My brother laughs as he turns to Jack. “It’s true. I’ll never forget the time we had a picnic at the zoo on my birthday. Arlo wanted my mum because he’d wet his pants and he ran straight across the picnic blanket and through the fucking cake.”
“I was two,” I say, trying to incinerate my brother with my eyes. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. “You talk about it like it was last week. I haven’t wet my pants in many years.”
Jack pats my shoulder soothingly. “Food,” he says in the diplomatic voice that he’s employed for years to break up arguments.
Tom grins at both of us and races off to join the others. They’re taking pictures of a barge covered in fairy lights.
“If it’s any consolation to you,” Jack tells me, “Tom had to shit in a carrier bag on site last week because the portaloo was broken.”
I grin up at him. “Why, yes. That does make me feel better. Thank you so much,” I say with a great deal of malicious gratitude in my voice.
He laughs, and we move off down the little cobbled street. The group moves two abreast, keeping to the narrow pavement. Jack and I bring up the rear walking close together, and I wonder if we look like a couple to strangers passing by. I have a sudden yearning for that to be true and the force of it surprises me.
I’m largely over my crush on him. I’ve dated other men and thought my enduring awareness of Jack to be harmless, a remnant from my teen years when every emotion felt powerful. So it’s alarming how much I want to pull him to a stop and kiss him. Or just walk with his arm around me.
I try to ignore the heat of his body and the way his arm brushes against mine. I’m not successful.
Four
Jack
When I open my eyes blearily, I don’t know where I am. Then I move, the expensive sheets shifting against my body, and the hotel room comes into focus. The dawn light streams through the partially open curtains, and I roll to my side, enjoying the firmness of the mattress and the peace of the early morning. Then a soft snore sounds, and I observe my room companion.
Arlo is lying half out of the covers, his legs stretched out and his head buried half under the pillow. The reddish-brown waves are muted in the dim light and his face, so alive and vivid during the day, is now quiet and peaceful, his full lips pursed as if he’s chasing a thought in his sleep.
He’s wearing only sleep shorts; last night he’d declared the room too hot for a T-shirt. The amount of wine he drank was probably more to blame than the thermostat. He’d been very merry last night, chattering away as we walked back to the hotel after the meal, bumping against me and tugging at my arm every chance he got. He’s always been physically demonstrative, but when he’s drunk, he becomes more so. There were buzzing hummingbird touches on my arm and my side, and he’d even cupped my face to get me to look at him, making a forceful point with laughter brimming in those smoke-grey eyes.
I shake my head. “Merry” applies to Arlo, whether he’s drunk or not. He defines the word. He’s warm and funny and quick-witted, and he draws me like a fire on a cold night.
Amidst the mess of blue sheets, his pale skin glows, the slender length of him laid out for my eyes. My greedy eyes.
I curse my stiffening cock and shift position, feeling like a peeper ogling him while he’s asleep. Unfortunately, it isn’t the first time I’ve looked at Arlo like this—with want.
I can pinpoint the exact moment I first became aware of him as someone more than just Tom’s adorable younger brother. I always had a soft spot for him, and he’d always cheered me up for some reason. He was scatty and dreamy and extremely chatty. There always seemed to be a layer of warmth around him, like the Ready Brek kid moving through life protected by a cheerful red glow. His family is lovely, but Arlo is the warmest and funniest of the lot.
But my feelings for him changed a year ago. It was Christmas Day and he was totally blitzed. Hardly surprising, as he’d been drinking his dad’s eggnog, which is so strong it probably has the power to sanitise your hands. Everyone else had staggered into the lounge to watch the Christmas special of EastEnders, but Arlo and I stayed at the kitchen table, drinking and talking.
At first, we talked about his career and how much he loved teaching. Somehow the conversation turned to Steven and our relationship. Arlo had obviously decided that honesty was the best policy and embarked on what can only be termed a character assassination of Steven. I’d tried to protest out of loyalty, but honesty forced me to silently admit that he was right on most points.
Arlo had grabbed my hand, leaning in and talking animatedly, and in that moment, everything changed. I remember so clearly looking at his pale face, his grey eyes bleary but determined, and thinking how beautiful they were. Then I’d looked at the rest of him—the slender body clad in old jeans and an atrocious Christmas jumper, his red-brown hair waving around his face. A charge had run through me like I’d stuck my finger into an electrical socket.
I remember thinking, Oh my God, he’s so gorgeous. I wanted to touch his hair to test its softness and kiss those full lips. I wanted to do everything.
I’d stared dumbly at him, trying frantically to bring myself back to sanity. But then he’d had another cup of eggnog and passed out at the table. By the time I’d roused him and shoved him into bed where I wouldn’t be able to see him anymore, I’d managed to think sensibly.
Arlo was my best friend’s little brother, I’d told myself. Tom would fucking kill me if I went there, and how did I know Arlo would reciprocate my attraction, anyway. I knew he’d had a crush on me at one point and the knowledge had been like a sweet whisper that I’d tucked away, but I was pretty sure he’d got over that years ago.
Even if he did return my interest, I was sure that I’d end up driving him away, the way I had everyone else with my obsession with details and tidiness and planning. I stood outside his bedroom door that night and made myself imagine his inevitable rejection in great detail. We’d argue. His family would take his side, and I would lose everything—the warmth and joy his family had always given me, along with their home, which had, in important ways, become my sanctuary, its rambling chaos so different from the ordered pristineness of my parents’ house. Then I imagined something even worse than that—Arlo no longer looking at me with delight every time we met, and instead turning away.
By the time I went downstairs, I’d convinced myself it was a moment of madness and nothing more. I’d relaxed and enjoyed the rest of the holiday with my adopted family. Unfortunately, I’d been far too complacent, because it turned out that I’d opened a box that day that couldn’t be closed again, and to my horror I couldn’t repack my awareness of him.
Now I keep hoping that I’ll go back to seeing him as a de facto little brother. Unfortunately, it hasn’t happened, and the want has grown. Not just desire, but a yearning for his company.
I arranged to fly to Amsterdam with him deliberately. I knew I’d have to see my parents to explain the split with Steven, but I promised myself a morning alone with Arlo as my prize for getting through it.
And when he ran up to me in the airport—cheeks cherry-red, hair a mess—I’d felt the now familiar sweet thrill run through me. When he slept on my shoulder in the plane, I let him. With anyone else, I’d have put them gently back in their seat, but I let him stay, his body a warm weight against mine and the scent of his shampoo in my nose. I hadn’t even minded the patch of drool on my jumper, because it was Arlo’s drool.