Page 68 of Refrain
“I love you.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Promise, I’ll strip the bed and wash the sheets afterwards.”
Spook closed the door between the lounge and bedroom. Then, he made a brew and stood on the front doorstep to drink it, while looking out at the world.
-27-
Spook
The morning drifted on, shadows shortening, bird calls giving way to the rustle of the wind through the trees. Spook finished his coffee, then went to the wood pile and refilled the basket for later that evening. The bedroom door remained closed, so he straightened the place up a bit. The dishes he piled on the draining board, while various items of discarded clothing he shuffled into a single pile. It was hard to say what belonged to who. Eventually, he made himself a sandwich and another coffee and settled down with his guitar and his notebook. For a while, everything was quiet, and he figured Xane and Luthor were sleeping rather than doing anything more active. That pretty much turned into a cue for the bedsprings to start squealing, accompanied by an array of grunts and gasps, and practically a whole sermon’s worth ofOh, Gods!
He turned up the volume on the amp and played around with a couple of peddles for a bit, before settling into something he had buzzing in the back of his brain, seeing if he could get his fingers to pick out what he was hearing in his head. The thump of the headboard knocking against the wall made a not bad drumbeat.
He was working on a particularly tricky bit that meant sliding his hand up and down the frets at speed and some complicated finger gymnastics, when a different tune started up inside the clothing pile. Spook glared at the collection of denim and worn cotton T-shirts. Thankfully, it stopped after a thirty-second peal. He’d just started on his melody again, when the ring tone broke his concentration a second time, then a third.
“Fucking stupid…” He wrestled Xane’s phone free of the pocket of his discarded jeans and swore at it some more when it continued to hum merrily in his hand. It took a mere two attempts to crack the lock code, whereupon he was greeted with the notification that there were twelve new messages. It was not his intention to pry, only to silence the damn thing, since it bloody well wouldn’t shut up. Only, WKD had a particularly pithy tone and seemed particularly peeved. As he slid the volume control, it bleated out a different tune into his hands. Same contact, only now they were trying to call. Hesitantly, he swiped his thumb across the screen.
“About fucking time, you bastard!”
The shock of hearing her voice caused him to drop the phone. It clattered onto the tiled portion of the hearth and skated towards the iron grate. “Shit! Bugger!”
“Xane, are you there? Fucking talk to me, you arrogant git.”
Spook stared at the phone as if it were a rat with enormous teeth and glowing red eyes.
“Xane!”
The sound of Alle’s voice had all his hairs standing on end, and it felt like someone had just thumped him in the chest hard enough to crack ribs. Gingerly, he reached for the phone and dusted it of ash. It slid around his clammy hands as he tried to hit the cancel button.
“Hello? Xane? Fucking please. I know you’re with him. Would it really kill you to let me know that he’s, okay?”
He froze. Blood pounding so hard in his ears he thought the drums would burst.
“You can’t possibly believe I had anything to do with anything my fuckwit brothers did, which is the only justification I can think up for your silence”
He swallowed the blockage in his throat, and croaked, “H-hello, Alle.”
Time instantly distorted. It took what felt like hours for her to reply, then all her words emerged in a gush. “Spook? Is that… Oh, my God! For real? Is that… is it really you?”
“Yeah. It’s really… It’s me.”
“Spook, I’m so sorry, I—”
Nope. He couldn’t do it. He let his thumb fall, ending the connection. He didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want her voice in his head. Didn’t want to hear all the reasons why he’d been wrong to have left her without a word, but mostly he didn’t want to listen to excuses and apologies. Chilled, he stared at the phone. A tear dripped onto the screen, which he wiped away, even as the phone burst into life again. He chucked it into the pile of clothing, only to pick it up again immediately. Another tear fell. The salt sting of them in his eyes made it increasingly difficult to see. This wasn’t what he wanted. He knew it couldn’t be. There was too much trauma, too much baggage for it to ever work out. Nothing he’d admitted to Xane had been a lie. Allowing Alle Hutton to invade his thoughts had been a mistake right from their first meeting. Letting her back in now would only make things worse.
But the phone kept on ringing. That was Alle. She never did know when to call it a day.
Slowly, terrifyingly, he brought the phone to his ear.
“Don’t hang up, please.” It was a plea that wound itself like barbed wire around his heart.
“Then don’t—”
“I won’t. Are you… Are you okay?”
“You said you wouldn’t.” Though really, he hadn’t said what he didn’t want her to do. How could she possibly comply when she didn’t know what she was agreeing to?
