking was for their youth; whatever this is seems to have been reserved for a calmer time.
Stitch took care to touch every inch of Pete, in order to re-remember the things he had never forgotten; to learn the things he had not been around to witness. The scar on Pete’s hip from falling off his bike a few years ago was hesitantly kissed, as was the mole on the back of his neck that had been there since birth. He was aware, after all, of the choking possibility that this wouldn’t last long at all: that Pete would come to his senses and realise he shouldn’t be spending his time with a man who flinched at his own shadow.
But when Pete pressed his mouth to Stitch’s ear and murmured, “You think too much,” he boxed those thoughts in the back of his mind. They could be dealt with another day.
There would be time to worry about the future. There would be days for joint bank accounts; days for trying to read the Sunday papers as excited dogs tripped over his feet. There would be days to talk and argue and reach conclusions and make decisions. There would be days and days and days. But right now the future didn’t matter, and neither did the past, and the only thing that did was Pete.
When Pete handed him the bottle of lube Stitch stopped thinking completely, and as he eased himself inside - Pete gasping and whispering and humming in his ear all the while - he forgot all about Poppy and Daisy and the kiosk and everything that had happened and held onto Pete. He ran his hands up the column of Pete’s spine and Pete dug his fingers into Stitch’s back and they breathed together, kissing and touching and remembering and forgetting, and then Pete looked him in the eye and smiled one of his old smiles and Stitch felt himself unravelling, coming apart at the seams, and he came.
That night Pete lay next to him and Stitch lovingly watched the familiar, monotonous rise and fall of his chest until he, too, was soothed into sleep.