Recount

“You're gay? I don't believe you. You don't have the look.”

“Yeah,” Christopher said.

“I'm also gay,” Justin said.

“Wow.”

“This is terrifying.”

“I've never told anyone.”

“Neither.”

So aged seventeen they'd found each other—behind hay bales at the back of the Four Villages cider festival, both drunk, both earnest. June—frilled hollyhocks pink and alive, and everywhere stinging nettles, damp dock leaves, dry grass. Christopher found his hand was in Justin's—how?—but they had to break off when someone came by to piss. They'd sat down together on the tight, twined, spiking, cuboid bales. The piss was clattering-loud, and steamed. Mutually drawn, their knees sought out, touching, warm, hair to skin. The pissing man nodded vaguely at them. He left. One hand found the other again. Then, twee, supersaturated, silver-screeny, a second hand took a second hand.

Christopher, his bravest, said, “Isn't it natural we should kiss now?”

Justin laughed. But, “I'd like to,” he said.

And they did.

And they took the further risk when Justin's parents were queuing with their empty tankards for more cider at the barrel of going back to their home the little railway cottage in Uppleswell and into Justin's bedroom—they still held hands—a small childhood bedroom in the eaves with a sloping ceiling, furred green foxed mould in the corners of the walls, and a bed of overstarched babyblue sheets, where they fell together hot and clumsy and aching and had their first experience of love.

That'd worked for a while; and they'd been a couple for a while. In Devon villages in the noughties you didn't broadcast gay matters, so it all stayed closeted and furtive and radical. Their feet met under pub tables and they met for rambling walks; they cloudspotted; they learned illegal downloads to make gifts of playlists; they attempted a dinner date, in a proper restaurant; they played football, quietly unopposing on opposing sides; they gamed, swam, were loving, camped, made mistakes, argued, loved. But inside six months Justin was going off to uni in Sheffield and Christopher in London. Christopher announced it first.

“And well I'm not gonna be anywhere near London,” Justin said. “And what even is Sheffield like, other than hills? But I don't care about fucking hills, I care about fucking you.”

“Is that, fucking me, or as in, you fucking care about me?”

“Both.”

They laughed. Yet it was the species of laugh which tries to cover sorrow. Sorrow didn't feel too grand a word—it didn't feel enough for what they felt. And they didn't know how grand the feelings would be that they were going to feel, separated. Justin had Christopher's hand between his knees and was compressing it, letting it go, compressing it, only for what was meaningful in the rhythm.

“We're fucking dumb not to have coordinated our unis,” Christopher said.

“I know. We could easily both be in Sheffield.”

“London.”

“You can do French anywhere.”

“You can do medicine in London.”

They tried to keep it up and rang each other, but were soon busy, soon had new friends, and soon, though there were ambitions to meet and rekindle in the first holiday between terms, Justin had started sleeping with someone else and, soon, Christopher, not long after him, perhaps sensing it, started sleeping with someone else too. Sad fact was, their relationship hadn't been at fault: it was only circumstance.

Christopher had flings, two years' worth, but he didn't find inner lacks sated till his final term at university when, at a Flaubert reading group, he met Ramon. Shaven head, glasses, a tie. Ramon had spoken out boldly to the group on his idea of the crazed contradiction innate in the Flaubertian project, that the nearer you got in your striving for perfection you undid yourself, losing in your schema the natural flaws which make all the rest sparkle, the way the dirt in champagne flutes allows for the bubbles. You lost contrast, and everything became the same flawless pitch. This, he held, nevertheless made you love Flaubert. He was a rotten, maddening, cruel, loveable man. Christopher had loved this and thrilled to it, even the slight pretentiousness, and stopped Ramon afterwards as he rushed away with his Walkman in, at which Ramon unplugged one ear, and they spoke and spoke until the album must've certainly finished. And then came pints, in a quiet pub full of hops and guitars, and eventually:

“Would you wanna get a drink with me?”

“I am getting a drink with you,” Ramon said. “We are having a drink.”

“In a different way. I mean—are you? In a date sort of a way.”

Ramon didn't reply, and had little affect, and it was dreadful. He blinked a few times. Then he burst, “I would love that Christopher.” And, staccato: “I would love that.”

Vest tops were universal that year, white, ribbed, and tight; and Christopher also chose leather trousers—for the first time, uncomfortable in them, but pushing himself. He wanted to be the image of what he believed Ramon would like. The trousers were hard to get on. Hopefully less so in the getting off.

A bar near Soho. Ramon incredible. Christopher acted up to his clothes, striding in, kissing Ramon on the cheek as he stood (with passion flaring for such a minor gesture).

“Hey,” he said. “You look great Ramon.” He did. Double denim, his glasses. Stubble. Christopher sat masculinely in the second chair at their table-for-two, his back arched, his arms folded on the table.

“Thanks. So do you.”

Absurdly, there was nothing to say. It was as though they were too involved in faces and bodies for talking. But social pressure always cracks a silence. It was Ramon:

“You know, this is my only ever date.”

“Your first date with a guy?”

“No, my only ever. With anyone, boy or girl.”

Christopher loved this. “Man or woman?” he said.

“Well. Which are you?”

“I'm a man,” Christopher laughed.

“I mean, man or boy?”

“That's a leading question.”

“Oh no. You're just interpreting it as one. It's quite a grey question, quite innocent.”

“You'll find out later, then. There's my answer.”

“Ask me something.”

“How come you speak such amazing English?”

“They do have English teachers in Spain.”

“Stop it you. You know what I mean.” Had he really just said, stop it you?

“I had a very good one.”

“You almost sound English. I can only tell on some of the words. And the lisp. But you've kept that on purpose. Would that be an affectation?”

“I think it's called a speech impediment.”

“Oh, seriously?”

“Yeah.” Ramon was laughing with a huge mouth.

“I'm sorry. Shit.”

“Don't worry.”

“What?”

“I said don't worry. My accent unclear?”

“No, no. Sorry. Is this going badly?”

“Try not to analyse the thing while it's happening, Christopher.”

They went back to Christopher's room in uni halls near King's Cross and fucked fumblingly in his single bed. Ramon, a bottom, had the pushy insatiability that he loved. He also had hair on each shoulder and dark, Southern-European-style moles. He smelled of astringent blackberry. He left his glasses on when he was being fucked. He had large, fat thighs, out of all proportion. He said, “Christopher,” and “Chris,” and “papi,” and “daddy.” He came without needing to be touched and afterwards breathed facedown into the bed, exhausted, and Christopher lay on top of him, half-tender.

Their evolving relationship consisted in the main of irascible talk about French books and poems, and several trips a week to the cinema. Of the latter Christopher mostly wished they could see more Buster Keaton, Hitchcock, Billy Wilder type things, but Ramon insisted on Truffaut or Fellini or Tarkovsky. Likewise when they were having dinner Ramon often won out on the soundtrack: Hindemith or Webern; Christopher felt some guilt at his tastelessness contrasting his lover's fine taste, but really did want to listen to Vaughan Williams and Elgar, and would have to play his own CDs when alone.

Both popular, their respective rooms became hubs for partying, discourse, psychedelics, and others' breakups. Third Year passed about twice the speed as the first two. Predictably they both did well in final exams. Christopher achieved a slightly higher first. It was never mentioned. He'd learnt pages of Baudelaire verbatim yet seemed to never quite know what Deconstruction meant.

They graduated. They did Master's degrees, and started PhDs. And by their third year of living in their own place in London together they were fucking only once a fortnight. But it was the winter they'd brought in civil partnerships, everywhere in the newspapers and on TV, and it came over him, like the dancing frenzy of a medieval burgh, between his morning lecture and the late afternoon's: Christopher found himself walking down Hatton Garden and finding himself having learned Ramon's ring size and found himself going into a jeweller's to buy a silver band to propose with and two gold bands for their wedding. The wedding rings may have been presumptuous. But he was frenzied.

It was modest—Ramon wasn't out to his family in Madrid and Christopher barely to his in Devon. A few friends in a nondescript register office, lounge suits, bouquets. To avoid a catastrophic breakdown in family relations Christopher informed his mum by text that they'd “been civilly partnered for tax and migration purposes”, the exact logic behind which you'd never pry into.

The next morning in their usual bedroom Ramon said, “I love being married. I love you. I love this country.”

“It was legal first in Spain, Ramon.”

“I don't care. I love the UK.”

Christopher loved that quaint European way of referring to the country as “the UK” when resident in it. And he deeply loved his husband.

It was August when they took their sort-of honeymoon, staying in a high suite on the Campo in Siena for three weeks, two of which were under choppy clouds and skies of an indigo mood, with scaffolding meanwhile right across the Palazzo Pubblico. The red wines were very good; the local offal was not. One morning they were speaking from different sofas,

“Do you always want to stay in London? Forever?” Ramon said.

“I don't know. Probably, I love it after all. It's infinite.”

“Infinite. I'm not sure.”

“No?”

“I feel we know it well now.”

“We? Or you? Do you mean to say both of us?”

“Yes?”

“Hm?”

Ramon stood as the kettle boiled and brought him over a hotel-room coffee. “Yes, we've both been there six years now.”

“Almost six years.”

“Yeah, almost, fine. Well being here has made me realise how much there is to see, and do, and be, and try.”

“Rainy small-town Italy?”

“It's been great, hasn't it?”

Christopher looked forward at nothing, his coffee in his two hands. “Anywhere's great with you.”

“Here particularly, though, I mean.”

“I suppose.”

Ramon was pacing to the windows, peering out, and coming back. “I feel we could go, and both teach at one of these universities, live in an Italian town, learn the language, drink wine, write, maybe make films. There's so much freedom that London doesn't have.”

“I guess.”

A year later Christopher got a call just after dawn that his mother'd been rushed to hospital. Trees' leaves were flaking away outside. It was always “rushed”—unless you had an appointment there was no reason to go to hospital slowly. That day's dawn was unpleasantly hazy, like a summer noon, but it wasn't summer or noon. The leaves took a rocking motion as they drifted down, crisp, amber.

He didn't wake Ramon. He'd taken the call in a different room, leaving him to roll over in the dark mess of bed, while he found jeans and a shirt on the clothes rack, and just donned them and left. Good job the car'd been serviced, for it was hours back to Devon, even that early. Leaving London at six on a Sunday, with his heart disturbed, was nevertheless also a gliding calm of unpeopled ease. Too much ease. His little finger tapped feverishly at the steering wheel the whole drive there. The North Circular, then the M4, then the M5, past Exeter, plus roadworks—five hours. The trees' shadows were long and liberal, but had curled up when he reached home.

Actually he got another call from his father when he was forty minutes away. He said that it was a false alarm, that sorry to worry you and bring you all these miles, and wake you so early, but mum was fine, and in fact we were back home already, having tea in the living room. The blackthorn and ash hedgerows continued to whip past, up like walls on the car's either side, and not yet autumnal. Christopher increased his speed. He was bombing down a Devon 'cut', verdant narrow road carved through turf, where there were red berries in the hedges, like artificial Christmas wreaths. The car slapped leaves leaning too close, thwacking their branches.

He chose not to go directly home. On reaching their village, Abbotcombe, he pulled into the pub car park. A drink. But he'd forgotten, hadn't he?—Dad'd said, they had a Michelin star now, and notions, and those en route to Cornish boltholes stopped by for the set lunch. Entering on reflex, Christopher found the same shell with new innards: wallpaperless, chrome-filled, see-through chairs, black, white, grey, mirrors, (Japanese?), chrome, chic. There wasn't a bar as such anymore, but there were bar stools in black leather and a place to buy cocktails. He left.

The next closest, and likeliest, boozer was the Saracen's Head in Uppleswell, just a couple of miles. With no thoughts of his mother he drove there. Full, but unchanged. The old taxidermied fox riding the taxidermied badger, in tailcoat and tartan trews. Decaying naval flags. A rifle on the bar, crossed with a Napoleonic sabre. Limewashed walls, and timbered. The ceiling with electrified lanterns. Earthenware jugs and albarelli and cup-and-covers and chargers and dishes and mugs. Two rusted sallets on the oak bar. Full, because a party was ongoing in the main room with its cavernous fireplace, a family of twentyish; balloons.

Christopher bought a bitter and rested on his elbow at the bar. He tried to give the family privacy for its great public party, not looking their way. He thought of his mother. The dream of her passing into the hospital and right out again, all while he was driving. A man next to him came to the bar and asked for another two bottles of white wine, extremely handsome, and Christopher said, “My god—Justin.”

He'd aged, but only well. “Christopher? Fuck me, what are you doing here?” Justin was laughing. He seemed smaller for the passed years, and in fine shape, a touch bearded now. “Damn, this is weird. How the hell are you?”

“I'm good. Married. How are you? I'm back to see my folks. Thought Mum was ill, but she isn't.”

“Me too. Married too. Civilly partnered. Mike, he's called.”

“Ramon.”

“Mexican?”

“Spanish.”

“Exotic.”

“You can't say that.”

“Lighten up—buy you a drink if you want?”

“Yes. He is exotic though. Not racially. His tastes. He improves me.”

“Yeah, same. Mike's not here, oh, I should've said, my Dad's seventieth, yeah he can't be here because he's on a work trip. Real shame.”

“Seventy! Fuck off.”

“I know. Time comes for us all. Horrible.”

“He looks good though.”

“Come and say hi.”

“I don't want to interrupt.”

“Yeah, another glass please. White wine okay?”

“Lovely, yeah. No, you go ahead. I'll wait.”

“No, no. Let me just run the bottles over. Here.”

“Thanks Justin.”

He turned, deposited the bottles at far ends of the long table, amidst family, and came back immediately.

“I'm not keeping you from them?”

“No, we've been at it all morning. We've eaten. They'll go back for a kip soon so don't worry about it.”

“It's so good and also so odd to see you again.”

“I know. Both married. God. We're so young. I had great plans to be a cool homosexual. Who are we?”

“I felt I had to, with the law passing.”

“Same. Pressured by Tony Blair into dull gay monogamy.”

“Yeah.”

“So, your mum?” Justin was tipsy. He swayed a little, jocund.

“She's fine. Well, I don't know really. They rang me early today, as if it were life or death, and when I'm almost here I get another call, have to pull over and everything, and turns out she's fine? That they're now just having tea and nothing's wrong.”

“What did they say? How's she look?”

“Well I haven't seen her.”

Justin laughed loud. “You haven't been back yet?”

“No, I haven't seen them. I guess it sort of pissed me off to make me come all this way with the whole thing that's she's dying, and then she's fine?”

“So she could be not all that good.”

“You think?”

“No, I doubt that. But. I dunno. I dunno what I'm trying to say. It's really good to see you again.”

“And you.”

“You've drunk those quickly. The beer too.”

“My round?”

“By all means.”

“Tell me about Mike then.”

They had pints now, not wine, two lagers as would've appalled their dads. Christopher learned that Mike was also in med tech, like Justin, that they'd met at work. They lived in Cambridge. Heart stents. Mike liked the gym, and fishing, and boxing, and all the things gays weren't supposed to, and so, perversely, did. He also had a beard. (Did Justin like beards now, then?) His ears were pierced. He apparently also had huge arms, and loved Sondheim musicals. Christopher told him about Ramon, their home, their marriage, Flaubert. Justin bought the next round. Eventually his dad and the seventieth party said their goodbyes, leaving him with kisses, and Christopher, whom they didn't recognise, and to whom they weren't reintroduced.

Justin bought the next round and the next. It reached sunset. Christopher noticed that he was keen for the subject of their conversation to be themselves, not their husbands. Ramon, mentioned, would be moved on from; so too Mike. He had a manner of circling back to their childhood. A great, transparent, cloudless pink glow came to the windows, of fresh cold sunset.

“Nightcap?” said Justin.

“Sure. I could have another.”

“We could go back to my parents'. There's a drink's cabinet. Well there's like a whole floor-to-ceiling wine rack, and spirits in the cupboards.”

“Sure.”

Walking over, Justin draped his arm round Christopher's shoulders. His touch had the same weight as it had as teenagers. Then Christopher thought of his mother again—they'd be worrying. And worried that he wasn't worrying enough, and hadn't called again or come to see them. Yet they, also, hadn't called him again. The sun dropped out of view. He felt that it wasn't the foremost issue of his life. He felt that what he was doing was right.

“Gin and tonic?” Justin said, telling rather than asking. Since Christopher's last visit the cottage had been extended and reworked and adapted. The kitchen was huge, white, high, with an island, skylights, two brushed steel fridges, exposed beams. After efficient movements through cupboards, and going into one of the fridges, Justin handed him his drink.

They talked about being young again. They talked about school, and teachers, uni, and what they were up to in London and Cambridge. The bottle of gin and the bottle of tonic came out for a second round, and stayed on the countertop. Christopher explained how he was teaching French but not a professor, not even yet a PhD, not sure what was next.

The ice melted, and Justin went to the fridge to replace it from the maker. Then he said without any run-up, “Yeah, Mike's great and all, but we're never able to speak properly, I mean, without trying to be a knob, in a deep way. He's all surface. He's so hot, right. But conversationally, there's nothing there. That sounds harsh. You won't have it with Ramon, I bet. You're both French literature people, into film. Not Mike. Musicals, and Britney, and like nothing else. Fishing. I dunno. I miss that. I miss being pretentious. Dyou see what I mean by that? When you chat and chat in bed all night long. That's gorgeous—I miss that. I've only had that with you. Mike's Mike. I love him. I'm not into musicals, though.”

“I get it, I get it.”

“You're not expanding.”

“Well, I'm not sure what to say.”

Justin poured him another drink, and handed it to him, and their fingers touched, and evidently he paused in the letting-go, so that they might touch longer, and in it Christopher found something appreciable.

“Do you love your husband, Chris?”

“Yes. Very much.”

Justin looked dark. He placed his glass on the counter and turned his eyes to the floor. Like a little boy, in trouble or embarrassed, one of his hands held the other hand's main finger. He said, “Well I shouldn't have said that then, should I? See, I felt you were going to say something similar and so we could together not have to be alone. Now I look stupid and—cruel.”

“You're not cruel. Definitely not that.”

In a total movement, emptying out all the rest of the world's significance, Justin came forward and kissed him. He thought of Ramon, as he kissed Justin back. The countertop's granite cut into his back, and where his shirt rode up it was cool. They kissed. The large room's spotlights were very bright. He and Justin clambered, and knocked the bottle of tonic water over, laughingly righting it. Because it was immoral, it felt better.

Breaking away and whispering—where he hadn't been whispering before—Christopher said, “Your family?”

“They'll be napping, or even just straight to bed. That's being seventy for you. Don't worry.”

And they ended up in Justin's childhood's single bed, still with the starched blue sheets.

Christopher left, half-drunk, at sunrise. He stank of Justin. His mouth was furry, his eyes bleared, his head raw, his breath like meat. Going down, slow on the aching floorboards, he found the backdoor and got out. Twittering birds and a beautiful dawn—black trees, shadowed in gold light slanting. Yards away, the pub was quiet, and the car park almost empty.

He drove to his parents', taking the roads at a gentle morning pace, yet was still soon there. Early-risers, they were awake when he knocked. He looked like shit; they told him so; and before he properly greeted them or explained anything, he went up to shower, as if he were a child again, exempt from the laws of adult politesse, and in from football training, muddy and cold. Indeed he didn't even ask after his mother. He didn't know if this was from not wanting to, or not remembering to, because he was thinking only of Justin. But he had to come down, showered and towelled and toothpastey, redressed in his last night's clothes, and he realised it was because he couldn't understand how through her fundamental drama she hadn't changed: she looked the same. Hadn't he been made to think she was almost dead?—and they confirmed it, she had almost died, they were more than worried, but the doctors had told them “false alarm”. How could false alarm be, at that level? Weren't you ill or not ill? But she seemed fine. They chose not to ask where he'd been and why he'd needed to shower—it was for them the habitual waywardness a gay son did not need to explain, being already inconceivably different. Christopher stayed for tea, and for toast, and by eight was driving on home to London.

Taking the motorway at almost twice the limit, a speed slipped into unheeded, he raged against the idea that some medical accident could have made him unfaithful to Ramon, and, briefly, he hated his mother, selfish and borderline hypochondriac as she was. He overtook lorries the way you'd charge past a dawdling pedestrian in a train station. Ramon whom he hadn't noticed he hadn't called. Christopher had been missing all Sunday, tracelessly. Which made his actions worse.

Back in the flat. “Oh fuck, Christopher, where have you been?” He was assaulted with kisses.

“You're home. It's Monday. Not at work?”

“Of course I'm home, where the hell have you been? How could I go in? What did I do? You're back now, you're back.”

They were embracing in the hall. Christopher said, “It was my mum, she was ill, we thought she was. I went back. I didn't want to worry you.”

“Oh my god, what's wrong?”

“I should've said.”

“Is she okay?”

Christopher started to cry. He said, “She's okay. She's fine. Ramon, I had sex with someone else.”

(Ramon said he needed to sleep on it. They spent the day at their own tasks. That evening they went to bed in the same bed, but didn't touch.)

He woke second and Ramon had already left the bedroom. It was dark, no rim of sun round the curtains. Putting clothes on quickly he followed, finding Ramon in the kitchen drinking coffee. The sole light on was the weak light of the stove's extractor fan unit. Ramon was undressed, just in boxers, and mostly in shadow.

“Oh, Ramon, look.”

“No.”

“It was Justin—”

“Justin, your first?”

“Well, my boyfriend when I was a teenager, yeah.”

“He what?”

“I bumped into him at the pub—”

“Actually. Actually, no. I'd like you to go. I'd like you to go out of my life please. Like, right now. We can sort everything else later.”

“Don't be ridiculous.”

“No, I'm sure.”

“Sure of what?”

“What I just said. I'd like you to go please.”

“Go? And do what? Go where?”

“Just go, for today, for this week, whatever. We will talk another time. I'm not, today. Just go.”

“I'm not going.

“Yes, go and take a walk please. Really.”

Christopher hugged him desperately but he was held away. He tried to kiss Ramon but Ramon silently turned—he moved himself unfussily from all affection.

So Christopher did walk. He walked for a long time, until he was high over London in the blue dark before sunrise. Alongside him came the rage he'd had the day before, driving east. Why should he have left? He had fucked up, but wasn't forgiveness admirable? Didn't relationship and marriage warrant more than being told to leave? The rage moved into memory of the joy of Justin. That that was something like what he deserved.

And as light emerged from no one source, no sun perceptible in a simple sky of cloud, he was thinking of Justin. Christopher walked among the dying leaves of half-wild trees. In the young light they were grey and insubstantial. But the leaves lightened, and the trees lightened, and he heard their susurrant breezing, and light soon made clear the interstices of crossed networks of trees, like the lit spaces between fingers held to light. He walked and waited, until the morning was grown on. Once day generalised, from an anticipation to a fact, he took out his mobile and called Justin, believing (perhaps hoping) he would now be awake.

“I told Ramon.”

“Christopher? Oh, hey. I'm just getting ready for work right now.”

“I said I cheated and it felt right—do you understand that?”

“Christopher.”

“I thought about it the whole way home and all yesterday and all today. I don't care. Doesn't life offer you certain things? You're given the chance to jump—I say we'd ought to jump, then. There's no point praising bravery without being brave.”

“Christopher.”

“It isn't about Ramon—I love him and I'll go on loving him, but it's the contrast—it's what this has brought back—it's that I still love you, Justin, years later, fucking stupid as that makes me, but it's true. I want to try again. When can I see you? I can drive down today.”

“But, Christopher. I’m married.”

“I told my husband—ours is over, our marriage—I’m doing without it—I want to restart, to retry, to try and live my life over and be with you.”

“Wait wait wait, Christopher listen, I told my husband too.”

“You did?”

“Yes, but it wasn’t like that. He was fine with it. This happens sometimes. We’re gay, that’s our birthright. Sometimes we get with other people and that’s fine.” Justin laughed. “But this? I’m married. That doesn't end. I love Mike. I meant to stay with him—and I will. And you love Ramon, as you just said. I meant to ask—how’s your mum doing now?”

(Yes, Mike was fine with it.)

“What do you mean?”

“Are you really going to lose something you've spent years on for one evening of basically mischance?”

“You're something I've spent years on. Mischance?”

“Chris, you're so passionate, and I don't mean to offend you here, but it's in like a teenagery way. People don't end marriages because of one random slip up. Nor is it all that wise to get back with someone you've been broken up from years and years.”

“We're young. It hasn't been that long.”

“Think about how much life you've had in that time.”

“Oh fuck. Fuck, Justin. Why's it like this?”

“Where are you? I can hear the wind. Head back home, Chris.”

“No. Can't.”

“You can.”

Over the parkland, the earlier promise of the day's lustre had stalled, and reversed. Cloying cloud thickened. Sun lost foothold. The light, which had been a soft background, giving to everything, was now more miserly of itself, and so, in its withdrawal, the start of morning began to feel like dusk. Corvids, rather than songbirds, stalked around the chill grass. Christopher said, “I love you,” and sighed, and hung up.

He allowed contact to fail. He didn't call again, and the week was awful; and, whenever, over the years, he had to return home, to care for his father, or for his mother's funeral, he avoided Uppleswell. He didn't seek to know anything about Justin. Ramon left his life. But he found that, nowadays, dead relationships linger. There cannot be closure. The person from your past will be there, on your feed, a targeted ad, a recommended friend, a push notification. Justin was neither good nor bad, there only being an issue of alignment. Christopher had new partners, and was really and truly in love several more times, with men more suited to him, who were more attractive, more accomplished, and who lifted him to better states, alongside them. He was tenured as a professor, eventually. He taught French and the literature he loved, a life of often-unrecognised daily splendour. He owned a flat, a car—there was talk of children. Justin came to him in moments of happiness, and middle feelings, and sadness, and boredom, remembered only partially, as much a stand-in for an era as for the details of him. He came back as “People You Might Know”. He came back in half-assessed memories. He was in the nighttime, and the morning. There cannot be closure: things linger.