Read Online Lynch by Peter J Merrigan - Free Book Online

don’t need to know. We all have a past, Scott.’
    ‘No,’ Scott said, ‘you should know.’
    ‘It’s only a second date. Are you sure you want to show me your skeletons?’
    Scott blinked. ‘If there’s going to be a third, yes, I need to tell you.’
    ‘Okay,’ Jesse said. ‘But for what it’s worth, you really don’t have to.’
    ‘My last boyfriend,’ Scott began, stopped, cleared his throat. ‘We were together for eight years. We were in love. And a year and a half ago, he was killed.’ His eyes clouded. ‘I watched him die.’
    Jesse was silent for a long time. Finally, he asked, ‘Is that why you moved to England ?’
    ‘Sort of,’ Scott said. ‘Thank you.’
    ‘What for?’
    ‘For not saying how sorry you are to hear that. For not asking a load of questions about him.’
    Jesse’s smile was tender. ‘Like I said, we all have a past.’
    ‘How can you possibly beat that?’
    The challenge was light-hearted, but Jesse’s response drove a spike in the ground between them. ‘I have a stalker,’ he said. ‘She tried to kill me.’ When Scott said nothing, Jesse added, ‘Thank you.’
    Scott lay back and Jesse lay down beside him.
    ‘She moved into the flat above me in York ,’ Jesse said, linking his fingers together over his chest. ‘She told me she loved me, and then she tried to kill me.’
    Scott closed his eyes, felt the sun warming his cheeks. ‘And that’s why you moved to Yorkshire .’
    Jesse laughed. ‘Sort of,’ he said, mimicking Scott’s words from moments before.
    ‘Want to talk about it?’ Scott asked.
    ‘Maybe some time when I’m drunk,’ Jesse said. He got up on an elbow, looked down at Scott. ‘Let’s stop being killjoys. Are we on a date, or what?’
    Scott smiled, tried to put aside the mixed feelings he had. ‘I do believe we are,’ he said, and he reached up, took Jesse’s shoulder, and brought him down for a kiss, right there on the beach, not caring who was watching, helping Jesse up onto his feet and running when an old man shouted an obscenity at them, laughing as they stomped over a discarded sandcastle, hand in hand as they sprinted across the beach.
    They stopped, on an empty stretch of sand, the tide slowly coming in, and they embraced and kissed again. Breaking for air, resting his forehead against Scott’s, Jesse said, ‘I left my shoes back there.’
    The thought of the old man prodding the gay boy’s shoes with a stick like they could be diseased sent Scott into gales of laughter that had him doubled in the sand and holding his sides as a breaking wave tickled his shins.
     
     
    Jesse opened his front door and stepped into the dark within. It wasn’t until he had closed the door behind him and locked it automatically that his thoughts turned to Prabha. Apart from mentioning her briefly on the beach, he hadn’t thought about her all day. Scott had an infectious way about him that took his mind off his demons. When they were together, Jesse could think of nothing other than kissing him.
    The time between their first kiss this afternoon, lying on a blanket in a field, horses chuffing beside them, and their second kiss on the beach, had felt like the longest time. When they ran off from the irate pensioner, holding hands as they ran, they had kissed and then sat down for ten minutes, saying nothing, content with each other’s company, before venturing back for his shoes. He carried them back to the car, walking barefoot along the street, and on the drive home they held hands, letting go only long enough for Jesse to change gear when necessary.
    The atmosphere between them was more subdued now, but comfortably so. The revelations they had briefly discussed, and each silently acknowledging that it wasn’t the right time to talk about them further, had cast a sense of shared displacement around them. In the car, Scott had said, ‘Thanks again, for not asking me any questions about what happened.’
    ‘Likewise,’ Jesse had said.