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It’s only November, but it’s close enough to Christmas that the roads are busier, the streets are clogged with shoppers and the frosty night is crystallised with twinkling lights. This time last year he was getting into a row with Aaron about how much money they should be spending on presents. It seemed like the sort of thing they should be arguing about considering they were engaged and supposed to be making financial decisions as a pair. And, as they always did, those arguments always blew up into something bigger and rolled over until a new row reared its ugly head.
But that kind of bickering seems nostalgia-glossed to him now, only remembering the making up, Aaron’s cold nose and the little huffy laughs he made when he was relenting. The way Robert would wrap his arms around Aaron’s middle and squeeze the breath out of him and say “Are you mad at me?” even though they both knew he wasn’t. And that’s all gone now – all of it. The breaking up and the making up. Now they’re in limbo, a smile in the street, a conversation if he’s lucky. A permanent, irreversible ache. Being lonely is one thing – one thing he’s used to – but being lonely when for a minute you had it all - a family, a Christmas full of love and togetherness. That’s real loneliness. Raw, prickling. Everlasting.
On the way back to his car, a wave of emotion hits him in the throat. It plagues him at stupid times. Like this moment right here, a shopping bag in hand, Vic and Diane’s present neatly wrapped by the assistant in John Lewis so he doesn’t need to make any real effort himself.
Because Aaron should be beside him, chastising him for it, rolling his eyes. And Robert should be ignoring him, thinking of Aaron’s presents he’s got stashed away at home, hidden and all kinds of sentimental. Instead he’s alone on the street, feeling like he’s got a fist lodged in his wind pipe.
He needs a drink.
There’s a bar up ahead, its orange and magenta lights spilling out onto the street and a thrum of music and conversation. He hopes it’s too loud to talk in there. He doesn’t even want company, not someone to moan to or someone to get off with. What’s the point? You can’t do anything with this kind of emptiness, only hope that over time it closes up all by itself.
He orders a pint and sits with it at the back of the bar, running his finger against the condensation.
It’s a nice place really, modern, loud. Music he likes. No one too young to make him feel old and tired.
Except, it’s all too late by the time he realises that he’s ended up in a gay bar.
It’s not like he hasn’t been in one before, he’s been in plenty, all over. They’re just not where he’d choose to spend his evening. It was an easy way to get laid once upon a time (not just blokes surprisingly - it’s amazing how easy it is to pick up a straight girl in a gay bar). But these bars don’t reassure him or make him feel any of the comfort that Aaron gets out of that environment. He’d look at Aaron the same wherever they were, he’d put his hand on top of his and tell him to hurry up and finish his drink so he could hurry him home to bed. He’d put his hand under the table and run his fingers over his thigh anywhere, in any pub. It doesn’t matter where.
He corrects himself – it didn’t matter where. Now? Now they can just about manage an awkward beer, ten feet apart in The Woolie.
He’s surprised Aaron can tolerate gay bars really, the music and the overly preened men. Not his sort at all. And Aaron’s the very opposite of them – but it was always nice to see his shoulders ease up, to witness him being comfortable enough to lean forward to kiss him and take the lead. Robert found he could tolerate any bar for that. He supposes it’s where Aaron came to know himself, learn about who he was, who he could be. It felt like the right place for him to be himself finally. A place that drew him out of hiding, that offered him freedom.
Robert’s journey to the here and now didn’t resemble any of that. Maybe if it had then he wouldn’t be in this mess.
Things with Aaron aren’t hopeless right now, not completely anyhow. They’re better than they were last month, than they were in August even, when they were barely able to look at each other. Now Aaron will talk to him, he’ll moan about Liv’s latest drama, he’ll talk about the scrapyard, he’ll even text him links to things they would have once laughed about over breakfast. Not regularly, but every once in a while. But it’s not enough. It’ll never be enough. And Robert can’t stop torturing himself with the what ifs and the maybes. He wants that life back, with Aaron, with Liv. With the family he so almost had for keeps.
*
There’s a commotion at the bar, one that Robert can’t avoid noticing. Two men with their arms around each other and then a smaller group of lads at their side, all doing shots and banging their hands flat on the bar top. People having fun, sharing company, is more than a little annoying to him right now and he regrets ever setting foot in the place. He must be sneering because one of the men, one that just had his face kissed by another, looks over at him, brow crumpled and then looks away again. They’re all older than Robert by the looks of it so maybe it was resentment in his sneer too, that they were fooling themselves into acting like teenagers with their whole lives ahead of them.
He downs more of his pint and fishes his phone from his pocket. The background photo always takes him by surprise and manages to hurt afresh each time he unlocks it. Vic says he should change it; he just can’t bring himself to. That Christmas, that crochet-covered sofa at Lisa’s, that matted-hair dog, that glow of a Snowball in his stomach.
He’s got the urge, as he always does when he’s had a drink, to text Aaron and tell him he misses him. He never does, comes close, but never sends it. He loves him far too much to burden him with that again. But sometimes, selfishly he needs to release it somewhere into the world, so he’ll type it and delete it just to relieve that sharp ache.
“Sorry mate…”
He’s distracted from his typing this time by a man at his table. The man from the bar, the one he’d grimaced over at earlier. He hasn’t even looked up at him properly, he can just tell in his periphery and really, tonight of all nights, he’s not in the mood for this.
“It’s Robert, isn’t it? Robert Sugden?”
Robert’s head lifts, eyes scanning up the man’s body. It’s not a voice he recognises, though it would be typical to bump into a clingy bloke he’d had a one-nighter with a million years ago, but then when he reaches the man’s face, Robert goes cold. Years melt away – sixteen years - and his breath stutters to a stop.
“Ah, you probably don’t remember me,” the guy says because all Robert is doing is swallowing, dry mouth making that almost impossible. He panics about choking and reaches for his beer, taking a swig and clearing his head with a shake.
“It’s Ben. I –“
“I-I do,” he says, interrupting the guy before he can explain what Robert already knows.
“You’ve changed!” Ben says, laughing warmly and folding his arms across himself. “Taller. Meaner looking.”
“Sorry,” Robert says. “I wasn’t…I didn’t mean-”
“Relax. I was only joking ya.” He indicates to the empty space next to Robert. “D’you mind?” He looks back to the man he was with at the bar and raises his hand as if to say he won’t be long. Ben was always like this, forward, leading the way. Robert feels fifteen again – uncertain, blushing, sick, ashamed. Just like then, Robert is split – between telling Ben to go and telling him to stay.
He moves over a little, letting Ben sit down.
“I didn’t know if I should come over. But I don’t know, it felt weird. Like fate or something.”
“Of all the bars in all of Leeds…” He doesn’t look at him, fingers on his drink and the humour drying up on his tongue.
“Well, exactly. But I thought it was you, sitting here all on your tod.”
“Some things never change, eh?” Robert smiles weakly. He can still hardly bring himself to look at Ben. The past sixteen years compress into a solid block in his chest. He wants to run. Cry. Scream. He wants to go back in time and bury everything all over again. Everything in his whole adult life seems to hinge around that very moment and he half wants it never to have existed. Fifteen. Ben’s steady, farm-rough hands on his waist, mouths meeting and it barely being a moment before footsteps and the door opening. The door and…
“D’you want a drink?” Robert asks, dragging himself out of that bedroom.
“Nah you’re alright. That’s what he’s for,” Ben says, pointing out the slightly shorter man at the bar, muscled, peppered hair. “Fiance,” Ben says, showing off his ringed hand.
“Congratulations.”
“Well…he’s alright.” Ben grins. He nudges Robert with his elbow. “What about you, eh?” He’s so carefree. Those weeks, that afternoon, that moment is almost nothing to him, barely a memory, barely anything. Robert was just a lad he met on a farm a lifetime ago, a stern old man for a boss – he can’t have worked there longer than a couple of months – and then life carried on as normal. Out, proud, all the rest.
Ben’s looking at his ring finger. The ring Robert can’t bear to remove.
“Oh it’s…complicated.”
“Right,” Ben says, half-chewing on his lip. “Sorry – never did know when I’d put my foot in it…”
“It’s not that.”
“It’s fine. You don’t have to tell me all the gory details.” Ben goes quiet, turns his face away, head tilted down. “I know it’s all…ancient history now…but after your dad walked in. I mean…I did think about sneaking back the next day to say sorry to ya, but…”
“It’s fine,” Robert says. He can feel every part of him seizing up, palms cold with sweat. “You wouldn’t have got a warm welcome.”
“From you or him?”
Robert doesn’t say anything.
“No, I thought as much.” He offers a half smile, not noticing the hard swallow Robert does, the tremble of his mouth. “Still, you lived to tell the tale.”
“Yeah.” He tries to make light of it, twist it into a joke, eyes wide and smile forced. “Just about.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I could never have imagined bumping into you here, though. Of all places.”
“I just came for a drink,” Robert says, taking another mouthful of beer as if to prove a point. “I didn’t actually realise it was…”
“Oh.” It’s as if Ben raises a shutter. Robert knows that look, he saw it on Aaron enough all those years ago.
It throws him back years. A weight, tightening around his throat, around his head. Robert lifts his fingers to his temple and presses hard. The collar of his shirt constricts making him hot and breathless at once.
“Well it was good to see you again…” Ben rises to leave, but Robert stops him. It’s like a reflex, a white panic. He puts his hand on his arm and then jerks away again, folding in on himself.
“I’m sorry, okay? I wasn’t having a go.” Robert says. “I’m just…” His eyes close for a minute, head churning. “I’m not in a good place.”
Ben rests his hand on Robert’s shoulder tentatively like he’s scared Robert’s going to punch him. He looks at Robert’s ring again.
“Does your wife know?”
“What?”
“I’m guessing that’s the ‘complicated’ business you meant. Sitting on your own in a gay bar, that you just so happened to have stumbled upon. Looking cagey.” He opens up his hands. “Am I even close?”
He can’t help it, the scoff, the laugh stolen out of him by years of hiding. “Two years ago you would’ve been getting there, yeah.”
“Shit…” It’s his turn now to put his head in his hands. “I didn’t mean to be so flippant. Blame the age. I’m the wrong side of thirty five and seen far too many-“
“Closet cases stumbling into gay bars?”
“Well…I was aiming for something that sounded a little less heartless than that, yeah.” He pats Robert’s arm again and then removes it. “Sorry.”
It grows quiet between them, though the bar continues to bustle around their table, unaffected. That’s what life’s like, Robert knows, regardless as to how you’re feeling inside, life just carries on.
“I was married,” Robert says. “To a woman. And I cheated. And I cheated. I was with her for all the wrong reasons I suppose. Love her…but I cheated. With women. Men. Whoever I fancied. And then…”
Robert exhales, knotting his hands together and for one long moment he allows himself to look up and look properly at Ben’s face. It’s like looking into the past, talking to himself aged fifteen. Prising the boy out of that moment and telling him that one day, one day, he’ll get to be himself. No masks, no hiding, no pretending.
“And then I met Aaron. When I was still with my wife. But I met him and…everything changed. I changed. For the first time I…I was me, you know? I was me.” He can feel tears building and he looks away, bites down on them. “I’ve always known…for a long time I knew. Both. That I like both. That I’m…bisexual. It was all the hormones and that teenage stuff but I knew there was just something there I hadn’t got figured out…And then you were there. Something clicked. I didn’t just…well, you know how it went. And then when you…when we…”
Robert has to stop there for a moment, dig his knuckles into the sticky table surface and steady his breathing.
“Let’s just say, my dad wasn’t that pleased about it. After he sacked you he was angry. Really, really mad. The kind of mad you don’t want to experience again. So I just…stopped it. I put those feelings in a box and I locked them up. Threw myself into being a normal teenage lad. And you see…girls are great, girls are amazing. But I still wasn’t me. Part of me wasn’t allowed. It was wrong. Shameful. And I could live with that…I could. It didn’t matter. I just accepted that was never going to be part of my life. Until Aaron. And he just…”
Robert’s head fills with a thousand images of Aaron, moments, snapshots. He smiles – one of relief and freedom. “He’s the best thing…”
“He sounds pretty great,” Ben says, offering Robert a small nod. This is safe ground. His voice is almost mocking, attempting to lighten the mood. Robert can see in his eyes that he’s still processing everything Robert said, that he doesn’t know where to begin and Robert doesn’t expect him too. They’re practically strangers, they weren’t even friends. He woke Robert up to feelings and a life that had been dormant, but for Ben, Robert was barely a scratch on his life.
“Give us a look then,” Ben says, holding out his hand for Robert’s phone.
His favourite picture is easy to find. Just a silly one from New Year’s Eve after a few beers. He was always more up for having a photo once he’d had a couple of drinks. His eyes are bright in it – beautiful – his hair soft and a smile that seemed then would last forever.
“Wow. You did alright for yourself, didn’t you? Where’d you find him?”
“In the village…Emmerdale,” Robert says, watching the recognition pass Ben’s face. “His whole family live there. We’d both been away for years, he was in France and I’d left about a decade ago…”
“And your dad…how did he take it?”
Robert’s head lowers at the mention. It’s not like he hasn’t thought about it until he can hear it in his own head, Jack’s voice, Jack’s words. How much of a disappointment he is, how men should be men, how not his son, not like that sort. It’s all there, blurring, stalking him. A part of those darkest days when he’s too weak to shut it all out, when he doesn’t have the answers and the confidence to distract him from their persistence.
“He’s dead,” Robert says. “He’s been gone a long time now only…not up here though.” He touches his head.
“These things stay with you,” Ben says, his smile apologetic. “I was lucky – my mum raised me on her own and her only comment was that all men are pigs so why did I want to fall in love with one so badly?”
Robert laughs along with him. Ben was nineteen when they’d kissed, his mother already knew about his sexuality. Robert knew all this at the time. Ben had had a boyfriend for two short months, he’d said. It hadn’t been the first thing they’d talked about, but on the warm days Robert would fetch him a drink for his hard work and they’d sit and talk. And flirt – he realised that only later. And Ben said he looked like someone else. Robert had hoped he meant a movie star, someone rich and handsome and successful. But Ben had said no, just a boy I was seeing a few years ago. Maybe it had been a test on Ben’s part, or even to inspire some jealousy in Robert. Robert had excused himself and went inside, body and head thumping, something unfurling. Because by then he knew what this all was.
“So the wedding ring?” Ben says again. “To Aaron this time?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow. You don’t do things by halves.”
“What d’you mean?”
“Do you know how long me and Nick have been dating? Ten years. Ten fucking years before I could convince him to marry me before someone else got there first. You and your bloke get some sort of early bird special, or something?”
Robert shakes his head, smirking. He made it sound so straight forward.
“He’s just the one you want to get old and grey with, right?”
“Yeah. He is. The only one.”
“So what are you doing sitting here all sad on your own then?”
“We broke up. A few months ago. Long and painful story. My fault. It’s not something we can fix and I’m trying to live with that. Struggling. But…trying.”
“It’s all you can do…” Ben says. He looks up and catches the eye of his fiancé, smiling at him. “Sometimes these things have a way of working out.”
“Like fate, you mean?”
“Don’t roll your eyes,” Ben says, teasing. “You might not believe in all that universe shit but maybe I do. My mother was obsessed with the stuff. Tarot, horoscopes, runes, dreams. Palm reading! But I don’t think it’s all mad, I mean, I only met Nick – in a round about sorta way – because your dad fired me. Yeah, it’s true. After I left your farm I got some summer work in an office the other side of Hotten. Not my sort of thing to be stuck indoors, but it paid better than manual labour anyway. You told me that enough times! Got myself a full time job there eventually, a nice little managerial position and then low and behold, we merge with another company and who’s the cute bloke working in IT?…Nick. See!”
Robert shrugs, unconvinced but he’ll humour him all the same. His smile is still nice enough to forgive his stupid comments. It always was. He always seemed so worldly wise and persuasive.
“So, maybe you were meant to struggle. And meet a hundred wrong people. And marry your ex-wife and move back to your old home to meet that hot bit of rough you’ve got there. And come out and be yourself. And even…screw it all up. Because now you’ve done the hard part. And now you know what it’s like without him, you know what’s important to you. What matters.”
“You didn’t end up on some wacko psychology course in the past decade, did you?”
Ben tuts, giving him a little shove. “Come on,” he says. “Come and have a drink with us.”
“No, you’re alright. I’m gonna get off.”
“Oh it’s nice to know you’re still the sulky, stubborn blond you always were,” Ben says, a deliberate, caring fondness to his tone. He plants a quick kiss on Robert’s cheek and then stands up. He looks at Robert for what feels like a long time. He’s still handsome, that same rugged way. Robert feels like he can breathe a little easier, look at him without the world spinning.
“So, see you in another sixteen years then?”
“Ah well, I wouldn’t want to get in the way of fate,” Ben says with a parting grin. “It’s good to see you and I’m glad you’re…figuring things out.”
“Thanks,” Robert says. “And congratulations. On the wedding.”
When Ben’s left the table, Robert sits still. Their meeting was surreal, dreamlike and yet he can still see Ben in his eyeline, knows it happened. But something’s different, something inside him that feels so very unreal. A detachment, a release. Maybe Ben is right – he’s done the hard part already. He’s found out who he is now, who he wants to be. No more burying, no more shame, no more pretence.