FEST GIFT FOR SEXYSCHOLAR

[awry]

“Hey,” I called before he was halfway there. “D’you think you could do the ones in the other rooms, too?”

He stopped, turning around in question. “Uh-what?”

“The fireplaces. In the other rooms.”

“I just did that one.” He jutted his chin at the happily chattering fire in front of me. “Didn’t you see what I was doing?”

“Sure I saw,” I said. “Didn’t really register, though.”

When I spoke his lip curled in a scowling sentiment, and I liked that. I liked his annoyance. He glanced at the door, licking his lips somewhat nervously. “So you’re staying, then?”

“I am planning on making myself unwelcome as long as I possibly can.”

Ron glanced at the door again. “But what if he-“ he caught himself, but it was too late. As soon as he’d said it I thought it, too. The idea bloomed into a life-sized technicolour image in a split second, and I could see it happen so easily: Paul coming back, like I knew he probably never will, to apologise and atone only to find me there with Ron Weasley-the house a mess, us: a sweaty jumble of limbs and deceit. I wondered if Ron would be up for staging a scene like that, or if he even felt that same need for revenge as I did. And if he felt just as guilty, just as ridiculously idiotic for simply thinking all this, for obviously caring far too much.

“He won’t,” I said, hoping it wasn’t true. “He never does.”

Ron glared for a moment, as if trying to decipher was I was saying-as if he didn’t know. His eyes flickered to my mouth for a fleeting second, almost too quickly but I still saw it happening so clearly. He appeared to be remembering what I’d been doing with it just minutes before, and an inconspicuous blush crept up his neck. His expression was unreadable when he said, “Fine.” And then, quickly, “Just so you won’t set the entire place on fire.”

“Whatever works for you,” I replied, almost laughing for an explicable reason. He shook his head at me again, something he seemed to enjoy doing, and set a slow walk toward the bedroom. We both ignored the fact he knew where it was. I followed him, shuffling along the wooden floors, head still faintly woozy and otherworldly with the lightness of alcohol.

I sat on the bed and Ron crouched by the fireplace again. It was the same scene, almost, but different somehow. There was a controlled awkwardness, a consciousness of sorts that I was growing aware of with each sobering second that ticked by. On the floor, Ron fished the matches out of his pocket and fiddled with the box, flipping it between his fingers as he scanned his surroundings for something. Then, he picked up a crumpled piece of paper and asked, “Can I use this?”

It was the start I’d made on my memoir. “Sure,” I said with an airy gesture, and slumped back on the mattress.

Ron started to do complicated things with the logs, and once again I hardly paid attention. I watched the way his shoulders moved in his sweater, and tried to link this grownup person in this room to the kid I used to scream hateful things at across busy hallways. It was only minutes after what had happened on the living room couch and already I had trouble recalling it properly, the memory so jarring it was beginning to blur and I began questioning its authenticity. Had that really happened? Did I really initiate all that? Did I actually close my eyes and slipped my fingers down to-

“Are you paying attention?” He’d turned to look at me, eyebrows raised. “You have to pay attention. I’m not doing this again.”

“He didn’t leave me behind or anything,” I replied to a question he didn’t ask. “I’m not here because I think he’ll come back or anything.”

Ron blinked at me. He opened his mouth, making a weak inclination toward the fireplace as if to say-‘but what about the fire?’ I ignored it, propping my arms in support of my head and looking at the ceiling. “I’m not deluded. Or stupid. Or pathetic.”

“I didn’t . . .say-“

“I know what this looks like. Me up here alone, pissed out of my mind, going down on you like I’m trying to make a point or something. I know. I realise.” I turned to look at him. He was uncomfortable, unaware of his own grimace as he looked back. I continued, “But I’m not that guy. I’m here because I’m writing a book. S’the fucking woods, you see. They’re inspirational, right? So I’m here to get my creative juices flowing. That’s why I’m here, you see. Just that.” To conclude I added a single nod, daring him to tell me different.

Ron seemed awkward in a very painful way. He waited a long, hesitating moment to see if I’d finished talking before slowly turning back to the fireplace and continuing with his work in silence. He’d gotten a nice fire going and was encouraging it with a stoker at random intervals. When it appeared that nothing more could be done, that the flames had gotten as orange and had climbed as high as they could under his supervision, Ron rested the fireplace poker against the wall and got to his feet with a quiet grunt of effort. His steps toward the bed were self-conscious and unnaturally defined, but I am sure I wouldn’t have done a much better job of it in his place. He sat down on the edge of the mattress to my left, slumping in his frame with a small sigh.

“What’s the book about?” he asked.

I waited a while and stared at the back of his thick neck before answering. “It’s going to be a memoir.”

“A memoir?” He gave me an over-the-shoulder glance. “What about?”

Somehow, the question seemed a lot more funny this time around. I told him, “About you, Ron Weasley. Obviously. I am going to dedicate the entire thing to you.” He gave me a look, and I choked out a snort. Rolling my eyes I relented. “Whatever. I don’t even know. I guess it’ll be all about my tortured childhood. About how the whole war thing was just one big fucking misunderstanding, a run-on of freaky coincidences that inevitably led me to being the racist fuckhead that I am.”

Ron didn’t move. He didn’t rush to deny or confirm but just sat there, a bit frozen, disliking this blatant display emotion. I ignored it and continued, raising my eyebrows dramatically, “But don’t let the sound of it fool you, old friend. It is going to be brilliant. It’s going to be innovative and thought-provoking and, like . . . massive. You know? Absolutely fucking massive. Instant bestseller. I can feel it. I mean-I know my life, right? I know my life, and it’s massive. Crazy. People will read it and go, ‘Woah, I never realised’, and then they’ll just sort of come to the conclusion that all they’ve been doing all this time is love and understand me so freaking much that it accidentally came out as . . .” I swallowed to keep the sarcasm in my voice. “. . . As contempt.”

Sometime during my speech Ron had turned away, had half stood up. I’d heard him muttering an “Ohgod” at a certain point, and now that I was done and the ugliest part of my person was withering nastily on the floor between us, he ran a hand through his hair and said, “You’re drunk. And I shouldn’t have come up here. You’re drunk, and I knew it and I-“

“What, took advantage of me?” I managed a mocking laugh, lifting myself to my elbows. “Hell yeah, you did. And now you’re just going to have to live with that, Ron Weasley. Ain’t life a bitch.”

He grimaced, looking at me with a pained kind of frown. “Did he teach you to talk like that?”

“What if he did?” I wanted to know. “Does’t bother you?”

“Yeah. Yeah it does.”

“Fuck off,” I said with that same high laughter. “He also happens to be the one who taught me how to give a proper blowjob, and I didn’t hear you complain about that just a-“

Ron didn’t want to hear it anymore. Before I could finish he was already out of the room, marching out with angry steps and all I could do was laugh even more as I called after, “Oh, come on! Don’t be such a spoilsport!” And then, after adding an amused pause, “But I thought we were going to have SEX!”

I’d been watching his retreating back, and kept on watching when he stopped-suddenly-at my exclamation. I felt a certain sense of thrill as I waited to see what would happen next, how he’d react to the next atrocity that would undoubtedly spill out of my mouth very soon. I’d already taken a breath to express some vile thought or another when he’d abruptly turned on his heel and began marching back toward the open bedroom. The ironical, good humour I’d felt in regards to it all quickly ebbed away at the sight of him-all furious features that seemed to have come from nowhere, legs moving like a soldier’s and reminding me how he actually was a soldier once, some years and a lifetime ago.

“You are a horrible human being,” he announced at the doorway. “Fucking horrible. And Paul is my friend, all right? And he’s-he’s a good person who cares, actually fucking cares about the people around him. Actually wants them to be happy. Are you getting this? I mean-just, Paul is good, okay? And he loves his family so much that you have no idea how-“ Ron stops himself, running a frenzied hand through his hair as he raises his eyes to the ceiling for a breath. “I don’t even believe you deserve to hear this,” he says, looking back at me with a very frightening expression. “But have you ever considered, has it even occurred to you that-that he might be doing this to mess you up?”

There were so many questions in that rant, most of them rhetorical but those that weren’t-those that were actually asked with the intention of gutting me as I sat there, edge of the bed, breathing through my set jaw-settled at the bottom of my consciousness and refused to be acknowledged. I was sobering up quickly, but not nearly quick enough. And in the end, the best I could come up with was, “What?”

“Jesus. Look at you, Malfoy. Don’t you ever think that you’re being set up for-“ he swallowed, trying to stop the way his voice kept changing, “I don’t know, for humiliation? The same kind he was-when-Just, look, people want to get even. Even good people. If they hurt, they want someone to hurt back, right? D’you understand what I’m saying?”

I tried to sit up straight and answer with more dignity than I possessed at that moment. But I wobbled, my arm giving way and causing me to jerk awkwardly in my scramble upwards. I felt more drunk than I had ever before in the contrast between me and the soberness that was Ron. I said, “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Weasley.”

He gave a soft, hollow laugh at this. “I don’t, don’t I? You know, I haven’t actually been up here for, what-three, four years? And when I saw you on that balcony, shitfaced like that . . .” He pulled his lips into a thin, wry smile. “It wasn’t hard, Malfoy, to think what he’s undoubtedly been thinking for the past . . . I don’t know, how long has it been?”

“How long has it been?” I made a lucid attempt at a reply, but got no further than-“How long has it been? Fuck you the fuck out of here, is how long it has been.” Getting to my unsteady feet, drunken gestures joined in on my eloquent manifesto of: “Get the fuck out. You do not have the right to-I am-I am a guest here. I have been invited. I am-“ And then, as quick as that, I remembered a way of phrasing I’d heard before that had to come out right that moment in the most inappropriate-“You are not welcome here, Ron Weasley. This is not your place. These are not your people, and you are-“

In retelling this, I can’t help but remember something that happened not that weekend but some time before that, a month or two or more. It’d been late summer and I decided to walk back home from a lunch down town. I didn’t do that often, but it was a nice day and I recall realising that autumn wasn’t that far away and that savouring the last of the season might be in order. I was passing a laundry mat, just that part of the street where everything smells like soap, when I noticed this guy-slumped against the wall, on the floor, asleep in the collar of his coat. He had a box in front of him, and he was waiting for people to put money in it. There was no cardboard sign explaining his situation, no blinded ex-surgeon from wherefuckingeveristan. He didn’t acknowledge the people on the street and there was no special trick he’d do in return. I stopped and looked down at him, and for a moment I felt a certain anger rise up. Should I be angry at homeless people? Probably not. But this guy, he didn’t do anything. Anything. He expected people to give him money, just give it to him, for doing absolutely nothing. I mean, I’d seen the bums up in town-but at least they make an effort, you know? They get a dog that twirls when you toss him a coin, or they play some kind of horrid tune on an old recorder and then you know, Okay, this lot actually want this money. And so you give them some. And then they go a get drunk off it. But, whatever, they’re grown ups, right? It’s their choice to fuck up, right?

Right?

But this kind of blokes, those that just sit there and wait for the world to happen for them-I just don’t get that. And you pass them by and you’re still supposed to feel this guilt, to feel a certain regret for being not that good a person-or at least not good enough to share everything you can spare with a homeless guy. And what gets to me, what really, really gets to me is how sorry everyone feels for these people. How much fucking compassion seeing someone doing nothing for money can conjure, and I’m like-What the fuck am I doing wrong here, then? I give money, I give all sorts of money to all kinds of charities and nice things like that. I share and I say sorry over and over and over and I’m trying to make up, right, I’m trying to do things right but-But it seems like trying very hard never evokes as much tenderness as giving up completely does. Trying very hard is almost wrong these days, as if-‘How dare you wish for a better life? How dare you think you deserve better? The gall. The arrogance. Unbe-fucking-lieveable.’

I had four twenties in my wallet that day. I didn’t need them for the while being-I was just a block away from home, where the was food and entertainment and central heating in case winter came too soon. I could’ve easily spared one twenty, or even all of them. In the guy’s box there were a few coins, some pennies but nothing over a pound. I walked on. He hadn’t even noticed me. Back home I ordered takeaway for a tenner, and finished only half of it. The rest I threw away. I wondered for a long time what that said about the kind of person that I was. I wondered whether not giving eighty quid to a bum nullified sponsoring a marathon for . . . uuh, whatever disease that was. I wondered to which extent good and bad were mutually exclusive, and which of the two I was more, and what doing good meant-and what qualified as doing bad.

And standing there in that cabin, poking Ron Weasley’s chest and telling him hateful things, felt like a particularly bad thing to be doing. I wanted to take a step forward, or backwards, or maybe I wasn’t moving at all and it was just gravity doing it given job-but something happened to the unstable way I was keeping myself up, and then I wasn’t up any longer. I was going somewhere best described as down. And it was on my way down that Ron half caught me before I could do so myself, all scrambling arms and profanities as he roughly pulled me back to a footing of sorts. Tired and drunk and battered as I felt I saw no sense in trying to be trying very hard any longer, so I went a little liquid against him-draping my arms along his neck, resting my achy head on his shoulder. Ron didn’t like this, he was annoyed when he tried to get me to stand on my own, but I thought, Oh, fuck this shit. And then I held on a little tighter.

Ron went still for a moment before releasing a small, resigned sigh. He let me have at it, his arms limp at his side for a while. Then they were behind me, vaguely patting my back while I more or less clung onto him. It’s just that he was so steady, with his gruff wisdoms and bookless tents, while me-for all my literary knowledge of the world that didn’t seem at all keen to have me-I was quite the flimsy little creature.

“Come on,” he said into my hair. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

He ran me a bath, and it was a cold bath, one that got even chillier when I was left to my own. I was shaking in the water, trying to get my shit together as I scrubbed down my legs. I don’t know if my mind cleared up, if it was ever that cloudy to begin with, but it helped the nausea and it helped to sit down. I listened Ron walking around the living room, doing things I couldn’t see-randomly dragging chairs from the one place to the other, it seemed to me-until the noises stopped, and then it was just the sound of water quietly sloshing as I bended this knee or the other.

For the longest time I thought he’d gone away. It was late evening by then and there was barely any light in the small bathroom. I tried to imagine falling asleep in the cold of the cabin on my own, sober and surrounded by the smell that wasn’t home and wasn’t Paul either but simply vacation-home, and the idea alone clenched at throat. I stretched out in the bathtub, languidly taking up the space-freezing or not, I tried to let some tension go. When it got too uncomfortable, too cold and still no apparent change in atmosphere could be discerned, I opened my eyes to find the shadow of Ron leaning against the wall opposite.

“Hey,” he said, and I wondered if I could be the one mocking him for it this time. No, I figured, and instead went for,

“I thought you’d gone.”

“Nah,” he shrugged. Then added, “You feel better?”

I nodded even though I didn’t know. My neck rested on the marble edge of the tub on a bunched up towel put there for comfort, and I found that I was rather comforted. I looked up at the wooden ceiling and saw, out of the corner of my eye, the way Ron shrugged himself off the wall. He sat on the corner next to my shoulder and asked, “What else did you bring with you, except your clothes?”

I frowned. “Why?”

“The typewriter’s yours, isn’t it?” he ignored my question.

I nodded again but still wanted to know, “Why?”

He didn’t answer. What he did do was brush a strand wet hair from my forehead, and look down at my face like he was seeing something else than what I knew was there. He kept on combing back my hair, weaving his fingers through with quiet ease. When he lingered on my brow, tracing it with a thumb, he said,

“Unbelievable. You are still such a kid.”

“I’m your age,” was my argument.

“I know,” he said. “Isn’t that just sad?”

I closed my eyes and hoped he’d continue to play with my hair. But he didn’t, and the next time I opened my eyes he was ready with a towel, ushering me out of the water. This is where we pretended I was incapable of doing anything myself, and so he had to dry me. He did it with care and didn’t seem bothered at all, and I simply stood straight and waited for him to be done. It was only when he threw the fabric over my head and rubbed hard that I allowed myself to weep just a little, just for a few seconds. When he pulled the towel off my head and draped it over my shoulders, he managed a half smile and I felt I needed to tell him that-

“I am not a horrible human being.”

“No. You’re not.”

“I’m not.”

“I know.”

“I am sorry for doing wrong things. It’s not like I’m not. I mean-I am. It’s just hard, you know. Staying sorry when no one will accept the apology.”

“I know.”

“You’re just sort of stuck with it.”

“Yeah.” His hands dropped from my shoulders. “I know.”

And then we stopped pretending I was incapable of doing anything myself, and he left me to get dressed. When I finished and went out to the living room through the bedroom, there was not a trace of me left. The mess I’d made, my silly rebellion against everything this place represented, was folded and tucked and mopped up without much difficulty. My things were packed in a corner: a suitcase with a typewriter box on top of it. The fires were put out, the bottles gone, the trashed paperbacks innocently put back on the shelf-as if the little house and its feeble walls were looking in on me and saying, Hello. This weekend might as well have never happened.

Ron was in the kitchen. He was waiting, I think, and he was eating old gherkins out of a jar. On seeing me he bit off the half he was munching on, and dropped the other half back in the jar. He offered me an odd sort of smile and slid the jar back in an empty cupboard. Then, wiping his hands on his pant legs he walked past me out of the kitchen, saying as he chewed,

“You take the typewriter, I’ll take the suitcase.”

As I followed him, a bit lost in thought and quiet in myself, it hadn’t occurred to me to wonder where we were going. He handed me the handle of the box and took that of the suitcase in hand, leading the procession of the two of us out the door. Before leaving the cabin I decided that actually, I didn’t really want to keep the typewriter. So I put it down on the floor and was rather happy to have two hands to shove down my pockets as I walked after Ron into the November night.

We didn’t go far. The path down the decline was slippery because of the drizzle and because it was hard to see in the dark, but there was a campfire ahead to serve as focus point while we held on to branches in fear of falling. The tent that had been folded and stuffed into a backpack had gotten out somehow, had gotten itself up off the ground in a symmetrical pitch. We ploughed our way through muddy ground toward the brook, and when we got there Ron dropped the suitcase by the tent and said,

“All right.”

So I said, “What are we, uh, doing?”

“We’re gonna sleep in the tent,” he said, walking toward the fire. “Can’t stay in the cabin.”

I considered this, and “Oh god,” was my conclusion. “I’m sober.”

Ron smiled to himself wryly, sitting on his little unfolded camping stool. There was an upturned crate opposite, which I assumed was my seat of honour. Awkwardly, I seated myself on the ramshackle thing, arms droopily hanging between my legs.

“Where’s the typewriter?” he asked on noticing my empty hands.

“I don’t want it anymore,” I said.

He looked at me for a silent moment. Then, “What about your memoir?”

“Eh,” I shrugged. “Whatever. Was never going to work out anyway.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Timing’s just off, you know. World’s not ready. Maybe in ten years.”

“Maybe.” His mouth curved into a slight smile when he bent down to tug a root from the ground by his foot. He twiddled with it, then threw it in the fire. He added, “Wouldn’t count on it, though.”

“I guess,” I said, watching the twiggy root curling into itself in the heat of the flames. “Means I’ll have to find a new project, then.”

“I’m sure you’ll find something.”

“Ah, you’ll be surprised.” I suppressed a sorry grin. “There as isn’t much demand for notorious wrongdoers lately.”

At this Ron ducked his head, looking sideways as he tried to hide a smile of his own. It wasn’t funny, it was actually quite sad, but it wasn’t to be helped. A weak laugh shook my shoulders, and I dropped my face into hands, supporting my elbows on my knees. I heard Ron’s equally embarrassed laughter echo mine, and we sat like that for a while. Laughing wearily at ourselves. Or, well, mainly at me. But I was cool with that, because it wasn’t as bad as I thought, and not at all as malicious as I remembered mocking to be. When the laughter died down and it was just the fire cackling between us, I felt the tiredness wash over as if it was the sleepiness we’d been waiting for all this while. I tried to keep my eyes steady on the flickering of orange to yellow but once the drooping starts, you know you’re done for it. My head bobbed against my shoulder, jolting me awake, and Ron noticed.

“You can go lie down,” he said, nodding at the tent. “We’ll head back into civilisation in the morning.”

“Okay,” was my sleepy reply. I clumsily manoeuvred my way through the flaps of the tent, and flopped onto a sleeping bag without much ado. If I’d get cold, I figured, I could always crawl into it later. I woke up an uncertain time later when there was movement in the tent. I lifted a heavy head, squinting at the shadows. Ron stood crouched not too far from me in an undershirt, trying to keep his balance as he stepped out of his pants. Feeling slightly uneasy at the sight, I managed a croaky,

“Cold?” from my corner of the tent.

He looked up, surprised to see me awake. With a half smile he folded his pants, saying in a whisper, “If I go to sleep with my clothes on I’ll be even colder in the morning.”

“Oh,” I replied, already closing my eyes again and not thinking about how I was sleeping with my clothes on. I rolled a little to the side because even though there was a bit of space, the instinctive reaction was to make more of it. The next time I heard him his voice was closer, still speaking in that same whisper.

“Don’t you want to get into the sleeping bag?” he asked. “It’ll be more comfortable.”

I cracked open one eyelid and found him quite close, quite sitting back on his heels, quite resting one hand on my shoulder to keep me awake enough to answer. I gathered some strength and lifted a hand of myself, hooking it on his elbow and pulling down.

“What?” he said, leaning in as if I was going to talk very softly. The truth was I wasn’t going to talk at all. I pulled until he was low enough, and then I pressed down his shoulders trying to get him to lie down properly. He cooperated quite easily, although confused and unsure whether I was doing something in my sleep. When he was down on the canvas I was exhausted with the effort of it and was content to use his chest as pillow. There were no pillows and I felt he’d make an excellent pillow. I buried my face into the dip in the middle, and tried very hard to ignore the tremor of his thudding heartbeat so close by. It didn’t quite work as I’d hoped. I grunted, feeling the good sleep ebb away to mild excitement that I didn’t welcome.

“Do th’thing,” I murmured into his shirt.

“Wha?” he said without so much as a breath.

“Hair,” I tried to explain. “The hair thing. N’bath.”

Ron didn’t respond at first, and I gave him a few seconds to decipher my babble. When his inhale of understanding I felt a sense of relief, and couldn’t help a vague smile from my face as he began combing his fingers through my hair. I made a happy sound of impended slumber and he rested his palm on my cheek for a second. I heard him whisper,

“Not a wrongdoer, mate. Just a glorified screwup, s’all.”

And then, I was gone.

When I next woke up it was to the hollow sound of rain coming down on the plastic canvas above us. It was light outside, and because the tent was green-the light inside was green too. I’d been covered by an unzipped sleeping bag that did a good job as a blanket, and Ron had been draped over by me. I, too, did a good job as a blanket.

I breathed in deeply and the smell of him, so close by with my nose in his neck, suddenly became a part of waking up. Unsettled by this I grunted out my new state of consciousness, slowly pushing myself off and onto a sitting position next to him. The blanket came with.

Blurrily, I stared at the closed flaps of the tent. The light outside seemed hindered in that way grey mornings usually are and the rain that came with it sounded fierce. In trying to recall the previous days I found that not everything was as clear, and that while certain memories came rushing back with startling sobriety that couldn’t have been accurate-some had slinked away, had curled into themselves in the heat of alcohol.

I cast my mind back to Paul M. I was startled to find that while I was sleeping, he’d taken a few steps back and was now a little further away from my heart. I can say that, I can say ‘heart’ because literary upper-class upbringing allows me to and because I’ve long given up the idea I was quite as tough-skinned as I fancied my-

My thoughts came to a skidding stop. Behind me, a wayward hand had swiftly inched its way under my sweater and was now hotly skidding over my lower back. I wanted to turn around and see Ron’s sleepy face grinning back as much as I didn’t want to at all. Out of the corner of my eye all I could see was the contour of his leg under the blanket, which didn’t tell me much. The fingers on my back moved deftly, slowly, stretching and dragging a large palm in their wake. The touch followed from the line of my spine, then went from the one side to the other-from one shoulder blade to the next. When the hand reached the base of my neck, a rustling of sorts joined it. The legs next to me were pulled back, and then they were on either side of me, and there was a body behind me.

Ron tugged at my sweater, pulling it over my head so that I was left with two sleeves keeping my arms in a bunch. He wrapped two arms around my waist and when his cheek touched my neck I felt the smile in the folds of his features.

“What’re you doing?” I asked, genuinely wondering.

He hummed, pulling me closer. “I am sitting behind you,” he clarified. “And I’m hugging you to my chest, and now-“ he playfully bit my shoulder, “-I am biting you.”

I had to smile at that. How can anyone not smile at that? I relaxed into him a bit and queried further: “And why?”

“Because,” he started, using his hands to untangle the jumble of my sweater from my arms, “because you’re pretty. And also because it’s sad to see you like this.”

I looked up at him over my shoulder. Ruffled hair and sleepy eyes on a flushed face that was clearer, livelier than the whitewashed picture I had in mind. I said, “Pathetic, you mean?”

He shook his head at me, as he was prone to doing, and bent down to place an open-mouthed kiss on the line of my jaw. There was nothing to be done about the way my belly fluttered at that, and so I relaxed somewhat more. This wasn’t something that I knew to happen quite that often.

“Hey,” Ron said, pulling back to get full attention. “Hey-hey.”

“What?”

He had a face like he wanted to say something, but then didn’t say anything at all. The shifting of weight was all the reply I got, and the hovering of his lips over mine. I inched up, he pulled back a little then leaned in again and the anticipation of it was killing me. He kept on shifting, rising slowly and lowering me in the process, and expertly keeping his face very close to mine. And when I was almost on my back again, just propped on my elbows, and he was lingering over me in a similar position-we stopped. We exchanged heaving breaths. We closed the small distance and began a slow kiss. A slow, sliding kiss of certain heat that I was pleased with because I don’t remember ever having one of those. The sentiment flowed on from there, and when our tongues curled closer to my mouth than his I sucked him in, which was the beginning of a new, more frenzied kiss. This one had speed and body movement, teeth biting down on the other’s lips and soon we were pressed together on the floor-grinding, rubbing up against the planes of body so close. Ron’s stubble, the kind Paul was always too clean-shaved to have, burned around my mouth and gave every angle a certain edge-a contrast to the evenness of his lips. On a certain pause for oxygen I took a chance and placed my hands on his shoulders before he could lean in again. He looked down in confusion, mouth red from my doing. The excitement was clashing with some fear, and when I spoke my voice was shaky, unsure.

“I won’t stand,” I whispered up at him, “to-to be humiliated.”

I couldn’t see any changes in his face at my words. He just looked for some time longer, breath still laboured, eyes still restlessly taking me in. His reply was abrupt: another kiss, a third one in kind and a jumble of heavy feelings and high cravings. He pulled a groan out of me like that, his hands travelling down and hooking thumbs on the band of my pants. I held on to his neck with two hands, pushing up as he took off all that I was wearing. At his keening reaction I kissed him in earnest, slickly answering each take and give of a tongue. He murmured something into the kiss and so I moved lower-down his neck, to his shoulders, and found that there was nothing better than biting at that skin then evening it out by ways of the mouth.

Getting off Ron’s underwear was easy, but on accomplishing that it had felt like we’d performed a miracle now that nothing was in our way. He lowered himself slowly, hissing when I clenched two hands at the skin of his back. We both voiced our grunting approval at the contact. When the moving began, the rutting and the arching and fisting each other with feral grins, the specifics blurred into the backdrop of all things sex and sweaty. We made do with the space we had in the little tent, rushing then taking our time-going slow, then fast, then erratically stumbling over each other’s rhythms. I came with my legs wrapped around his waist, pulling him deeper as I hid my face in the crook of his neck-now viciously red from bite marks. He came some time later, with a clear gasp and his forehead pressed against mine. We were both catching our breaths when he wanted to roll off and I couldn’t help but hold on, couldn’t stop myself from saying,

“Wait. Just-wait.”

We waited. The rain was still falling, and it kept on falling all the time as we laid there-and later, too, when we dressed in silence and when I thought it was going to be the part where we’d pretend that-

He stopped me there, right there. I was midway buttoning up my shirt and he stopped me to kiss. And oh, I liked that. I asked him if we could just keep on kissing while doing other things because he was a fun kisser, and he said, Sure. So we did that. It still kept on raining.

And I’ll tell you, that rain didn’t stop that morning. Not as we packed up the tent, not as Ron’s car sped down the highway with me in the passenger’s seat, not as he dropped me off at home and kissed me some more at the doorway-telling me to be good, telling me that he’ll see me next week-and the rain still hasn’t stopped today. It’s still coming down right now as I’m waiting in this parking lot, have been waiting for the past million undeceive minutes. My heart is thudding in my throat and I’m not sure why, because this shouldn’t be that hard at all. This should be easy, incredibly easy and I really don’t know why my legs feel like lead as I trudge my way up the gravel incline toward the club.

I am soaking wet by the time I get to the doors leading to the lunchroom but I feel it’s maybe incredibly appropriate. If I’d written the memoir I would’ve probably added exactly this kind of torrential rain to exactly this scene. Even if it’d been a normal, dry day in reality. Yes, I think to myself, Nature’s on my side.

As I walk across the carpeted floor I can’t help but revel in the squelching sounds my shoes are making. I look behind me just to see the trail of mud I’m making. It is . . . majestic. It is also late afternoon and so the place is empty, the men probably in the adjacent room playing cards-smoking, patting the richest ones’ kids on the head, saying things like, ‘Heya, chap!’, for a lack of anything else to say. They don’t like kids at all.

I’m halfway down the hall when a waiter, one that has seen me there before and knows me by name, hurries toward me from the servant’s break room in the back. He seems puzzled as to why I’m wet, why I’m allowing myself to be wet and probably annoyed with knowing he’s the one to clean it up.

“Mr Malfoy,” he starts, voice wavering over a concerned tone of sorts. “Can I perhaps bring you a-“

“-No. Listen, is Mr M around? I need to talk to him.”

“Uhm,” the waiter thinks, unsure for a moment. “Uh, no. Wait-no, I’m sure, I remember him saying he won’t be in this-“

“Oh, bullshit and you know it. He’s in his office, isn’t he?” I started toward his office, and the waiter immediately grabs my shoulder-unprecedented on its own. I freeze in my step, more out of surprise than young man’s force. I turn toward him. He can’t be more than twenty. His friendly face is suddenly something serious, something earnest.

“Wait,” he says. “I’ll get him.”

And he gets him. He disappears for a few minutes, minutes in which I’m left to droop in puddles on the floor, and when he returns he’s following in the fast march of Paul M. The sight of me startles him, and it tells by the way he pauses on a step, the way he buttons his jacket as if to prepare himself for something. Perfect, I think. Perfect.

“Mr Malfoy,” he starts when at a polite distance. “You’ve been in the rain.”

“I have,” I agree. “I have been in the rain.”

“Would you like a towel?”

“No, I’m good.”

“Is there anything else you’d like?”

“No. No I . . . I can’t think of anything.”

Paul breathes in, wariness embodied. “You asked to see me. Specifically.”

“Yes,” I say, offering him a weak smile. “I don’t want to be a member of the club any longer.”

He gives me a disbelieving smile in return, as if I’m joking. Joking or making a scene. He gives the young waiter a quick glance. “If you’d give us a moment,” he says, and the waiter is already backing away, ready to make his leave when I-

“No, it’s okay. He can stay. That’s all I wanted to say.”

“Draco,” Paul drops his voice, lowering his head a bit to indicate something private. “What the goddamn hell do you think you’re doing?”

I shrug out of genuine ignorance and turn to leave. But he grabs my arm, taking a step forward and asking in the quietest voice,

“Is this about the weekend, Draco? Are you still angry about the-“

I pull my arm out of his grip, and there’s no lie in that this is not easy at all. I swallow, hard, willing away the strongest urge to not do any of this. “No,” I say, and I keep on walking. I don’t want to look back, and maybe in my memoir I wouldn’t have. But in actuality I’m rarely the man I want to be so I do look back, and Paul is standing there, still the same as I saw him all those years ago. Still a kid, still clenching his fists at his sides, still unable to keep bad things from happening. Only now I am the wet one, I am the one who is leaving, and he owns this ground that I’m walking on as I step out into the rain again.

Burying my hands in my sodden pockets I decide that having done this does not make me A Better Person. But I also decide that it is A Good Decision, and that those are always a good kind to have. I consider perhaps trying to be A Better Me rather than A Person. I like the idea of doing the things I’ve been wanting to do, those that A Person wouldn’t, and I agree with myself that a change could be made by maybe thinking a little bit more, a little bit deeper before doing something that could be wrong. I decide that I definitely don’t want to do wrong anymore.

But there’s still no chance I’m giving eighty quid to a bum and I’ll still be buying more takeout than I can eat, and if that sets me back even more on the scale of goodness-well, I guess I’ll just have to find someone who’s actually that good, and then love them very much.

Nearing the parking lot again, I push some hair back out of my eyes and the gesture doesn’t fail in making me smile. I look up and watch the rain, watch how its movement colours it against its surroundings and I feel at ease. Comfortable, even, with myself.