Work for it, p.22
Work for It, page 22
In this one, I hold his gaze and repeat, “Tomorrow.” The word is broken glass in my mouth, because tomorrow, I leave. I have to. I want to see Liz and restart my life, to keep all these good changes going. But I also want to be Griff’s, to know that it’s safe and it’s forever and it will never come back to bite me.
In short, I want the impossible. How greedy I am.
“Can we go for a walk?” he asks me.
I do believe I’m about to be ceremoniously dumped, which is a relief. The alternative was to leave my heart behind in this place, dangerously far from my body—which I would’ve done, if Griff would’ve let me. But, since he clearly doesn’t want to keep it, at least I’ll have something to hold on to when I no longer have him.
He leads me through now-familiar streets toward a green space where I’ve seen people playing fetch with their dogs—using sticks, of course, because balls are just so city. I want to laugh at this place the way I did when I first arrived, but I think I hate it now, hate it like an enemy. It will always be the place that has what I want: Griff.
There are no dogs around right now, though I’m sure some will appear soon. We sit in the grass, me checking for crap, Griff apparently confident in the villagers’ wholesome commitment to keeping Fernley clean. All around us, there are daffodils brighter than butter, airy dandelion clocks, and delicate daisies with petals coloured like clouds at sunrise, pink edging into the white. Griff sprawls amongst it all, and he seems…
He seems, undeniably, to fit. His big body could have sprouted from the earth, his strong, careful hands are as lovely but resilient as the daisies, and his face, as he tips his head back beneath the sun, is beautiful. Gorgeous. Like everything I never knew I wanted.
He looks at me, and I hold my breath, waiting to be left.
But all he says, in the end, is, “Let’s be lazy.”
My exhalation tastes like relief. “Darling, you’ve never had a better idea.”
He laughs and plucks a daisy, holding it out to me. It smells of fresh, sweet nothing. Like us. I push it into one of my shirt’s open buttonholes, and Griff smiles as if that was exactly right. My hands itch to cup his creasing cheeks and kiss that smile off his face, but I don’t, since tenderness will only make this worse.
Perhaps he disagrees, or simply doesn’t care, because he murmurs, “I’d make you a daisy chain, if I could.”
“You can’t make a daisy chain?” I put a hand over my heart. “I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you.”
“I could when I was a kid. But my hands—”
“Do other things now,” I cut in, before Griff can insult the slow, deliberate fingers I adore.
His smile is a tiny dart to my chest.
I hold out my own hand and say, “I’m certain I could make one, if I received the proper instruction.”
“Yeah? Teamwork?”
“Indeed.”
“Like this, then,” he says, plucking a daisy at the very base of its finely-furred stem. “Length. Okay?”
“Okay.” I pick one just like he did, choosing the longest stem. He nods, and I keep going.
“Now,” he says after a while, “Use your thumbnail—here.” He talks me through slicing a fine hole and looping the next daisy through it, slow and delicate so as not to rip the bond wide open. Rinse and repeat. It’s a satisfying cycle.
“You never did this as a kid?” he asks while I fall into a rhythm.
“You know what my childhood was like,” I murmur, because we’ve talked of so many things, these past few days, that he does. Griff’s heard all about my wealth and my obedience, the ice I lived with and the infrequent burn of the cane over my palms. Just as I’ve heard about the times his mother smiled, and the times she couldn’t. That’s a connection as fine and beautiful as the floral chain I’m building, but just like this chain, it will dry out and die. It has no roots. “I’m glad you’ve taught me,” I say, “since I’ll be an uncle soon.” But what I mean is, since I’ll be leaving you soon. Going back to who I really am: a friend, an uncle, and a man who disappears sometimes because no-one’s earthing him.
I don’t want to believe that’s all I’ll ever be, but until I know exactly how to change, hope seems arrogant. I can’t stay with Griff, be with Griff, based on nothing but hope. He deserves more than that.
“You’ll be a fantastic uncle,” he tells me.
“You can’t really believe that.”
“Why not?”
I look up, find him watching me as if he truly doesn’t understand. And it strikes me, all at once, that he doesn’t. I’ve been so much better, and so determined, here in Fernley. He has no idea what a mess I am.
“I’m unreliable,” I begin, my voice quiet. “I can’t predict, from day to day, how I’ll be. Who I’ll be.”
“Baby,” he says softly.
But I’m not finished, and I don’t want him to make this feel better. I want it to be better, and no-one can give me that but me. Every time he tries, it hurts us both. “I’m cold,” I say, because it’s often true. “I run away when things get difficult. My temper is ridiculous.”
“And you think you’d lose it with a child?”
I can’t answer that, because once he eases a concession out of me—once I say something that makes me seem good, like, “No, of course I wouldn’t”—he’ll think that he’s won, that he can convince me I’m wrong. So I steamroll over him and get to the part that matters.
“I’m going to leave you here without a backward glance,” I say. Even the words hurt. “That should prove I’m not good enough to be with you.” Now Griff is looking at me like he’s never seen me before, which makes sense, since I’m not sure he has. My chest tightens. There’s an anvil lodged in my ribcage, heavy and sharp, because this is it: the moment when he finally figures out who I am. He’ll see, and he’ll stop loving me, right on track. Which is a good thing. It’s a good thing.
“Olu,” Griff says finally. “You don’t have to leave me.”
The anvil moves from my chest to my throat. Of course, since it’s an anvil, it’s far too big for my throat, and things are tearing. “I do.”
“You don’t.” The expression on his face, I realise suddenly, is pain. I want to flinch away from that—from the fact I’m hurting him—but I think it needs to be this way. He asks me abruptly, “You don’t seriously think you’re not good enough, do you?”
That’s his issue? What, does he want me to repeat all the worst things about myself, as if it isn’t hard enough to hold them inside me? My emotions are a cauldron, hot and poisonous, so intense I can’t think clearly enough to respond.
“Olu,” he says, “I can’t tell what you’re trying to… Is this what you want? Or…? For fuck’s sake, talk to me.”
Through gritted teeth, I snap, “You don’t decide when I speak.”
“I know that.” Carefully, Griff takes my growing daisy chain from my hands. I should push him away, but I don’t. I’m furious, but I’m frozen. I want him to touch me. I need him to touch me. Since this will be the last time.
He sets the daisies gently aside and drags me onto his lap. “You are absolutely good enough, Olu. You’re better than enough. I promise.”
Before I can say that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and that frankly, he’s getting on my nerves, arguing with my perfectly sensible conclusion—Griff kisses me. His mouth is soft and slow and sweet, as if to tell me without words that I can stop him whenever I want. But I already knew that. So I pull him closer, hard, and we topple over. I cling to him like a vine and let his weight crush me into the grass, and he doesn’t falter or hold back. He slides his tongue into my mouth, sends electric shivers dancing through my veins, his hand sliding to cup my nape. Anyone could see us, but I don’t care. I’m not worried. I’m not panicked. I love him. I love him so much I can barely breathe.
He pulls back and says, “Stay.”
“I can’t.”
“You can,” he insists fiercely.
“I can’t.” He doesn’t know how messy things are in my head, but if I stay long enough for him to figure it out… I don’t want to see how he reacts. “Just let me go,” I say, “and spend the rest of your life thinking I was someone else, and this was a perfect holiday romance.” I sound pathetic, but maybe that’s okay and maybe I don’t care. Maybe, right now, it’s not shameful to be devastated.
Because what I’m doing is devastating.
“You know we wouldn’t last, if this was real,” I tell him, forcing iron into my voice. “Say you know that.”
His hands tighten on my hips. “Stop it.”
“We’d give things up for each other and resent it. Or try long distance and drift apart because this was only meant to be a fling. Forcing something is never worth it. So I’ll leave now, while you still think you love me—”
“While I think? Olu, shut up.”
“Why?” I ask, and my voice is so empty it almost scares me. The emotion that was overflowing a second ago is gone, hidden inside me where no-one can see, because it’s private. I’m breaking myself right now, and it’s private. “Why?” I ask again, when Griff remains speechless.
“You aren’t leaving like this.” His voice is a tangle of disbelief and dawning anger. Finally, anger. “You aren’t going to feed me this bullshit about—about how we’re just too much effort, and then fucking disappear.”
“I am.”
He pushes me away and asks, “Why?”
“Because I’m a piece of shit, clearly.”
“Stop saying that.” His eyes screw shut as he tugs, frustrated, at his own hair. Then he stops, opens his eyes again with something like realisation. “Of course,” he murmurs, “of course you can’t stay here,” and the pain in my chest is almost violent. But I don’t flinch. Then he continues, “I have to come with you.”
This must be a hallucination. “You have to—what?”
“You can’t stay here in the middle of nowhere. Your sister—and—no, I have to follow you home.” He reaches out and takes my hand like we’ve just solved everything. “Okay? Say it’s okay.”
“But you don’t want to leave Fernley. You said you’d never leave.”
His shout rings through the clearing. “That was before you!”
I didn’t even know Griff could raise his voice. He looks rather surprised, himself. For a moment, I want to laugh and kiss the shock off his face. Then I remember what I’m trying to do here.
I’m trying to leave him.
And he won’t let me.
I imagine Griff abandoning everything he’s ever known. I think about him quitting his job, selling his family home, turning his back on all the places where he sees his mother’s ghost, to follow a generally good-for-nothing man ten years his senior, whom he’s known for three weeks, to London. I see him, in my mind’s eye, sitting in my sterile, shining apartment in the city, wilting every day and learning exactly who I am. How I am. The way I think and feel and act in real life, when I’m not cocooned by the slice of escapist fantasy that is a place like this.
I feel sick.
“I’ll come with you,” he says, sounding nervous now. “I mean it. I will.”
My response is the absolute truth. “I don’t want you to.”
16
Griff
Days pass. Part of me—the part Olu woke up, the part that hopes for things—believes he might come back. That he’ll tell me he’s sorry, he didn’t mean it, he wants me like I want him. That we meant something. So on Monday, I keep an eye on the front gate at the farm, half-expecting to see him leaning there like nothing happened, an apology only I would notice in his eyes.
That doesn’t happen, obviously, but I hope for it on Tuesday, too. On Wednesday, I’m less hopeful and more miserable. By Thursday, I decide to hate him. It doesn’t exactly work, but I do my best.
Now it’s Friday morning and I’m on my hands and knees, yanking out the dandelions by my office building’s front door and imagining they’re all Olu’s tongue—the same tongue that tried to let me down gently before losing patience. Ever since he left, his words have been ringing louder and louder in my ears. I would’ve given him anything. I put my heart and my world and my entire fucking self on the table, and he said, “I don’t want you to.”
I almost wish he’d said what he really meant: “I don’t want you, Griffin. I came here to escape something, and you helped, Griffin. But did you really think I’d fucking keep you, Griffin?”
I should’ve known better. No-one keeps me. No-one.
“What are you doing, dear boy?” The voice floats to me from somewhere over my head, the accent and the lazy surprise reminding me of Olu. He’d ask the same question, just like that, as if he were too cool to be truly shocked by me scrabbling in the dirt—too cool to be shocked by anything at all. But that’s not true, no matter what he pretends in public. He has real, raw feelings no-one would ever guess at, and for a while, he let me see them all.
Stop. You’re hurting yourself.
I dump the weed in my hand, sit back on my arse, and look up. It’s Henry talking to me, obviously. He has this pompous quality to his voice that Olu doesn’t—probably because his whole cut-glass thing isn’t entirely natural. When he was younger, he had a bog-standard Leicestershire accent like the fucking rest of us. Bet he thinks I don’t remember that, since I’m supposed to be slow.
He’s staring at me now as if I’m not just slow, I’m bonkers. I know that look, even if I don’t know much else. And now I hear Olu’s voice in my head, soft and secret: You know all sorts of things, Griff, so stop being awkward. When he said that to me, our legs were tangled together beneath my sheets.
Stop it. Stop it.
I’ve let the silence between Henry and I stretch too long, the way I used to. “Just weeding,” I grunt, and drag myself to my feet.
He arches an eyebrow. “Griffin, you are my production manager. Please leave the menial tasks to Peter.”
Menial, I can tell by his tone, means shitty. Henry says it as if he and I are on the same level: Leave the shitty jobs to the shitty people, Griff, and we’ll go to my office and eat caviar. Which is exactly how Henry normally behaves, only… not with me. I have no idea what’s going on, and it’s pissing me off.
When I don’t reply, he shifts back and forth, then clears his throat like he’s about to give a speech. “Well. How are you, my boy?”
What is this my boy thing? “Fine.”
He gives me a look that tries to be sympathetic but just comes off as slimy. “I hope you don’t mind me saying, Griffin, that I’ve heard reports to the contrary. Apparently, you now spend your nights roaming the woods like—”
My jaw tightens. “Like a monster in the dark? Or maybe just like my mother.”
Henry’s mouth flaps soundlessly.
“Nice to know everyone in this village is still incapable of minding their own fucking business,” I snap.
He finally recovers, holding up his hands. “I hope you don’t think of it as prying, Griffin! It’s not. Just healthy concern for one of our own.”
I have never, not ever, been one of their own. I don’t even know who they are.
Henry leans closer, like we’re sharing secrets or something. I can see his pores. I don’t want to see his fucking pores. “Between you and I,” Henry whispers, “I’m rather missing his presence also.”
“Missing who?” My words are so hard, so flat, so obviously a brick wall of fuck off, that I don’t think anyone on earth would have the balls to keep pushing.
But clearly I’m fucking wrong, because Henry does. Which makes me wonder how he fits his massive nuts into his corduroy trousers. “Keynes, of course!” he says cheerfully, not realising I’m seconds away from stomping him into the ground. “I know the two of you were close—though it seems you’ve, er, perhaps drifted apart.” He must see something in my eyes, because he backtracks again. “Not that I’m attempting to pry! No, simply showing concern.”
If he says concern one more time, I will throw him over my shoulder and climb to the top of the tallest tree in this village like I’m King fucking Kong. And then I’ll drop him.
“Now, as for myself,” he goes on casually. “Well, Keynes and I are the sort of friends who go through years of separation, you understand. We bump into each other, have a grand old time, and then it’s off to our own worlds again! But at this point in my life—and I’m sure you agree, Griffin—I’d like to hold on to my friends a little more tightly. And Kate feels the same. She absolutely adored Keynes at our dinner party a couple of weeks ago—he is so charming, isn’t he?”
I am going to punch Lord Henry Breton-Fowler in the face. That must be obvious, because he looks at me with alarm and takes a massive step back. When he starts his rambling speech again, the words come a bit faster.
“You see, it occurred to me, Griffin, that you may have collected the elusive Keynes’s contact details, which—” He breaks off and does this tinkly little laugh that makes me want to rip my ears off. “Which I quite forgot to snag for myself. The number on his card seems to be outdated. An oversight, I’m sure.”
There’s a weird rushing in my ears, like an ocean thrashing just before a storm. I’d like to drown Henry right now, that’s for fucking sure. Because apparently, he’s actually trying to act like we’re best friends so I’ll give him Olu’s number.
The fact that I don’t even have Olu’s number is the icing on the shitty fucking cake.
My blood burns like the rivers in hell. “You really do think I’m thick.”
Henry’s head rears back. “No, Griffin, of course not!” He laughs nervously, like I’m the one who’s being unreasonable. “I simply—”
