Sullivan'd only waited the gruelling six or so hours since he'd watched Morgan bag his king-fit lunch to eat it. Only sought refuge in the quietest crook Guerrero's houses to enjoy itâthe forsaken timber A-frame picnic-er lodged between the two feet's worth of empty space between their building and the next. Knackered can't even begin to cover the feeling, irritation better does it when the door thwacks open and Jahseh joins him outside. Although that moody halo that's shadowed about him all week fills the space an impressive second before he does.
"What?"
"What?" The bench rasps beneath Jahseh's weightâor perhaps the heft of his syphoning brood. Because something about the scowl he's toted about since last Thursday makes his presence all the heavier for everyone he forces it upon.
"If you're gonna keep sulking, do it somewhere else, yeah?" Sullivan lowers his sandwich. "I've had enough of it, really."
"Who's sulking?"
"You're sulking. You got a face like a smacked ass, it's meady." Jahseh rolls his lips inwards. His smart remark and the inevitable bout of bickering to follow folded inwards with it. But then he shifts his gaze elsewhere and he is again troubled by questions he asks himself and so has no choice but to answer himself. The plummeting gripe in the hollows of his stomach at the thought of his once abandoned trailer in Thistlebrook suddenly abandoned no more. The hot air that smogs all about his conscious at any interval in his day, and he hates to say it's her, but he'd be a fool to owe it to anything else. And the sigh that's plodding to slip from between pursed lips does so in the humbling realisationâhe is sulking. "Jah, I'm gonna hit you."
Sullivan's sandwich drops onto its wrinkled foil. He waits for Jahseh to expand in that long-routed way he always does, because God forbid he get to the point. But it's never ABC with Jahseh.
"You talked to Eve?"
"About what?" Sullivan edges. "That's why you're all sour? 'Cause Eve ain't talking to you?"
"She is."
"Then what's the issue?"
"Don't know."
He doesn't know. Jahseh isn't new to his tripled pulse about Eve, nor the smouldering stir beneath the surface of his skin when she smiles at him. He's intentionally leaden to connect the dots, that's one question he's sure is better off unanswered, but the void in his understanding has fought its way from the back of his mind to the forefront. Surely it's deeper than Eve. The trailer, Parker, Kamaleâhe can't boil it all down to Eve.
"For fuck's sake, Jah, if you like the girl, go be with the girl. Stop making it my problem."
Sullivan takes to his sandwich with a robust bite, glaring past lettuce trimmings and toasted crusts at Jahseh's deepening frown.
"Ah, shut up, man."
Sullivan scoffs, "You're still tryna convince us it's not a that? From when you got me gliding on civvies in the middle of the night 'cause you wanna make the babe smile, you can't really deny much more, can you? Slumping someone's stepdad 'cause he called your girl a bitch. Wringing necks like tea towels and all."
Yes, the dots he's neglectful to connect. But even from the comforts of his denial, there's no fooling Sullivan. Or anyone with two eyes and even half the story.
"What you talking about?"
"If you like the girl, go be with the girl. That's all I got for you, bro. Do what you want with it." Sullivan's shrug sets something off in Jahseh. As if it were that easy. And the only person who should know that was him, yet he's callous to the notion like it's even remotely within his reach.
Perhaps Jahseh finds her pretty. So? Perhaps he finds her loving, and abnormally humble. And selfless in the worst way. He doesn't know her heart but perhaps he sees it in all its expanse, perhaps he's repeatedly marvelled by the plumb magnitude of it. Perhaps he knows he likes all that about her and moreâso what? Eve sees a glass half full where he sees it half empty. She sees opportunity in Abbey Wood where he sees a ghost town. And she sees the youth that live there all along their strip like they're embracing a life outside a screen. Not the careful distances between them. Not the hierarchy to their huddles or the Nokias bulging from back pockets. But Jahseh does. So perhaps he finds her this, that and the third, perhaps he doesn'tâeither way, he knows he can't get close. They're like oil and water, that much he does know.
Yet nowadays, he catches himself stewing over the possibilities more often than not.
"She's not like us."
Sullivan tuts, "No one is."
"She don't know the first thing about me, either."
"With all the time you lot spend together," Sullivan jokes. He's met by the whites of Jahseh's eyes as he rolls them, but it only amuses him all the more. His flat-faced, stonewalled prick for a brother thaws himself twice a week to take Eve for breakfast without failâSullivan can't understand what more there is to discuss about it. No riddle, no mystery. But he can't force Jahseh from this haven he seems to find in his ignorance, nor can he be bothered to. He'll only last so long.
"She don't know me. Not me."
"Whose fault is that? More time, you ain't even tryna let her."
"Why would I? She ain't like us," Jahseh folds his arms. "I don't want her."
I do.
Jahseh blinks, unsure whether he'd thought it aloud. Whether he'd thought it at all. But he quickly realises, and with a debilitating chill that writhes tight around every shelf of his spine, that his matter at hand was never about whether or not he wants Eve, but simply the untoward fact he can't have her. Because to have her is to know her, and to know her is to know him and Jahseh knows he'll never let her get so close. Kamale is just another reminder of it. Jahseh finds himself willing to go as far as to rescue that boy and for what else if not Eve's sake, but all his acts of service can't make up for the trough he's so carefully dug between himself and the rest of the world. Of course he wants her, how can he not? He just can't. Or rather won't, because there's no way she'd know himâall of himâand still want him, too.
Like I said, oil and water.
"Keep telling yourself that."
"Fuck."
"Yeah, fuck."
Jahseh runs a hand down the side of his face, his posture slumped. Shoulders sunken. That recurring headache eased and yet all the while replaced by something less dizzy and rather rawly still. No longer the possibility of Eve, but rather the impossibility of her.
"Eve might know fuck all about you, but everyone else does, y'know. It's only a matter of time before she asks someone a question and they answer it. And you're all popping up at The Link like there's a single person in there that couldn't name you by faceâthe wrong name, as well," Sullivan says. "Including Kamale. He can't even look you in the eye. You think Eve can't see it? You think she won't ask? And when she does, what makes you think he won't answer?"
"He ain't stupid."
The impossibility of Eve.
Oil and water.
This'll do.
This was a bit of a tricky write, couldn't tell you why.
Do you remember aaaaaages ago when writers would make trailers for their books? Like compiled clips from films and music videos or whatever. So nostalgic.
Thoughts and feelsss!
Jahseh thinks him and Eve is never gonna happen... Don't hate me for what's to come #lol