Page 47 of Someone Like You

He tried to back away, but Phil shakily fisted his hoodie as if seeking support and drew him back to himself with a begging look.

“Please, just… just give me a minute.”

It wasn’t a sin. Hugs weren’t kisses. Hugs weren’t sex. They were allowed. They could have this. Just this. Just one innocent thing. It wouldn’t hurt anyone.

Following an ancestral instinct, Ian wrapped his arms around Phil, letting him rest his head on his shoulder until the tension melted from his body. But even then, even after Phil went limp and exhaled a breath of immense relief, Ian didn’t —couldn’tlet go. This single minute might be all they’d ever get.

He cradled Phil’s face into his palm, stroking the bristly beard, the affection thrumming fierce and violent in his ribcage. Phil just closed his eyes and leaned into his touch, fingertips digging into Ian’s pecs, quietly absorbing the comfort of the embrace.‘I love you,’Ian thought, drinking in the trusting abandonment of Phil’s gesture. In that blind trust he found the same desperate longing that was devouring him from the inside.

It would’ve been so easy to get used to this — Phil’s breath upon his chest, their bodies moulded into one another, and the peace, the completion, the feeling of all the jumbled pieces Ian was made offinally clicking into place. He couldn’t fathom how something that felt so natural and simple could be so impossible.

He took a deep breath, chin pressing against the side of Phil’s head and, tapping into his last vestige of self-control, he murmured: “You should go.”

Phil sighed in surrender. “Yeah.” He lingered a few more seconds, rubbing his cheek against Ian’s hoodie one last time, then pliantly stepped back. He cleared his throat. “See you at the fountain at 6?”

“Aye.”

An unspoken agreement was signed with that: they would never talk about this.

Ian escorted Phil to the door. Even Kibble crawled out of her hiding place to say goodnight, rubbing herself on Phil’s shins until he crouched down to give her a proper scratch between the ears.

Duffel bag in place, beanie on his head, Phil took the bike and the helmet and jogged down the three steps leading down to the street. He stopped there, staring at the scratches on the helmet in his hands, and cast a mournful look back at the door.

“In another life—”

“We don’t have another life, Phil.”

Phil’s lips tightened. “In another life,” he said, “maybe I’d meet you first.”

chapter 9

PHIL

When Phil was little, he had been obsessed with stories where unattractive or scary characters met someone who could see through their appearance and love them for who they were. Odd fascination for a child who’d always been good-looking, so much so that everyone had just assumed he had some sort of saviour complex that made him identify with the hero who rescued the monster. In truth, the more he grew up, the more he felt like he had the opposite problem: people liked him for how he looked and more often than not ended up disliking his personality. He’d learned at a very young age to be the person that strangers expected to find beneath his looks: confident, charismatic, easy to be around and talk to. What people couldn’t see was how hard it was for Phil tobethat person. It was like walking around with a one-hundred-pound weight around his neck: he was strong enough to do it, but after a few days the collapse was inevitable. The longer he carried thatweight, the longer it took to recover, and it was getting harder as he aged.

That was what had happened when he’d become a bestselling author practically overnight. The jump from Mr Nobody to some kind of celebrity had knocked him off his chair at home, throwing him into a flurry of signing sessions, interviews, and public events, and Phil hadn’t been the same since. Meeting Abby had been providential: she’d sustained him in the most stressful periods, held his hand when he’d struggled with the speed and the franticness of his new life, and had showered him with all the unconditional love Phil had never received from his parents. An angel, that was what Abby was, and Phil would be forever blessed to have her. Sometimes, however, it was hard to keep up with her. Abby felt and lived things in ways Phil wasn’t capable of, even before the burnout and the medication. They were like a bird and a fish: engineered differently, living in different worlds, swimming along the water surface to be together.

It didn’t feel like that with Ian.

Ian was like Phil, an underwater creature, a solitary spirit thriving in the dark peace of deep waters, happy in his own company, free to be himself without justifying it to anyone.

Phil envied him. Freedom was a luxury not many people had. Phil wasn’t so hypocritical to consider himself a victim in society: he had wealth, a healthy body, a safe, cosy home to return to at the end of the day, a fiancée who loved him and accepted him for who he was. Hewaslucky. He just had no idea it was possible to feel so physically and emotionally in tune with someone until he started flirting with a stranger he’d run into at the park. Only that stranger wasn’t a stranger any more, and Phil’s initial confusion about the peculiar undertones of their friendship was fading, leaving him to deal with an uncomfortable certainty he had no hope to escape. And yet, as they sat here, in Ian’s tiny kitchen, eating greasy takeaway straight out of the box, life felt wonderfullysimple.

“I think these were the best spring rolls I’ve ever had,” he said, contentedly leaning back in his chair.

Ian arched an eyebrow at him. “You scoffed them down so fast I doubt you even tasted them.” He pushed his dish towards Phil. There was still a roll in it. “Take it. I’m full.”

Phil knew it was a lie. He knew how much Ian could eat and a portion of spring rolls was nothing but a snack to a mountain of a man like him.

He eyed the dish, then Ian. “You’re not full. You just want me to have it.”

The dimples appeared before the coarse sound of Ian’s throaty laughter. “Ach. No foolin’ you, is there?”

This was how they communicated: care disguised as jokes, fondness as good-natured mockery. And because Phil knew what Ian was doing, he grabbed the roll and made a big show ofsinking his teeth into it, like he was just doing Ian a favour. “Fuck you,” he mumbled as he chewed, then hid his touched half grin under a sip of Pepsi. “I’d kill for a beer right now.”

Ian turned back to open the fridge that was right behind him. One second later there was a can of beer sitting in front of Phil and another in Ian’s hand.

“Non-alcoholic,” said Ian. He grimaced after one swig. “Tastes like cold pish.”

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