Page 25 of Maybe
Fuck it, I phoned him.
“What’s wrong, Isaac?” said Ezra, not sounding very asleep at all. In fact, sounding on the edge of panic. Who the hell phoned someone at ten to midnight unless there was something the matter?
“Um… oh my god, nothing. I… sorry… I didn’t realise it was so late.” I winced at the lie. “I… um… just called to thank you for the photo of Jonty. I…uh… I really liked it. He’s… well, he’s obviously great at welly-wanging. I’d ask if it runs in the family, but I know it doesn’t, so…”
A smoky laugh floated across the air waves, and some of my anxiety drifted away. “He must have got that from his mother’s side. His good looks and charm he got from me.”
One hundred fucking percent.“The looks I’ll buy. I’m not sure about the charm.”
“I can turn it on,” he said in a low raspy tone, doing exactly that. Edging on flirtatiousness? As my dick thickened hopefully, I mentally slapped it down.He’s my brother, my brother, my brother.That sexy voice and tone was simply the way he spoke.I tried to picture Ezra washing up. Except then I had an image of his wiry, pale forearms plunging into warm soapy suds, the dark hairs at his wrists flattened, the little playing card tattoo dipping in and out of the water, and...
“Sorry if I woke you.”
Rustling noises accompanied his next words, like he was getting comfortable. In bed. Not washing up. Maybe naked.My brother, my brother.“No, I was up. I’m a night owl.”
“Oh, I know all about that. My sleep’s all over the place. Especially with nightshifts. Sometimes I wake at four a.m. and my stomach thinks it’s lunchtime. It’s to do with melatonin levels.”
“Cool.”
Nope, not cool at all. Dull, nerdy, intense, and pointless information. Maybe I should have phoned Gerald instead. Or sacked the whole thing off and climbed into bed for a hot threesome with two guys called Ben and Jerry. Masturbated Ezra out of my system. I did plenty of that. Masturbation was the private gift that never stopped giving: reliable, always readily available, and never an inconvenience to anyone else.
An awkward pause followed, during which Ezra was obviously trying to work out how to politely wind up the call. “I was putting a song together that’s been bugging me. Can’t get the hook right.” He sighed. “It will come, with patience.”
“I didn’t know you still wrote your own songs.”
“That’s because you haven’t seen me for ten years. You didn’t know I had a son either.”
“And you didn’t know I made weird late-night phone calls, so we’re both learning new things about each other.”
That smoky laugh again. Too attractive for its own good.
“Do you sing your own tunes when you’re busking?”
“Nah, that’s not what the punters want to hear. They want something bland and soulless they can hum along to, like Ed bloody Sheeran.”
I quite liked Ed Sheeran. “What do you do with your songs, then? Do they sit in a pile, gathering dust? You could have Taylor Swift’s next big hit right there.”
My attempt at hearing that laugh again paid off. He had no idea what he did to me. “I’m not holding my breath. A local rock band uses most of them. I write ‘em, they sing ‘em. The lead singer’s an old friend of Carly’s—that’s Jonty’s mum. We work on them together.”
“Oh, you mean like Elton John and that other chap? Bernie someone?”Really, Isaac? Was that the most contemporary musical reference you could come up with?
A fourth teasing laugh escaped him. “If Elton made less than ten quid off streaming downloads last year, then, yeah, exactly. You should come with me to one of their shows. They’ve just been signed to an indie label. They’re a decent live band.”
“Um… okay. Sure.” I scrolled back in my mind to the last time I saw a band play live. Did the London Philharmonic count?
Another silence, although less awkward. “Is Jonty asleep?” I asked him, to fill it.
“I fucking hope so. It’s gone midnight.”
“Yeah, well, sorry again for calling so late.”
“It’s fine, honestly.” A few seconds passed, then, “Was there something you needed to get off your chest, Isaac?”
I liked how he said my name, light and deliberate, as if he knew it made my heart skip a beat.I don’t care about other shift workers.Tears, hot and unexpected, pushed behind my eyes.
“Isaac?” he repeated, softly, “Are you still there?”
Before I hardly knew I was saying them, the words tumbled out of me. “We had a cot death last week. I’ve never seen one before. Me and Alaric—he’s my friend—we… we, like, we ran ituntil the paeds team arrived and took over. It was… it was… well, it was shit, as you can imagine, and we had to pretend like we knew what we were doing because everyone was looking at us, and we did know what we were doing, except it didn’t feel like that. And after, it was… it was...”
