Love in Every Season Read online

  “No, I’ve got Nick with me. I got a couple of tickets because I was going to bring Jenny, but she’s had to work so her brother came along.” His words came out all of a rush, with particular emphasis on Jenny and brother which was the point where I knew he knew. I guess the gossip machines had been going full blast at home and he wasn’t likely to have missed the juicy bit of tit-tat, with all its embellishments.

  I bet his mum had said, “Ben’s gay. Did he ever try it on with you?”

  “Jenny’s your girlfriend?”

  “Yeah. We’re coming up to our ninemonthiversary.”

  I managed not to laugh. That must have been Jenny’s term, not his; not unless he’d changed an awful lot since he went off to Uni. “Nice. Is she at Plymouth as well?”

  “Yeah, doing biology research. She’s pretty smart.” He jerked his thumb behind him. “Nick’s even brighter. He’s at Warwick. Languages.” That potted history seemed to be all I was going to get. “You’ll like him. I’m glad I ran across you.”

  My heart sank. I’d had this sort of thing happen before and the glint in Matty’s eye showed it was coming right around the corner at me again. I’m not a bad looking bloke, even with the slight twist to my arm and the listing to one side that tends to happen after my second pint. And I’m not just going on what Mum says. I’ve never had any problems getting dates; they all say I scrub up and strip off pretty well. Even when I’m not shaved down for a race.

  As a result, some of my friends think I’ll be God’s gift to their token gay—and usually hideously ugly—mate (assuming I’m not the token gay myself). They drag along Tom or Chris or whatever he’s called and steer him in my direction on the assumption that I’m gay and single and, given that I’ve got CP, probably not that fussy. Right on two counts, wrong on one, and wrong on the only one which really matters. I don’t want anyone else’s leavings, or the last chocolate left in the box, romance’s equivalent of that horrible hard centre that cracks your teeth. I could just imagine what this Nick was going to be like, so I got into gear for doing a runner.

  “I’m sure I will like him, but I’m in a bit of a hurry at the moment. What about meeting up later on, over a pint?” I started to back away. “Ring my mobile when the last event’s done.”

  “Same number?” Matty had to raise his voice as I continued my not-very-gallant retreat.

  “Yeah. See you later.” I waved, turned and made my way through the crowd, almost colliding with a corker of a bloke carrying two coffees. Shame Nick wasn’t going to look like him. I’d just have to text Matty back tomorrow and say I’d missed his call because of the crowd noise. I felt guilty, but only for all of three minutes. Matty White had effectively cut himself out of my life and I wasn’t going to roll over and let him back in.

  Fate’s a cruel mistress. Or master. Or something. I got to my seat—eventually, after battling through crowds and then signing autographs for some real swimming fanatics—and I was settling in when something slapped the back of my head.

  “Ben!” It was Matty, of course, looking pleased as punch and plonking his backside in the seat behind mine and two to the left. “That’s a stroke of luck. I’d forgotten I hadn’t got your number on my new phone.”

  That made me even more angry. Matty pulling the “long lost friend” thing on me when he hadn’t bothered to keep my number. I scowled at him, and at the weaselly looking bloke sitting to the left of him, who was evidently the ghastly Nick and every bit as horrible as I’d imagined him. There was another bump to my head and I spun round one hundred and eighty degrees, about to give some clumsy sod a mouthful. There was gorgeous-guy-with-the-coffees smiling at me and being terribly apologetic.

  “Sorry, did I thump you?” He smiled, revealing the sort of lovely teeth that would have been all the better to eat me with, if I’d been lucky. “My fault. I’ve always been clumsy. I think it’s dyspraxia but Jenny just says I’m a prat. With dyspratsia.” He grinned.

  This horrible hot flush—remember my habit of blushing?—started to clamber up the back of my neck, which is hardly my best look given that there’s more than a trace of ginger in my hair. I managed to stammer something like, “No worries,” although I could have been spouting gibberish, for all that I was aware. All I could think of was that I’d nearly gone and cocked everything up with my I won’t answer the phone ruse. At least fate had saved me and redeemed itself at the same time. Unless I was buggering things up again by making an assumption too many, this must have been Jenny’s brother, and he wasn’t the spotty nerd I’d expected.

  “I’m Nick.” This gorgeous vision of tall, dark handsomeness stuck out his hand. “You must be Ben.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.” I managed to shake his hand without shaking too much myself. Sometimes I get a bit clumsy if I’m overexcited.

  “We saw you on the telly—Paralympic World Cup, earlier this year. You won.”

  “You don’t half state the bleeding obvious,” Matty chipped in, grinning. “I suspect Ben remembers that for himself.”

  “Just a little.” I was hoping the red flush was starting to subside.

  “Matty was so proud of you. Kept pointing at the screen and saying that was his best mate from school days. He started to cry when you won.” Nick rolled his eyes. “Great Jessy.”

  I was starting to well up, too. Maybe Matty had redeemed himself a bit. “We said we’d be here, being a part of it. Even back when we were horrible, spotty schoolboys, we knew we’d have to make London 2012 happen.”

  “And you did.” Matty ruffled my hair, just like we were fourteen again. “I’ve got tickets to see you, next month, so you damn well better make the final. And get a medal. No pressure.”

  “Not much. Only from you and Mum and Dad and the whole bloody street.”

  “Me as well.” Nick had got himself settled into his seat and given that I was in the row below I got a distinct eyeful of his crotch every time I turned to speak to him. I wasn’t sure it was helping my coherence.

  “Will you be there to cheer me on as well?” I tried a) not to sound too hopeful and b) not to keep staring at his trousers.

  “Try and stop me. If you win, I’ll be basking in the reflected glory for months. We’re sport mad in our house and even the friend of a future brother-in-law would count as one of the family if he had a Paralympic medal.”

  Future brother-in-law? No wonder Matty had been full of the lovey-dovey talk. “Wear your lucky y-fronts, then. I’ll need all the help I can get.”

  “Gah. False modesty.” Matty whacked my shoulder with his programme. I was about to launch into a great spiel about how I was up against a really tough field when Nick got there before me.

  “No, Ben’s just being realistic. There are some really fast Aussies in his event, and this guy from the US is starting to make a splash. No pun intended.”

  “Which guy from the US?” Matty pulled the face I remember from school, the one which usually appeared when we did algebra.

  “The one who placed fourth in that race we watched. When Ben won.” Nick gave me a wink. “Was he this thick at school?”

  “Worse.” I listened in as Nick gave Matty a comprehensive rundown on the top runners and riders in Paralympic swimming. Gorgeous, knowledgeable, funny; he seemed too good to be true. There had to be a catch and I had an awful feeling the catch was insurmountable. He was going to turn out to be straight and only here for the swimming. All my conspiracy theories about Matty finding out I was gay and engineering a meeting would turn out to be hot air and leave me with just daydreams.

  “Rebecca Adlington going to do the double again?” Nick’s voice woke me out of my reverie. I’d gone off on a mental tangent—mainly involving him, me, a swimming pool and a double bed.

  “Wouldn’t surprise me. She’s the girl for the big occasion.” I basked in the attention from Nick’s big green eyes. He could look at me like that all night—literally—as far as I was concerned.

  “Is that inside knowledge?” He grinned.<
br />
  I really don’t remember much about the rest of the evening. We got into a discussion about mainstream swimming which meandered into talking about athletics and cycling, finding its way back via rowing and yachting to diving and all things watery. The conversation was interspersed with various races going on in the pool but my memories of those are less clear than my recollections of what Nick said.

  Poor Matty; he must have felt like he was being left out in the cold. We tried to include him in the conversation, but he wasn’t into all the technical stuff. Soon he struck up a conversation with the weaselly guy next to him—mainly, I suspect, because he had a pair of nice looking girls with him—while Nick and I kept up the nattering. I wasn’t picking up any clues, though. I mean, Nick was chatty and enthusiastic but whether that was because he’d fallen for my innate charms or whether it was a treat for him to be able to talk to another Olympics nerd, I couldn’t be sure.

  I made sure we agreed to go for a drink afterwards, though. Matty’s ears pricked up at the mention of beer, so he was back in our conversation again, suggesting some places to go, all of which seemed to have been recommended by his Jenny. I didn’t care, so long as Nick was going to be there and I could get some idea about where his romantic interests lay. Maybe if we could start talking gymnastics we could get him around to whether he’s more your Daniel Keatings or your Beth Tweddle type. Or Nick could go off to the loo and I could have a quiet word in Matty’s shell like and see if he could settle the matter.

  What I didn’t give a second thought to, at that point, was what the fuck I was doing even contemplating getting into a relationship with my races just a matter of weeks away. Especially as I’d signally avoided doing that very thing the last few years, telling myself that London had to be top priority. Maybe it was the thought of a last night of freedom—I was off to training camp in Manchester the next afternoon—that had made me a bit wire happy. I’d have saved myself a whole bucketful of trouble if I’d said, there and then, that we’d have to defer meeting for a drink to the end of September.

  ***

  The bar wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. I’d imagined something overpriced (even for London 2012) and up itself, but it proved to be far enough from the Aquatics Centre to have escaped the crowds and the hype. Jenny was there to meet us, Matty having texted her earlier; she seemed a nice girl, not quite the stuck-up tart I’d expected. Hell—I was getting as bad as Mrs. White at sticking labels on people without any evidence. I liked Jenny, and not just for the fact that she kept Matty happy while I talked to Nick. After half an hour, Nick went to get his round in and Matty slipped away to relieve the pressure on his bladder, so I had the opportunity to pump Jenny.

  Before I could get up my courage, she turned to me with a big grin. “I don’t believe in beating around the bush, so based on what Matty’s told me, I’ll be blunt. Nick’s gay. And he’s available. I leave the rest to you.” She tapped my hand with her index finger. “Only don’t hurt him, right? Or else I’ll break every bone in your body, Matty’s pal or not.”

  She smiled again, like she’d just said something sweet, and immediately changed the subject to what Matty had been like at school. I think I answered most of her questions in a manner that sufficiently emphasized her boyfriend’s good points—he did have them—while taking the rip out of him. That’s the sort of thing friends are supposed to do.

  I carried on after he returned, partly because it was fun to see him trying to talk his way out of some of the crap I dumped him in, like that story about him spying on the girls’ changing rooms at school. And it didn’t hurt taking centre stage with Nick there, especially now I knew I wasn’t wasting my time trying to impress him. A nagging little voice in the back of my head tried to suggest that Matty had organised the whole thing, just like I’d suspected, maybe even getting his mum to liaise with my mum about which events I was attending. Although given the initial rush for tickets he’d have had to be clairvoyant and set it all up the spring of the year before. Maybe that was taking the conspiracy theory too far.

  By the time we finished that round and Matty had been sufficiently made fun of, it was getting late, too late for a lad who had to get his backside to a training camp the next day, so I started to make “goodbye” noises.

  “You can’t go yet.” Matty—who might just have had a touch too much of the falling down water—made a grab for my arm.

  “Leave him be.” Nick came to my rescue with another one of his dazzling smiles. “This boy’s got a busy few weeks ahead. He doesn’t need any beauty sleep, but he’s got to keep that body of his in peak condition.” He got up. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

  “I’m getting the tube home. I’ve got all my gear at my parents’ house.”

  “Then I’ll walk you to the station.” He offered me his hand, to pull me up out of my seat. “I’ll go straight home afterwards, Jenny.” We made the usual pleasantries, Matty promising that it wouldn’t be so long in between us meeting up next time, after which we managed to get away.

  I walked as slowly as I could, just to eke the time out as much as possible, although I must have overdone it, getting to the point Nick where stopped and asked if I was alright.

  “I’m fine,” I snapped, immediately regretting how sharp I’d sounded. “Sorry. I just didn’t want you thinking I have to walk this slow. You know, because of it.”

  “It?”

  “The cerebral palsy. I’m not a fucking cripple.”

  “I know you’re not.” He moved a step closer, grabbing my jacket and drawing me face to face with him, just a beery breath apart. “I meant what I said about you not needing any beauty sleep. You can’t improve on perfection.” He leaned in, sharing the most romantic kiss I’ve ever been lucky enough to receive. I don’t know what swept me off my feet more—the kiss or the words.

  Nobody has ever called me perfect, not even my mum when she was trying to cheer me up on one of my rare feeling down days. All my life I’ve had to work around my limitations, make do with what I’ve got and try not to dwell too much on not being one hundred per cent. Maybe Nick was just trying to get into my pants but at least for the time being I was going to pretend he was sincere about every word.

  “Daft bugger.” It was the best I could manage, given that wind had been taken out of my sails. Not very romantic, but it seemed to do the business. He kissed me again and I responded. Had to show him that I was Olympic class and not just in the pool. “I wish I was perfect, but I’ll settle for being me. You can be you, as well, because that’s pretty nice.”

  Romeo and Juliet type dialogue, eh? Shakespeare eat your heart out.

  “I’m glad I suit.” He gave me a squeeze, before we walked on again; it was getting busy, throwing out time at some of the local bars and restaurants flooding the streets with the full and the semi-plastered. “I’ve been badgering Matty to wangle an introduction with you ever since I saw you in the World Cup. He kept saying it would have to wait until you’d finished competing for the season.”

  “Fate seemed to think otherwise.” Bloody hell, I sounded like some toffee-nosed idiot in a Mills and Boon novel, the sort Mum reads when she wants a nice sniffle. We stopped again, waiting for the lights at the junction to change so we could cross. “I’m sorry I can’t invite you home.”

  “No worries. Not everyone has sympathetic parents.”

  “No, you silly bugger, that’s not what I mean.” The crossing light man turned to green, so I grabbed Nick’s arm and urged him over the road. “Mum and Dad would be delighted to meet you. Too delighted. You’d end up having the third degree—probably want to know the status of your pension portfolio and everything.”

  “Ah.” Nick’s voice said it all. “Not taken anyone significant home yet? Worried they’ll be putting a veil on me or something?”

  “Sounds like you already know them.” Still, for all the laughter, it was a shame. I was going to be out of circulation for the next few weeks and it would have been nice to d
o more than shake hands on a tube station platform. I didn’t think we’d be able to get away with tongues, even at this time of night.

  “We could go back to our house. Jenny and I have the use of my parents’ flat while they’re off at their pad in France. Very ‘A Place in the Sun’, even if it means they’re missing some of the action here.”

  I knew he meant the TV show—one of Dad’s favourites—rather than the film. There had to be money in the family, then, unless the flat was out in Chipping Ongar and the holiday home was a beach hut. “Won’t we be cramping Jenny and Matty’s style?” I couldn’t think of anything more likely to kill passion than the thought of Matty listening to what we were getting up to.

  “I’ll text her. She can drag him off to a club and give us an hour to ourselves. Then I can run you back to your house.” Seems like he had it all planned. “Unless you don’t fancy coming home with a stranger?”

  “Silly sod.” I kept walking, trying to hide whatever look I had on my face, be it inane grin or anxiety. I trusted him to take me home, although I wasn’t sure I trusted myself. “I’d love to go back to yours, but we better only make it an hour or so. Come tomorrow I turn into Ben the barracuda.”

  We got on the tube, heading west, which was good news as it would be less far for him to drive me home. I was surprised when we got off at Victoria and started wending our way down some of the back roads, and even more taken aback when we stopped outside a swish apartment block. If this was the location for the London flat, I bet the holiday home was on the lines of a chateau. Nick’s accent had edged more upmarket as we’d headed nearer to his home, as well.

  It was as lovely inside as I’d anticipated, to the point I started to feel intimidated. Hell, if this was what Nick had been brought up with, what was he doing hanging about with a guy from a bungalow located on the highly salubrious western fringes of the Piccadilly line? I mean, where we lived was nice, but a flat in Victoria, full of watercolours and antiques, it wasn’t. I hoped Nick wasn’t just looking for a bit of rough—and a bit of unusual rough, at that, given the CP.